Effective Family Support

Burgess Cheryl

Description

A practice focused guide that assists social workers and others to support families who need help with the task of parenting their children. This support may be required because families are lacking informal networks of support or because of professional worries about the levels of care parents or other carers are providing for their children.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Child protection
• Social work

Informations

• Publié par: Dunedin Academic Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781780465869
• Langue: English

Extrait

PROTECTING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE SERIES
SERIES EDITORS
JOHN DEVANEY
School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast
and JULIE TAYLOR
School of Health and Population Sciences, University of Birmingham
and SHARON VINCENT
Social Work and Communities, Northumbria University, Newcastle
Effective Family Support
Responding to What Parents Tell Us
Cheryl Burgess
Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Child Welfare and Protection, University of Stirling
Ruth McDonald
Corporate Policy Officer, Falkirk Council
and
Sandra Sweeten
Manager, Kelvinside Academy Green Forest Nursery, East Dunbartonshire
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Author Biographies
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 Theories, models and the evidence base for family support
Chapter 2 Remembering the basics
Chapter 3 The art of assessment
Chapter 4 What do parents say they need?
Chapter 5 Building family resilience
Chapter 6 Are we making a difference?
Chapter 7 Conclusion
Appendix The research studies
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Firstly, we are grateful to all the parents and carers who told us about their experiences and whose words are recorded in this book. We also wish to thank the many practitioners who arranged for us to meet with the families.
Thanks are also due to Brigid Daniel, who encouraged us to write this book, and to Sharon Vincent for her advice and mentoring. We would like to acknowledge the support given by Nick Burgess, Kelly Stone, Peggy Shatwell and Sarah Ridley.
We dedicate this book to Sandra Graham, whose wisdom and dedication inspired us all.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Cheryl Burgess is an honorary research fellow at the University of Stirling, where she worked for thirteen years as a researcher. She was previously a local authority social worker.
Ruth McDonald is an award-winning social worker with extensive experience managing family support services in the third sector. She now works as a policy officer for a local authority.
Sandra Sweeten has primarily worked in the field of social care and Early Years. She currently works as the manager of Kelvinside Academy Green Forest Nursery, based in East Dunbartonshire.
FOREWORD
Never has it been more important to value and preserve family support services – the pressures on parents are enormous. Far too many parents in the UK are working long hours with low pay, are on tenuous or no contracts, struggle to find decent housing and bear the brunt of brutal austerity measures. These pressures, coupled with associated personal issues such as mental health problems, isolation and relationship breakdown, can have profound effects on parenting and on children’s wellbeing. The availability of non-stigmatising, compassionate support can make an enormous difference to the whole family.
However, family support services are themselves falling victim to austerity measures and associated cuts in public funding. All too often projects that do survive are constrained by short-term funding, specific models of practice, targets and narrow requirements for specific outcomes.
All projects, of course, aspire to be effective, but the focus on specific prescribed ‘outcomes’ must not come at the expense of what parents most need. This book provides invaluable insights into the best way to create welcoming, empathic and effective services for parents who are struggling.
The authenticity of this books lies in the extent to which it is informed by the views of parents – both fathers and mothers. The book is underpinned by extensive research undertaken over many years, which has gathered the direct views of parents and children about what kind of support helps them best. The consistency of the messages from so many different studies, undertaken in different settings and contexts over several years, is striking. Many of these messages coalesce around getting the basics right. This research is also informed by the authors’ practice wisdom and knowledge of the underpinning theory about what helps parents. This is important, because it must be acknowledged that parents may not always agree that they need help with their parenting, or they may not recognise the impact of their behaviour on their children. Establishing empathic connections with people to enable them to begin to benefit from services is crucial. Many of the parents who contributed to the research underpinning this book have reflected on their own ambivalence about seeking help or being referred for help, and their views are the more powerful because of that.
The authors do not promote one specific model of intervention, rather, the evidence from the research that is drawn on suggests that effective family support needs to be informed by principles underpinned by theory that can be applied in a range of settings using different models. The book offers an accessible overview of two main theories – ecological theory and family resilience. Ecological theory provides a framework that encourages practitioners to identify the layers of factors that may be affecting parents from the wider structural and social pressures through to the intimate experiences of the individual. Parents themselves may be so focused on the proximal issues that it can also be helpful for them to gain the broader perspective that an ecological approach brings. Family resilience theory is essentially hopeful, in part because it encourages self-efficacy, and is therefore important to share with parents. More recently, resilience theory is being augmented to recognise the extent to which challenging oppressive conditions can improve resilience, too.
The book appeals to our common humanity; in particular, the focus on getting the basics right reminds us all that the parents who are struggling need the same kind of respect and courtesy that we all want from services. It is hard for any of us to ask for help from strangers, and we all share a fear that we will be re-buffed – not taken seriously or belittled. None of us would like receiving help in a building that is not fit for purpose and that seems shabby and dispiriting, and none of us would like to receive help from practitioners who are not themselves supported in their work.
Professor Brigid Daniel
Dean of School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management,
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
INTRODUCTION
‘Family support – it sounded hopeful, I was quite excited – it was what I needed. It’s one thing to get given leaflets about parenting but that’s not enough.’ Parent, study H
The origins of this book
Most parents and carers need help from time to time with the demands of caring for children. Many of us are lucky and can call on the advice and support of friends and family; there are some parents and carers who cannot. It should not feel ‘shaming’ or ‘nerve-wracking’ to ask for help with being a parent, and yet that is what we have heard consistently from parents and carers in the course of our combined seventy years of work in this area.
This book will draw on our practice experience in providing what is broadly known as family support. For the purpose of this book, this means the support required for parents to care for and nurture their children. It will also make use of the findings from multiple research studies, undertaken by one of the co-authors over a twelve-year period as a researcher, which explored the effectiveness of support for families living in a range of situations. These studies included parents with new babies and those struggling with teenagers; families involved with the child protection system; and kinship carers coping with complicated family circumstances and dynamics. A full list of the research studies from which the views of parents were drawn can be found in the Appendix. Each is identified by a letter code, which we use in the main text to show which study the quote from the parent was drawn from.
In this book we use the term ‘parents’ to include all adults who are providing primary care for children: for example step-parents; grandparents; those providing kinship care; foster carers; and adoptive parents. In society today, there are many different types of family and parenting arrangements. Children are cared for in shared-care arrangements, by same-sex couples, lone parents and by family and friends. Some of these families may be managing particular difficulties, including complicated family dynamics. Parents who have physical or learning disabilities may have their own challenges to face.
There are numerous definitions of ‘family’ – one dictionary describes it as ‘a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for’ ( www.dictionary.com ), although, of course, there are many families without children. The family unit has always had a fluid form, with adults leaving and joining other families to form reconstituted families, but we are increasingly moving away from the traditional form of a family led by a male and female parent. There are research centres and programmes across the globe that explore family life and the effects on children of these different family structures (Centre for Research on Children and Families, University of East Anglia; Australian Institute of Family Studies; and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Doing Better for Families research programme (2011)). In undertaking support work with families, practitioners must be open to different family structures and include any family members who are important to the child.
Some of the participants in our research and practice, whose views form the core of this book, were step-parents, lone parents, part of a same-sex parenting couple and kinship carers. Some had disabilities or were experiencing poor mental health, and some were misusing drugs and alcohol as a way of coping with past and present difficulties. While there were particular challenges associated with having