Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare Network - News
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Family Intervention Project
New research results show striking success for the impact of Family intervention Projects. These projects use an ‘assertive’ and ‘persistent’ style of working to challenge and support families to address the root causes of their ASB. There are different ways in which the service can be delivered: outreach support to families in their own home; support in temporary (non-secure) accommodation located in the community – the dispersed option; and 24 hour support in a residential core unit where the family live with project staff.
The national evaluation based on the first 90 families to complete the projects shows:
• 61% of families who were reported to have engaged in four or more types of anti-social behaviour when they started working with a FIP reduced their levels of ASB to 7% when they left the FIP. 35% were still engaged in some level of ASB when they completed the intervention.
• The proportion of families facing one or more ASB enforcement action(s) halved from 45% to 23%.
The projects also had positive results for children and young people:
• The number of 5 to 15-year-old children reported to have educational problems (i.e. truancy, exclusion and/or bad behaviour at school) declined from 37% at the start of working with the FIP to 21% when they left.
The projects also show a decrease in the number of families facing multiple risk factors such as:
• The number of families exhibiting poor parenting was halved from 60% to 32%
• The proportion of families to have issues with domestic violence reduced by two thirds.
• The proportion of families with child protection issues by the time they left the project was halved (21% to 10%).
The specific factors cited as explanations for these results were
• Recruitment and retention of high quality staff
• Small caseloads
• Having a dedicated key worker who manages a family and works intensively with them
• A whole family approach
• Staying involved with a family for as long as necessary
• Scope to use resources creatively such as helping families to decorate and improve their environment
• Using sanctions with support, and effective multi agency relationships.
Beverley Hughes, Minister for Children, said “By giving very intensive challenge and support, the key worker is able to tackle really effectively the root causes of the families’ anti-social behaviour, by not taking ‘no’ for an answer and showing families better ways of behaving and coping.
“Most families don’t choose to become anti-social. They do so because of underlying problems they do not know how to deal with. This research shows that FIPs are turning things around for some of the most disadvantaged families in our society”
Children of depressive mothers suffer development delays
This study is one of only a few to assess the impact of depression in pregnancy, separately from postnatal depression, which affects women following childbirth.
Read article on Mental Health Foundation website
Keeping the Family in Mind - write up of day by Terry Bamford
It is not very often that one has a conference focussed exclusively on improving the life chances of families affected by parental mental ill-health.
But June 10th was really encouraging for those working to achieve change.
Sponsored by Barnardos, the Cabinet Office and CSIP, the conference drew together some excellent speakers and some workshops showcasing best practice. No wrong door was a core message from the conference endorsed by Kevin Brennan, Junior minister at the Department for Children, Schools and Families. He stressed the importance of joining up local services so that local authorities were better at identifying families in need, assessing risk and commissioning appropriate support services. He emphasised the importance of people being able to access help through universal services like schools in order to minimise stigma.
Naomi Eisenstadt built on the Minister’s speech to highlight how far thinking had moved from the silos of departments. The Minister had talked of children, not of pupils; he had recognised the importance of all staff being able to signpost and assist people in need of help. She identified the symptoms of multiple disadvantage: no parent in the family in work, poor quality or overcrowded housing, no qualifications, mother with mental health problems, one parent with longstanding limiting illness or disability, low income, inability to afford food or clothing. 14000 children lived in families with 5 or more of these disadvantages.
She urged a dedicated key worker, a whole family assessment and intensive structured support. She used midwives as an example where a think Family approach required the midwife to see the family not the bump! She advocated a strengths based approach to building tailored packages of support.
Amanda Edwards from SCIE updated on the long awaited SCIE/NICE guidelines. These are now expected to be published in early 2009. There will be five pilot implementation sites- Liverpool, Birmingham, Lewisham, Southwark and North Somerset.
But for many the highlight of the day was the brilliant spoof of a daytime TV show by a feisty group of young carers from the Barnardos project in Liverpool with the help of the Splinter theatre group. Using humour they illustrated how stereotypes and prejudices got in the way. They demonstrated the nature of services which focussed exclusively on children’s needs or adult services and called for real joining up of thinking.
Think Family Approach has impact on policy
The Think Family approach is having an impact on policy. New guidance has been issued on Parents with mental health problems and their children as part of a DH briefing on the Care Programme Approach.
The new CPA guidance recommends that the needs of the parent, the child and the family are assessed routinely at each stage of the care pathway from referral to review. The guidance says that between 30% and 50% of users of mental health services are parents with dependent children.
Parents say that they appreciate additional support when they are unwell. They describe how they fear losing their children, and the reality of it happening. They feel on trial about their parenting abilities and though they may need help, they fear the consequences of asking for it. Women are afraid to come forward for help, particularly black women. Such anxiety can be an impediment to recovery. Worry about mental illness being ‘passed on’ to the children is another common fear, and one shared by the children.
The guidance discusses safeguarding and the importance of early years. It stresses the importance of early identification of problems and the need for joint working between mental health and children’s services.
There is a helpful and very detailed set of references and toolkits for use by professionals.
Two important new resources from SCIE
Poverty, Parenting and Social Exclusion and Research Briefing 24 - Experiences of children and young people caring for a parent with a mental health problem.
See Education section under Resources
Family Pathfinder Projects
The successful bids for the Family Pathfinder Projects - the next phase in the implementation of the 'Think Family' approach, have been announced.
Children who care for parents with mental health problems
Each week in Community Care, the Social Care Institute for Excellence analyses research findings behind specific social work practices.
Individual Budgets Pilot programme by Julia Winter, disabled mother
Read Julia's experiences of this programme, published in Disability, Pregnancy and Parenthood international, Number 61, Spring 2008.
My Private Hell
Stephanie Merritt describes the crisis that almost claimed her life. Read article from the Guardian.
