极速赛车168最新开奖号码 parenting capacity Archives - Community Care

极速赛车168最新开奖号码 Strong evidence parenting support services improve outcomes for families in adversity, councils told

Mithran Samuel — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 09:47:19 +0000

There is strong evidence that parenting support services improve outcomes for children and adults in families experiencing adversity, councils have been told.

The latest government-commissioned practice guide to what works in children’s social care said interventions for parents of children aged 0-10 could improve parenting practices and child behaviour, lessen levels of stress and support adults mental health.

It also highlighted the vital importance of practitioners’ skills in building trusting relationships with, and in empowering, parents, and also the value placed by staff and parents alike on interventions that recognised the interconnections between parents’ and children’s needs.

Case for prioritising parenting support ‘has never been stronger’

Sector what works body Foundations, which published the guide today, said it was based on the first major review of UK and international evidence on parenting support for families experiencing adversity, including adult mental health problems, substance misuse or domestic abuse.

On the back of the guide, Foundations’ deputy chief executive, Donna Molloy said: “As councils struggle to cope with the costs of children’s social care, our evidence shows that proven models of parenting support can help to keep children safe with their families, improve their outcomes and alleviate pressure on an already overstretched system.

“The case for prioritising proven parenting interventions has never been stronger.”

Evidence to meet government social care outcomes

The practice guide is the second of a series of Department for Education-commissioned resources from Foundations designed to provide senior leaders in councils and partner agencies with the strongest available evidence to deliver on the outcomes in the children’s social care national framework.

The DfE-issued statutory guidance, published in 2023 under the previous government’s children’s social care reforms, sets four overarching objectives for the sector and three key enablers for achieving them:

Outcome 1: children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need.
Outcome 2: children and young people are supported by their family network.
Outcome 3: children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes.
Outcome 4: children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes.
Enabler 1: multi-agency working is prioritised and effective.
Enabler 2: leaders drive conditions for effective practice.
Enabler 3: the workforce is equipped and effective.

The first guide, on kinship care, was published in October last year, and the one on parenting through adversity for parents of babies and children aged 0-10 is the first of four on parenting support. The others will cover support for families in adversity with children aged 11-19, parents or carers of children with disabilities or severe mental illness and adoptive and foster parents.

Rising parental mental health needs ahead of family help reforms

The parenting through adversity guide comes amid a growth in the numbers of children in need assessments identifying parental mental health or substance misuse problems, which directors of children’s services have warned is increasing risks to the youngest children.

At the same time, councils are set to implement significant reforms to the way they support families, through the rollout of the family help model in 2025-26.

This involves the merger of targeted early help and child in need services into multidisciplinary teams, designed to provide families experiencing adversity with early, non-stigmatising help, =to resolve issues and prevent them escalating into child protection concerns.

Though the government is providing a £270m grant to implement the changes, the reforms come with councils under significant financial strain.

Guide ‘will help councils focus resources on what works’

Foundations’ head of practice guides, social worker Nimal Jude, said the latest guide would enable authorities to determine where to invest their resources.

“We are acutely aware of some of the workforce pressures and the wider financial situations that local areas are in,” she said.

“It feels like this guide has come at such a crucial time during this transformation to family help, because you can really make some decisions about what things that you might want to scale back and what things that you might want to focus attention on, not least because you can now focus your attention with the full confidence that this is actually the best available evidence.”

The evidence base

The guide is based on two systematic reviews of the evidence around parenting support for families with multiple and complex needs.

The first, carried out by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI), in partnership with the universities of Oxford, Amsterdam and Monash, examined which interventions relevant to the UK, had the strongest evidence for reducing child maltreatment or improving child outcomes, along with what practice and delivery approaches contributed to success.

It examined 95 randomised controlled trials – where participants are randomly allocated into a group that receives the intervention and a control group – of 50 parenting interventions, finding:

Small to moderate statistically significant effects on children’s emotional and behavioural problems, child wellbeing and parent-child relationships.
Small to moderate statistically significant effects on promoting positive parenting (for example, appropriate disciplining, praise, warmth, and nurturing behaviours) and reducing negative parenting (for example, hostile parenting or laxness).
Small statistically significant effects on parental mental health and reducing parental stress.
Small but non-significant effects on reducing parental maltreatment and child abuse risk.

Strengthening parent-child relationships

Based on the CEI’s systematic review, Foundations said there was “strong evidence” for the benefits of providing parenting interventions to strengthen parent-child relationships, and that councils should make these available to families with children aged 0-3.

It said these should be based on, and delivered by practitioners well-trained in, attachment and/or social learning theory (which posits that children learn through observation, including parental modelling). These staff should be able to observe and reflect on how parents respond to children’s cues and explore parents’ own attachment experiences.

The guide also said there was “strong evidence” for councils commissioning interventions to improve child behaviours, reduce negative parenting practices and improve positive practices.

Improving child behaviour and parenting practices

In relation to behaviour, key features shared by effective interventions were supporting parents in setting clear expectations and boundaries and promoting child-led interactions.

Promoting positive parenting can include practitioners taking on a coaching role, which requires them being skilled in coaching techniques and being able to build long-lasting, trusting relationships with parents.

The guide also said there was “strong evidence” that parenting interventions can reduce parental stress and improve mental health for those with mild-to-moderate problems.

Improving mental health

It said practitioners should be skilled in understanding the impacts of stress on parents experiencing adversity and should be given time to develop relationships with them, to enable parents to learn new skills and make use of feedback.

While the guide stressed that that parenting interventions were not sufficient to achieve significant changes to mental health, it said there was evidence they could improve parenting skills, even in adults with clinical levels of illness.

It said these programmes should involve practitioners offering guidance on child development and supporting parents’ abilities to manage their emotions.

Evidence ‘promising’ in relation to reducing harm

On reducing the risk of harm to children, Foundations said the level of evidence for parenting interventions was “promising”.

It said programmes that involved a fixed and structured series of sessions tended to be more effective in this area than those that were flexible.

The guide added that local leaders should examine the need to invest in these services for families with children on the edge of care and in the rollout of family help.

Vital importance of practitioners’ interpersonal skills

Alongside the CEI review, Foundations carried out its own systematic review of studies on the barriers and enablers to successful implementation of parenting interventions for families in adversity and on parents’ views, experiences and preferences in relation to these. This drew upon 33 studies.

Among two findings that had “high” certainty, based on the strength of the evidence, was that practitioner interpersonal behaviours were “essential to building trusting relationships and empowering parents”.

The review said parents valued practitioner characteristics such as openness, non-judgmentalism and encouragement, which facilitated the development of the trust that was “essential” in promoting change.

Building trust was supported by an initial home visit, communication outside of scheduled sessions, regular attendance from the parent and a consistent workforce, with parents highlighting the challenges of doing so when workers changed.

Recognising that parents’ and children’s needs are ‘intertwined’

The other finding that was deemed to be of high certainty was that both parents and practitioners value interventions that recognise “the intertwined relationship between parents’ practical and psychological needs and the needs of their children”.

Practitioners appreciated that supporting the parent, by focusing on their practical, social and emotional needs, was often the best way to help the child, with this approach welcomed by parents, the review said.

Based on its review, Foundations identified 12 principles for working with families in delivering parenting interventions:

Tailoring parenting support to ages and stages of child development.
Using strengths-based approaches to engage parents and offering parenting support across the system.
Ensuring that parents from minoritised ethnic backgrounds have equitable access to effective parenting interventions and that these are delivered in a way that fully meets
their needs.
Understanding that parenting interventions work well for families where the parent has poor mental health, and, when delivered successfully, support parents to improve parent and child outcomes.
Prioritising face-to-face delivery of support.
Implementing both fixed and flexible delivery models to support a mixed local offer and prioritising more structured interventions to effectively reduce the risk of serious harm to children, directing resources where they are most needed.
Tailoring local programmes to meet the specific needs of families, offering both group and individual options to support engagement and provide parents with choice.
Focusing on careful implementation, effective delivery, and ongoing quality assurance to ensure the success of interventions.
That a strong local offer should start with a robust population needs analysis and involve place-based system leadership to develop a multi-agency offer.
That local areas should have effective referral routes into parenting interventions from a range of local services.
That effective parenting support requires a skilled and integrated workforce to deliver effective interventions.
Parenting support should form part of a wider system of support that strengthens the resources available to parents.

极速赛车168最新开奖号码 Attachment theory: assessing parental mentalization

Gillian MacFarlane — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 09:33:39 +0000

This article presents a few key pieces of advice from Community Care Inform Children’s guide on applying the principles of attachment theory to social work assessments, which was first published in February 2015 and updated in April 2023. The full guide explores attachment theory and how to apply principles such as emotional regulation and mentalization to better understand parent-child relationships, behaviours and assess risk. Inform children subscribers can access the full guide here.

The guide is written by Alice Loving, a practitioner, academic and trainer specialising in parenting assessments, attachment, trauma and mentalization. Alice is a lecturer at the Centre for Child Protection at Kent University.

This extract focuses on a key principle of modern attachment theory – mentalization – in relation to parenting behaviours.

The capacity to mentalize

The capacity to mentalize is “the ability to understand behaviour in light of underlying mental states and intentions” (Slade 2005).

Mentalizing means you can make links between how your own thoughts and feelings influence your behaviour. We also mentalize for others – attuning to what another person may be thinking or feeling and how this may be impacting their behaviour.

This capacity is particularly important in parenting. Some parents may struggle to understand that their child has different needs, experiences and feelings to theirs. Some parents feed their child when they, the parent, are hungry, not when the child is; or overstimulate the child because they, the parent, are bored.

Concern can arise when parents/carers are consistently unable to demonstrate mentalization – especially when the child is significantly distressed.

Practice example

A parent finds the intimacy of feeding her baby uncomfortable (due to her own trauma history), so in order to get feeds over with more quickly, she bites holes in the bottle teats to make them larger, so the milk comes out quicker. She is not then connecting with the experience of the baby and how it may feel for her to try to drink the fast-flowing milk, and, as a result, much of the feed is lost as it spills from her mouth.

Assessing parental mentalization

You can explore this with a parent by asking questions such as: “If your baby was speaking right now, what do think she’d be saying? And what would you say back?”

You can gauge a parent’s capacity to mentalize with their child by asking questions such as:

What are your child’s likes and dislikes?

Most children have items of food, toys or activities that they are particularly fond of, and others that they may dislike. For the parent to be aware of these likes and dislikes can demonstrate not only their attunement to what is in their child’s mind, but also the way in which they view them as an autonomous individual.

Can you give me three to five words that describe your child?

Once they select a word, ask the parent to describe a recent memory that demonstrates why they chose the word. Pay attention to whether the parent describes things that are internal to the child (eg happy, considerate, wilful, independent, clever) – which indicate a sense of their child’s internal world, as opposed to ways they behave and physical or factual attributes.

What do you enjoy doing together?

A key aspect of the ‘secure base’ element of the attachment relationship is for the child to have a sense that the parent enjoys spending time with them. If this is not the case then this is an important element to focus on during your interventions.

Is there anything that your child is scared or frightened of?

This question is reliant on the parent reading the potential cues and signals associated with the child’s fear and and entering the child’s mind to fully comprehend what might be causing it.

What do you do to show your child that you love them?

This question needs to be asked gently and sensitively. It is important to gain an understanding of how a parent’s love is experienced by the child, and this question alone can trigger a moment of reflection for the parent and connection with whether their child might feel loved by them.

What do they do to show you that they love you?

It may be appropriate but potentially painful to first ask, ‘Do you feel that your child loves you?’, before then exploring ways they feel that the child shows this.

Tell me what it is like to be mother/father?

This question can generate a large variety of answers. It is often a helpful starting point for exploring what is in the parent’s mind about their child and what they feel is in the child’s mind about them.

How do you think they would describe their experience of being cared for by you?

This question is an adaptation from George Kaplan and Mary Main’s (1985) ‘Adult attachment interview’ and aims to connect the parent to the child’s lived experience of the care that they provide.

As well as informing assessments, asking questions like these, which prompt a parent to consider their child’s internal states, can help develop their capacity to mentalize with their child. You can also help parents to develop mentalization by modelling it yourself towards them.

If you have a Community Care Inform Children licence, log on to access the full guide, and read more detailed information on attachment theory, assessments, and how to work with and support children and families.