Family Support

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Family Support

What is it?

How does it work?

Why?

What is it?

Family Support is an individual package of support delivered by a trained Family Support Worker (FSW) who will visit the family at home to establish a relationship with them and can assess the overt and underlying causes of a wide range of issues. Family Support Workers are skilled in engaging families and working in partnership with them.

Family Support Workers are experienced Lead Professionals in the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) process, which seeks to promote positive outcomes for vulnerable children and families through integrated multi-agency working. Where appropriate, the FSW may initiate a CAF and organise Team Around the Child Meetings.

Our FSW will carry out a thorough assessment to identify areas of need and agree an action plan with the family. Progress is reviewed at 6 weeks in order to ensure that we achieve the best outcomes. The support process is structured and systematic.

A qualified and experienced Social Worker provides professional case supervision, which ensures another level of scrutiny and that child protection and other sensitive issues are dealt with appropriately.

How does it work?

The Family Support process is well structured and managed and begins with a full Assessment, which identifies the needs of the family within the same broad areas used by the CAF framework:

• Child’s physical and emotional health/wellbeing
• Parenting capacity
• Environmental factors.

Having established areas of both resilience and vulnerability an Action Plan is devised in partnership with the family. After six weeks or half a term, the Action Plan is reviewed to check whether all actions have been completed or whether there are further needs to be added. Sometimes the review stage reveals unmet or new needs, in which case a new Action Plan will be devised and implemented, with the referrers consent. At this point the case will be closed or a revised action plan will be implemented.

The referrer is kept informed at every stage of the process. We work in partnership with the family and the referring organisation.

The referral form can be downloaded here - the file is a PDF, and requires PDF reader software.

Why?

"Especially in a child’s earliest years, the right kind of parenting is a bigger influence on their future than wealth, class, education or any other common social factor."
Early Intervention: The Next Steps – Graham Allen MP January 2011

"Children’s physical and emotional health and their cognitive and social functioning are strongly influenced by how well their families function."
Family Paediatrics, Report of the Task Force on the Family

Ofsted found 500 000 children had been put on the special needs register simply because they were falling behind. Children who have been put on the SEN register and who do not have a specific learning difficulty are clearly suffering the effects of some other barrier to learning.

These typically include:

• Problems with parenting
• Inadequate and/or overcrowded housing
• Parental debt/low income
• Parent or child’s mental health issues, particularly depression.

For example: Low income/debt leads to stress => Stressed parents are less tolerant and need to attend to their own issues => children pick up on unhappiness => behavioural problems => increased family stress.

Financial management education and/or benefits advice => lessens debt => reduces parental stress => positive effect on the family dynamic.

Happier children are more likely to enjoy and achieve in their later lives.

We recognise that these are complex and inter-related issues and we are not claiming to have a magic wand.

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