Therapeutic Approaches To Social Work In Residential Child Care Settings

Geraldine Macdonald and others for the Social Care Institute for Excellence have published a new report looking at therapeutic approaches to social work in residential child care settings.

Compared to the looked-after population in general, children in residential child care have some of the highest levels of need, including increased emotional and behavioural difficulties. This report focuses on how residential child care staff in Northern Ireland trained in a variety of therapeutic approaches to enhance their practice and relationships with the young people in their care.

Staff reported that therapeutic approaches do have some limitations – for example in dealing with physical aggression – meaning that other models such as Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) were still an important part of practice. Young people in residential child care often noticed an improved ‘atmosphere’ and the use of fewer punishments to deal with poor behaviour, even if they did not notice that a new approach was being used.

Some factors that helped put these approaches into practice included training staff, offering follow-up supporting materials, and developing wider systems of working that support the approaches – for example careful planning when a young person is first admitted to a home. Therapeutic approaches can complement specialist therapeutic interventions – such as trauma-focused and cognitive-behavioural therapy, counselling and so on – but do not replace them. These specialist services are a vital part of the support that looked-after children and young people should have access to.

The report is available to read here: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/reports/report58/files/report58.pdf

Creating Services & Welfare To Combat Perinatal Depression

A new report by Family Action argues that welfare cuts and poor quality housing are having a negative impact on mothers’ mental health and their ability to bond with their babies. It suggests that early intervention should mean intervening before at-risk babies are born, by providing services that support vulnerable mothers emotionally and help develop parenting skills, alongside financial support. Whilst there are services for severe maternal mental health problems there is very little for women suffering moderate to mild difficulties. The report also argues that the troubled families programme, although much needed, is not suitable for preventing problems before they cause damage.

The report is available to read here: http://www.family-action.org.uk/standard.aspx?id=19802

Tyler Whelan Death: 'Agencies Missed Chances'

Peterborough Safeguarding Children Board has published its Serious Case Review into the death of Tyler Whelan. The report is available to download here: Peterborough Serious Case Reviews.

According to the BBC News Website's coverage the report shows that child protection agencies missed "numerous opportunities".The report examined the role of Peterborough Children's Services department, medical professionals, Cambridgeshire police and probation officers. It found an assessment of the family carried out by a social worker was "very poor" and had not met "procedural requirements".

The report identified "numerous missed opportunities when interventions should have been more rigorous and incisive or clear". But it said there was no evidence that the death could have been prevented.

Tyler died in hospital in March 2011 after collapsing at home in Peterborough. His mother, Stephanie Whelan, 27, was found guilty of allowing or causing the death of her son.Her former partner, Elvis Lee, 34, was convicted of the murder at Cambridge Crown Court.

Which Interventions Actually Improve Educational Outcomes?

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just published a new 'round up' of their research which looks at whether children's and parents' attitudes, aspirations and behaviours (AABs) for education really do affect attainment; and whether interventions focused on these can reduce the attainment gap. Key messages from their research were:

• It was not possible to establish a clear causal relationship between AABs and children's educational outcomes, particularly due to the quality of evidence, which offers limited support for the impact of most interventions.
• Evidence supports interventions focused on parental involvement in children's education to improve outcomes. The immediate focus should be on rolling out and closely monitoring these.
• There is mixed evidence on the impact of interventions focused on extra-curricular activities, mentoring, children's self-belief and motivation. Further development of such interventions should be trialled alongside evaluations of effectiveness.
• There is little evidence of impact for interventions focused on things like addressing children's general attitudes to education or the amount of paid work children do during term time. 

You can download a summary of the evidence here: http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/education-achievement-poverty-summary.pdf

Early Interventions: Improving Outcomes

NFER researchers have published a report reviewing the literature exploring the impact of early intervention on outcomes for children, young people and families.

Overall, the evidence showed that the case for investing in early intervention approaches to improve outcomes and to bring about cost savings in the longer term is widely accepted and supported. It is the extent of potential cost savings that increasingly needs to be identified and evidenced to enable policy makers and local commissioners to make informed decisions. There is, however, a paucity of evidence on the cost effectiveness of early intervention approaches within the UK.

The full research report is freely available to download here.

Monitoring & Evaluation of Family Intervention Services & Projects

New Report: Monitoring and evaluation of family intervention services and projects between February 2007 and March 2011 by Cheryl Lloyd and others for the Department for Education.

Family interventions were set up to work with some of the most troubled and challenging families to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB), youth crime, inter-generational disadvantage and worklessness. They take an intensive and persistent multi-agency approach to supporting families to overcome their problems, coordinated by a single dedicated 'key worker'. The findings presented are based on families referred to family interventions in 159 local authorities.
Published 15 December 2011
Report:
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-RR174
Brief:
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-RB174
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