Young People in Focus

IYPP PROJECT

4. Project Development

Prior to the IYPP Project, we had been running separate groups with parents and young people, only some of whom were from the same family. Parents started a Living With Teenager Group and then 2 to 3 weeks later an Avoiding Conflict with Adults group ran for young people. The challenge for the IYPP Project was to run parallel groups for parents and young people, all of whom were from the same family. This meant that we needed to have referrals for both the parent and their child at the same time.

In the beginning agencies were referring families for both programmes without knowledge of the new parallel nature of the IYPP Project. This led to difficulties recruiting whole families to commit to the parallel groups ie parent/carer and young person.  Therefore changes needed to be made to the process to ensure we were able to stay true to the devised parallel model. These changes are discussed in more detail in the following section.

4.1 Barriers

4.1.1 Promotion of the project and recruitment of families

• The first four IYPP project groups were set up prior to the project workers commencing in post. This led to different approaches by different workers and inconsistencies about the processes needed for promoting the parallel nature of the groups to parents and young people
• To achieve our targets for the number of families agreed for the IYPP Project, families requesting both LWT and ACWA were jumping ahead of the queue over families who either just requested an LWT or an ACWA programme.  This was seen as a difficulty for the CFF

4.1.2 Retaining families on the parallel intervention

• In some cases the teenager engaged while the parent refused the place or vice versa. This meant that groups intended as parallel, were mixed, with some parallel families and some non-parallel families
• Sometimes referrals that were not originally for both programmes became parallel after the home visit

4.1.3 Keeping to the intended structure of the model

• Referrers and families were not initially aware of the intended structure and model of the IYPP Project and clearer criteria was needed for referring families to it
• There was a higher dropout rate in the first few groups, because commitment from the whole family to a family intervention was not very high

4.1.4 Completion of research questionnaires

• Some families were not aware they were taking part in research until they started the programme and didn’t necessarily understand the significance of the questionnaires
• In some cases we were not able to get commitment from the whole family to take part in the research and therefore got incomplete sets of questionnaires
• Return of questionnaires from families proved very difficult in the first 4 groups

4.1.5 Confidentiality

• The breach of confidentiality became a fear for some parents in the last group, as both staff were co-leading the LWT and Grounded together. Parents were concerned that their young people could share personal information with other young people on their group, which would then reach other parents
• Young people seemed to be less open to sharing personal information when they knew we were both working with their parents too
• At times workers struggled with ethics of confidentiality, as they were party to information that they felt may have been useful to share, in order to promote better understanding between parents/carers and young people

4.1.6 Time constraints of funding

• Due to the time constraints of the IYPP Project’s start dates and delivery phase, the first groups were started before the IYPP Project workers came into post. A longer period of time for development work would have overcome many of the problems encountered in the first few months

4.2 Overcoming the Barriers

Once the IYPP Project funded workers were in post they were able to evaluate the project processes in order to make improvement.

Through gradual improvement of the recruitment process and the way families were engaged in the research project, a retention rate of 90 to 100% attendance was achieved in the last 2 groups.

Changes made included:

• Producing a flier about the IYPP project so that the referrers, parents and young people were clear about the project, purpose and commitment required
• Sending a letter to families (both parent and young person) explaining about the project and inviting them to take part in the research
• When the first phone contact was made with the family, offering them a place on the LWT and ACWA on the condition that both parties signed up
• Carrying out a joint home visit. Meeting with both the parents and the young person, initially together, but then spending time with the young person on their own to gain their commitment, without them feeling forced by the parent to attend
• Offering an incentive for families to complete the research. i.e. cinema vouchers were given to each family as a thank you for their time, once we had a complete set of questionnaires
• Making time during the first and last session for the IYPP Project to be explained properly, including why and how the questionnaires would be used and to give time to complete questionnaires in the sessions so they could be collected in immediately or the following week
• Reminders by phone to bring in questionnaires
• Offer an extra home visit to give help filling out questionnaires
• The last LWT and ACWA groups were co-facilitated by the two project workers, whereas previously, either both staff had only delivered an ACWA programme together or they had worked on separate groups. The advantage of this was we were able to see the family holistically and bring both perspectives to bear on the work we did in the group
• Working with the whole family, meant we had more insight into and were able to, contradict some of the negative cognitions that parents or young people had about themselves or each other
• Re-affirming the confidentiality issues regularly to provide reassurance to families

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