Young People in Focus

IYPP PROJECT

7. Summary of Achievements

7.1 Number of Families Provided with Services

Over the first phase of the IYPP Project 17 families were referred 1 family was not seen and one family seen twice during two episodes for two separate children in the family. Although 15 families received an intervention only 8 were included in the evaluation figures for the first research phase as the remainder were still engaged with the service as the data collection phase ended.

7.2 Identified Range of Issues Affecting Offending

During the Family Therapy sessions families were able to identify and discuss a range of issues that affected their young person’s offending:

• Bereavement
• Family break up
• Paternal patterns of offending
• Abuse
• General communication skills related to abilities to solve difficulties through dialogue
• Relative poverty
• Poor environmental conditions
• Racism and/or other forms of discrimination
• Young person’s mental/physical health – ADHD, Asperger Syndrome or Autistic spectrums, general levels of distress and  behaviour related to unresolved or processed traumas
  ie witnessing violence from a young age

7.3 Multi – Agency collaboration

Most families worked with had a number of other agencies involved resulting in a need for real clarity and collaboration in respect to differing tasks and responsibilities. Other agencies included:

• Social Services
• Medical practitioners – health visitors, psychiatrists etc
• CAMHS
• Education – EWO’s, teachers etc
• Housing

Much of the liaison between the Family Therapists and the agencies listed above took place by telephone. In one instance the Family Therapist worked with an independent consultant, who was working with a young person in their school environment.

One example of a positive outcome from multi-agency collaboration was that of a young person who had very poor school attendance. The Family Therapists liaised with the Education Welfare Officer (EWO), who was the case manager for the young person. As a collaborative piece of work, the EWO attended a Family Therapy session in the young person’s home. The result of this collaboration was an improvement in school attendance for the young person.

7.4 Positive Changes

The Family Therapy Team’s experiences and feedback from families and referrers have led to their assessment that outcomes in terms of changes have led to:

• Increased access to education by the young person
• Decrease in family conflict
• Increased confidence in relating to others outside the home

In feedback from clients, many of them said that the relationship between the young person and parent/carer improved.

Five families stopped engaging in Family Therapy because the young person was no longer living at home and was either living independently in a hostel, with extended family or in prison.

From feedback and reviews with family members and the outcomes for the family members, the Family Therapists describe, below, a range of different responses to the service, which they see as falling into four broad categories. They also describe the types of outcomes that in the Family Therapists opinion would follow from these responses:

• Found it really useful – changes in patterns of behaviour occurred and were sustained, relationships improved and abilities to communicate openly and effectively increased, regard for self and others improved, families felt confident of being able to manage the future.
• Found it quite useful – reduced levels of distress and increased levels of competence, but ongoing complexities mean that only partial effectiveness was achieved and ongoing involvement remains very probable, a general optimism that the process was more helpful than unhelpful and that follow-up studies could reveal more benefits than are immediately obvious whilst a crisis state of living persists.
• Of some use but circumstances made it too difficult to establish a position of reflexivity – In the opinion of the Family Therapists the most effective work has probably been with families where there has been a one-off offence and the Family Therapy meetings have provided a point of focus to reflect on the effect of the incident, what has been learnt from it and what will prevent future difficulties. A majority of families worked with are still living in a context of on-going troubles with a family member, the local environment, lack of communication in the family and with external agencies. This kind of work often meant the arrival at the family’s home for a meeting coincided with the current event such as an arrest; a child running away; a child being moved to a safe place and so on. The complexity of the moment meant that the best we could hope for was to offer empathy for their situation and attempt to provide a few moments of calmness from which to find one or two things that the family could focus on that would help the situation from deteriorating further and maybe help point towards solutions. It is possible that these interventions have been more profoundly useful than it is possible to observe at the moment, for example, one family reported how they did not see the point of the questions we asked at the time, but later found the question came back to them when things had settled down and on reflection it had proved to be useful.
• Families belief system made it too difficult or inappropriate to continue meeting – A number of families had a very strong sense of ‘we should be able to sort this out ourselves’ resulting in a sense of shame and embarrassment. Most of these families permitted our involvement for a few sessions during which the family’s abilities and motivations for change were identified and amplified leaving the therapist with some optimism and trust that things will improve. In a sense this is the essence of systemic practice – making a small intervention that reconnects the family with helpful patterns of communication.

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