Young People in Focus

IYPP PROJECT

4. Project Development

The Family Therapy project structure was in place prior to the Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes (IYPP) Project. Developmental changes were focused more on the size of the service in that one extra family therapist was recruited and referral numbers increased.

To raise awareness of the project within the YOS we:

• delivered training sessions at away days
• talked about family work at staff induction
• gave regular feedback to the referrer about when contact has taken place
• involved the responsible officer in family sessions as appropriate

4.1 Barriers

4.1.1. Referrals and Communication

The referrals initially were very low and this is related to the issue of communication. Referrals for the Family Therapy service did increase due to the implementation of the IYPP Project. The Family Therapists felt, however, that better communication could have been achieved if the project had been on a larger scale. For example, due to being restricted to working only one day a week the Family Therapy team could not:

• attend case discussion meetings as it was held on a day that none of the Family Therapy team were available
• the Family Therapy team could only work on the day that the parent coordinator was not available and communication links temporarily became somewhat tenuous

4.1.2 Recruitment

Initial difficulties in recruiting Family Therapists to the IYPP Project meant that there was a delay to increasing the capacity of the existing Luton YOS Family Therapy service. Although this issue was due to some factors beyond the control of Luton YOS, a problem-solving meeting was held to discuss strategies to alleviate the delay.

4.1.3 Parenting Assessments

As strategies were put into place to address the issue of referrals and the Family Therapy Project received more referrals, there was an increase in the time taken to conduct parenting assessments.

4.1.4 Engagement

For those families that did engage we found that often the young person did not join the sessions. Parents would say that they had experienced Family Therapy in the past in other settings and they did not think the service had been helpful and in some cases the experience was described as being traumatic. Often parents did not see the link between the young person’s offending and family relationships and were sometimes reluctant to talk about these issues in front of younger siblings.

For these reasons and others we have found that it can take months for some families to engage with the service. They may refuse to even talk to the parenting coordinator initially. If the young person continues to offend they may eventually agree to talk about parenting support and possibly give some kind of intervention a go.

4.2 Overcoming the barriers

• After problem solving with the IYPP Project Coordinator we attempted to address some of these issues by:
  1. Developing the role of one of the responsible officers to work with parents and assist with parenting assessments.
  2. Hold one to one sessions with responsible officers to consult with them around family and relationship issues relating to their cases.
  3. Encourage the family therapists to have more face-to-face contact with the YOS staff when liaising with families.
• The implementation of the strategies outlined above led to an increase in referrals to the Family Therapy project
• In the initial stages of the IYPP Project some existing staff, such as the Family Therapy Supervisor and the YOS Parenting Co-ordinator co-worked cases in order to increase capacity
• The Parenting Co-ordinator at Luton YOS joined the IYPP Project. She was able to conduct parenting assessments, thus decreasing the waiting time from referral to intervention
• The Family Therapists would continue interventions over longer periods of time and where the parent(s) were subject to a statutory order, beyond the length of the order if necessary

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