Young People in Focus

SECTION 4

Session 2: Engaging with Families

Fundamental to this process of engaging parents and young people is the fact that when professionals work with families there is an imbalance of power in the relationship. There are a number of ways in which professionals can work to address this imbalance:

Worker’s approach to the family – Workers need to ensure that a strengths based approach is used, which means acknowledging the parents as experts regarding their own children. In discussions with the family, it is important to accentuate the positives of both the parent/s and young people. As part of this process it is also important to acknowledge the parent/s’ feelings about the need for interventions, either voluntary or statutory. As the IYPP Project involved young people, it was also important to acknowledge their feelings regarding the need for parenting interventions.

Necessary skills – The most important skills are good everyday social skills, which are needed to utilise fully in the process of getting to know a family. The most important of these skills is listening skills, but also important are advocacy, negotiation, flexibility and the ability to build up a relationship of trust with all family members. This means that workers need to meet with the family as a whole and with individual members of the family.

Strategies to break down barriers –There are many things that can be done to break down initial barriers and help to build up a relationship with families. Workers need to fully involve the family from the start. When working with a family it is important to be very clear about the worker’s role, responsibilities and expectations with all family members involved and the roles and responsibilities of family members. The intervention needs to fit in with the family’s routines.

Home Visits – It was felt by the site staff that home visits are an essential element in getting to know a family. It is also useful to send a letter and/or information leaflets about your service so that the family have some clear information before you visit, but obviously this will only be useful if you have already ascertained the best way in which to communicate with the family e.g. language/literacy needs. When visiting clients’ homes, workers should be conscious that presentation is important including dress code. It may be helpful to be accompanied by a parent or young person who has already used and benefited from your service if this has been discussed and agreed with the family beforehand. A video or leaflet with quotes from other parents and young people can also be useful. As a visitor, workers should be aware of issues such as seating arrangements and ask the family members where they would prefer to sit. It is important also to give family members an option to meet elsewhere. This was found to be particularly important to young people in one of the sites.

Traditionally, the site staff had engaged with either the parent/carers or the young person. The challenge for, and fundamental aim of the IYPP project was to engage both the parent/carer and the young person at the same time. The site staff had identified this as an important issue to discuss, as their work with families was dependant upon the successful engagement of the family as a whole. Fundamentally, the issues were the same as engaging with either parent(s) or young people, but site staff felt that they had to be aware of the differences when engaging both at the same time.

Staff from the Barnsley ‘Altogether Now, Supporting Parents in Barnsley Project’ facilitated a workshop during which they described their experiences of engaging with whole families. Effective engagement strategies for their project were divided into 3 stages – prior to provision, initial stages of provision and maintaining engagement once families are attending the provision. The definitions of the stages of engagement were:

Phase 1 – Underpinning factors of effective engagement (stuff that needs to happen BEFORE families come to the provision)

Phase 2 – What is involved in the initial stages of engaging families (from referral and up to but not including the first session of provision

Phase 3 – Keeping families engaged – (in the provision and till termination)

The strategies to employ at each of the stages of engagement can be seen in the diagram overleaf.

All Phases – There are some issues that cut across all three stages and these issues need to be considered carefully at all stages of engaging and working with families. They are as follows:

• Confidentiality
• Information giving
• Interpersonal skills
• Modelling
• Holistic Approach
• Initial engagement skills
• Consultation
• Evaluation

The discussion during this session highlighted some specific points to consider for engaging with families:

Often young people are more engaged with a family group process if their other needs are being addressed. For example, a young person with school attendance problems can be more motivated just by an Education Welfare Officer or member of staff asking them how it’s going and giving positive encouragement.

Workers often focus on our engagement skills at the beginning of the process, but those skills are important throughout the process and should be used at all times. Workers should not let them take a back seat once someone has agreed to join you. This was seen as very important to keep the whole family engaged.

It is also important that workers do not underestimate the power of modelling at all stages. If facilitators model positive and enthusiastic attitudes, it can have an effect, which is important to both parents and young people.

Staff need to use interpersonal skills at all stages and with everyone involved – other professionals, referrers and families.

Supervision is a vital component in this process as it allows time to reflect and improve practice. Group or peer supervision is useful in allowing workers to share ideas and problem-solve any issues that emerge.

Gaining young people’s and parent’s confidence in your approach to confidentiality is crucially important. This seemed to emerge particularly as an issue where the work was structured in parallel – how could young people be confident that what they shared with the worker in their group or individual sessions was not passed on when the worker, or a colleague, also worked with their parent/s and vice versa. Staff from the sites where they had separate sessions with parents and young people therefore had to work hard to be clear about confidentiality and to gain the trust of each family member. Clearly, one way of doing this is to establish with each person agreements that are created early on and referred back to, such as no information shared outside joint sessions, or information shared only on specific agreement etc.  Any confidentiality agreement will obviously need to include clarity about the exception in relation to child protection concerns when the welfare of the child, or young person, is paramount. This is discussed further in Session 4.

The diagram below includes a range of tips that came from this session.

Tips for engaging families in all three phases

« Previous | Next: Session 3 »