NCH Renfrewshire Primary Support Project Practice Profile

The PINS team met with project staff at the NCH project. In discussion with the team – Brian, Carol and Fiona – more about the work emerged.

Firstly, a short project profile:

The project supports children of primary school age who are considered at risk of developing significant offending behaviour: specific objectives are to

• Reduce the numbers of young people being placed on supervision due to offending.
• Reduce the risk of young people entering the criminal justice system.
• Improve children’s personal confidence, self esteem and social skills and to help them to cope more effectively in the management of their own lives.
• Provide guidance and support to parents and carers.
• Increase the level of social inclusion, and encourage pro social activity. 

The service includes: outreach work, parenting skills, art/play therapy, intensive therapeutic intervention, befriending, advocacy, counselling, group work, sibling support, out of school support, in school support and service user participation.

And now more from the interview:

PINS: Could you introduce yourselves and tell me a little about the service you provide?

Brian Emerson: I am the Youth Justice Team Service Manager.  About 3 years ago it was identified that there was a gap in provision for primary aged school children.  In line with Scottish Government policy of early intervention and working with families it was felt appropriate to start up a new service which would attempt to engage primary aged children and families who exhibit patterns of behaviour which would suggest future problems and criminal behaviour. 

Carol Bradbury: I job share as Practice Team Manager in the Primary Support Team.  I previously worked for 8 years within field social work and have worked in youth justice for approximately six years. My role includes both management and supervision responsibilities, but I also make a point of working in practice with staff.  Another of my key roles is to meet regularly with key stakeholders.  What I see as the main aim of this service is to provide input at an early stage which will negate the need for local authority social work involvement further down the line.  But if local authority involvement is needed, then we hope that it will be a more positive and constructive than if our team had not worked with the family and the young person during their primary schooling. 

Fiona Steel: I also job share as Practice Team Manager.  I previously worked for 4 years in the local authority then moved into NCH. This was initially in a fostering project and now with the Primary Support Team. We work with children in P1 through to P7 which is roughly 5 to 12 year olds.  At the younger end of our age range we focus efforts very much on parenting.  When we work with children at the upper age limit we find that engaging on parenting issues becomes more difficult. In such cases we focus attention on the young person and try and help them to become more confident and constructive. 

Practice Issues

PINS: What are the current practice issues for your agency?

BE: One of the main elements which we try to challenge in our early intervention work is parenting that could be described as harsh or inconsistent. The parents we work with often struggle with setting boundaries and establishing and maintaining routines. For example, getting children to go to bed at a set time or to be home at a certain time are regular issues we deal with. If children are not expected to be in at a certain time then this can often determine who they associate with and the types of activities they involve themselves in. If children are not getting enough sleep this has a knock on effect in respect of their schooling. We also find that the disruptive behaviour children display within school and the community is directly associated to their experience within their home environment. Parent’s who don’t enforce proper boundaries or rules, or who parent in an inconsistent manner or do not form strong positive attachments with their children tend to be the parents of children who have difficulty within school. 

CB: We are lucky in respect of our voluntary status as we can side step some of the issues families have in terms of dealing with statutory social work. Most parents do want our help and want the best for their child. But it can be difficult to engage parents if problems are entrenched and family relationships have broken down. This is why early intervention work is so important. If a parent begins to envisage their child’s behaviour as the child’s own fault then working with the parent constructively is much more difficult.

CB: Parents who misuse substances is also a major issue. It is very difficult for parents who misuse substances to provide consistent parenting or be consistent in terms of being able to work with the help we provide. For instance, the likelihood of a parent who is abusing substances to attend a parenting class or keep regular appointments is very limited due to chaotic lifestyles. We have had instances when we have tried to run parenting classes and some of the parents are clearly not in a state to concentrate and participate effectively. Thishas an impact on the rest of the group and their willingness to sustain commitment and attendance.

FS: I think one of the major issues which we have to deal with in our work is trying to build the resilience and confidence of young people who have and continue to experience extremely difficult circumstances. Many of the young people we work with have a very limited or conflicting sense of identity. They often have changing and irregular father figures. At the same time the amount of young people we work with who have experience of a traumatic event, such as the death of a close relative, is significant. In such cases, they are often only ever partly aware of the full details of an event while it might be common knowledge within the wider community. This leads to confusion, instability and anger.

BE: An issue which I think is important relates to schools. We have good relationships with the schools which we work with but I would stress the need for schools to have an understanding of the experiences of vulnerable children and a little flexibility in terms of working with them in terms of behaviour. It is important that schools impose firm boundaries in respect of discipline and behaviour but if you deal with all children the same without understanding what might be going on in their home life then in our experience it can lead to confrontation and a worsening of relationships. Imposing standards of behaviour and rules on vulnerable young people which are entirely alien to them is likely to isolate them even further and cause more problems in terms of their education.

Evaluation

PINS: Do you evaluate your service?

BE: It’s something we are very interested in. We are in the process of obtaining a briefing paper from Glasgow University. The research will hopefully provide us with information relating to the number of young people being reported to the children’s hearing system. But there are difficultiesin evaluating the kind of service we offer. We recently became aware of problems and limitations of evaluating our service in respect of pupil attendance figures. On the one hand it may look successful if a child has managed to remain in school and not been formally excluded. However, what may happen is that the child is spending non productive time within the school, for example sitting outside the Head Teachers office or that one of the child’s parents has been phoned by the school and asked to remove the child for the day. This may be in the child’s interest as it means a formal exclusion has been negated but what it shows us is that the child is still not coping within the school environment.  

Good Practice

PINS: What is the best way to positively impact on the life of young people and limit their chances of being excluded?

CB: I think we are successful in working effectively with parents. Our experience of running parenting group work programmes has been mixed due to poor attendance and problems relating to substance misuse so we try to be as flexible as possible. Our approach is individually tailored and we are willing to work in the community, at the family home, in school or within our office space. Most often we work within the family setting. We provide help in respect of a range of issues but primarily in terms of parenting. This might involve sharing strategies to help set boundaries, routines, discipline and bed times.

FS: I would add to this that our ability to build relationships with families and young people is very good. It is important to be very upfront and honest with people from the start and clear about roles and expectations. It is also important to explain child protection procedure so that families know that the social work department can be informed if we have child protection concerns. We also work well with schools and with young people in respect of their schooling. Some of the work which has been quite successful includes work around respect for authority, consequential thinking and building self esteem.

CB: A recent initiative which we have been involved in has been to try and engage male adult figures who play a part in the lives of the young people we work with. This might be a child’s biological father but often it is the mother’s boyfriend or partner.

BE: Historically you could argue that statutory social work have failed to engage them or work with them. This is something which we are trying to do. During the summer we piloted an initiative in conjunction with ‘Sport Matters’ which involved taking young people and adult male figures on away days to do some form of outdoor activities such as hill walking. The idea was to work constructively and do something fun in a neutral space. The feed back we received from participants has been very positive.