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Reducing Parental Conflict

to improve outcomes for vulnerable children

Brighton and Hove RPC Conference

20th June 2018

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Presentation aims

• Context to the Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Programme

• Overview of the RPC • Focus on the integration aspect of the RPC • Opportunity for questions

3 3 Department for Work & Pensions CONFIDENTIAL

Context: evidence

• Parental conflict (whether parents together or separated) places children at risk of poor social, emotional and educational outcomes

• Parental conflict across the spectrum from “silence to

violence” is potentially damaging • Growing group of proven interventions to reduce parental

conflict, improve child outcomes and potentially avoid the need for expensive services later down the line

• Offering evidence-based support with parenting likely to

be ineffective where there is conflict between parents

4 4 Department for Work & Pensions CONFIDENTIAL

Prevalence of Parental Conflict

28% Out of all children living in workless couple-parent families (this is 5% of all children), live with parents who report having a distressed relationship. Almost three times as prevalent compared with where both parents are working.

Proportion of children in couple-parent families reporting relationship distress by parental workless status

28%

13% 10%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Both parents workless 1 in 2 parents workless Neither parent workless

9%

31%

13%

6% 5% 3%

32%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

AtleastOnce A

Day

At leastonce per

week

At leastonce perfortnight

At leastonce per

month

At leastonce per

year

Less often Never

How often resident parents report that the child 'usually sees' their non-resident parent during term time (2013-2014)

53% children in separated families see their non resident parent at least once a fortnight

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Early Intervention Foundation Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbwWuck7cOs#action=share

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What needs to be tackled?

• Limited supply of proven support to address parental conflict • Take up is low and tends to be sought when families are in crisis • Tend to operate on self referral basis, which may be less

effective for vulnerable families. • The poor individual outcomes for children exposed to parental

conflict can lead to increased pressure on public services; yet we know that support to reduce parental conflict is not yet fully embedded in local authority services.

• We’ve been working with a small group of local authorities to test ways of addressing parental conflict over the last three years, as part of our Local Family Offer trial.

7 7 Department for Work & Pensions CONFIDENTIAL

DWP Local Family Offer (LFO) findings

The LFO areas found the following the most helpful aspects: • Strategic Leadership Support: DWP provided leadership support to:

⁻ Understand why intervening to reduce parental conflict is important and how to intervene successfully

⁻ Support the development of evidence based strategies

• Workforce Development and Culture Change: Training from awareness to delivering specialist interventions

• Measuring success: LFO areas developed an evaluation strategy, inputting to the national evaluation including performance measures.

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Reducing Parental Conflict Programme • £39m to 2021 to support both supply and demand side activities • build on existing activity, committed expert organisations and the latest

evidence to maximise the impact of investment • Evaluation to continue building the evidence base

Objective 1 Ensuring proven interventions are more widely available to improve

children’s outcomes

• Face to face interventions for workless families delivered through four regional contracts

• Training for professionals to increase supply of proven help

• Undertaking an agile discovery process to explore the possibility of offering digitally delivered support, particularly at key life events known to increase conflict

Objective 2 Supporting local areas to embed parental conflict support in wider

services for children

• Training & guidance for Front-line workforce to improve identification and effective referral to appropriate support

• Support to embed addressing parental conflict from needs assessment to delivery

• What Works’ function (evidence, dissemination and commissioning toolkit) to ensure that local commissioners understand why addressing parental conflict is important and how to do it

9 Department for Work & Pensions

The Contract Package Areas:

Face to Face Support

Lead Authority Geographical Coverage Westminster Westminster Kensington & Chelsea

Brent Camden Croydon Hammersmith & Fulham Lambeth

Gateshead Gateshead Newcastle Sunderland Northumberland South Tyneside Hartlepool Middlesbrough Durham Redcar & Cleveland

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire Essex Cambridgeshire Buckinghamshire Southend Peterborough

Dorset Dorset Devon Somerset Wiltshire Bournemouth Poole Plymouth Torbay

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Evidence based interventions, targeted at families with workless parents - with the aim to reduce parental conflict - leading to better outcomes for children Proposed interventions based on internationally recognised evidence, offering appropriate support for intact and separated parents Delivered through contracts covering four areas. Tailored to the target group and individual needs of participants e.g. location, timing etc. Supported by a screening tool

Face to Face Support- the plan

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Training Opportunities

Strategic Leadership Support Support local leaders and senior managers to: - Understand the implications of the evidence on their local area and

communities - Make effective evidence based strategic plans to reduce parental conflict

Frontline Practitioner Training Support people delivering services to families (front-line practitioners) from the LA and their partners (health, education, police, housing etc.) to: - Raise awareness of the evidence - How this impacts on families and children - How to raise the issue with parents - Advise and refer appropriately - Train the trainer approach

Parental Conflict Intervention Training Training professionals working with families to deliver evidence based interventions

12 12 Department for Work & Pensions CONFIDENTIAL

STRAND EVALUATION AIMS EVALUATION APPROACH Face to face services

The evaluation will provide evidence on the implementation, delivery and perceived impact of the F2F provision.

The evaluation will include both quantitative and qualitative elements as appropriate for each aim. We will consider experience of participants, providers and Local Authority staff.

Training Examining whether training has changed practice on the ground, in terms of the identification, support available and the extent to which practitioners’ feel skilled to deliver support/ the interventions.

Local Integration

Examining whether and how local authorities have integrated elements of parental conflict support into mainstream services for families.

Digital support

The scope of the evaluation of this strand will be confirmed following user research to determine digital needs.

Reducing Parental Conflict Evaluation

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Innovation Fund https://www.gov.uk/government/news/innovation-fund-open-to-help-children-of-dependent-drinkers

The government‘s package of support

Innovation Fund

£4.5 million 2018-19 to 2020-21

Helpline £0.5 million

2018-19 to 2020-21

Voluntary Sector

Capacity Building

£1 million 2018-19

14 Innovation Fund for Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents

Introducing the Reducing Parental Conflict Programme’s INTEGRATION LEADS

Embedding Parental Conflict in Your Local Areas

Reducing Parental Programme Vision

To help avoid the damage that parental conflict causes to children,

by 2020/2021 proven parental conflict support will be increasingly

embedded in local support for vulnerable families in England.

Who are we?

Sue Chapman Senior Integration Lead

Diana Robertson

North East

North West Midlands South West South East

London

• Proposing to mirror National Troubled Families Programme Area Leads • 5 further Regional Integration Leads to be appointed in coming months • Secondments from Local Authorities or partners for 18 months initially

What are we going to do?

Incorporate the voice of Local Authorities into the RPC programme design

& delivery

Engage, encourage and support Local

Authorities, and their partners, to apply the

growing evidence base regarding parental

conflict, into their local environments

Collaborate with Local Authorities & their

partners to measure the progress they are making

in mainstreaming this area of work

Facilitate sharing of learning & good practice

between local areas & stakeholders, including

the RPC Programme Board, Cross

Government Department Group, and the Early

Intervention Foundation

…. not to mention the support and passion from the wider Integration Team!

Local Integration

Cross Government Department

Group

Voluntary Sector Led Initiatives

Local Authority Ambassadors

Troubled Families Area

Leads

RPC Programme Strand Leads

Contract Package Areas

Troubled Families Earned

Autonomy Areas

RPC Programme

Board

Early Intervention Foundation

Integration Leads

Senior Ambassador

We know it won’t be easy…

How do we know if the RPC programme has been successful in embedding RPC in local areas

Current thinking includes: • Evaluation Strand • Base-lining surveys, working with Troubled Families Programme • Maturity Matrix

• reducing parental conflict is a complex issue and requires system-wide approach

• self-assessment tool: strengths and areas for development • co-designed with Early Intervention Foundation and Local Authorities

… and this evidence resonates with current local area activities…

Domestic

Abuse Alerts

Demand Management ASB

ACEs Predictive Analytics

Troubled Families

Outcomes Frameworks

Children and Adults

D&A Services

Evidenced Based Commissioning

Early Help

Service Design

An 0pportunity to Reflect • How aware are strategic leaders and managers in your local area, of the reducing

parental conflict evidence and issues? • How could this agenda support the challenges regarding neglect and demand

management? • How many families are experiencing parental conflict in your local area? • What activity is taking place to address parental conflict at the moment?

• Do the Parenting Programmes include aspect of reducing parental conflict? • Are there structures/ processes in place where effective discussions take place about

Reducing Parental Conflict, both operationally and strategically? What outcomes have there been?

• What training and development opportunities are there available for staff currently? • Are these part of discussions in relation to Domestic Abuse alerts and referrals

into the front door? In the context of Early Help, or children’s social care or across Children and Adult services?

• What would you like to see develop over the next 6 months, 12 months, 2/3 years?

Questions and Resources

Sue Chapman Senior Integration Lead Sue.chapman@dwp.gsi.gov.uk 07741 674 018

Reducing Parental Conflict Hub Early Intervention Foundation http://reducingparentalconflict.eif.org.uk/

Any questions?