Child and family research

Re-imagining social care services in co-production with disabled parents (DRILL/Big Lottery)

Working in co-production with a group of disabled parents the project:

• Explored disabled parents’ experiences of statutory assessments in children’s social care services and subsequent service provision, including examination of a) the assessment pathway (how parents access support) b) the assessment itself (thresholds and eligibility criteria) c) principles guiding the assessment, and how these were experienced by disabled parents.
• Drew on disabled parents, child and family social workers and researchers’ knowledge and expertise to re-imagine how children’s and adults’ social care might deliver holistic services which value the needs, assets and rights of the whole family.

Ealing Brighter Futures Intensive Engagement Model: Working with adolescents in and on the edge of care (DfE)

Ealing’s Brighter Futures Intensive Engagement Model is a complex, whole system intervention. Its implementation was intended to support and enable the children’s social care workforce to build effective, consistent relationships with adolescents, families, communities and carers, and to use those successful relationships to bring about positive change.

A mixed methods approach was employed, including: baseline and follow up interviews with strategic and operational managers, focus groups with social work teams, surveys and interviews with young people, foster carers and lead professionals and use of social network analysis to explore relational connections in a sample of cases.

Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire (DfE)

The mixed method study evaluated a whole-system multi-agency innovation in Children’s Services. Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire (FSH) is a whole-system reform of Children’s Services which aims to improve the quality of work undertaken with families, and thereby outcomes for children and parents. It brings together a partnership including the police, health (including mental health), probation and substance misuse services.

The evaluation consisted of three strands:

• Qualitative and quantitative data on the process of change (interviews, focus groups, structured observations and questionnaires from staff at three time points)
• Comparison of practice, service experiences and outcomes prior to, during and after FSH implementation. This involved observations of practice (104 of recorded and coded for skill), research interviews with parents shortly after allocation and 3 months later
• Analysis of a large dataset that included evidence on service use and outcomes for all children and parents in every family allocated in FSH.

Evaluation of Scaling and Deepening the Reclaiming Social Work Model (DfE)

The mixed method study evaluated a whole-system reform of Children’s Services by a partnership between a social enterprise, Morning Lane Associates and five local authorities. Reclaiming Social Work (RSW) is a whole-system reform that aims to deliver clinical support, group case discussions, devolved decision-making and enhanced administrative support.

The following data were collected:

• Data on the process of change from the perspective of key stakeholders
• A comparison of practice, service experiences and outcomes between RSW units and service as usual, drawing on coded observations of direct practice with families, research interviews with families and computerized records

Case study data on Keeping Families Together (KFT) units, including interviews with staff, observations of direct practice, interviews with family members and secondary analysis of fata on children young people receiving a KFT service to provie an indication of impact on care entry and potential cost saving.