Separated Parents with Complex Difficulties
Read about:
Understanding Parents with Complex Needs and Issues
Support ideas
Key ideas:
- Adult as well as family services to address separation issues and work in partnership
- Find safe ways for parents to rebuild relationships with children
- Work in realistically achievable steps
- Listen to children and follow their wishes if they are reliably available and in their best interests.
- Be transparent about safeguarding and information sharing protocols but be reassuring and positive where possible in order to keep parents motivated
Rationale
All agencies, including universal services like Children’s Centres and schools, will be used by separated family members with more complex difficulties, whether visible or not. Targets usually include trying to reach them in some way. However there are two paradoxes we urgently need to overcome:
The engagement paradox
A. Struggling parents avoid services and officialdom wherever they can, especially family and social services, for fear of losing their children to care; while
B. The adult services they do engage with (for example addiction, homelessness, offending and mental health services), will tend to prioritise a specific adult problem rather than being child-centred or helping the person work through their parenting or separation issues.
The skills and roles paradox
A. Non-specialist staff at universal services may lack information or confidence, or be fearful about working with parents with complex issues, or may be told that it is beyond their remit; while
B. Staff at adult specialist services may not be confident or informed about working with parenting issues, be told it is beyond their remit, or focus only on mothers
The result has been that it has not been anybody’s job to intervene early in separation conflict with this client group. They may well therefore only begin discussing their parenting situation when a crisis has arisen and social care service or the family courts become involved.
This might be overcome by:
- Practitioners in family, adult, voluntary and specialist separation services building effective working relationships and working together where needed.
- By each of us as practitioners being trained and prepared to be the first to engage parents with complex needs on child-centred separation issues and liaise effectively with other services. This includes those of us working for adult services that might not have traditionally considered this our remit.
- We may need to advocate and negotiate this with our managers and colleagues.
Continue to: Understanding Parents with Complex Needs and Issues