What needs to happen? Separation for leaders and managers

This section presents ideas designed to help leaders, commissioners and managers for local authorities, universal, statutory, and voluntary agencies to think through and discuss how services can consistently and universally respond to the separation related needs of children, mothers, fathers and their extended families. The aim is always, of course, to improve outcomes for children

Few families of any kind in the country are not touched by separation in some way, and though many are eventually able to co-operate reasonably well, they will need information and support at critical times.

But think about the children and parents who most need our help, who are most at risk of emotional and behavioural difficulties, offending, addiction, violence, mental health problems and homelessness. In your own work you will probably have seen that for these families separation, including conflict and possibly loss of contact with at least one parent (usually the father), are the norm - sometimes through several generations. They are the families we need to prioritise, even in mainstream settings.

And yet nationally it is unusual for practitioners to specifically address separation issues. Whatever our agency or role, we all need to develop effective working practices and policies to increase co-operation and maximise family support for children after separation.

This is a very effective use of our time and resources. This is a relatively undeveloped area of work and therefore a lot of potential exists for making a difference in outcomes for children.

This requires:

• Leadership, strategic, and funding commitment
• Commissioning only work that demonstrates separation awareness and is gender equal in this
• Involving children, fathers, mothers and practitioners in developing ideas
• Improvements to policies, core targets, record-keeping, assessments, work plans and paperwork at all levels
• Changing the practice of line-managers and frontline practitioners to provide separation aware work that is child-centred, gender equal and consistent between services as a universal given
• Workforce development (separation training and increasing gender balance through recruitment)
• Assessing the need for specialist services
• Effective mechanisms to help children, mothers and fathers and their extended families know about, understand and access support for separation issues
• Effective joint working and clear referral pathways
• Addressing separation culture – affecting public attitudes to separation

Read about:
‘Getting there’ section for an example multi-agency process
Is my organisation separation ready? for what an individual organisation might aim for
Useful forms of support for a list of service elements needed in a given area
The adult-family service gap – two important paradoxes to address
The Gender Equality Duty and separation
Policies and paperwork – principles and examples