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15 October

No 1230

Practice in family support training

There is now a growing understanding that, as a term, "Family Support" has wide meaning and involves providing sustenance to children and their families across a diverse range of service settings, including child protection, alternative care and community-based programmes (Dryfoos, Quinn, & Barkin, 2005; Gardner, 2003; Sinclair & Gibbs, 1998). Additionally, Family Support is now being seen to have specific value in helping people cope with life events such as suicide, mental health problems, poverty or disability (Dryfoos et al., 2005; Ghate & Hazel, 2002; Parton.1997). There is also some consensus that effective support to children and their parents centres on the ability of families to help themselves coupled with the capacity of professionals to meet the needs of their service users. However, it cannot be assumed that the help provided to families successfully equates to their need being met; and even where models of best practice are implemented, there remains the difficulty of ensuring these methods are shared among a wider population of service providers (Brady, Dolan, & Canavan, 2004).

One of the core tasks of professional training is to ensure that wide populations of workers who interface with families have the necessary up-to-date knowledge and skills in consistently meeting such need.

PAT DOLAN, JOHN CANAVAN AND BERNADINE BRADY

Dolan, P., Canavan, J. and Brady, B. Connecting with practice in the changing landscape of family support training. Child Care in Practice, 12, 1. January 2006. pp. 43-44

REFERENCES

Brady, B., Dolan, P., & Canavan, J. (2004). Exploring Good Practice in Child and Family Services (Research Report). Department of Health and Children, WHB/NUI, Galway Child and Family Research and Policy Unit.

Dryfoos, J. G., Quinn, J., & Barkin, C. (2005). Community schools in action: Lessons from a decade of practice. New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gardner, R. (2003). Supporting families: Child protection in the community. NSPCC Wiley, UK.

Ghate, D., & Hazel, N. (2002). Parenting in poor environments: Stress, support and coping. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Parton, N. (1997). Child protection and family support: Current debates and future prospects. In N. Parton (Ed.), Child protection and family support: Tensions, contradictions and possibilities (pp. 1-24). London, UK: Routledge.

Sinclair, L, & Gibbs, I. (1998). Children's homes: A study in diversity. Chichester: Wiley UK.

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