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29 OCTOBER 2008
NO 1366
Family support
It has been suggested that the family support movement reflects more a set of values than a defined programme strategy (Whittaker, 1993). These values include recognition that family care giving is a complex task and that the relationship between parent and professional is one of partnership. Parents are active partners in the search for the formal and informal supports necessary to carry out the difficult task of parenting.
The three-stage prevention model proposed by Hardiker et al. (1993) provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of family support:
Primary. At the primary level, problems are at the stage where they are common to many vulnerable groups and intervention is aimed at localities and communities as well as individual families. Methods of intervention can include networking, health promotion, social education and parenting programmes. Their objectives include, for example, good enough parenting and healthy lifestyles.
Secondary. At the secondary level, the client who is in acute crisis is the target for help. The focus is on individual and family work to prevent family breakdown. Methods employed might include family therapy, child protection work and enhancing family functioning.
Tertiary. At the tertiary level the client who has chronic long-term problems is the target for intervention. The work is rehabilitative with the aim of reducing institutionalisation, facilitating re-integration and enhancing coping.
A major debate has recently emerged in Britain about how policies and practices in relation to child protection integrate with and are supported by policies and practices that are concerned with family support (Parton, 1996). With in excess of 160,000 child abuse referrals annually in the UK, the child protection system can soak up scarce resources leaving little for family support and child welfare. Clearly, when a child abuse referral is received, intervention is located at the secondary level as child investigative procedures are operationalised. A return of a child home on trial and the monitoring of that child's welfare is work at a tertiary level. Family support services can also be provided alongside such statutory work at both these levels.
Models of family support services are various. In many cases, family support services are based in a single location at a family centre where families attend. There is a considerable body of research into family centres in the UK (Gibbons, 1990) and within Northern Ireland (Higgins et al., 1998). Within the Republic of Ireland there has been a growth in local resource centres for families based in local neighbourhoods. One such neighbourhood centre is based in Letterkenny, where the NWHB has converted two adjoining local authority houses. Some family centres provide outreach home visiting services, but at-home family support is also provided by independent visiting scheme, often by a voluntary organisation. Within the UK, Home-Start is a national organisation that utilises volunteers, who are normally parents themselves, to visit families in need containing a child or children younger than 5 (Van der Eycken, 1982).
A refinement of the term family support has occurred in North America because of researchers' scepticism about the effectiveness of parental enhancement schemes to achieve lasting change. As a result, the term family support has been used to describe core services that are accessible to all, and the term family preservation services has been introduced to describe specifically:
Family focused, community based services that are designed to help families cope with significant stress or problems that interfere with the parents' ability to nurture their children or to maintain the safety of their children within the family. (CDF, 1994, p. 14, quoted in Bogues & McColgan, 1997)
ROGER MANKTELOW
Manktelow, R. (2003). Delivering family support
services in rural Ireland. Child Care in Practice, 9, 2. pp.
142-143.
REFERENCES
Bogues, S. and McColgan, M. (1997). Evaluation of the Family Support Service North and West Belfast. Belfast: Bryson House/North and West Belfast HSST.P
Gibbons, J. (1990). Family Support and Prevention: Studies in Local Areas. London: HMSO.
Hardiker, P.; Exton, K. and Barker, M. (1993). Policies and Practice in Preventive Child Care. Aldershot: Avebury.
Higgins, K., Pinkerton, J. & Devine, P. (1998). Family Support in Northern Ireland. Perspectives from Practice. Belfast: The Centre for Child Care Research.
Parton, N. (1996). How can we Rebalance Child Protection and Family Support. London: Routledge.
Van der Eyken (1982). Home-Start: A Four Year Evaluation. Leicester: Home-Start UK.
Whittaker, J. (1993) Changing paradigms in child and family services: challenges for practice, policy and research. In H. Ferguson, H; Gilligan, R. and Torode, R. (Eds), Surviving Childhood Adversity; Issues for Policy and Practice. Dublin: Social Studies Press.
