Family Nurse Partnership programme

This report commissioned by the DCSF and Department for Health examined the first year effects of the pilot Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme found that the scheme can be successful but further development is needed.

The pilot is based on a model developed in the USA by Professor David Olds, it is an evidence-based nurse home-visiting programme designed to improve the health, well-being and self-sufficiency of young first-time parents and their children. It involves weekly or fortnightly structured home visits by a specially trained nurse from early pregnancy until children are 24 months old. The curriculum is well specified and detailed with a plan for the number, timing and content of visits. Supervision is ongoing and careful records of visits are maintained. The programme has strong theoretical underpinnings, with the formation of a strong therapeutic relationship between nurse and mother at its heart. The programme is designed for low-income mothers who have had no previous live births and starts in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Key points:
- The conditions of being a test site, learning the programme and demands of the tight set up timetable i.e. birth clustered around same time.
- There were wider demands on Family Nurses’ time from organisation and multi-agency working.
- There were challenges in providing this service within the UK context, with national health care, compared to the USA.
- There was a lack of integration between maternity and child health services.
- The FNP reached those who are likely to benefit most and the current eligibility criteria of all 19 years and under first time births should continue. Any further testing of the FNP with non-teenage mothers should focus on 20 to 22 year olds.
- The FNP is acceptable to first-time, young mothers but attrition during pregnancy exceeded the fidelity target in some sites. Further work is needed to understand why clients refuse or leave the programme.
- The FNP seems acceptable to fathers. The evaluation found that fathers:
• Participated in visits;
• Used programme activities;
• Valued the learning on prenatal development, diet and smoking, and preparation for labour and delivery; and
• FNs reported that many clients requested materials for fathers who could not be present, and conveyed questions that fathers had asked about the FNP programme.
- FNs recognised the benefits of using a structured programme, developing a different kind of relationship with clients, using new skills and reaching real need.

Parenting in ordinary families

This JRF report examined the literature around parenting.

Key points:
- Research into cultural differences and similarities in parenting indicates that aspects of parenting relevant to all cultures include parental sensitivity to the child’s needs, socialisation towards cultural norms and support for the child’s need for autonomy across time. The parenting to which a child is exposed may act as a buffer against adversity if it is warm and supportive or, alternatively, it may increase the risk of poor child outcomes if it is hostile or rejecting.
- Within the literature, a variety of parenting themes have emerged but those which recur consistently include sensitivity towards the needs of the child, management of the child’s behaviour and qualities of the parent–child relationship, including warmth and support, hostility and rejection.
- There is evidence that childhood anti-social behaviour increases in conjunction with increases in physical punishment but another school of thought proposes that, as long as its use is rare and only backs up other types of discipline, the effects of physical punishment may be beneficial.
- Much of the literature has focused on the parenting undertaken by mothers but it is important that paternal parenting is also examined.
- Although there were some aspects of parenting which were affected by factors which are immutable (maternal age, education and ethnic group), these were few and far between. Younger parents were more likely to be ambivalent about the timing of the child’s arrival but older mothers were more likely to report that they felt less fulfilled and that they had less time for themselves.
- Mothers who had spent fewer years in formal education reported that, on the whole, they felt less confident in caring for the child and they were less likely to report that they spent time teaching the child. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions with respect to the effects of ethnic group on parenting.
- Parenting varies little by ethnic group, maternal age or education and that on the whole parenting is warm and supportive in all groups.
- There was a large amount of variation in parenting across time: parenting remained stable for fewer than one in five families. In part, this is likely to be a function of the increasing age of the child.
- The factors which had the most influence regarding changes in parenting score were mother’s mental and physical health. Deteriorations in health were associated with reduced parenting scores and, in contrast to all other variables, improvements in health predicted increased scores.

Why children phone childline

This briefing gives basic statistics into why children and young people use the counselling service.

Key points:
- In 2006/07, 20,586 children and young people spoke to ChildLine about family relationship problems, representing 12 per cent of all calls. As well as the 20,586 callers, 22,704 children and young people rang to talk about another issue but also mentioned family relationship problems.
- In total, 43,290 children and young people spoke to ChildLine in 2006/07 about family relationship problems (either specifically or among other subjects), making it by far the most commonly discussed issue overall.
- In 2006/07, 4,215 children and young people in the sample spoke to ChildLine
about conflict between themselves and their parents. Some of these callers described very serious conflict. 18% talked about being physically abused and 12% said that they had been emotionally abused.
- Parents/carers abusing alcohol was an issue mentioned often by those who called ChildLine to talk about conflict between themselves and their parents.
- 395 children and young people in the sample spoke to ChildLine because they were worried about conflict between their parents. In some cases, they talked about violence between their parents that they had witnessed and found very distressing.
- ChildLine also received calls from young people (under the age of 18) who were struggling to cope with being a parent, with one in five of them being under the age of 15. Some were struggling so much they were concerned that they might smack or hit their child.

HE; Academies; State Boarding Schools & New Schools

The DCSF are on a mission to have every university in the country supporting a local academy school. Currently more than half of the 88 universities are committed and a further 20 are developing towards supporting an academy.

For more and a full list of which academies and universities are involved click here.

The hope is that with the raising of the educational age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, that links to universities will encourage young people who had never considered a university education to stay on post 18.

The academic year 2008 witnessed the opening of over 180 new schools, including 51 new Academies (taking the total number of academies to 134). Many opened as part of the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, including a purpose-built multi-faith centre which will be used by all members of the community at Allerton High in Leeds.

These new schools includes 5 new "all through" academies, schools which provide a seamless primary and secondary education, taking the total of such schools to 14, with a further 5 in development.

Additionally, the DCSF have announced two new academies will eventually take boarding students, with a focus on those students from the armed services in Lincoln and Salisbury Plain.
This comes on top of additional funds aimed to expand the places at state boarding schools aimed at vulnerable children, such as those looked after by the local authorities.

Safeguarding children report 2008

This report by Ofsted (on behalf of 8 inspectorates) examines arrangements for safeguarding children, is the 3rd such report and assesses arrangements for safeguarding children and young people in four key areas:

1. the effectiveness of the overall safeguarding systems and frameworks that are in place
2. the wider safeguarding role of public services
3. the targeted activity carried out to safeguard vulnerable groups of children. This includes updated evidence on the groups considered in the previous report, including asylum-seeking children, children in secure settings, looked after children and children treated by health services
4. the identification of and response to child protection concerns by relevant agencies.

Some key points:
- Local Safeguarding Children Boards have grown in independence but are still not fully developed.
- Strategic Partnerships are developed in all areas, but still need to improve joint commissioning and the management of high risk offenders.
- CRB checking is standardised, but good practice is not always followed.
- Inspections found evidence of a strong commitment by agencies to focus on the wider safeguarding needs of children and young people in addition to child protection.
- A shared, consistent understanding of safeguarding is still lacking, particularly between social care services and the criminal justice system.
- Some children and young people continue to express significant levels of concern about their personal safety and about being bullied, particularly in institutional and secure settings.
- There is better identification of needs at an early stage and increasingly effective provision of preventive and earlier intervention services.
- Many areas have identified domestic violence as a high priority area for action.
- Most areas are making good progress in developing the Common Assessment Framework.

The report goes onto make a series of recommendations, relevant at national and local level.

Australian - Brighter Futures Intervention programme

Brighter Futures is an Australian voluntary program that provides targeted support tailored to meet the needs of vulnerable families with children aged under nine years or who are expecting a child. Brighter Futures provides families with the necessary services and resources to help prevent an escalation of emerging child protection issues. It aims to strengthen parenting and other skills to promote the necessary conditions for healthy child development and well being. This report provides a baseline of activity in the Program up to September 2007.

Key points:
- The Brighter Futures children are typically under the age of six with a strong representation in the age group of two to four years. More than a third of the children had a medical condition and half of the children had a development delay.
- Nearly half of the children were identified to require intervention for behavior problems. Most of the children also had socio-emotional problems.
- Warmth, hostile parenting and consistency were three dimensions of parenting that had been identified in previous research as having an important impact on children’s subsequent health and development. Parental warmth was identified to significantly correlate with children’s behavior score. On average, the Brighter Futures parents scored slightly higher on the hostile parenting measure than the Australian population as a whole.
- On average, the primary carers assessed themselves as a ‘better than average parent’. However 13 per cent of participants stated that they had some trouble or were not very good at being a parent, compared to less than two per cent of the overall Australian population.
- More than half of the primary carers stated that they sometimes felt that they needed support but could not get it from anyone and 37 % stated that they often or very often felt that way.
- Primary carers demonstrated high levels of satisfaction with the services and the amount of service they received from the Brighter Futures program.

Children in need

This study commissioned by the DCSF explored whether data on the delivery and use of services for children in need is available, is recorded, can be accessed and could feasibly be systematically collected for the children in need census. It examined the likely quality and completeness of such data, the practical difficulties of extracting it from various management information systems (MIS) and the constraints of consent, confidentiality and data protection.

The Children in Need (CIN) Census aims to collect data on all children receiving support from Children’s Social Care Services, including children looked after, those supported in their families or independently and children subject to a Child Protection Plan. The Census provides evidence on which the DCSF can develop policy, make Spending Review bids, allocate resources to Local Authorities, understand the growth in spending on children’s services and measure their output in the National Accounts.

The CIN Census was suspended after 2005 but is being reintroduced in 2008-09. The present research was commissioned to discover whether the scope of the Census could be extended after 2009 to include some of the numerous additional services used by Children in Need, including those provided by or in partnership with education, youth justice, Connexions, health services and the voluntary sector.

Key points:
- This study identified and drew up working definitions for 11 additional services accessed by children in need, five of which are recommended to be included in the CIN census as a priority: Children with Disabilities; Family Support; Early Years; Special educational Need and Youth Justice.
- The principal problem is not the definitions of the services, but the myriad different ways in which the services may be named, commissioned, paid for and delivered, even within the same authority, and hence the lack of uniform recording and storage of data.
- Issues of consent and confidentiality will significantly impede most data collection from outside Children’s Social Care, but especially from health-related services such as CAMHS.
- It will not be easy to collect uniform child-level census data on most additional services and it may be necessary to consider alternative ways of collecting data to explain expenditure on these services.
- It is possible to determine that a service was provided, but very difficult to obtain an accurate measure of the volume of service provided and the cost incurred.
- The census definition of ‘Children in Need’ may need to be revised, in line with the Children Act 1989, to include the increasing number of vulnerable children accessing additional services from local authorities without a formal referral to Children’s Social Care, sometimes as a result of assessment under the Common Assessment Framework. An even wider population of children access preventive services partly or wholly funded by Children’s Social Care. The question is: should these services and these children be included in the CIN Census?
- Changes to the CIN Census after 2008-09 should be phased in gradually, giving time for consultation and for small-scale pilots to test the new provisions. Experience of implementing electronic data collections suggests that those which require changes to MIS require at least two years to implement.

Care matters - implementation plan

The Government's latest development in the Care Matters initiative (intended to improve the life chances of children in care, "looked after children") is to launch this implementation plan with the Local Government Association.

Key points:
- National framework for children in care and the link to performance management
- Guidance for Children's Trusts
- Evaluation tools to be used