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This case example is part of EIF’s (former organisation that merged to become Foundations) work to showcase how local areas are introducing change, adapting their strategies and changing the way they work to reduce parental conflict and improve outcomes for children.
This is Wirral’s story about building a multi-agency training programme and improving partnership working to help professionals confidently support parents in distressed relationships. It is told by Jane Egan, early help partnership manager.
With a population of 322,796, Wirral is one of the largest metropolitan boroughs in England. Characterised by contrasts, both in its physical characteristics and demographics, Wirral comprises both areas of greatest wealth and some of the most disadvantaged areas in England. In East Wirral, up to 54% of children live with single parents, and while this is not reflective of parental conflict, multi-layered issues of disadvantage such as low income and poverty indicate a greater risk of parental conflict. In a recent survey of Google searches relating to ‘divorce’ complied by a firm of solicitors, Birkenhead came top in the UK, again perhaps indicative of relationship disharmony.
Prior to 2019, parental conflict was not identified as a primary concern by the police and children’s services Integrated Front Door (including the Central Advice and Duty Team and the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub). Poor interparental relationships were generally classified as low or moderate domestic abuse, or occasionally described as parenting, child mental health or managing behaviour issues.
To consistently recognise instances of parental conflict, we needed all multi-agency frontline practitioners and their managers who work with children, young people and families, to better understand how this differs from domestic abuse, and acknowledge the impact upon children and young people’s wellbeing.
Wirral also lacked support programmes and resources to support trained professionals and parents who wanted to reduce parental conflict and its impact upon children. We identified that it was important to provide clear advice and information to all frontline practitioners and managers on how best to consistently recognise parental conflict and support these families.
We wanted to change the approach of professionals so that identifying and addressing parental conflict was seen as a primary and multi-agency concern. Key to the success of our work was ensuring that senior leaders committed to making reducing parental conflict part of everyday business. To do this, we put in place the following activities:
Over 170 Wirral professionals from the voluntary and community sector, local authority children’s services, education, health and the police received training to improve their skills in supporting parents to reduce conflict within their relationship. Professionals who had taken part in the training programme gave a 96% satisfaction rating for the training provided. 100% of delegates who responded believed the course material was relevant; said they were provided with the expected information, knowledge and skills needed for reducing parental conflict; and felt confident to use these skills within their roles.
Parental conflict is identified through case triage, and professionals are provided with advice of how to support parents and signposted to the resources available, albeit that these are still limited. In the first eight months of this year, 446 contacts were triaged as parental conflict.
Early Childhood services are at the early stages of working with OnePlusOne to introduce the ‘You, Me and Baby Too’, ‘Arguing Better’ and ‘Getting it right for children’ programme to parents where potential emerging parental conflict has been identified. The relationship between Wirral Early Childhood services and OnePlusOne has enabled practitioner guidance notes to be effectively used, and they are currently looking to evaluate early signs of impact of the use of this resources across Wirral Children’s Centres. Moreover, by ensuring that the RPC agenda is linked to Wirral’s Children’s Services and partnership plans, multi-agency partners are informed about how various projects and plans link.
Senior leaders have provided commitment to the reducing parental conflict agenda and are proactive in ensuring that reducing parental conflict is linked to plans and emerging strategy. For instance, the RPC steering group strategy development has been linked to a Children’s Social Care project to ensure that appropriate relationship support is accessible to families to reduce the risk of infants becoming looked after by the local authority.
Our recommendations for others would be to ensure the following are in place.
Our multi-agency training programme and partnership working has enabled an increased number of professionals to confidently support parents to see the impact of poorly resolved arguments and recognise where they can develop healthier ways to disagree and resolve differences.
Our work to sustain support for practitioners and families is continuing to grow this year:
