Building on learning from the Local Family Offer trial from 2015 to 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) developed the national Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) programme to build learning and best practice on how local authorities can support parental relationships and to improve outcomes for children, with a particular focus on disadvantaged families.
In early 2019, DWP offered every top-tier local authority in England the opportunity to apply for Strategic Leadership Support funding to strengthen their strategic capability to reduce parental conflict.
In 2019–2020, the practitioner training offer was developed as four standalone modules with an additional ‘Train the Trainer’ component. The training was designed to to develop the confidence, knowledge and skills of anyone working with families to reduce conflict and drive more positive outcomes for children.
In 2021, DWP offered a further Workforce Development Grant to train frontline staff to deliver specialist interventions and to build capacity across the whole system of children’s services.
More recently the Reducing Parental Conflict Local Grant has focussed on developing local capacity to manage and deliver RPC support and additionally for local areas to embed support to address parental conflict.
