“I just wanted somebody to be kind”
“I just wanted somebody to be kind”
Providing early support to families in East Lothian
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of some of the people involved
For some time, Ben’s family had been trying hard to respond to a variety of challenges. His parents noticed that he was struggling to share, take turns, and interact with classmates that he had known since he was in nursery and it was upsetting and frustrating for his whole family. They thought that the situation would improve as Ben got older, but he was now nine years old. He remained isolated from his classmates and his mum began to receive texts from other parents about Ben’s behaviour. Ben found his situation stressful too - he was rarely invited to parties or social events and would often become emotional at home after school.
In need of support and wanting to improve Ben’s experiences at school, his parents approached school staff for help and were referred to Families Together, a new service for families in East Lothian which aims to provide the right support at the right time. Through the service, Ben’s family were introduced to a Family Outreach Worker at Families Together. Lynne met with Ben and his family to understand more about what was already helping them, what they needed and how best to support them, and a plan of action was agreed. Together with Ben’s teacher, the outreach worker helped Playground Assistants to understand more about Ben’s behaviour and how to best support him. A referral was made to a service that can help to provide a diagnosis for any Additional Support Needs (ASN), and Ben was introduced to a befriender from Volunteer Centre East Lothian, a youth service which meets with young people aged 8-16 once a week to provide support, encouragement, and help to try new things. The outreach worker also put plans in place to help Ben’s family, connecting his mum to a peer support group for parents in similar situations and helping her to find new ways to relax – she’s since taken up Reiki and credits Families Together for supporting her through a challenging time.
Although Ben and his family weren’t being supported by any statutory or other formal services, they knew they were in a situation where they needed support, like many families do from time to time. Receiving this support at a time when they first needed it was essential, and helped the family to manage and overcome the challenges they faced before these potentially became more difficult to address. This focus on early intervention and prevention is what has become the defining focus of the Families Together programme, which is gathering momentum in East Lothian and leading to real change for many children, young people, and their families.
“The service is really focused on voluntary family engagement around early intervention and prevention. We’ve got quite clear remits around not duplicating any existing support that families receive from statutory services. Rather, we’re focused on trying to cut down on multiple referrals across multiple services to help ensure that everybody who needs support can get it.”
Creating conditions for change through the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund
The Families Together programme came about through the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund (WFWF), a pledge of £500 million investment by the Scottish Government made over the course of the current parliament (2022-2026) to transform services and change the dynamics of how family support is delivered by shifting local authority investment towards services that are centred on early intervention and prevention. By providing help and support for families that meets their specific needs in the here and now, the aim is to reduce or avert any need for crisis intervention further down the line.
The funding is split into three elements that offer a variety of ways to drive whole family support across Scotland and to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people and families. As part of the programme, East Lothian Council decided to invest in family outreach workers for families who needed additional help but who weren’t already being supported by statutory services, such as a social worker, through the creation of the Families Together programme.
The effective implementation of the Families Together programme is crucial to its success. East Lothian is the second fastest growing local authority area in Scotland, and with more families than ever before moving there, the capacity and time supported workers have available can be stretched. Many families have felt the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and cuts to public services in recent years, and there is pressure to meet the increasing demands to ensure that as many children and families needing support can be helped and aren’t waiting for this.
Expanding services takes more than funding. It is essential that people working in these services have the support to create the conditions needed for any changes have the appropriate skills to adapt, and are supported by leaders, decision-makers and processes along the way.
To help do this, East Lothian created a change and practice team. The team is developing their knowledge and skills around implementing change with support from the WFWF National Support Team, a partnership between CELCIS and CYPIC (The Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative), a network of improvement specialists. The National Support Team supports the change team in East Lothian in a variety of ways to apply implementation and quality improvement approaches. This includes teaching, mentoring and coaching around key areas such as building an understanding of the local area and their strengths and needs and developing and testing changes, using data, participation, co-design, and community engagement. By building this knowledge, the team know that what is happening is leading to real change for families and communities.
Creating conditions for change through the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund
The Families Together programme came about through the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund (WFWF), a pledge of £500 million investment by the Scottish Government made over the course of the current parliament (2022-2026) to transform services and change the dynamics of how family support is delivered by shifting local authority investment towards services that are centred on early intervention and prevention. By providing help and support for families that meets their specific needs in the here and now, the aim is to reduce or avert any need for crisis intervention further down the line.
The funding is split into three elements that offer a variety of ways to drive whole family support across Scotland and to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people and families. As part of the programme, East Lothian Council decided to invest in family outreach workers for families who needed additional help but who weren’t already being supported by statutory services, such as a social worker, through the creation of the Families Together programme.
The effective implementation of the Families Together programme is crucial to its success. East Lothian is the second fastest growing local authority area in Scotland, and with more families than ever before moving there, the capacity and time supported workers have available can be stretched. Many families have felt the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and cuts to public services in recent years, and there is pressure to meet the increasing demands to ensure that as many children and families needing support can be helped and aren’t waiting for this.
Expanding services takes more than funding. It is essential that people working in these services have the support to create the conditions needed for any changes have the appropriate skills to adapt, and are supported by leaders, decision-makers and processes along the way.
To help do this, East Lothian created a change and practice team. The team is developing their knowledge and skills around implementing change with support from the WFWF National Support Team, a partnership between CELCIS and CYPIC (The Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative), a network of improvement specialists. The National Support Team supports the change team in East Lothian in a variety of ways to apply implementation and quality improvement approaches. This includes teaching, mentoring and coaching around key areas such as building an understanding of the local area and their strengths and needs and developing and testing changes, using data, participation, co-design, and community engagement. By building this knowledge, the team know that what is happening is leading to real change for families and communities.
Leading with kindness
Over the last five years, the number of children and families in need of support in East Lothian – and indeed across Scotland – has seen a marked increase that isn’t confined to one location or issue. After a period of recruitment and upskilling outreach workers in 2023, Families Together launched in January 2024 and is available to families across the local authority area, with a physical base in the town of Tranent. The service is completely voluntary, and families are referred to it by practitioners, including school staff or health visitors, who have been approached for support by the families they work with or, in agreement with the family, feel that they could benefit from some extra support.
Being physically based in communities means being as accessible as possible and having the chance to form in-person relationships with the people the Families Together team helps. It has also raised awareness of the Families Together service and developed familiarity with the support on offer and helped to develop a sense of trust and understanding between local people and the team.
In addition to meeting families in person, the team has also set up a base in the Fa’side area with an outdoor garden and child-friendly space, runs drop-in sessions in local libraries, and goes to schools and food pantries in the community to meet people living in the area and share information about the programme. This presence gives team members the chance to meet with families, develop relationships, and ensure that what they say they need is at the heart of the programme:
“It’s about gathering community voice really, to find out about what’s going on in local neighbourhoods, what people need, and what they feel is missing. That’s why it’s important for us to be physically located in the communities we’re working with, with local meeting points, drop-ins, and other initiatives.”
Although Families Together is a service that families have consented to or that they have asked for support from, parents have told the outreach workers that, in the past, it has been difficult to know where to turn for support. Some families who have sought support over several years have been required to explain their needs and retell their stories multiple times when trying to access the right help at the right time, so it’s important for the Families Together team to meet every family where they’re at and without judgement.
During some community research with families in 2023, one parent who was talking about their past experiences with different support services told a Families Together team member about how they hadn’t always been treated with compassion or kindness. That conversation was shared with the team and has since become a ‘motto’ for Families Together; the team aims to meet people where they are at with no judgement, find out their needs, and offer support with kindness. It sounds simple, but for a lot of families, this hasn’t always been the case:
“One of the most important pieces of feedback we got from a parent was that they just wanted somebody to be kind. We try to keep that as our guiding vision and it’s the central focus to everything that we do.”
From the very beginning of this work, it was understood that different areas within East Lothian have different needs, and the best way to support families was to be adaptable, flexible, and to get to know different communities.
The Families Together team was interested in the thematic differences in the needs of families and the referrals they received from different areas so that they could develop and deliver the right service. When analysing data from the referrals that have come through and the support that children, young people and families have needed, there are three key themes that have come up frequently in the communities that the Families Together work in: poverty and housing, children and young people with Additional Support Needs, and support for children with emotional and social behavioural regulation needs. At times, these support needs can overlap; it is well known that families with children who have Additional Support Needs and families with caring responsibilities are more likely to experience poverty.
Across the local authority, more families are also experiencing in-work poverty and financial insecurity. For some, this is caused by the cost-of-living crisis and the money coming into households not being enough to cover families’ basic needs. There’s a daily pressure on households having enough to eat and to be able to heat their home. Over time, for some families this had led to more long-term challenges, such as not being able to access or afford simple housing repairs and health issues. For others, they have needed to turn to food banks and, having never experienced poverty before, are now not able to cover the essentials. When these challenges come together to create a ‘perfect storm’, the Families Together team needs to draw on multiple avenues of practical and emotional support to help a family.
The Roberts Family has four children and were trying hard to deal with several challenges at home. One of their children, Alex, was struggling with poor school attendance, and there were concerns about risk taking behaviour in the community. On top of these challenges, they were also experiencing problems with housing. The Families Together team worked with the family by introducing new parenting strategies and techniques to manage their Alex’s behaviours, including communication techniques, and ways to help create more routine at home. The team also helped with practical support: they supported the family with a referral that they had made to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), liaised with housing officers, doctors, and community police, found local youth activity groups for the teenager, and made a referral to Foodshare. Since being supported by the team, the family has felt things have improved for them. They have been able to secure a new property which better meets their needs, behaviour is changing, the household is sleeping better as they feel more supported.
Every family’s needs are different and while for some these might be exacerbated by a sudden shift in circumstances, many others just need a bit of advice and support when they face common parenting challenges. When this occurs, sometimes there can be a disparity between the support that’s been requested and the support that families actually needed. When the team dug into the challenge in more detail, it highlighted why it’s more important than ever that the teams are physically in communities and working side-by-side with families:
The Scott Family wanted to improve their son, Andrew’s, experiences at school. They noticed that he was struggling to interact with other pupils and finding it difficult to regulate his social interactions and behaviour, so his dad, Mike, reached out to the Families Together team for support. The family wondered if an ASN diagnosis could help, but after an initial assessment by the team and getting to know Andrew, it was suggested that supporting the family with some different household routine techniques could help. The Families Together team worked with the family to explore different techniques that enabled more routine and structure at home and within the first month there was a significant improvement in behaviour and relationships, which has continued.
Exploring parenting techniques has helped to improve family relationships not just between parents and children, but also with other relatives where tensions have arisen too:
Louise had a close relationship with her daughter, Lizzie, but could sometimes find it challenging to know what to do for the best when conflict occurred. Although Louise and Lizzie were regularly supported by a relative, the family member had shared some concerns around Louise’s parenting techniques, which led to her feeling criticised, and tensions could arise between family members. The family all felt that some extra help and support could help things at home. They were referred to the Families Together team who brought the family together and introduced them to Parenting Under Pressure tools to help support more positive relationships and become familiar with techniques to identify what is working well, what the concerns are, and how to address these. The family said that the meetings have had a very positive impact on everyone involved and their relationships and communication have really improved as a result.
In the holistic approach that the Families Together, and Whole Family Wellbeing Funding, takes, the needs of parents, carers and children are considered. For older children and teenagers, the approach has focused on creating safe, independent spaces for young people to come together to share their thoughts. Here, they meet with other young people in the community who are a similar age and also experiencing challenges in their lives and discuss techniques to address them.
Seeing an opportunity to create a space for peer support, the Families Together team members decided to set up two support groups for teenagers who have been identified as being on the periphery of needing additional support. The young people come together once a week in a quiet, neutral setting away from their schools to encourage a place of safety and openness. Together, they share worries, plans, and ambitions with the goal of being able to offer each other peer-to-peer support. Conversations are based around whatever topics they want to talk about and receive support for. The young people involved said that the meetings have helped them to open up and share about challenges in their lives, improve their communication techniques, and develop new, positive relationships.
Time for change
Since the launch of Families Together, the programme has gone from strength to strength and is rapidly picking up pace. Working with the CELCIS and CYPIC National Support Team, the team in East Lothian has adopted an approach based on the principles of both implementation science and quality improvement, helping to facilitate a focus on delivering real change for children, young people, their families, communities, and the people who deliver services to support them. This solutions-focused way of working has helped to hone in on what really leads to tangible improvements: robust data, strong leadership, and community engagement which is underpinned by a culture of change. This has enabled them to approach the programme in a more manageable way, build a strong service for local people, and share their learning across the local authority and its partners. Read more about Families Together here.
“It feels like it’s a good time for change and that people are ready for that. Local communities have been really keen to engage with us and share their views, and they can hopefully see that we really do want to listen and help. In that way, Families Together can be a connection between communities and the local authority.”
Published October 2024 © CELCIS
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