Carly Attridge from Family by Family – a new programme that pairs families who need support, with families that can provide it – talks about why being more ‘human’ in our approach to strengths-based working is helping her scheme flourish.
One of the best things about being alongside families is they tell us how it is. In a group conversation about how practitioners and services can impact on families, a Mum involved in the project said: ‘We’re all just winging it anyway’. It was a bit of a drop the mike moment. She was explaining how much of a difference it would make if a family support worker who had kids, shared some humanness in their approach and said ‘yeah, I get it. I’m winging it too’. Her theory being that most of the family support workers she has interacted with have probably been through similar struggles in their day-to-day experiences of parenting too.
We can’t be the model parent all the time. Sometimes our kids will drive us up the wall, sometimes they will do things that make us want to tear our hair out and sometimes we will just be really tired and want to stick some chips in the oven. When did this not become normal?
None of us have a rule book on how to parent and, although I am not a parent myself, I do have my own guide, which I have realised wasn’t following any secret recipe on how to get it right. We’re all just winging it and navigating our way through life. Our group discussion shared how dismissed and judged that makes them feel, and how they know that the professionals will have done things they probably shouldn’t. This stays with us. Feeling ‘less than’ is something that sticks and lingers.
Polly Curtis’ book Behind Closed Doors writes that it’s not ‘bad people, it is a bad system’. There are many wonderful professionals who really do want the best for families, do take a more compassionate approach, or are as frustrated as the rest of us by the broken system they operate within that stops them from working how they would like. Overall, we’re all just doing our best with our lot in life and bringing our experiences learnt or lived to the table. But wouldn’t it be more freeing for practitioners to feel like they could be more open with families, that they could bring their whole selves and help people to realise that they’re not alone. We all have days where we pack an unconsidered lunchbox, lose our rag, or not know where our kids’ PE kit is. We don’t seem to be very forgiving these days, and maybe we all need to be released and take a more human approach.
This is something that we looked to create in Family by Family, a whole family peer support model which brings families with similar experiences of tough times together to help one another. It builds community, friendships, purpose, and a wealth of outcomes in confidence, self-belief, health and wellbeing, often with life changing results for both adults and kids.
Family By Family blends a happy union between professionals and families, but one where professionals take the back seat. We have a team of family and kids’ coaches who have been working within the system but want to do something differently. Our sharing families, families who might have experienced trauma, abuse, mental health difficulties, domestic violence or drug abuse, are the ones who are connecting to families who need to make a difference. With a focus on families who might fall through the cracks of universal, early help and prevention services, but have a clear trajectory to being in crisis, are supported by a sharing family that they choose, to work on goals they believe would make their family life better. It is not mandatory; it is based on choice, relationships, learning and doing together and working with the whole family unit – parents and children together.
Our non-judgemental approach and the ability for the team to appropriately share their own stories of tough times in their own families has created an even playing field. The coaches are there to help hold the lion’s share of risk of working with families who have significant issues in their lives, to nurture the relationships and networks of the families involved and to create a thriving community of families who are looking out for each other. Believe it or not this is unusual. In health and social care, we are trained to not share anything of ourselves. Of course, this must be done appropriately, remembering the power imbalance, and not becoming a therapy session, but it is a game changer and we have certainly seen that in Stoke, which is our first Family by Family area.
ABCD, community development, coproduction, codesign, strengths-based working is popular right now. It’s important to remember that these things are cyclical and not a new way of working. They are ways of living, working and being that communities have operated in for centuries. It’s just that the system has created a rod for its own back, breaking down people’s capacity to care for each other and stripped communities of the holistic services and opportunities that would enable them to get the help and support they need, when needed. We have all been through tough times, and as Polly so brilliantly commentates on in her book, there is a stark difference between experiences of families who have wealth and those that do not. We must hold onto the fact that tough times has an equity to it. We can all face it, so we mustn’t demonise those who do and might not have the resources to overcome it, let alone the social networks around them too.
This work is complex but equally it isn’t complicated. It’s principled and values based, and it seems extraordinary because of where the system currently is. Working from people’s strengths, gifts, and talents, seeing them as whole people and not their problems and supporting them to do what matters to them creates amazing outcomes for kids and their parents. In Stoke we saw a single mum get her car back on the road, which has led to employment, in ten weeks – ten weeks! This was unimaginable given how this mum was when we met her: visibly downtrodden, lacking in hope, no support, or resources to help with her situation. Or what about parents and their children overcoming their social anxiety, building community networks, feeling a sense of purpose and offering meaningful help through their experiences. There is no alchemy here other than the relationships we are building and putting the ‘human’ back into being alongside these families.
This may seem like a rose tinted view and in some instances of course, we must consider safeguarding and other factors playing out that might be causing harm. This work is not to replace social workers, or the safety nets put in place to protect children and adults from harmful acts, but from our experiences, and listening to the families in Stoke, there’s a heck of a long way to go before people feel like they are being treated as humans in the system and are able to access what they need to thrive; creating the conditions with services for families to feel fully listened to, that they have talents and strengths to share with each other, and ultimately that they are treated as we would like to be treated ourselves. If professionals are scared to share a bit about their own true experiences and to be more authentic, then how we can expect families to do the same with us?
This work is beautifully messy and non-linear. At times people will take steps forwards and back again, but the relationships, community, and sense of belonging means that they may not fall as far as they would otherwise. Implementing strengths-based working takes a lot of investment of time and resource, as well as a commitment to holding the tensions and polarities of community approaches in a risk averse and regulated system. It is not impossible though, and there are many great examples across the UK where communities are working differently with families to great success.
At Family by Family, we want to try a different way of being and doing, that works alongside families and services to create better options for families who might need a bit of extra help, where they don’t feel like they are bad parents and that they are being told off for things that the professionals are probably experiencing themselves. Why not test it out? What small step could you take to be more human in your approach today?
