Whole Family Approach
We are committed to supporting the whole family – as a unit.
Our work focuses on bridging the gaps between parents and their children to prevent the impact of violence, helping them to forge greater bonds between them and reducing and preventing the impact of adverse childhood experiences.
It is widely recognised that strong family relationships are critical in a motivation to preventing offending and re-offending.
This is complemented by practical support for children through our Early Years and Education work.
Having a loved one in prison is traumatic for children and can often result in stigma. Through this programme, we work with children who have a parent in prison to support them and try to ensure they don’t follow a similar lifecycle.
This includes providing peer support groups and 1:1 mentoring for children and young people impacted by familial imprisonment.
Time to Thrive is delivered by Time Matters who also engage with the wider family to provide support and access to opportunities.
Following a successful pilot on the Wirral, the MVRP now fund Crea8ing Community and the Young Person’s Advisory Services Flourishing Families to deliver this programme aimed at supporting the whole family.
Following a referral from a social worker or community partners, the triage team gather information and provide access to a range of support options focused on the families need. Families are also assigned a Family Wellbeing Engagement Officer to help provide wraparound support and encourage engagement.
Research shows this programme led to a significant improvement in needs, behaviours, wellbeing and mental health for the young people and adults supported.
This can include:
- 1-2-1 support and consultations with support offered through group work and structured forums;
- Triage services with assistant psychologists to determine and agree approaches and support;
- Peer-led support groups;
- Therapeutic care for children, parents/ carers and adolescents;
- Peripatetic delivery in primary, secondary and alternative education sites
- Delivery within a NSPCC family centre;
- Parenting group and home coaching programme.
It’s estimated that at least 3% of families in the UK are impacted by child to parent abuse. Yet understanding of of Child / Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) and support for those affected is still limited, both locally and nationally.
To change this, we united with CPVA First Response to hold the region’s first event on CAPVA, bringing together partners across Merseyside to discuss how we can coordinate the response for those affected.
This event further highlighted the need to improve our understanding of this issue and, as such, we commissioned Liverpool John Moores University to undertake a research project.
The primary objectives to explore were:
- the nature and extent of CAPVA,
- the factors that increase risks of exposure to CAPVA, and further harm, and factors that can protect people from harm,
- the impacts of CAPVA on children, families, services and the wider community,
- the range of programmes in Merseyside to prevent and respond to CAPVA, and the perceived and / or actual impacts of these approaches
The final report for this study is due to be published shortly.
The Invisible Walls programme is aimed at maintaining and improving relationships between male prisoners and their children and families, improving the quality of life of all participants, reducing re-offending by the prisoners, and reducing the risk of ‘intergenerational’ offending. It adopts a ‘whole family’ approach, providing support to prisoners, partners and children.
We work with the Family Unit at Altcourse prison to provide a Family Link Worker who will work across the Family Unit delivering courses to prisoners, liaise with families in the visits’ hall and link families into their local children’s centres. The programme offers Nurture Courses, accredited family enhancement courses, School Readiness Courses, awareness raising of communication and language development and activities that can be delivered both virtually between families and face to face in the visitor centre
The Nurturing Programme encourages parents to be confident, positive and boosts emotional and mental wellbeing in adults and children. The feedback from the men who have taken part and from their families has been positive, with some of the men even taking part on a session on Altcourse Radio to talk about the benefits, encouraging others to attend.
We work with each of our local authorities to enhance and expand the targeted programmes being run during the school summer holidays to support the most vulnerable families in our communities, through the Holiday and Food Activity Programme (HAF).
In summer 2022, we supported activities in Knowsley, Liverpool and Wirral, helping to fund outreach teams, youth workers and provision of food in key areas.
Find out more about these programmes in each of our areas using the links below: