Kids and Us – a Project for Lone Parent Families

By Mackereth, Catherine

Abstract New Deal for Communities, a government initiative aimed at regenerating deprived neighbourhoods, funded a project for lone parents and their children, ‘Kids & Us.’ It sought to support lone families, by offering a range of services, including counselling, systemic family therapy, group work, training, recreational activities and a help-line. Trainee volunteers provide many of the services, which enables the project to function on limited resources. Regular supervision by the project coordinator ensures the quality of the service and provides an opportunity for training, which is limited at present in the area. Evaluation of Kids & Us has been extremely positive, with the creation of jobs and people obtaining qualifications, as well as many local people accessing new health opportunities. Clients, both adults and children, value the service highly. However, further funding is uncertain and the future of this successful project is in jeopardy.

Key words

Lone parents, counselling, family therapy, volunteers, regeneration

Community Practitioner 2007; 80(6): 26-28

Introduction

This paper describes a community-based project, Kids & Us, which aimed to improve self-esteem, confidence and parenting skills for lone families. It was funded by New Deal for Communities, based in a deprived area of Newcastle upon Tyne. Kids & Us provides one-to-one counselling and group therapy, as well as group work and a helpline.

Background

New Deal for Communities (NDC) is a government initiative which operates in 39 localities with populations of approximately 10,000 people and involves a ten-year programme, starting in 2000. It is based on a neighbourhood renewal approach to regeneration.1

Key elements of the programme lie in partnership working and sustaining regeneration up to and beyond 2010. It is also committed to working with local residents to address problems that they identify and working to find acceptable solutions. This is embedded in the governance arrangements of NDC. The decision-making body is the NDC board, which comprises of local representatives, local councillors, representatives of statutory and nonstatutory agencies and businesses.

Newcastle NDC has a relatively young population, 21.7% being below 16 years of age (Newcastle: 18.8%, England and Wales: 17.5%). There is a significantly higher proportion of lone parents: 11.5% in NDC; 6.9% in Newcastle.2 It is an ethnically diverse population, which is increasing. In 2001,19% of the NDC area were of an ethnic minority, compared to 4.4% in Newcastle as a whole. This figure rose to 33% in 2004, with a considerable increase in refugees and asylum seekers.3 On the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2004, the NDC area is placed among the 10% most deprived in England. Unemployment is at 19.9%, compared to 8% in the city as a whole, with double the city rate of people out of work.4 Educational achievement is low, with 38.5% of working aged residents having no formal qualifications.2

Health issues are a particular problem in the NDC area, with 7.5% of people estimated to be suffering from mental illnesses (UK rate: 5.6.%). The Standardised Illness Ratio for the area was 226.8 in 2003, compared with 100 for the UK. Low birth rate is considerably higher in Newcastle NDC (9.5%) than nationally (6.3%).2

Support for lone parents

There is a considerable body of research that shows the strong positive association between social support and health and wellbeing. Lack of social support is linked to depression and other manifestations of poor mental health.5,6,7,8 Feeling valued and cared for, being listened to and reassured has been repeatedly shown to be beneficial to parents and families.’ Parental support, in the form of one to one or group sessions, has been found to be important in preventing the poor health effects of lack of support.10 Lone parents and their children are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of not having appropriate social support.11

Forty-five per cent of poor children live in families headed by a lone parent.12 Children in single-parent households are vulnerable to the effects of living in poverty, such as poor educational achievement.13 They are also twice as likely as those living with married parents to suffer from mental health problems. Social Trends” show that 20% of children living with a divorced, separated or widowed parent suffered from problems such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, conduct disorders and attention deficit disorder.

Kids & Us

The limited access to support for lone families has been recognised within Newcastle.H Kids & Us is a project developed to provide this. It is unique in that it offers a range of services giving support at a preventive level, through to open access to counselling, based on a systemic family therapy approach, which is concerned with addressing all family members needs.

Counselling is provided by volunteers, who are trainees in family therapy and counselling. These volunteers are predominantly practitioners in social and health care, including social workers and health visitors. They receive regular supervision provided by the project co-ordinator, who is a social worker by background. The use of volunteers makes the service relatively inexpensive and provides an opportunity for training that is hard to come by within the city. Families are referred to the project for a variety of reasons, from bullying to child abuse. The commonest reasons for referral are family breakdown and domestic violence.

The largest group of professionals making referrals to the service are health visitors and other community practitioners. The project provides a service that is immediately accessible, without the long waiting lists that many other statutory services have. The ethos of a family-centred approach is in keeping with the preventive remit of health visitors’ work. It also provides an opportunity for community practitioners to get experience in counselling within the confines of a well supported and supervised project.

Aims of the project

* To raise self-esteem, confidence and parenting skills

* To reduce behavioural difficulties in children

Objectives

* To provide therapeutic psychological services for lone parents and their children

* To provide social activities, which will support lone parents and their children

* To provide a helpline for lone parents

* Service provision

Family counselling service

This work incorporates a family/systemic approach, alongside an individual approach to counselling work. 262 individuals were referred in the last year (27% self-referred, 33% from social services and 19% from health, particularly health visitors), which included 84 lone parents and 178 children. This last year has shown a further increase in the work done with children and mothers around family breakdown due to domestic violence and abuse. Using a systemic approach, the work aims to strengthen the bonds between mothers and children as they work towards developing a new and safer family structure together.

Children’s art group

As well as individual work with children, the project runs art based groups which have enabled children with similar problems to meet and interact. Using a group approach with children enables them to work through their problems together, supporting one another whilst enabling them to make friends and reduce their feelings of isolation. Evaluation with parents and children has been very positive. All children described the group as ‘very good’. When asked what they enjoyed most about it, the replies included ? made friends’, ‘painting’, ‘having snacks and drinks’, ‘we had fun.’15 (pi 1) Parents all described the group as useful for their child and that they would bring them to other activities at the project.

For parents

A number of activities have been organised for lone parents. One was a parenting support group which ran in conjunction with the children’s art group over the holidays. The group offered parents an opportunity to have a mutually supportive space away from their children to look at issues facing them as lone parents. Parents gave feedback in an evaluation after the group ended and most stated one of the most useful things about the group was ‘knowing that there is other people having the same troubles to deal with’, and ‘simply having someone to talk to.’15 (pi8)

Kids & Us also ran, in conjunction with an outside facilitator, a four-week course for lone parents around confidence building called the STEPS programme. When evaluated, all participants found the course to ‘be useful’ and all reported ‘improvements in self esteem.’15 (p!8)

Other training sessions around gaining skills for employment have been held regularly. Yoga classes are held on a weekly basis, to provide relaxation and a further opportunity for parents to meet each other.

Helpline enquiries

In the past year, Kids & Us help-line received a total of 291 enquiries from lone parents and professionals seeking advice and support on a variety of issues, including information about counselling, signposting, holidays and employment.

Evaluation

Kids & Us has undergone an intensive project evaluation by SQW Economic and Management Consultants. The summary states that:

‘Kids & Us provides a high quality service, which tackles its strategic objectives through its focus on local delivery and specialist services aimed at lone parent families in deprived areas. The project has outperformed on all of its original lifetime targets and appears, particularly when compared with other services aimed at sexually-abused children, to provide good value for money. It fits well within the local and national children’s service agenda.’15 (p39) The evaluation involved consulting with a range of stakeholders, including four strategic staff, nine delivery staff, five referrers, two commissioning officers from social services, eight parents/carers and three children. An information leaflet was distributed to current and former service users, inviting them to group discussions, or interviews, but the majority expressed a preference for completing a questionnaire. The sample of beneficiaries involved in the evaluation was small, but the qualitative responses were considered valuable in providing depth of information about the service.

The adults reported accessing the service because of feelings of not being able to cope with a particular situation. A key aspect was having someone who is impartial to listen. The service is locally situated within the New Deal for Communities’ area and there are very small waiting lists, meaning that people get seen when they need support, rather than joining a waiting list, which is the case with all other services. This allows for early intervention and enables a considerable I amount of preventative work to be done. As one counsellor said:

We’re wanting to get people in so they don’t get to the stage where they [children] need counselling… if you get them young enough, like art therapy and things… maybe the problem can be solved quite easily, whereas if it’s years down the line there’s a lot more issues.’5 (p20)

From the questionnaires, clients were all very positive about the project:

a complete godsend, a massive part of my recovery.” (p25)

Staff were perceived as being non-judgemental, supportive and sympathetic:

Simply having someone to talk to. The counsellor …is excellent, she really empathises, she’s not pushy, which isgreat15 (pn)

Meeting with others was also perceived as being beneficial:

… knowing that there are other people having the same troubles to deal with.” (p25)

Offering other services than just therapy was seen by the counsellors as positive, because inviting people to yoga may be less threatening:

Offering someone yoga might sound a lot safer than saying to someone ‘come for counselling’… that’s a good entrance in, if you can offer a different heading, people will come in and enter for all different reasons …once they are in, you can then really assess whether some of the other services would be better for them.15 (p!3)

Children were encouraged to complete activity sheets and produce drawings about their experience of the project. A key element was that they had run and made new friends. This was in addition to other benefits, such as dealing with stress, learning about family relationships and getting on better with the family. Parents backed up this positive response, commenting that communication and behaviour had improved, as well as being able to understand what was going on in their lives and adapting to the changes.

A key element of New Deal for Communities’ ethos is community involvement. Kids & Us was developed from a project initiated by Gingerbread, a voluntary organisation, which had found a need for such an initiative. Although clients were not involved in setting up the project, some became members of the management committee and so had an impact on the development of the service.

Evaluation of the initiative involved assessing the value for money offered. Over the first two years of the project, outcomes included:

* 3.1 jobs created

* 26 people trained and obtained qualifications

* 288 local people accessed to new health opportunities

* 72 new childcare places provided.

These surpassed the anticipated targets of the project.

A major problem, common to most community health projects, is lack of funding. New Deal for Communities funded the project for three years but it has required time and effort to gain further funding. A local charity has provided money to develop work with the ethnic minority population in the area. However, funding from statutory agencies has proved difficult to secure. Services are now being offered on a paying basis to clients from the statutory agencies, but remain free for self-referrals.

Conclusion

Kids & Us has provided a well-used service, which is good value for money. It has offered a number of services which include one to one counselling, family therapy, group work, support work, exercise and relaxation. It has been evaluated positively and could be easily rolled out across the city and elsewhere. However, due to lack of funding, its future is uncertain and this reflects the situation, both locally and nationally, of reduced money being available for voluntary agencies to develop services appropriate to local need.

Parental support, in the form of one to one or group sessions, has been found to be important in preventing the poor health effects of lack of support.10

References

1 Neighbourhood Renewal Unit. Available at: www.neighourhood.gov.ukypage.asp?id=617 (accessed 12.06.06).

2 Dargan L, Pugalis L. New Deal for Communities: National evaluation main phase. New Deal for Communities Newcastle (Ltd) overview report 20022005. Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2005.

3 MORI. MOR/ Household survey results. Newcastle NDC 2002 and 2004. London: MORI, 2004.

4 Barraclough N, Beatty C, Wilson 1.200) Census Profile of Newcastle NDC. Sheffield: Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University, 2004.

5 Putnam R. Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy 1995; 6: 65-78.

6 Kawachi I, Kennedy BP, Lochner K. Long Live Community: social capital as public health. The American Prospect 1997; 8(35): 56-9.

7 Berkman LF, Glass T. Social integration, social networks, social support, and health. In: Berkman LF, Kawachi I. (eds) Social epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

8 Wilkinson RG. The impact of inequality. How to make sick societies healthier. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005.

9 Oakley A. Social support and motherhood: the national history of a research project. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1992.

10 Hillen P. The meaning of’parenting’ and the impact of groupwork. Community Practitioner 2004; 77( 11 ): 422-5.

11 Office of National Statistics. Social Trends. London: ONS, 2004.

12 Carlisle D. Ending child poverty. Community Practitioner 2005; 78(7): 236-73.

13 Palmer G, Carrr J, Kenway P. Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2005. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005.

14 New Deal for Communities. Appraisal for Kids & Us. Newcastle: NDC, 2003.

15 SQW Economic and Management Consultants. Kids & Us. Final report to Newcastle NDC. Leeds: SQW, 2005.

Catherine Mackereth BA, MSc, PhD, RN, RM, Dip HV

Programme support officer

Newcastle New Deal for Communities

Newcastle upon Tyne

Copyright TG Scott & Son Ltd. Jun 2007

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