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Family support services

This priority-setting exercise was a joint project with Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW) and run in association with the James Lind Alliance from March 2022 to February 2023.

What were the aims of the project?

The project asked families and the practitioners in the services that supported them about the main challenges they faced. It explored how strengths-based approaches that focused on people’s strength and resilience helped change and improve the lives of families accessing family support services.

Family support services include support from local authority staff like social workers, services delivered by organisations like Action for Children and Barnardo’s, mental health services, drug and alcohol support services, homelessness services, asylum seeker and refugee services, and other types of support from community groups, families and friends.

How we carried out the exercise

We gathered the views of parents, families and social care practitioners on what new research was needed to answer the question: What matters most in developing family support services in Wales?

We ran an initial online survey to gather questions and reviewed those question against existing evidence. We then ran a further survey with our stakeholder groups to prioritise the remaining unanswered questions.

Who helped us with this work

We engaged with various stakeholder groups and partner organisations. We also set up a working group that brought people from different backgrounds together to help us develop our research questions and review our process at every stage. These included subject matter experts, parent advisors, heads of service, third sector, and project coordinators from the three partner organisations.

The outcomes: the ‘top 10’

The 10 priority research questions selected were:

  1. How can families be supported to problem solve for themselves and take more control over their lives?
  2. How can practitioners make more use of trauma-informed practice in their day-to-day work? (By ‘trauma-informed’ we mean practitioners who are able to recognise and understand the signs and symptoms of trauma in the individuals and families they are working with).
  3. What are the best ways to support children and family members who are experiencing mental health difficulties?
  4. How can practitioners motivate and support work with families for more successful engagement with strength-based approaches?
  5. What is the best way to support families where young people display violence and aggression to their parents/carers?
  6. How can practitioners best be supported in working with children and/or parents with neurodevelopmental disorders*? (for example, ADHD and autism)
  7. How can practitioners work best with men and fathers?
  8. What works best to build trust and rapport with families so families feel respected and listened to and there are quicker and longer lasting outcomes?
  9. How can services work better together to ensure a more consistent experience and better outcomes for families?
  10. What is the best way for families to access real practical support, helping them to balance the pressures of everyday life (such as housing, tidying, cooking, bills, being short of money)?

* We recognise that many neurodivergent people don’t consider themselves to have a disorder. For this reason, we use the more neutral term ‘neurodivergence’ instead of ‘neurodevelopmental disorder’ in our work.

The following questions were also discussed and put in order of priority at the workshop:

11. How do practitioners balance the use of research evidence and models with their experience and wisdom when supporting and forming relationships with families?

12. What should be explored further in the role and use of person-centred approaches? (By ‘person-centred’ we mean when individuals and families are placed at the centre of the service and are involved in making decisions about their life)

13. What are the impacts of regular change in teams and support workers on children, families and social work support?

14. How can social opportunities (for example, local groups and clubs, day trips) be increased to support families who are isolated?

15. How can family time/contact between adopted children and their siblings and/or parents be better managed?

16. How can we ensure the voices of non-verbal clients are heard within service provision?

What do we do with the priorities?

We work with partners to make the research questions actionable. The research priorities for this exercise have been used in different ways. For example, we’ve produced several evidence summaries relating to the topics identified.