A review of research about the impact of parental drug misuse and promising interventions. The findings are linked to the dimensions of children’s lives that practitioners will be familiar with through their assessment work under the NAF and the CAF. They draw mainly on studies published in the past ten years in the UK and Ireland, with additional material from the USA about intervention studies because of the lack of this material in UK and Irish research. The review is produced separately from the one on problem drinking, below, because of the important differences between the two issues.
Research in Practice (2002)
A chapter describing how the Matching Needs & Services audit tool was developed and tested and has been used by various social care and health agencies and for different samples of children and families. With a particular focus on emerging clusters of need, the use of the tool to achieve ownership of local research findings across agencies, and the contribution of young people and parents to auditing need, identifying outcomes and planning new services.
Chapter in Ward H and Rose W (eds) Approaches to Needs Assessment in Children's Services (2002) JKP
This book extracts the findings about fathers, and about the range of professional responses to them, in the research studies that informed Child Protection: Messages from Research (DH 1995). It discusses the impact of fathers on children’s development, gives examples of good practice in working with fathers, highlights issues for future research and lists useful organisations and contacts.
Radcliffe Medical Press (commissioned by DH) (2000)
One of the practice tools developed at Dartington as part of its common language work about children in need. It is an audit tool to help agencies collect information on the needs of children in order to plan and implement more effective services and evaluate them to see if they are having the desired effect. It identifies the principal groups of children in need in a local authority area and promotes communication between professionals from different agencies. It also provides a mechanism for incorporating the views of service users in identifying need and planning service responses.
Dartington Social Research Unit(1999)
This tool can help design better residential services for children in need. It can be used as a stand-alone tool to reflect on what a residential placement for children in need is intended to achieve and how it can improve life for its residents, or it can be used in conjunction with Matching Needs & Services, above, to clarify the needs of the children being looked after and how residential placements can help achieve desired outcomes for them and the range of professional responses to them.
Dartington Social Research Unit(1999)
A practical guide to those parts of the Children Act 1989 that relate to the provision of services by local authorities to children and families, dealing in particular with the powers and duties of local authorities in relation to children in need, child protection and care and supervision proceedings. It combines a discussion of the legal framework of the Act with information about good social and legal practice, relevant research and recent case law. It is grounded on the author’s practical experience of providing an advice and advocacy service for families and training for social workers, lawyers and other child care professionals.
Ashgate (1998)
A chapter that describes two mechanisms for empowerment that were developed in the mid-1990s under the auspices of Family Rights Group, a national organisation with a long-standing reputation for promoting user participation in children and family services. The first is family group conferences - its development and philosophy, its introduction to the UK from New Zealand, early findings from research studies, and how it works in practice. The second mechanism is family advocacy - with comment on its slow growth, the impetus provided by the Children Act 1989, and the essential elements for successful local schemes.
In Cannan C and Warren C (eds) Social Action with Children and Families (1997) Routledge
The final report of the evaluation of the first 18 months of the operation of this new approach to care proceedings. For more details see the current work and research sections of the website.
Commissioned by Nuffield Foundation and Brunel University
A practical guide for all practitioners and managers across services working with children and young people in contact with the youth justice system.
With Peter Smith. For the Department of Health, Department of Children, Schools and Families, the Ministry of Justice and the Youth Justice Board. Department of Health (2008)
Commissioned by the National Association of Social Workers in Education (NASWE), and funded by the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC), with a view to understanding more about the ability of education and support services staff to address the needs of children and their parents.
The report describes the work led by RTB and undertaken collectively by a large group of professionals from the Education Welfare Service in four English local authorities. The audit of child and family circumstances identified that children whose pressing needs related to their parents’ mental health difficulties and traumatic experiences, and the need for improvements in care at home and adult/child relationships were found to have the most serious needs and the least successful outcomes.
Recommendations included focused work to develop services to address the common needs across the sites and for a future strategy underpinned by effective multi-agency mechanisms for assessment, planning and review. The involvement of adult services was seen as crucial to this strategic development.
Brown, L. and Ryan, M. (2008) Learning Development and Support Services Project. An audit of the needs of 197 children in touch with Education Welfare Services in 4 local authority areas. London: RyanTunnardBrown