The health and wellbeing of mothers and infants is the foundation of healthy families and communities. Explore open access Research in Practice resources until 14 April to support healthy beginnings and hopeful futures for World Health Day.
Health and social care professionals play an important role in supporting the mental and physical health of parents, both before and after birth, and beyond. Practitioners need to have the skills and knowledge to engage families to improve outcomes for infants, children and their parents.
Engaging families effectively
Key messages from the Pre-birth Change Project focus on equipping practitioners to engage families effectively. The resources aim to equip practitioners to engage families effectively and highlight the importance of adopting a trauma-informed and trauma-responsive approach when working with parents involved with children's social care.
Hear Laura Bibey, Team Manager for Baby & Me at Newport City Council, discuss the importance of trauma-informed approaches to pre-birth work.
Pre-birth Change Project
The Pre-birth Change Project brought together academics, practitioners and leaders in children’s social care to discuss local practices, procedures and protocols in relation to pre-birth work. The resources explore core issues, challenges and good practices emerging from research in this area.
Key message five, Equip practitioners to engage families effectively is open access to support World Health Day until 14 April.
Supporting parental mental health
Pre-birth work plays an important role in safeguarding infants and ensuring families are given the support they need. Fidelma Hanrahan shares key findings from research that informed the Change Project in an accompanying blog.
For parents facing mental health challenges and substance use, pregnancy can heighten difficulties, and child protection involvement may lead to further trauma and cycles of repeated removal. Explore how a parent led co-production group highlighted the need for trusting relationships and a strengths-based, preventative approach to better support parents with mental health difficulties during social care interventions.
Transforming pre-birth work: Insights and resources for better outcomes
Pre-birth work is a crucial area of practice in social care. However, it remains one of the most complex and challenging to navigate.
Explore learning from the Born into Care research that informed the Change Project resources.
Co-production and parental mental health
Recent research highlights the importance of fostering trusting relationships between families and professionals.
Katy Cleece, Dr Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez, Carley Hall and Parisa Quaynor explore the importance of parent-led co-production in a new blog.
Working together with parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties
Parents with learning disabilities are over-represented in the child protection system and are disproportionately more likely to have their children removed from their care.
Explore open access resources, developed by the Working Together with Parents Network, that are designed to support professionals working with parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties, and their children.
Working Together with Parents Network
The free to join Working Together with Parents Network is for professionals across adults and children’s social care, health, education, legal and independent advocacy sectors.
Hosted by Research in Practice with National Children’s Bureau our combined expertise aims to elevate the networks national visibility and ability to influence government, push for systems change and support practice improvement with parents.
The Being a Dad programme sought to understand the experiences of fathers with learning disabilities and their interactions with adults social care services.
The resources highlight the need for services working with families to recognise and build on the value of fathers as good male role models, and to support and work with them.
The Getting Things Changed programme aimed to address concerns that policy and law do not always translate into practice.
View resources that highlight examples of effective practice when working with parents with learning difficulties where there are concerns regarding neglect.
Substituted parenting is a term used in the family courts and can lead to children being removed from learning disabled parents. This can be an alienating experience where professionals take over the parents' role.
The Substituted Parenting programme set out to develop a common understanding of the meaning and use of the term ‘substituted parenting’ and to support parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties to understand the term, the associated risks, and how to mitigate them.
Pre-birth: Change Project
Interactive resources designed to enhance pre-birth services and improve outcomes for infants and parents by driving policy and practice development. These tools are valuable for senior managers, strategic leads, commissioners, and professionals in social care, health, and midwifery services.
Supporting pre-birth work
Join us for an upcoming webinar launching a new Change Project to support pre-birth work.
Transforming pre-birth work: Insights and resources for better outcomes
Pre-birth work is a crucial area of practice in social care. Fidelma Hanrahan shares key findings from research that informed the Research in Practice Pre-birth Change Project in a new blog.
Co-production and parental mental health
Pregnancy can onset or worsen mental health, sometimes leading to harm to the child. Katy Cleece, Dr Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez, Carley Hall and Parisa Quaynor explore co-production and parental mental health when parents are experiencing intervention from children’s social care.
Working together with parents with learning disabilities
Professionals working with parents with learning disabilities are welcomed to join the Working Together with Parents Network.
Working with parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties
Shifts in terminology occur over time and aim to achieve greater equality, social justice and promoting and protecting marginalised groups’ human rights. The Working Together with Parents Network is on this journey alongside parents with parenting support needs.