One of the greatest challenges those of us involved in family services face is getting the right balance between support and intervention, care and challenge. With that in mind, many practitioners and academics are promoting moves away from methods targeting individual family members towards strength-based family-focused approaches. A Restorative Approach (RA) is one such approach increasingly adopted in belief this practice supports families more effectively.
Restorative Approaches: The concept, process, skills and effect in family service provision
This workshop led by Annie Williams and Jeremy Segrott from Cardiff University is just one of the many inspiring workshops at the BASPCAN child protection congress. The workshop will interest practitioners, managers and policy-makers concerned with children and family services. By the end they will be familiar with RA, its core values and some skills essential in its use. The workshop will outline the concept of RA, present emerging research on its use in family-services and offer an interactive session that allows participants to try RA skills and discuss its relevance to their field.
Thinking Outside the Box: innovative perspectives on protecting children and young people
It’s now just 11 weeks till the start of the congress, so if you haven’t done so already, why not get your registration in. Take a look at our website to see the full programme and to register: www.baspcan.org.uk/congress-2018/
What’s in the workshop?
The first half of the workshop will be presented by academic researchers. The initial presentation will be of an article concerned with the RA concept and how it relates to family-service delivery. Attention then turns to empirical findings. Firstly, from a study exploring family-service delivery that links using RA as a delivery framework to practice as recommended. This will be followed by results from an evaluation of the Restorative Approach Family Engagement Project (RAFEP): a family-practitioner training programme delivered across Wales with the aim of promoting RA and increasing family engagement. The evaluation collected data via questionnaires before; immediately after; three/six months post-training; and focus groups three months post-training. Findings indicated that practitioners believed RAFEP promoted RA, increased confidence when working with service-users, helped families engage better, and led to better relationships between practitioners and service-users. The final interactive part, delivered by staff from an agency committed to RA training and practice, will focus on RA values and skills. During this participants will participate in facilitated discussions of how RA relates to existing practice, organisations and working systems. They will then have opportunity to take part in activities that develop essential skills underlying RA practice.
