Family Centred Wellbeing Service
Our Vision
‘We aim to work alongside families in a flexible, collaborative way, to empower them to use their own unique strengths to flourish’
Our Principles
- Bespoke Family Support
- Early intervention
- Holistic
- Outcome focused
- Clarity (accessible)
- Responsive to needs.
Rationale
Parents/carers, children and young people and professionals recognised that there was a gap in early intervention family support in North Ayrshire. Research also indicates the importance of whole family support to support the mental health and wellbeing needs of children and young people.
We have the skills – North Ayrshire already has a key focus on positive relationships, nurturing approaches and positive mental health and wellbeing as part of it’s approach to supporting children and young people. By developing this service, we hope to build a sustainable, multiagency, holistic, strengths focussed community-based assessment and support service for families, building on the wealth of skills within North-Ayrshire Council HSCP and Communities & Education Directorate.
Referral Pathways In
Schools and Service Access will refer to the team through using the Request for Assistance form as part of the Named person service or CareFirst systems
Who can be referred?
Children and young people of ages 5-12 years in the Three Towns and Irvine locality.
Common themes might include:
- Children/YP presenting as unsettled or disengaged in school,
- Children/YP struggling with peer relationships or showing signs of poor wellbeing.
- Children/YP having attendance issues.
- Families where there may be some breakdown in relationships.
- Families who need help building routines/ structures.
Referral Pathways On
There are likely to be times when direct work from the family wellbeing workers is not the best support and so referral on to the following service might be appropriate.
School Nurses
Educational Psychologist
Welfare Rights Officer
Area Inclusion worker
GPs/Community Link Workers
Housing
Social work/Service Access
What do we do?
Step 1 – Assessment
Meeting with family, observation, gathering information, completing questionnaires or checklists for example through using Outcome Star or other evidenced based assessment tools.
Step 2 – Planning
Collaborate with the family to form a Family Wellbeing Plan – Goal setting/Timescales and how do we reach these together.
Step 3 – Intervention or Signposting
Option A – Intervention
Option B – Signposting on to other services for example like those listed above
What interventions can we offer?
- General advice and guidance to support practical issues/promote positive relationships
- Support with sleep routines and boundary setting
- Support with co-regulation of emotions
- Parenting support groups
- Video Interaction Guidance (VIG)
- Building on positive relationships groupwork (BPR)
What do we mean?
- VIG – is a strength-based approach which uses video to help identify moments of attunement and build on family strengths to build their confidence on supporting their children and young people.
- BPR – a programme based around the principles of NVR (Nonviolent Resistance) which uses relational approaches to support families where children are resistant to other models of support.
