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.

Who are we?

Team Manger – Patrick Farren, who also manages Rosemount, the crisis and intensive support service. Patrick has a vast knowledge of partner agencies that can support children and families.

Core Team

Nicola Gilmour – has 9 years’ experience in family support work, delivered family wellbeing approaches including SNAP (Stop Now and Plan). Nicola also has an extensive knowledge of child development.

Adam McCalmont – has worked with SNAP providing support to young people and parents for the past 7 years.  Adam also has significant experience supporting individuals with autism.

Karen Wallace – has 15 years multiagency experience across North Ayrshire. She has experience of working with both children and adults with complex needs. She also has experience delivering many wellbeing approaches including SNAP.

Paul Walker – has been supporting children and families with complex needs in a range of environments for 18 years. He has experience of Residential childcare, as a Home/School link worker, a classroom assistant and has delivered SNAP for 6 years.

Extended Team

This core team is supported by other key professionals within the following teams

Family Learning Team – Claire Smith

Psychological Service – Fiona McArthur

Service Access – Val Fitzpatrick and Maureen Weaver

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.