Evaluation of Growing Futures: Research Report
Deanne Mitchell
Monday, April 29, 2019
This study is an evaluation of the Growing Futures programme carried out by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire for the Department of Education.
Report by Katie McCracken et al, Department for Education (2017)
Growing Futures was established in Doncaster to improve the outcomes of families, and particularly children and young people, who have experienced domestic violence and abuse, by improving the services that work with them. Growing Futures was designed to address significant historic difficulties with multi-agency working and poor levels of trust between service users and services. It was led by Doncaster Children's Services Trust.
Programme key components
Key components of the Growing Futures include:
- Funding of 12 domestic abuse navigators (DANs)
- Funding of two perpetrator workers to coordinate monitoring of domestic violence perpetrators within the custody suite, to deliver one-to-one engagement work, and to support perpetrators to address abusive behaviour
- Funding of a parenting coordinator, working across Doncaster, to deliver evidence-based parenting programmes and evaluate the impact of these on families.
Findings
Direct work and outreach work with families and communities has improved. The evaluation found that, in some cases, a new and more trusting type of relationship between professionals and victims and families could be forged. This was because of the introduction of a new model of working, and particularly the DAN role. Using action research with young people also raised awareness of the issue among that group, and encouraged them to challenge cultural acceptance of domestic abuse in Doncaster. This programme produced new insights into views among young people in the area, and resulted in several young people launching their own campaign to address the local education gap over domestic abuse.
This is a ‘whole-family approach', whereby services coordinate to provide support and therapeutic input to victims, children and also perpetrators. In this model, all professionals from relevant agencies should work together to understand and address the needs and issues of a family as a whole, including addressing any risks, rather than focussing separately on individual family members.
In the report, domestic abuse navigators were credited with having supported a total of 102 families. This dataset indicated a 16 per cent reduction in repeat referrals per Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC). An analysis of social care data shows that domestic violence featured in 39 per cent of looked-after children cases by March 2015. By the end of 2015/16, this had reduced to a yearly average of 29 per cent.
Programme impact
Following the start of Growing Futures, a look at social work case files and navigators' casework suggest an increase in the number of specialist domestic abuse risk assessments being undertaken. Some families, supported through the new model of working, reported a number of significant benefits, such as feeling as if their wishes and concerns were listened to; and that practical advice and support was provided, along with greater continuity with workers. They also reported a greater level of trust in their navigators compared to previous experiences of social workers.
The use of the whole-family model can produce multiple benefits. These include more uniform and consistent completion of risk assessments, better understanding of the impact of domestic violence on families, and better engagement between families and services. Professional knowledge and understanding of whole-family working was widely reported to have been improved where professionals had been exposed to DANs' work or where they took part in Growing Futures' training sessions.
Working with victims and perpetrators
Victims who have access to a DAN say they did not want their navigator to work with the perpetrator in their case at the same time. Navigators recognise that victims want to have someone perceived to be ‘on their side'. So Growing Futures have brought in a perpetrator worker. Navigators emphasised the importance of being part of a navigator team. Some explicitly expressed the view that it would not be appropriate to have lone navigators located within any service.
Implications for practice
- Whole-family working - that is, working with all family members to support them to overcome domestic abuse and develop healthy relationships in future - appears to enhance professionals' capacity to develop in-depth understanding of the main problems facing a family. It can also support them to change entrenched behaviours and attitudes. Working to enhance family members' strengths and abilities, rather than imposing rigid expectations they cannot meet, has been key to engaging families, particularly those with negative experiences of social care services.
- Small caseloads are necessary to facilitate the intensity of direct work that is required to enable deeply entrenched behaviours to be explored and tackled, and to ensure availability to respond to families' crises. Having a perpetrator worker is a vital element of the model. For some families, though, having one professional work with victims and perpetrators is inappropriate or ineffective, often due to victims' concerns that perpetrators may manipulate or collude with professionals.
- Although some progress has been made in some areas towards multi-agency working, work is still needed to bring clarity to referral pathways, service protocols, models of working, roles and responsibilities, and information and risk-sharing.
Deanne Mitchell is information specialist, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
FURTHER READING
Related resources
- Children Experiencing Interparental Coercive Control, IRISS, Lauren Smith, 2018
Related resources by SCIE
- Social Care Institute for Excellence et al. (2008) SCIE research briefing 25: children's and young people's experiences of domestic violence involving adults in a parenting role. London: Social Care Institute for Excellence. Available at: https://www.scie.org.uk/publications/briefings/briefing25/index.asp