IN DEPTH RESEARCH LONGBRIDGE AND SPARKBROOK

BYLEONIE SHANKS, JONNY MALLINSON, NIL GUZELGUN, CLAIRE BRADNAM AND REBECCA BIRCH

This report describes the findings of ‘deep research’ alongside families in two parts of Birmingham: Longbridge and Sparkbrook. Through this research we have generated a series of insights relating to the lived experience of families, and their relationship with services. These insights have emerged from the following driving question:

How can we help families in Longbridge and Sparkbrook to thrive?

We acknowledge that the numbers of families involved mean that our findings cannot be taken as reflective of either ward as a whole, or the city more broadly. Our research is intended to generate insight that might support Birmingham City Council to identify new and potentially transformative perspectives on the challenge of supporting families to thrive.

Setting the scene

Since April 2014, Innovation Unit has been working in Longbridge and Sparkbrook on behalf of Birmingham City Council. The work can be broken down into two parts:

Part one - ‘Deep research’ with children, young people, families and professionals to get under the skin of the issues people face in Longbridge and Sparkbrook, revealing what is hidden and uncovering insights about the way things are now and the way people would like things to be.

This research includes eight ethnographies with families (four in each ward), a series of pop up events in both wards, four codesign workshops (two in each ward), and a process of youth engagement with a small group of young people (one group in each ward).

Part two - An engagement process with a wide range of key stakeholders from each community, which focuses on the creation of new forms of local leadership that might start to drive local change.

This engagement process has a number of component parts:• Vision building - A wide range of local stakeholders have

worked together in a series of workshops to build a collective vision for the future.

• Ideas generation - The same group of stakeholders has generated new ideas for the things they might do together in order to achieve their vision.

• Prototyping - A smaller subset of this group is in the process of testing these ideas by running some small, bounded prototypes in their communities. The success of these prototypes will be contingent on how well people work together.

• Learning and reflection - We will work closely with this group of stakeholders to reflect on and learn from the prototypes. The key questions we will be asking are:

• What does really great locality working look like in Sparkbrook?

• What are the barriers and enablers to better locality working?

• What are the conditions under which locality working can flourish?

Why take this approach?

Deep research (in particular ethnography), whilst not quantitatively significant, can reveal a huge amount about the experience of children, young people and their families, as well as the system that supports them. This research can make a meaningful contribution tothe reviews of children’s services currently being conducted by the council, by unlocking new perspectives on the

challenge. It will help reposition the ‘voice’ of children and young people at the heart of the decision making process.

At the same time, the council is committed to devolving responsibility to ten local Districts through the creation of new governance and leadership arrangements. We are supporting the council to understand how it can devolve power in a way that maximises its chances of driving local change, by running a process in Longbridge and Sparkbrook that mirrors what we know to be true about sustainable and transformative local leadership:

1. In order to drive transformational change in local communities, the council will need to enable authentic conversations about real issues between people who have a genuine stake in the local community. Facilitating these kinds of conversations can only be done by breaking down a district into smaller, ‘natural’ communities, in which people feel a connection with each other and the community.

2. Local leadership will only drive transformational local change if it is able to challenge local orthodoxies and practices. As a result it needs to be driven by local people as well as professionals, and be fundamentally committed to allowing the ‘voice’ of children, young people and their families to guide decision making.

Outputs

This report represents the first of two outputs, and relates specifically to part one: ‘Deep research with children, young people, families and professionals’. It provides a set of general insights about the lived experience of families that might be relevant to other parts of the city. Throughout the report, we have sought to introduce our own expertise and experience in ways that complement the research.

A second report that relates to part two and outlines what we have learnt about the creation of local leadership capable of driving transformative local change in Birmingham will follow at the end of September. There is more to come.

Who is this report for?

This report is intended to feed directly into the reviews of children’s services currently happening in the city. Its findings will be particularly relevant for system leaders who are responsible for reorganising services and support in the city. But it will also be relevant for both front line professionals, who might be interested in the stories it presents and the challenges it identifies, and the city’s strategic leadership, who will be interested in the principles that start to emerge.

Introduction

By working in depth in Longbridge and Sparkbrook, Innovation Unit have built a rich picture of what life is like for children, young people and their families in those two localities. The following report uses real stories to generate insight in relation to our driving question:

How can we help families in Longbridge and Sparkbrook to thrive?

Over the last 3 months we have conducted the following research:• Ethnographies with 8 families (4

in each ward) - Ethnography is a term used to describe deep, contextual field research, where trained individuals spend prolonged periods of time with service users, to understand their lives and generate insight that might help shape the future design of services. We conducted ethnographic research visits with 8 families each of which lasted one day in total.

•Pop up events - Pop up events allow for less in-depth conversations, with a much larger number of families, in places that families often spend time (for example supermarkets). We have delivered a series of pop-up events in both localities, with families and young people.

•Youth engagement - Alongside The Children’s Society, we worked with a small group of young people in both Longbridge and Sparkbrook. These young people were trained in community research tools and techniques, and were supported in producing a short video reflecting the research they themselves led in their communities.

•Codesign workshops - We have facilitated four codesign workshops (two in each locality) with a wide range of different stakeholders, from front line agency staff to third and community sector employees and volunteers.

This report outlines the key findings of this research process, and is broken down into the following sections:

• Family insights - Insights relating the the lived experience of children, young people and their families across both wards, generated on the back of in depth ethnographic research and supplemented data from the pop up events, youth engagement process, and codesign workshops.

•Servicespecificinsights - Insights relating directly to the services children, young people and their families use along the 0-19 pathway. Pages 18 - 24.

There are also two separate pamphlets that come along with this report that present the raw data that has fed this report. These pamphlets include:

• Locality Insights - Insights related specifically to Longbridge and Sparkbrook. These insights have been generated primarily on the back of the pop up events.

• Ethnography write ups - Full write ups of each of the ethnographies undertaken. These are not transcripts, but narratives based on analysis and reflection.

Innovation Unit has not set out to provide an answer to our driving question. We acknowledge that the numbers of families involved mean that our findings cannot be taken as reflective of either ward as a whole, or the city more broadly. Our research is intended to generate insight that might support Birmingham City Council identify new and potentially transformative perspectives on the challenge of supporting families to thrive in these two parts of the city.

Parents as Educators

FulfillingAspirations

Thissectionrelatesspecificallytothelivedexperience of families in Longbridge and Sparkbrook.

Using the stories of the families we met through our ethnographies, it identifies key opportunities, challenges and insights, which can be broken down into the following themes:

• Parents as educators• Building supportive relationships• Fulfillingaspirations

Each theme is described through the following lens:

• What if? - statements that identify opportunities to work differently with families.

• Key insights- outlines some key insights generated through the research.

• Key challenges - sets out challenges for families relating to each theme

Building Supportive Relationships

SECTION KEY

FAMILYINSIGHTS

30-year-old Laura in Longbridge sits in the spacious lounge of a two-bedroom house that she bought 4 years ago with her husband John. On the floor, 18-month-old Lily is absorbed in a farm animal-themed jigsaw puzzle. “She can match up the pictures but she hasn’t yet got the spatial awareness to be able to fit the pieces into the slots,” Laura explains. Like all parents, Laura will play an important role in Lily’s learning and development, and she takes this role seriously. Having made the decision to become a full-time Mum after giving birth to Lily, she enjoys and takes pride in the role of parenting, and perceives it as a challenging yet rewarding vocation. It is clear to Laura that Lily’s health, wellbeing and development are her responsibility, and as a result she takes care to ensure learning opportunities are built into the daily routine– whether reading books, playing games, listening to music, or watching educational programmes on the television. Laura also has a confident grasp of the ways in which Lily is developing not just physically, but intellectually, emotionally and socially. She worries that, as an only child, Lily is a little slow to develop language, and has been making more efforts to talk to Lily throughout the day in order to expose her to more speech, whilst simultaneously looking for opportunities for her to socialise with other children.

Laura 3018 monthsJohn

Additionally, while Laura is committed to seeking out services and activities that are available for mothers and young children, she does not see these as a panacea for Lily’s development needs, understanding and sometimes even questioning the limitations of this provision. Of the Stay and Play sessions that she and Lily attend, for example, she wonders whether they could be a “little more structured – at the moment it’s just kids running around, whereas sometimes I wish there could be more music and singing or something like that. ” While she is a very devoted mother, Laura understands her own health needs and is careful to look after herself. Two years ago she experienced a huge trauma when she had a stillbirth. Devastated by this experience, she has been proactive about making sure that she has the space and support to stay well; for example, despite moving outside of the catchment area of a trusted GP, she has arranged it so that she can continue to go to this GP when she feels the need to talk to someone. She also builds plenty of time into her schedule for relaxation, describing Wednesdays as her “day off” with Lily at home, when she can recuperate and get on top of household chores.

Laura’s Story

The role of parents during a child’s earliest years is the single biggest influence on their development. Good quality home learning contributes more to children’s intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income. But our research found that many parents are struggling to fulfill the role of ‘primary educator,’ since playing this role successfully requires significant investment of time, energy and enthusiasm. Many of the parents we met were unable to make such investments:

WHAT IFWhat if all parents had the skills and experience to take responsibility for the learning and development

of their children?

“As a mum, I’m happier than ever – I feel very fulfilled, just watch-ing Lily grow and develop. It’s very rewarding work. I’m lucky!”

Laura, 30, mother of 18-month-old Lily

WHAT IFWhat if all parents were mindful of the need to nourish their own emotional wellbeing?

WHAT IFWhat if services saw it as a priority to protect and promote the emotional wellbeing of whole families?

Parents as Educators

INSIGHTS

Meeting the learning and development needsofchildrenrequiressignificantinvestments of time, resources, skills andconfidence.

Being an effective primary educator of one’s child is not easy. Parents often feel ill-equipped for this role, particularly on giving birth to their first child. As Laura noted, “nothing and nobody prepares you for it.” Our research highlighted some common characteristics and competencies that those parents we met who invested heavily in their children’s learning and development shared. These parents:

• are aware of the need to invest in the different areas of a child’s development, whether physical, intellectual, emotional or social.

• are willing and able to create opportunities for learning and play in the early years of a child’s life, and as they get older. Creativity and a curious learning disposition seem to be traits that enable parents to support children in their development, helping them to identify simple ways to build learning opportunities into the day-to-day routine.

• have a confident grasp of the developmental indicators.• are reflective about how best to ensure that children progress

in all areas.• expect, and have the confidence to demand the best out of the

services that children engage with.• retain ultimate accountability for their children’s health,

wellbeing and development.

It is important that parents understand and take care of their own physical and emotional needs as well as those of their children.

There is a strong correlation between the emotional wellbeing of parents and that of their children. Research has shown, for example, that growing up around ‘toxic stress’ – that is to say, prolonged, consistent stress – has been proven to inhibit the development of children’s brains and have a negative impact on later life outcomes.

Parents who therefore find the time to build some “me time” into their routine, look after their own health, and take care to nurture interests, hobbies and friendships, seem to be both more resilient than those that neglect their own needs, and better able to provide a nurturing learning environment for their children. In our research we found examples of parents who were making proactive attempts to protect their own health and wellbeing. Alice23-year-old Alice is very committed to raising her two young children. She is a busy mother who spends much of her time taking her children to and from activities. With a history of severe mental illness, however, she recognises that it is vital for her to try to stay well. Fortunately she is blessed with a number of creative skills, and makes time in the evenings for herself to sew, crochet and draw. She only learnt to sew one month ago, and is already wearing her own handmade clothes. During our research we found that creativity and resourcefulness can be an important coping mechanism, helping parents to relax and make the most of their own talents and the resources around them to create stimulating environments for their children.

However, parenting is a stressful job, and – in amongst the daily need to juggle various responsibilities – it can be difficult for families to prioritise their health, wellbeing and development needs. Laura was fortunate enough to have the financial and practical support of her husband John, which enabled her – as a full-time Mum - to devote plenty of time and energy to Lily. How might the picture look different if Laura had two or more children to look after, or if Laura had to worry about who was paying the bills?

KEY CHALLENGES

“Life is so hard, I can’t wait for the children to be in school. They need so much from me. All the time. It never stops.”

Aafia Faaraz, 28, single mother of 5 children

Familiesin‘survivalmode’oftenlackthetime,energy and resources for reflectiveparenting.

We met a number of families who seemed to be worn thin by the demands and stresses of daily life and their parental responsibilities. This was impacting significantly on their ability to provide stable and nurturing environments for their children. They lacked the time, energy, motivation and money to invest in their children’s learning and development. What does it mean to be in ‘survival mode’? The families we met seemed to share a set of characteristics: • poverty and/or financial problems, from living on a low

income to struggling to manage debt.• a large number of children, often leading to stress and

exhaustion for parents, particularly in the case of single parent households.

• social isolation and the lack of ‘an extra pair of hands’, meaning that parents have little extra support and limited opportunities to take time for themselves.

• at least one child with a disability or learning difficulties, requiring extra care and attention often at the expense of other siblings.

• at least one parent with a history of serious mental or physical health or substance misuse issues, leading to a sense that the family is ‘treading water’ in order to keep out of crisis.

In particular, those families we met in ‘survival mode’ seemed to experience the following issues: Lack of quality interactions between parent and child. Sometimes this was driven by the material inability of parents to access services and activities that were available to them locally, due to a lack of time or expensive public transport costs. At other times it was linked to a simple lack of awareness about the importance of these kinds of interactions.

Lack of play and opportunities for creative stimulation in the home, often caused by a lack of resources, but also linked to a poor understanding of the benefits of creativity and play for children’s development. In some cases technology was being used as a ‘babysitting’ mechanism, with children being allowed to spend much of their time watching television or playing video games because it helped the parents to feel in control and gave them some respite from the day-to-day stresses of parenting. Dependence on services to take responsibility forchildren’slearninganddevelopment. Families ‘in survival mode’ displayed limited interest or unquestioning trust in what their children were learning within professional settings. At times they felt comfortable engaging with their children’s learning and development at the nursery or the children’s centre, but did not know how or were unable to continue this work in the home environment.

In Sparkbrook, single mother Caroline’s routine from 3pm onwards is dominated by her 3 children under 10 and her two autistic teenage boys. The children all eat at different times and her attention is stretched to meet all of their different and complex needs. Her 15 year old daughter is independent and sociable and often does not arrive home until 9 or 10 at night. Most nights she doesn’t know her whereabouts or what she does. For Caroline, this is a blessing as it is one less child to take care of and worry about during this hectic time of the day. Caroline is concerned that her daughter might be getting into trouble, but unfortunately, this is the last of her worries. Caroline’s autistic teenage sons are also desperately in need of more out extracurricular activities. Both sons arrive home from SEN school at 4pm to a long evening of computers and iPads, and most evenings display frustration in the form of aggression towards their younger brothers and sisters, because they have steam to blow off and no outlet. Caroline doesn’t feel able to accompany the boys outside to be in the park with their friends because of their unpredictable behaviour outdoors and because of her demanding childcare commitments at home.

Caroline is worried that the bad behaviour expressed by her autistic teenage sons at home is having a very negative effect on the behaviour of her younger children. She wants them all to do well at school, but has no idea what they do during the school day.

Caroline 45 (single mother)

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Caroline’s StoryPoor emotional wellbeing within families is chronic, widespread and frequently‘undertheradar’.Servicestoooftenignore or even exacerbate these problems.

Severe mental health issues affected parents in five of the eight families that we spent time with, and many were receiving dedicated support for these issues, such as counselling. Yet the research also revealed another level of largely invisible but chronic anxiety, worry, stress and guilt that most parents were experiencing to some degree, on an almost consistent basis. In the families we met this stemmed from a complex interplay of factors, including: • low confidence and self-esteem as a parent - worrying about

whether or not they were ‘doing things right’• status anxiety – worrying about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’• inability to afford basic items for their children• exposure to negative media portrayals of families, such as

Benefits Street• a conflicted sense of identity, caused by wanting to pursue

other ambitions, such as creative or career-related endeavours, while also feeling the pressure to be a good parent

• general concerns about their children’s behavior and development, particularly as their children grew older. It was common for parents adolescent children to observe shifts in the ways in which their children communicated with them, and to worry about their safety as they grew more independent.

These are issues common to many families in many parts of the country, and in some instances, might be considered an everyday part of parenting. But for the families we met, an inability to manage or cope with these stresses and strains has meant that everyday anxiety has become particularly toxic. This is not helped by what has become an increasingly stressful relationship with services.

Stressful relationships with services Given the prevalence of poor emotional health and wellbeing within families, it is therefore important to note that a corollary finding of the research was that services are routinely failing to notice or give these issues due attention, and indeed seem to contribute to the problem in a number of cases. This was for example particularly evident in schools’ interactions with families, which seemed often to be characterized by distrust and blame: four families described the stress that had resulted from confrontational and oppositional relationships with schools on the basis of their children’s poor behavior, poor academic performance, or failure to attend school.

Denise AND THE BEGUMS

Despite being highly engaged in her children’s learning, for example, Denise described the fights that she got into with her son’s school over the fact that his attendance was well below average. When she tried to explain on numerous occasions that this was because he had a stoma (bowel condition) which was making him ill, teachers responded with disbelief and skepticism until finally she sent him to school in a “bad state”, with “blood soaking his shirt.” It was only at this point that the school began to take her seriously, but these interactions represented a memorably stressful time for Denise.

Another striking example of an antagonistic relationship with schools came from the Begums, whose children’s primary school went so far as to call social services because their eldest two children were struggling with their word cards, and teachers suspected that Adnan and Sadia were not giving their children enough support at home. Sadia and Adnan were left really traumatised by the visit from social services, even though - as Sadia says - they “found nothing. We have nothing to hide.” She nevertheless comments: “It just makes you feel bad, like you’ve done something wrong. I felt really guilty for a long time after that incident.” Experiences like this suggest that services that engage regularly with families should aim to develop more empathic and cooperative relationships with families, taking into account the effect that these interactions can have on families’ health and wellbeing.

When Patricia’s eldest daughter Elise committed suicide some years ago, her family was left devastated. Her relationship with her ex-partner Edward didn’t help. Just after hearing about her daughter’s death, she recalls sitting on her bed, surrounded by friends and cousins, when Edward came in: “It was 1 o’clock [...] He just said, ‘Can’t you tell them to go? I want to go to sleep.’ But I know what he wanted. He wanted sex. I pushed him away and told him to leave me alone.”

This was the one of a series of abusive and unsupportive relationships with men that have blighted Patricia’s past. She went on to conceive her youngest daughter Melanie, now two, with Edward, but when Melanie was seven months old, Edward came to the family’s home and raped Patricia. The trauma of these incidents led to Patricia spiralling into alcoholism.

The “wake up” moment for Patricia came when Melanie got taken into foster care. She decided she needed to turn her life around in order to win back the custody of her daughter. She took the initiative to join various support groups, including an alcoholics anonymous group, a bereavement group, and a women’s empowerment group. The emotional support that she has been able to access through these groups has really helped Patricia to recover. She is now able to keep her drinking under control, and has been reunited with Melanie.

These days, women are the main sources of support for Patricia, notably her friend and former neighbour Deborah. When going through difficulties, it is Debbie who Patricia can turn to: “She knows everything about me! She has been there when I needed to cry, she came and cleaned the house when it was worn down, and she has been there when I needed some advice.” Patricia sees Deborah twice a week, and Deborah accompanies her to the women’s empowerment group. She also receives support from her sister, a secondary school teacher who lives in a town nearby and often supports Patricia’s eldest two children, 18-year-old Mark and 15-year-old Laura, with their studies.

A devout Catholic, Patricia has also found great solace and support through the church. She attends church every week with her children, but is keen to point out that this is “not the stereotypical church”, but is a multicultural, congregational church, where people are allowed to dress informally. “Everyone is accepted as they are.” Beyond the spiritual and emotional support, Patricia receives a lot of practical support through this community as well. People give her lifts and have acted as the brokers for jobs at the time when she was looking for one. Slowly but surely, these relationships and connections are helping Patricia to rebuild her life.

Patricia’s story

Patricia 44Laura 15MELANIe 2 MARK 18

Whether with friends, family members or service providers, supportive relationships are critical to building resilient families. The families we met all relied on relationships at different times, in different ways and with different people. Across the piece, we found that the deeper the relationship, the more meaningful the support, and the greater the impact on the families resilience. But for many families, it is incredibly difficult to build and sustain such relationships:

WHAT IFWhat if all families lived close to someone whom they could trust to take care of their children?

“After my husband divorced me my friends left me bags of groceries by the front door. I was too proud to ask for help but they could see that I needed some support. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Denise, single mother of two, aged 45

WHAT IFWhat if all parents felt that they had safe, easily accessible and nonjudgmental spaces in which to

connect with other parents outside of their homes?

WHAT IFWhat if services saw it as their role to broker supportive connections between families rather than breed

reliance on professionals?

Building supportive relationships

Parenthood can be socially isolating.

Absorbed in the new responsibilities that come along with parenthood, people can often be cut off from familiar friends and routines when they first become parents. Laura mentioned that she has not been out with her old group of friends since her daughter Lily was born 18 months ago. Fortunately she lives next door to her sister-in-law, another stay-at-home mum with small children, so she has been able to avoid growing too isolated, but other parents were not so lucky. Lacking time and confidence to build new connections, and often without the means to travel far, many of the parents we met had become more insular and housebound. Without being able to access the different kinds of emotional, financial and practical support that come along with social capital, this meant that these families were more vulnerable to crisis and experienced higher levels of stress.

During our research in Sparkbrook and Longbridge we found that:

Relationshipsbuildconfidenceandserve as the agents of change.

They can prompt and enable people to take simple but often significant steps that they wouldn’t have the confidence to take by themselves. Laura, for example, was reluctant to go down to her local children’s centre alone, and only took this step when her sister-in-law offered to go with her. Sadia Begum only went along to a local community action group, The Larches, when a friend from down the road encouraged her to go along. Relationships often provide the key to helping people to make changes in their lives and access new experiences and opportunities.

Trusted horizontal relationships are often the frontline of support for families.

In times of need, parents will often turn to their own trusted networks – friends, family and neighbours - for help before turning to services. In our research we found numerous examples of parents accessing practical, financial and emotional support through these networks at moments of real crisis. When Denise divorced from her husband, she found herself without any source of income and with two small children to feed, but friends helped her out by leaving bags of shopping outside her front door in gestures of quiet generosity. When the Begums had to survive without benefits for a month after Sadia Begum’s short-term employment contract had ended, they went to their neighbours’ houses for dinner for a week until their benefits came through.

Quality of relationships matters.

Quality relationships over quantity of relationships are what is needed to make a difference to people’s lives and help them to feel supported. People need someone whom they can trust and know well enough to rely on for practical help. As we have already learnt, all parents need ‘an extra pair of hands’ to alleviate the stresses of parenting – someone for example to look after the children for one night so that they can have some ‘me time.’ Where this kind of support is not available, life can be very difficult. In cases where the couple relationship between parents was strong and parental responsibilities were shared, our research showed that this was a key protective factor that enabled families to cope much better with day-to-day responsibilities such as housework, and caring for their children. Single parent families were more likely to be vulnerable to stress and exhaustion, unless they could draw on sustained support from another person, whether parent, friend or professional.

Isolated parents mean more isolated children.

It was found that word of mouth is a powerful means of alerting families to the kinds of services and activities that are available, in both Sparkbrook and Longbridge. Those families with fewer social connections were therefore less likely to be aware of what was on offer in the area, meaning that children as well as parents missed out on opportunities for social interaction.

Local and easily accessible connections are particularly valuable for more vulnerable families.

The value of geographically close connections must not be underestimated. During the research it was found that extended family and friend networks (e.g. multiple aunts, uncles and cousins; grandparents) did not necessarily impact upon the extent to which a family felt supported, with parents like Sadia Begum saying things such as “they have their own children to look after, they don’t have time to look after mine”. The exception to this was when family and friends were living geographically close. Convenience and proximity seem to be important for families in enabling them to access support at the times when they need it. This is particularly the case for families on low or restricted incomes, for whom it is often not practically or financially possible to travel far and wide. It was also found that people can be too proud to ask for help, and it is only through face-to-face interactions and visible signs of distress and crisis that others may be alerted to their needs. Denise, who has worked as a teaching assistant at a primary school in Longbridge for the last 12 years, described ways in which teachers will often go out and buy shoes, socks and bits of uniform for children from impoverished families, and tell parents that the child won the items in a raffle to avoid the family feeling embarrassed. So what are the some of the key factors that prevent families from building valuable and supportive relationships?

INSIGHTS

Aafia’s Story

“People are buying rottweilers up and down the street to protect themselves. They’re scared to go out.”

Adnan Begum, 38

Fear of external threats can drive social isolation

Fear of external threats was a common barrier for families in both Sparkbrook and Longbridge, often restricting their movements beyond familiar sites such as home or school, and preventing them from making new friends and connections. Some of the families that we met during our research preferred to stay indoors or to drive around in cars rather than use public transport in order to maintain a sense of security and control, and protect themselves against unpredictable risks and dangers. These patterns of behavior not only make families more vulnerable to insularity and social isolation, but also weaken their ties with their local communities. They are less likely to find out about and engage with activities and opportunities that are available to them nearby. This in turn causes the family to lapse into unvaried and unstimulating routines, at the same time as feeling disconnected from the people and places in their neighbourhoods. Our research suggested that ‘fear of external threats’ is a complex psychological concept that can have multiple dimensions, including: Fear of crimeA number of the families that we spoke to perceived the areas in which they lived as being unsafe, fears that were in some cases supported by visible evidence of criminality and direct experiences. Patricia in Sparkbrook talked about being grateful that her two eldest children, Mark and Laura, are “introverted” and tend to stay in the house, because she does not see the area as being a safe place for young people. Barry and Sarah live on a street that they share with drug dealers, who regularly deal on the streets.

Fear of differenceFear of interacting with other people who are ‘not like us’ was cited by both parents and young people as a reason for avoiding certain places, and in some cases seemed to lie at the heart of a more general distrust of and disengagement from the surrounding area. In Longbridge, Denise’s teenage children Andrew and Isabel spoke

of avoiding The Factory - a young people’s centre situated just round the corner from where they live, because it was frequented by gangs of youth who did not belong in their social circles. “They’ll probably start fights with us.”

Fear of judgmentFear of judgment was shared by a number of parents. Sadia Begum talked about being reluctant to invite people to their house because they did not want visitors to see inside and make judgements. In the Begums’ case, unwelcome visitors included the children’s cousins, whom Sadia perceived to be more “well-off” than her own children. “I don’t want my children saying ‘he’s got an iPad – why can’t I have an iPad?”

KEY CHALLENGES

In Sparkbrook, mother-of-five Aafia Faraz finds that leaving the house is only possible when another adult is available to look after the children at home. When she does leave the house (this is usually just to get the food shopping) she only ever takes one child out at a time because she doesn’t feel that she can trust them on the roads and in the supermarket. Her daughter, who has autism, is rarely ever allowed out of the house, except for the school run ,because Aafia considers her to be a hazard to herself and others. Aafia’s anxiety about being outside with the children really limits the families’ ability to access any activities outside of nursery and school. These two places are safe zones for the family and the children only get access to outdoors, play and new experiences through these two places.

“Mummy never lets me out of the house…. I don’t know why…. I put my pretty dress on so that I could go to the shops and buy smarties with you (the researcher) today.”

4 year old daughter

Aafia 28(single mother)

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“I wish I had some lads in the area to chat to, do exercise with.”

Barry, 47

Services underestimate the value of relationships

In the cases described above, social isolation is a self-imposed choice based on families’ perceptions of external risks and threats. Yet social isolation and loneliness can also be driven by families’ powerlessness to change their situation for the better. They may for example lack basic confidence and social skills, be too preoccupied with other parental and caring responsibilities, or simply not know where to go or what to do to meet new people. We found that families with high levels of need tended to more socially isolated than others, and often really valued the support that they were receiving through service interventions. These vertical relationships between professionals and families represented a substitute for the kinds of friendship and support that others might access through family, friends and neighbours, offering people a perceived social outlet. In one sense this can be seen as a positive finding. Three of the families that we met – Caroline, the Carrolls and the Begums – had established highly trusting relationships with professionals who were supporting them, and referred to these professionals as ‘friends.’ In all cases, the support had helped the families to cope significantly better with, and to make tangible improvements in their lives. However, for professionals, building good relationships with families is simply ‘part of the job’. Eventually, these relationships will come to an end. In most cases, additional support that families receive might focus on improving their mental and physical health and general coping mechanisms, but it is rarely focused on building the family’s social capital. This means that, when the support is withdrawn because it is deemed to have been ‘successful’, families lose the interpersonal relationship with the professional and everything that goes along with it; reassurance, friendship, practical support and advice. This once again leaves them in a precarious position, without access to the rich assets latent within social networks.

Brokering sustainable relationships Whereas the ability to be self-sufficient is often perceived to be a positive outcome for families, our research suggested that there is a need for services to better understand the inherent value of sustainable relationships, and to play a more proactive role in equipping people with the platforms, spaces, confidence and skills to connect with one another. This does not have to be limited to more long-term service interventions such as the CAF – it can also be hardwired into the culture of all services that engage with families. Laura in Longbridge, for example, noted that there is an opportunity for health visitors to do more to signpost families to social activities that are available in the area.

34-year-old Sarah Carroll is a full time Mum and is almost housebound due to a range of physical and mental health problems including epilepsy, heart disease, diabetes, and unstable personality disorder. She has spent long periods of time in hospital in the past. Sarah is also the registered carer of their oldest child Adam, who has autism.

Since falling pregnant in 2013, when a family CAF was put around the family, Sarah has relied heavily on the emotional and practical support she receives from services. She sees both her family support worker and her counsellor as being amongst the few people who are part of her social network, other than her parents.

On the day of the ethnography, Sarah receives a call to let her know that that the support from her family support worker will be coming to a close. Sarah is visibly upset and confused by this news as she considers her support worker to be a friend, and feels able to confide in her when she is having a bad time with Adam. From Sarah’s perspective, there was no indication that the support was going to stop, but when relaying the news to her husband Barry, he reassures her that it is a good sign that they no longer needed additional support, and that they can continue on their own from hereon in. Former army officer Barry is Sarah’s full-time carer. There is a sense that he feels lonely and would value some male companionship. He misses life in the army: the routine, the travel, the friendships and the sense of purpose. Since retiring he hasn’t met other men in the area, apart from Sarah’s elderly father and his friends, so does not socialise much. Despite visiting the school twice a day, he does not talk to the other parents because he feels too shy and doesn’t know what to talk to them about. “I don’t get out much,” he says. “Life can be mundane.” While the services that support Barry and Sarah have successfully managed to improve the family’s ability to cope in the short term, Sarah is left feeling bereft when the support is withdrawn because it is the friendship that this relationship represents that she really values. In Barry’s case, too, services have failed to identify and respond to his need for more social outlets alongside his caring responsibilities. Left without the social networks that improve families’ resilience and sense of supportedness and wellbeing, the family is at risk of spiralling back into crisis.

Sarah 34Barry 47

ADAM 12 LEWIS 4

Sarah & Barry’s Story

LIAM 1

Adnan’s story

Adnan Begum has been struggling to find work for over ten years, but his health issues have made this difficult – he suffers from chronic anxiety and associated back pains, and has been an alcoholic ever since his days of working in restaurants as a young man. In his interactions with the Jobcentre he has been consistently pressured into applying for catering jobs because of his past experience. Up to now he has resisted this because he wants to give up alcohol, and knows that any exposure to alcohol could feed his addiction. Rather than going back to bars and restaurants he wants to retrain as a painter and decorator instead, but the job centre have responded by simply threatening him with sanctions, which has exacerbated his anxiety. Recently Adnan met a family support worker through his daughter’s Sure Start nursery, who is helping him to get back on his feet. The support worker visits Adnan’s family’s house and recognizes how much Adnan has to offer: he is a dedicated dad, and genuinely wants to contribute positively to society. The support worker has suggested that Adnan start volunteering, to ease back into working life more slowly, and has been trying to find him some relevant opportunities. Since working alongside this support worker, Adnan has cut down his drinking, gained new qualifications, and feels as though he is on the road to recovery. “I feel hopeful again,” he says.

Sadia 35 73 89Adnan 38

Without exception, all of the families that we met during the research had positive aspirations. Parents wanted the best for their children, and for the most part they also had hopes for themselves. Having aspirations gives people a sense of direction and purpose, and improves people’s sense of wellbeing. At the same time, many of the families we met were unable to take and sustain positive steps in pursuit of these ambitions, and the services they received did little to support them in doing so.

WHAT IFWhat if all families had a long-term plan, and were receiving support to implement it?

“We want our children to be proud of us!”

Sadia and Adnan Begum, 35 and 38

WHAT IFWhat if all parents in search of work were assigned a job coach in order to offer them dedicated support

to find work?

WHAT IFWhat if all families were encouraged and supported to set aside a nest egg for their children’s future?

Fulfillingaspirations

INSIGHTS

All families have aspirations, but aspiration is highly subjective.

Our research showed that aspirations are highly subjective. Some parents were for example very keen to work, while others wanted to be stay-at-home parents, in order to devote as much time and energy to raising their children as possible. Some parents wanted their children to thrive academically, others wanted their children to receive a solid religious education, while others simply wanted their children to be well-rounded individuals. It is not possible to make generalisations or assumptions about what people want, as these were all found to be highly dependent on families’ individual circumstances, past experiences and values. Any support that is offered to help people to achieve their aspirations should be aware and respectful of these differences, and seek to understand them.

Effective services work both to understand where parents are at, and where they want to be.

The services that seemed to be having the most significant impact on families were those that got to know the whole family, understood their current needs and aspirations, and put in place a realistic plan for supporting them to realise their goals. This might sound like common sense, but in reality a lot of the interactions that families described having with services seemed to be reactive and transactional, focusing on managing risk and tackling current problems rather than taking a strength-based approach. Stories included health visitors conducting weight checks on babies without even having a conversation with the parents about what a ‘healthy’ weight might look like, social services paying one-off visits to families’ houses based on a complaint that they had received and then never being seen again, and job centres providing job seekers with only a baseline level of support to find work, while at the same time setting them unhelpful targets. On the whole, families receive little support from services to think about and plan for their future in positive and practical ways. Yet where services had made the effort to offer more tailored and sustained support wrapped around parents’ aspirations, this approach seemed to be reaping dividends, as illustrated in Adnan Begum’s story. Despite positive stories like this one, however, we heard several accounts of thwarted ambition through our research, with families experiencing difficulties with making progress or creating a better life for themselves.

Alice 23PETER 9 months

KELLY 3Dave 33

Her parents leave Christmas presents and birthday presents in the porch, but she won’t let them in. She became quite distressed recently when they waited for Dave to leave to walk the dogs before attempting to visit her.

Recently Alice has started CBT sessions. She is happy to have started the sessions, but they have caused her eating disorder to re-emerge. She finds it very difficult to reflect on the traumatic nature of her childhood, and is very anxious that she could become angry and violent like her own parents. She found a recent parenting class very challenging when parents were asked to share the good things that their own parents had done and that they wanted to pass on. She didn’t feel that she had anything to contribute.

At the moment, long-term planning for the future does not seem possible for this family because a lot seems to hinge on how Alice will respond to her 40-week CBT course. Although the hope is that the therapy will ultimately improve her life in the future, the most pressing priority is simply for Alice to get through the next few months without regressing.

“I need to stay out of hospital - I don’t want to go back in there. I’ve got these two now.”

Alice

ALICE’S STORY

Alice and Dave are a white British married couple who live in Longbridge with their two children: Kelly, aged three, and nine-month old Peter. They are busy and creative parents, proud to have designed a safe, stable and nurturing environment for their children.

Alice seems content with the full-time occupation of being a mother, spending most of the day moving between various sessions and activities for her children. Her main ambition is to stay well, as she has a history of severe physical and mental illness stemming from an abusive childhood. At 15 she was admitted to a specialist eating disorder unit, and remained in different NHS and private hospitals for several years managing various mental health problems. At 19 she discharged herself to marry Dave. This was a fresh start for Alice and she is determined not to allow her past to overshadow her family’s future.

Alice has a distant relationship with her parents. She doesn’t communicate with them, describing their potential influence over her as unhealthy. Despite this, Alice and Dave live in a semi-detached house that they rent from Alice’s parents. Alice is not particularly happy about this arrangement, but says that it a pragmatic choice: the rent is cheaper and the house is in an ideal location for raising a family.

“The parenting class taught me that it’s not nice to shout. I was so used to shouting at the children and getting angry. Sometimes it’s hard not to.”

Aafia Faraz

Peoplefinditdifficulttobreak away from negative patterns of behavior and relationships

Lack of positive role modelsOur research suggested that, where parents have been exposed to a particular set of norms and behaviours through childhood and into adult life, they sometimes struggle to establish a different way of life even where there is a strong desire to change things for the better. For example, issues such as long-term worklessness were being ‘inherited’ because people had no other positive role models or frames of reference, and often lacked the support and opportunities to be able to break away from the precedents set by friends, family members and others in their community. This was particularly obvious and poignant in the case of Caroline, who was proud of the fact that she was the only one in her family who had gained a university degree in social work, and had actively sought to distance herself from her family, whom she labeled as “scroungers.” And yet – despite a strong desire to be “more than just a Mum”, and a clear sense of wanting to pursue professional success – she ended up following the example of her family, giving birth to eight children.

Inherited parenting stylesWe also observed parenting styles and approaches being passed down through the generations. In many cases, this was a positive trend – Denise for example talked about her ‘wonderful childhood’, and how she had learnt many of her coping mechanisms from her parents. In other cases, however, less positive parental strategies were being unthinkingly copied, such as heavy-handed disciplinary practices or the failure to give children adequate love and attention. Aafia Faraz mentioned that she did not stop to reflect on her own way of disciplining the children until she attended a parenting class, though she also observed that – even equipped with this new parenting advice – it was difficult to change learnt behaviours.

Toxic relationshipsNot all relationships are positive ones, yet can often be difficult to break away from. This seems to be particularly the case where relationships provide families with financial or practical help, thus breeding dependency. Patricia stayed with a violent and “selfish” partner up to crisis point, when he came around to the house and raped her, and her children had to intervene. It can take courage for people to break away from harmful and limiting relationships, and people often need a lot of support and counselling to be able to deal with severing these historic and emotional ties.

Families struggle to adequately envisage, invest in and plan for the future

The families that we spoke to almost universally struggled to speak confidently about what they wanted out of the future, beyond being able to talk in vague terms: ‘I want my children to be happy’; ‘I want to be in work.’ The reasons for this seemed to vary – in some cases it was complacency, with families trusting that things would ‘just work out.’ In other cases it was a failure to see possibilities beyond the experiences that they had had, while other parents were so worn thin by their parental responsibilities, that they had never had the time to think about where they might want to be in five or ten years’ time. Short-term improvements over invisible long-term investmentsRelated to this inability to plan for the future was a common failure to set aside any kind of ‘nest egg’, or to start to build a safety net that would enable vulnerable families to be more resilient to setbacks. It was true for most of the families that they had limited financial savings, and some - like both Laura and Denise - spoke with dread about what would happen when the children reached university age. Denise described having “enough money put away for a rainy day”, but not enough to be able to support her children through university.

To some extent this was due to the fact that families were living on limited means, and had almost nothing left over after paying the bills and buying food. Even Laura and John, probably the most economically resilient family that we met, were surviving on only one income, and had to start shopping in Aldi rather than Morrison’s.

Yet people’s day to day choices are not just dictated by material realities, but also the psychological impact of lives that are often very stressful and difficult. Some families were living under such financial strain that even a small injection of money or support was more likely to be put to short-term use – to make everyday life a little easier, and to bring about improvements that are instantly tangible – rather than to make invisible long-term investments.

Sadia Begum said that she wanted nothing more than to be able to put away some savings for her children, but when she had some extra earnings in 2013 as a result of a part-time job, she spent the money on buying expensive wallpaper that cost £40 per roll. The immediate and visible change that this made to her home environment, where she spends most of her time (it is important to her to provide a stable, safe, pleasant home for her family – “that’s the least I can do”, she says) was preferable to the invisible benefits of starting a savings account.

Perverse incentives in the system are disempowering for families and prevent them from making progress

Asking for help Our research revealed that families find asking for help difficult, and this can keep them locked in situations that are difficult and stressful. At times, pride serves as a barrier. People are reluctant to admit that they are struggling, unpractised in doing so, and fearful of the consequences. In some cases they want to avoid being judged by others, concerned about what others will think if they are seen as people who ‘need help.’

Our research also found that the basis on which people can access help often forces them into an unhelpful binary according to which they are either ‘in crisis’ or do not qualify for help at all. Despite consistently seeking support for her autistic children through the Common Assessment Framework, for example, Caroline was denied this support because she was perceived to be “coping well enough.” Eventually she persuaded a family support worker to come to her home, whereupon it was agreed that she could benefit from help, but this time her needs were considered to be “too complex” for any support to be offered through the CAF. As a result she went for several years with no support at all, and it is only recently that - after slapping one of her children during a particularly fraught moment at home and calling a family support worker herself to explain what had happened - she has gained access to a social worker and counsellor. She now lives in fear that the support from her counsellor will be withdrawn.

This reactive, needs-based approach to support seems to characterise many of the service interventions that are put in place to help families in need. Our research found that one possible

risk of this approach is that families - fearful of having the highly valued support taken away - over-identify with the labels and diagnoses that they are given in order to qualify for help. They start to define themselves through the labels they are given. There seemed to be a lack of low-level, preventative, asset-based support that families might access as they became better able to manage, and this meant that they got trapped in a disempowering and self-perpetuating cycle of dependency on more high-level and intensive support, being defined as - and defining themselves - as ‘disabled’ and ‘incapable.’

Finding work If needs-based support can serve as a perverse incentive that increases families’ vulnerability, the lack of appropriate work opportunities for parents also means that families can be ‘better off’ living on benefits, and thus remain dependent on the welfare state.

In three of the families that we spent time with, the unemployed parents were very eager to find paid work, both in order to develop and fulfil identities and ambitions outside of their parental responsibilities, and to generate a higher income. However, for people with childcare responsibilities, there seems to be a lack of job opportunities that are sufficiently flexible - and pay sufficiently well - for this to be a viable alternative to relying on benefits. For single parents, parental responsibilities are impossible to juggle with a full-time job, particularly where - as in Caroline’s case - there are a large number of children to look after, and they have significant learning and behavioural difficulties. For low-skilled parents, temporary, short term and zero hour contracts are often the only options available to them, but the instability of these opportunities means that families feel that it would be too risky to come off benefits, exposing the family to an unreliable financial situation.

“Sometimes it feels like you have to be really struggling before you can get the help that you need.”

Denise Smith, 45

Sadia Begum wishes that she had saved more money before she became a mother, because she does not like being so financially vulnerable and would like to be able to put away some savings for her four children. At the moment she feels that she can barely provide them with the basic essentials, though she wants to be able to support them to be ‘happy and successful’ in their current and future lives.

Sadia left school with three GCSEs, and immediately found work looking after elderly people in a care home. When talking about this work, her eyes shine brightly. She misses the work, the routine and the social aspect of the job, and regrets the decision to become a full-time Mum when her eldest daughter Anissa was born. That was 9 years ago, and Sadia is now really struggling to re-enter the job market, although she would love nothing more than to be able to go back to work. She briefly tried selling Avon products, but had to give this up after a while because she couldn’t find enough customers for the products.

In January 2013, Sadia did manage to find a temporary job as a dinner lady at her children’s school, helping to run the Breakfast Club. “That was a really nice time,” she recalls, smiling. “I think my children were proud of me.” In September 2013, however, Sadia’s job came to an end - it had only been a maternity cover position. Since the family had been receiving reduced benefits because of Sadia’s income, she assumed that the Job Centre would

Sadia 35 73 89Adnan 38

automatically resume payments, but in fact it took over a month for the correct amount of benefits to start coming through again - during which time the family completely ran out of money and were unable to afford food. Sadia remembers this as a real low point:

After this stressful experience, Sadia has resolved not to try to work again until she has found a full-time, permanent, stable position - “no more faffing about.” She sees that this might be difficult or even impossible, but is resolved to prioritise her families’ security over her own aspirations. “Maybe some time in the future I’ll be able to work again, when the kids are older….”

“I had to take the kids down to the neighbours so that we could have dinner with them. Every night we were literally going to different people’s houses for food. The Job Centre said there was nothing they could do. They gave me the number for a food bank on the other side of Birmingham. How were we going to get there?”

Sadia’s Story

SERVICE INSIGHTS

This section describes specific insights from the research relating to services and support along the 0-19 pathway.

SECTION KEY

OPPORTUNITY NEED PROBLEM

Parenting classes are particularly valued for

their social aspect

Anti-Natal

Health visitorsChildrenʼs

centres

Primary School Secondary

SchoolSixth form

college

Nursury

Leve

l of f

amily

invo

lveme

nt wi

th se

rvice

s

Playgroups

First-time parents feel unprepared for

parenthood.

Provision, communication and outreach for early years services

are often inadequate, particularly for parents with

children aged 0 - 3

Parents need more support to understand whether their childʼs physical, intellectual, emotional

and social development is ʻnormal.ʼ

Parents need more practical support and skills to be able to make the most of their homes and communities as learning

environments

More informal and appropriate spaces for young people to socialise outside of school.

More supported decision making is needed around

key transition points

Peer-to-peer support and signposting could be

powerful

Parents are unaware of and lack confidence to engage with childrenʼs

centres.

Health visitors are perceived as performing mainly a risk

management function

Childrenʼs centres provide a valuable gateway to building

the trust of families who need support

Many parents have an appetite to learn.

Build on trusted spaces and institutions such as

religious institutions

Families value and want more meaningful

communication with schools

Parenting advice does not always feel relevant to

familiesʼ situations

Schools can be insensitive to family contexts, driving

stress and anxiety.

A relationship of distrust characterises the

relationship between young people and the police

Families often feel ill-equipped to support

their childrenʼs homework and education.

There is less hand holding in the transition from early years

services to schools, and this can come as a shock to both

parents and children

Teenagers should receive more systematic support from health services such as sexual health, mental health and counselling

and relationship services

Involve young people more in decision-making and build

their leadership skills

Families need more support to plan ahead

Better work experience opportunities for young people,

which engage with the real world and harness their

aspirations

Harness young peopleʼs ʻcommunity spiritʼ

WorkExperience

GCSEʼsSelecting

a secondaryschool

Starting secondary

school

Earlyyears

Selectinga primary

school

SERVICE TIMELINE

0 11 19

SUPP

ORTI

NG F

AMIL

IES

IN T

HE E

ARLY

YEA

RSOV

ERCO

MIN

G SO

CIAL

ISOL

ATIO

N

SUPP

ORTI

NG F

AMIL

IES

IN T

HE H

OME

HELP

ING

FFAM

ILIE

S TO

DEA

L W

ITH

TRAN

SITI

ONS

RELA

TION

SHIP

S BE

TWEE

N FA

MIL

IES

& S

ERVI

CES

SUPP

ORTI

NG T

HE N

EEDS

OF

YOUN

G PE

OPLE

PREP

ARIN

G FO

R TH

E FU

TURE

Starting primaryschool

Birth

Many parents described the way in which parenthood had come as a “shock”: they talked about traumatic birth experiences, difficulties with breastfeeding, overwhelming exhaustion during the first few months of their children’s lives, and difficulties with coping with the dramatic change in lifestyle. This caused low mood, anxiety and, in some cases, postnatal depression, the effects of which could persist for several months or years. This is not a finding that is unique to parents in Sparkbrook and Longbridge, but does emphasise the need for services to be more proactive in helping parents to know what to expect and equipping them with basic skills for looking after their children in the first few years of their children’s lives.

Development in the early years of a child’s life is often relatively invisible, and some parents have low awareness of what to look out for in terms of their children’s development, often focussing just on their physical health: for example, Sadia complained about the fact that her youngest daughter was returning home with very dark urine and worried about whether she was being given enough to drink, but displayed little understanding of other ways in which her daughter might or might not be progressing.

Other parents experience anxiety over whether their child is healthy, particularly in intellectual, emotional and social terms. There is appetite for services to establish more of a transparent dialogue around this. Laura, for example, commented that “health visitors weigh your baby but then they don’t tell you whether or not the weight is healthy or not. As we are the parents, why isn’t there more of a conversation around this?”

During what can be a very socially isolating time for parents and children, we heard that there are not enough activities and opportunities for parents with young children, particularly those aged 0 - 3. Activities are difficult to find, hard to reach and often carry a cost which for some families is unaffordable. In Longbridge in particular, there were complaints that there is a lack of dedicated parks and play areas for babies and children, despite an abundance of open spaces. Online social networks like B31 in Longbridge are effective ways for families to share information about events and activities that are on offer, but these are only used by a select number of families. There needs to be more systematic and strategic processes in place to alert parents to what is on offer, taking into account the ways in which they receive information: some parents are for example very comfortable with using technology, while others are less tech savvy.

Supporting families in the early years

PROBLEM: First-time parents feel unprepared for parenthood

PROBLEM: Provision, communication and outreach for early years services are often inadequate, particularly for parents with children aged 0 - 3

NEED: Parents need more support to understand whether their child’s physical, intellectual, emotional and social development is ‘normal.’

The Begums did not access the children’s centre until their youngest son had an accident and had to go to hospital, and it was only then that staff signposted the family to the local children’s centre. Sadia feels that, as a result of this intervention, her youngest two children have really benefitted from going to sessions at the children’s centre, whereas she feels that the older two “missed out.”

Services should seek to be more proactive – rather than reactive – in ensuring that families are aware of and are engaging with local early years services.

There was a perception that they could do more to link families into the community and the activities that are available, rather than simply being there to ‘check up’ on families.

Despite being a relatively assertive and empowered Mum, Laura says that she only had the motivation and confidence to go to the children’s centre when she was able to go there with her sister-in-law – another Mum. She says that she would be available and willing to play a role in signposting and accompanying other mothers to the activities and services in the area, and would like to have the platforms and support to be able to do this.

Parents tend to listen and learn from one another, and peer -to-peer signposting and support could therefore be a way to increase families’ engagement with services and the community.

More than half of the parents that we spent time with had accessed parenting classes through early years services, and seemed to particularly value the chance to meet other people and have some ‘me time’, often more so than the skills and content taught through the class itself. There should be more opportunities for parents to connect with one another through early years services, and they should also seek to engage Dads, as they often stand to benefit from this opportunity to meet new people.

Sarah and Barry recently attended a parenting class. They both enjoyed this greatly, although neither of them felt particularly in need of parenting advice. They mainly appreciated the fact that it gave them an excuse to get out of the house. Barry made good friends with a local single Dad, though sadly he hasn’t managed to maintain contact with him since the class ended.

Overcoming social isolation

PROBLEM: Parents are unaware of and lack confidence to engage with children’s centres.

PROBLEM: Health visitors are perceived as performing mainly a risk management function

OPPORTUNITY: Peer-to-peer support and signposting could be powerful

OPPORTUNITY: Parenting classes are particularly valued for their social aspect

“I’m not sure what I’d do without my free bus pass.” - Alice

There are a number of barriers – both material and attitudinal – that prevent families from accessing local services in the local community. Parents also need support to make the most of their homes as learning environments. For example, on account of being in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, Alice is entitled to a free bus pass, which means that she is able to get around with her two young children at relatively low cost; without it, she’s not sure what she’d do, because getting around can be very expensive.

As well support to overcome barriers to leaving the house, parents also need more support to make the home a more stimulating place in which to learn and play. This might involve building the creative skills and resourcefulness of parents, in order to empower them to make the most of everyday routines and available tools and technologies.

Services should use parents’ interactions with early years services to extend other forms of support ‘holistic’ support. Adnan Begum has benefited hugely from receiving help from a support worker whom he connected with through the children’s centre that his daughter attends. Support might cover issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, dealing with children’s behavioural issues and learning difficulties, domestic abuse and relationship advice, support to gain employment and qualifications, counselling, additional parenting advice, diet, budgeting skills and debt management. Children’s centres provide an ideal opportunity to engage with and establish trusting relationships with parents, allowing professionals to work to understand the families first before intervening in their lives.

There is often a gap between the information and advice that parents receive in early years settings, and chaotic home environments, where the advice is not practically applicable or relevant. Early years services should do more to understand the realities of families’ lives and the full range of issues that they have to deal with, and adapt parenting advice and information accordingly, so that it is more likely to be heeded at home.

In Sparkbrook, the nursery head kept the researcher back to explain the extra support that Aafia Faraz’s children would be getting with their development. She stated that they needed to get ‘mum’ to be more disciplined and routined at home, but Aafia was not invited into this conversation. During the session, Aafia was told to address some practical things like: toilet training, sweet consumption and bed routines, but was given no guidance on how to do this in her own context, given the challenges that she faces. For Aafia, these things feel like an incredibly tall order, and indeed, the fact that her two older children have been through the same nursery suggests that this advice has not yet been effective for Aafia and her family. The researcher sensed that it would take a really committed and empathetic person to translate what the nursery is asking of her into action in the home. An example was when the nursery head told Aafia not to buy the children sweets because it makes them hyperactive and more likely to be aggressive with each other. She agreed but when back at home, Aafia fed the children ice-cream for late lunch to keep them quiet for a little while. It is possible that she did not consider ice-cream to be sweets, or more likely that quick fix habits around food are hard to break, let alone recognise in the first place.

Supporting families in the home

PROBLEM: Parenting advice does not always feel relevant to families’ situations

NEED: Parents need more practical support and skills to be able to make the most of their homes and communities as learning environments

OPPORTUNITY: Children’s centres provide a valuable gateway to building the trust of families who need support

“I want Anissa to go to a school that’s close to where we live.” Sadia

Choosing the right school for their children can be very stressful for some parents, while others do not treat it with due seriousness. Around this often very fraught and disruptive time, there seems to be very limited support or conversations to help parents choose the right school for their children. The result is that families can end up making uninformed choices about which schools to send their children to. They may make these decisions for example based on factors such as whether the school is close to the house or the kinds of people that attend the school, which can be arbitrary and mean that children end up in academic settings that are not suited to their needs and abilities.

Throughout their interaction with early years services such as children’s centres and nurseries, parents are given constant reminders and support with basic parenting tools and approaches. At this stage, courses, discussions and check-ins around routine, discipline, toilet training and healthy eating are regular. Some are more useful than others, but they do provide parents with a sense that they are supported.

Aafia Faraz spoke very positively about the parenting class she recently attended where she learnt about how to use the naughty step, and about healthy eating. She recited the ‘be firm, be a friend’ part of the advice she’d been given back to the researcher a number of times. She said that it was such a good class because it was all in line with the Koran and was taught by a Muslim Pakistani teacher.

Once children go to school, however, this support does not continue. In contrast with the more holistic and wrap around support that families receive through children’s centres and nurseries, schools tend to be more distanced from the experiences of whole families, focussing most of their support on the child. Both children and parents therefore experience the transition to schools as a dramatic step. Parents can feel that they are losing the scaffolding of parenting support and advice that they relied on through the early years, while for children it can feel like a significant step up in terms of what they are expected to learn and how they are expected to behave.

Helping families to deal with transitions

PROBLEM: There is less hand holding in the transition from early years services to schools, and this can come as a shock to both parents and children

NEED: More supported decision making is needed around key transition points

Schools often fail to understand the barriers to learning in the home, and can be antagonistic towards parents if they feel that their children are behaving badly, under-performing or failing to attend school regularly. We also heard that they can tend to disregard and be insensitive to the financial difficulties that might be faced by families, causing shame and embarrassment when families cannot afford school materials, school trips or coach buses.

Denise’s 15-year-old son Andrew does well academically, and when he turned 11 Denise suggested that he undertake the entrance exam for the local high-performing grammar school. On the day of the exam, however, Denise and Andrew took a tour of the school, during which they started discussing school transport with one of the teachers. Knowing that she would not be able to afford school coach fees (which were £1200 per term), she told the teachers that she would be happy to drive Andrew to the school, but the teacher informed her that this would mean that he would miss out on an “important time for socialising with his peers on the coach.” The conversation put Denise off sending Andrew to the school: she decided that it “wasn’t for us.” She also mentioned a home economics class at her daughter’s school which demanded that all students buy costly ingredients for a dish that they were cooking in class: the bill ran up to £23. Denise pointed out that this was a financial burden even for her, and that less well off families would have really struggled to afford it.

Many parents showed a strong appetite to learn, particularly around the early years stages of their child’s development, with many taking parenting classes and childcare courses and classes arranged through children’s centres. Schools and other services have a real opportunity to work with parents to raise literacy and numeracy levels, in the same way that children’s centres are equipping parents with the tools to support their children’s development in the early years.

Supporting families in the home

PROBLEM: Schools can be insensitive to family contexts, driving stress and anxiety

OPPORTUNITY: Many parents have an appetite to learn

The families we met through the ethnographies all had aspirations for their children, and were clearly determined to do all they could to ensure their kids achieved these aspirations. As already discussed, they sometimes struggle to know how to make this happen, but although they may not feel that they can support their children’s education, they do like to know what is happening. They appreciate open, honest communication and feedback.

Currently, schools seem to expect parents to play some role in academic development, without acknowledging the fact that they have their own difficulties. Communication with parents also tends to be restricted to those times when the school is ‘worried’ about the child, which can often make parents feel victimised. There is a real opportunity for schools to engage parents in an ongoing dialogue about their child’s school experience, not just when things are going wrong but throughout the school term, so that parents feel involved in their children’s education rather than marginalised. This might spark a shift in parents’ attitude to their children’s education and the role that they might play in it.

As children get older and their homework gets more ‘difficult’, some parents feel helpless to support their children academically due to their own lack of formal qualifications or further education. Technology can also act as a barrier: some parents – like the Begums – do not feel confident with computers and thus, if homework involves internet research, for example, they do not feel that they can help.

In some cases, parents think that it should not be their responsibility to educate their children, and they are happy - and expect - to devolve this responsibility entirely to schools. This tends to be a consequence of lack of a confidence rather than disinterest, but presents a barrier to the children of these parents progressing academically, compared with other children who have more support and encouragement to do homework. In other cases, parents whose children seem to be struggling at school end up ‘outsourcing’ their children’s learning to other professionals and services, such as private tutors. This can be unsustainably costly, and raises parents’ expectations of what services can deliver, leading to stress, disappointment and powerlessness when the children do not progress.

Although Adnan frequently takes the children to the park to play, he and Sadia largely see it as school’s responsibility to educate their children in a more formal sense, and seem to lack the confidence to do so themselves. Sadia comments that by the time the children have reached primary school, their homework is already too difficult for her to be able to help them with it. Although their third son Mohammed is excelling at school, their eldest two children, 9-year old Anissa and 8 year old Michael are struggling. Sadia recently received a call from Anissa’s school asking her to attend a meeting to discuss Anissa’s slow progress. This really worried Adnan and Sadia, because they fail to see what else they can do: they are already paying £300 per term for their children to attend a private tution school on Saturdays, which represents a significant proportion of their small income.

PROBLEM: Parenting advice does not always feel relevant to families’ situations

OPPORTUNITY: Families value and want more meaningful communication with schools

A consistent finding of the research was that there is demand for more informal spaces for young people to spend time in. This would prevent them from becoming socially isolated or hanging around in parks and on the streets. Youth centres are trusted safe spaces for young people, but there aren’t enough of them, and there are a number of barriers to accessing these formal venues. Young people may not be able to reach them because they are too far away, or be unwilling to access them because they perceive them as being “not for people like them” or have little to offer them. Some parents – like Denise – felt that there should be more ‘aspirational’ activities for young people, such as amateur dramatics or writing groups. There is a need for innovative approaches to provision for young people that take into account the influence of their social networks, personal preferences and relationships with community as well as other potential barriers to engagement.

Particularly in multicultural Sparkbrook, many parents trust and value the religious education that their children are able to access through mosques and other religious institutions. They see these as safe spaces that they can send their children to, which prevent them from getting bored and give them a grounding in the cultures, values and languages that are part of their background and heritage.

Caroline does not check her children’s homework. She takes her children to and from school, but does not further engage with their educational needs. She sees her role as primarily to provide a safe environment for her children, and to ultimately ensure that they learn to stand on their own two feet. Despite this, Caroline shows a keen interest in the children’s religious education. A converted Muslim, she is considering sending her children to the Madras, so that they can learn to read the Q’uran.

There is a need to think about the potential of institutions outside school to provide spaces for social interaction as well as possibly encouraging parents to be more engaged in and involved in their children’s learning.

This is particularly the case in Sparkbrook. Young people distrust the police and vice versa. Police and other surveillance bodies such as neighbourhood groups should work to develop a more trusting and supportive relationship with young people.

Supporting the needs of young people

PROBLEM: A relationship of distrust characterises the relationship between young people and the police

OPPORTUNITY: Build on trusted spaces and institutions such as religious institutions

NEED: More informal and appropriate spaces for young people to socialise outside of school

“Anissa’s getting older: she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. Sometimes I worry about what’s going in her head. I think she might be getting bullied.”Sadia

Young people – as well as their parents – want more support from services around their emotional, sexual and physical health. Adolescence is an emotionally difficult time for young people and also marks the point when they start to become more independent. It is therefore important that they receive support to know how to safeguard their own safety and wellbeing and to develop positive relationships, romantic and otherwise. Currently, families generally feel that support for the mental and emotional wellbeing of teenagers is weak and patchy, with an over-emphasis on academic outcomes for children at the expense of their personal and interpersonal growth. Mental health problems can get worse during this period, and many parents feel that their relationships and quality of communication with their children becomes more difficult, creating anxiety. There is a need to think about how to develop more systematic, integrated and effective support for families around health and relationships.

Patricia’s eldest daughter Elise committed suicide some years ago, leaving the rest of the family devastated. Patricia had a mental breakdown and spiralled into alcoholism, as a result of which her youngest daughter, now two, was taken into foster care temporarily. While this crisis meant that Patricia has been proactive about accessing support for her mental health issues through her in order to win back the guardianship of her youngest daughter (she attends a bereavement group, a women’s empowerment group and acupuncture sessions) she is hugely worried about the mental health of her 18-year-old son Mark and 15-year-old daughter Laura. She feels that they have not received adequate support around their tragic past, and worries that they never talk about their sister.

Young people want to be given ownership over and responsibility for issues that affect them. There should be more opportunities for them to have a say in and to shape the services and communities that they interact with.

Partly because of existing schemes such as the Duke of Edinburgh, which provide a structure for young people to engage with the community, and partly also because young people’s mobility and social circles tend to be more confined to the local area than that of their parents, there is often an appetite and willingness amongst young people to engage with local community issues. There should be more opportunities to harness and mobilise young people’s natural desire to contribute positively to society through interesting community action projects.

OPPORTUNITY: Involve young people more in decision-making and build their leadership skills

OPPORTUNITY: Harness young people’s ‘community spirit’

NEED: Teenagers should receive more systematic support from health services such as sexual health, mental health and counselling and relationship services

Laura has been expelled from school due to bad behaviour, while Patricia has observed Mark behaving oddly on numerous occasions, doing things like eating the foam of the couch. The family receives visits from a social worker, but interestingly this social worker seems only to be concerned about the safety of two-year old Melanie: she never makes enquiries about how the elder two children are coping.

Families worry about how they will afford university fees and whether or not their children will be able to find work in a hostile job market. There is a need for more proactive conversations with families around how to prepare for the future. This might for example include encouraging families to start a savings account for their children early on in their school career, rather than just before they are about to leave school, giving parents time to adjust their habits and plan ahead.

Families with teenage children complained about inadequate work experience opportunities for young people and a failure on the part of schools to engage meaningfully with real world issues. This often leaves young people with only a vague sense of what they might do after school, or a narrowed sense of what is possible. A greater focus on building young people’s entrepreneurial skills and connecting them with inspiring workplaces and professional role models could serve to widen their horizons, and make them feel more excited and positive about the life and opportunities that lie ahead.

18-year-old Mark is currently doing an apprenticeship in ICT. He is not particularly excited about his apprenticeship, and often skips training. His true passion, however, lies in dance and rapping. He would love to have the opportunity to make a living through teaching contemporary dance, but would not know where or how to go about this. He spends his free time writing songs and making music videos with his best friends at home. Patricia wants him to continue with his apprenticeship, believing this to be the more pragmatic choice.

Preparing for the future

NEED: Families need more support to plan ahead

NEED: Better work experience opportunities for young people, which engage with the real world and harness their aspirations

Concluding remarks

The insights presented in this report demonstrate the potential for radical change in public service provision. Across the UK, local authorities and front line service providers are redesigning services, and reorganising systems in ways that embed the insights presented here and the principles they point towards. We believe that Birmingham City Council has a unique opportunity to do the same, joining a growing band of public service pioneers who are committed to reimagining the role of public servants, and the services they provide.