Background: commissioned to gather evidence to support implementation of Getting it Right for Every Child

During 2009-10 Comas undertook a piece of commissioned work which supported the development of the Getting it Right for Every Child in Edinburgh approach. As part of the commission, we evaluated multi-agency working to support vulnerable families. 

Findings

Within multi-agency process we observed that professionals within children’s services often struggle to plan to meet the emotional and nurturing needs of parents, although many recognised this as a factor in children’s vulnerability. 
In particular, the options for supporting parents of children over five were much more limited than those for working with parents of younger children.

More evidence

During 2010 Comas also conducted a piece of work for the Scottish Government to write a practice manual for professionals working with children affected by domestic abuse whose fathers (or father figures) are involved in a ‘Caledonian Programme’ to address their abusive behaviour. In this piece of work we recognised the vulnerabilities of parents, both of the protective parent who has experienced trauma and is trying to manage their children’s loss and trauma; and of the parent trying to change and to repair damaged relationships.  While our work on the manual focused on how agencies need to collaborate to support children, we recognised that strengthening mothering requires a mother to feel confident and to rebuild her resilience; and that for fathers who are trying to become better fathers, their efforts to change and support their children could be enhanced if their own needs were addressed.
Comas was also developing work with people in recovery from addiction, many of whom were trying to rebuild their relationships with their children whilst making progress in their own recovery journey. 

Putting it all together

We believed that the resilience model fitted well with Comas’ interests and values, and could be of benefit to people in recovery from addiction and people in recovery from mental illness, to sustain their recovery and help them to rebuild relationships with their children.  We approached the City of Edinburgh Council Fairer Scotland Innovation Fund with our findings to develop and test our ideas for a Resilient Parent Coaching pilot.