Whole household or family approach
Take a whole family and/or a whole household approach
While families are made up of individuals, their challenges and successes are linked. Successful early intervention or prevention of problems can only work when all family members are considered.
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Transcript
In this video you will hear from: A nursery teacher, young person, parent support officer and housing manager
Yvonne Dervin, Early Years Outreach worker:
I've worked with a family where there's been four generations actually in the house, so to go out and look at the family as a whole we'd have to get all the right people around the table really so to have the experts that come in from mental health, from housing, it helps us a lot in having a whole family approach to support.
Charlotte Hudson:
I think it's better to listen to the whole family than to have one person, because the problem could just be like a one-sided story. So it's better to understand everybody's point of view and to get a better understanding of what the problem is and how to help.
Evelyn Uche, Parent Support Officer, Newall Green Primary School
It's crucial to look at the whole family, from identifying that they may have a grandparent that lives with them; there's overcrowding; parents identify that they're carers for neighbours; they have other family members sofa surfing. And that then will all impact on our pupil and then we look at what other support we can put in for the additional family members, no matter what age they are.
Samantha Morecroft, Tenancy Support Manager, Great Places Housing
An early intervention case that we provide this support to, where there wasn't necessarily a housing issue, was when we were working with one family within a Primary school that came through because there was a housing issue. However the staff there saw the support that the family were receiving from the Early Help key worker, myself, and actually then referred another family to us through Early Help. Because they knew that they were in a Great Places tenancy, but actually it was around relationships and health issues with the children within that household. It wasn't a housing issue, but there was a housing issue brewing. We were able to get in there early and help with that before it actually became a major issue for that tenancy.