39. Memorandum submitted by Relate
INTRODUCTION
Relate has been extending its work into this
field for some years now. Our experience is that young people
who are at risk of being anti-social and later offending can often
live in families that are in difficulty as a result of family
change, something that we have experience of through our work
to promote health, respect and justice in couple and family relationships.
We find that many families undergoing transitions
such as adult couple relationship breakdown, parental unemployment,
or perhaps bereavement can find the transition in family dynamics
difficult to manage, and that notions of healthy, respectful relationships
are hard for these families to create.
Relate offers a chance for families to come
together and work through the transitions together with the aim
of giving everyone a chance to say what they think and be involved
in finding solutions to the emotional issues that they are facing.
We have been working within the relationship
support field for over 60 years, and believe that we have built
up a bank of knowledge and skills that can significantly change
people's lives.
OUR WORK
WITH PEOPLE
ON ANTI-SOCIAL
BEHAVIOUR ORDERS
Anti-social behaviour in young people is often
the beginning of a downward turn for a young person that can lead
to youth offending.
Relate is now involved in delivering over 20
contracts of work on behalf of Youth Offending Teams across the
country, supporting the parents and families of young offenders
and teaching them new skills and behaviours to cope with the family
changes and difficulties that they are often in.
It is our experience that these workshops and
courses are one of the successful ways that families can be supported
to positively change and in turn support young people to change
their behaviour and resist reoffending.
We offer a range of interventions, tailored
to the needs of the community group that we are serving, and the
most regular of these are outlined below.
"RIDING THE
STORM"—PARENTING
COURSE
This course normally runs over six or eight
sessions. The course is accredited by the Open College Network
(OCN).
The course is offered to those with a young
offender in the family. It is also suitable for parents with children
who are at risk of offending.
The following can be achieved by parents attending
the course:
— Better understanding of the pressures
of being a teenager;
— Breaking of bad parental habits;
— Building on identifying their existing
skills as a parent;
— Managing conflict between parent
and teenager;
— Negotiating boundaries;
— Raising awareness of peer support
networks;
— Rebuilding relationships;
— Stabilising family life.
PARENT MENTORING
This course is available to any parent supporting
other parents and their children.
This course runs over a total of 22 hours and
can be run in a way to suit the client (over three days, ten weekly
sessions, regular morning or afternoon sessions). It is accredited
by the Open College Network (OCN).
Benefits of this programme include:
— Peer support for parents in the community;
— Low cost help to parents;
— Building capacity for supporting
parents in your community;
— More empowering approach to parenting.
Relate also assist in arranging travel for parents,
to and from course venues.
Our experience is that people who attend our
courses find them challenging and supportive and that they take
with them skills and knowledge about how to change how they react
to situations in order that they might respond differently in
the future.
EVALUATION OF
OUR PARENTING
PROGRAMMES
Parents who have attended our programmes reported:
— less conflict with their children;
— better monitoring of behaviour;
Other findings included:
— the average child's offences fell
by a third while their parent was on a course;
— 90% of parents attending would recommend
it to others;
— 89% of children of parents on an
order were convicted in the year before the course, this fell
to 61.5% in the year after average number of offences per child
also halved (from 4.4 to 2.1).
Relate believes that it would be in the interests
of all to extend our work out to those families of young people
who are on anti-social behaviour orders, and would welcome the
opportunity to extend our own programme to deliver more opportunities
to families in difficulty.
25 August 2004
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