Family Action
Key Facts
Location
Project Criteria
Contact
Catriona Scott
Email
Project funding
£149,423
Funding round
Family Action (formerly Family Welfare Association) is a national charity supporting over 45,000 children and families a year by providing financial, emotional and practical resources through 100+ local services and our national grant-making programme. A further 60,000 benefit from our educational grants advice service.
Our key objectives are:
- To increase the resilience of the families and individual service users we support by working with them to build on their strengths
- To improve awareness of why and how best to meet the needs of disadvantaged and socially isolated individuals and families in England
- To improve the physical, emotional and financial well-being and mental health of all our service users.
Family Action's family services work alongside children and parents/carers in their homes and other community settings including family centres, schools and primary care. Improving resilience, mental health and wellbeing is a key aim in our direct services.
Building Bridges-Aims Of Project
- Strengthen existing parental couple relationships, whether parents live together or apart, and assist separated/divorced parents who are in conflict to better work together in order to minimize the impact of the poor parental relationship on their child or children, and so improve outcomes for those children
- Strengthen family relationships in families where parental behaviours compromise family wellbeing, for example where parents are substance/alcohol misusers, have significant mental health problems or live with high degrees of conflict and distress
- Promote active and positive fatherhood, with particular emphasis on engaging fathers in their children's learning and development
- Promote inclusion and equality by enabling the take up of existing services by disadvantaged, vulnerable, 'hard to reach' and less well served communities
- Promote stronger family relationships and improved parental confidence and skills through intergenerational activity.
Family Action is committed to an outcomes focus to evaluate and improve services. We use externally-validated outcome measurements to monitor and track progress with service users e.g. independent evaluation of Building Bridges services.
Monitoring tools are implemented from first contact, establishing baselines, identifying key issues, recording identified and agreed goals to meet identified outcomes. Children's full participation is a key quality requirement and we use a range of processes to engage children in planning their own targets. We also use the following evidence based tools: core -10, GAD-7 and PHQ-9, Index of Family Relationships (parents)
Beneficiaries-Target Groups
One to one work with parents and families, support to children, group work with children and parents. Work with the wider family.The service has been designed to meet the needs of families where parents have profund and enduring mental health problems. The service offered is, as far as possible, tailored to meet families' needs and circumstances. It is flexible end holistic.