Family Support Services
Coram’s Family Support Service provides parents with the skills to improve and strengthen relationships with their children. Through work in the community and outreach to schools, Coram offers family support where parents need it the most.
The aim of the service is to provide resources to families in need which model best practice in parenting and family support and which enhance the care and parenting of vulnerable children.
Our underpinning principles are:
- Prevention of family breakdown is preferable to treatment and public care for children.
- Focused support work with families has been shown to be effective in preventing poor outcomes for children in terms of behavioural problems, criminality, poor educational attainment as well as family relationship breakdown and reception into care.
- Improving parenting capacity is a key aspect of preventative work. Our use of the REF’s Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities group work model builds confidence, teaches skills and techniques and enables parents to relate more positively to their children and meet their needs for care, affection and control.
- ‘Solution Focused’ methods to address family problems builds on families’ own strengths and beliefs rather than taking a ‘parenting deficit’ or ‘problem child’ approach. This results in positively motivated parents who respond with confidence to their own successes.
- Valuing diversity, respecting and validating differences enables engagement with families from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
- Group work approaches in general facilitate the development of social skills, mutual peer support and learning as well as enhanced self esteem and confidence.
- Creating opportunities for parents and community members to train and act as volunteers and helpers enhances the quality and resourcefulness of both those individuals and the communities of which they are members.
- Enabling parents to support their children’s learning is the most important determinant of achievement in school.
Our projects across London reflect our principles and have been developed flexibly in response to local community needs and priorities.
For further details on our family support services, please use our contact page.
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