Teaching Tops Programme
Undertaken by our team of highly experienced Family Support Workers, ACCA’s TOP bespoke Parenting Programme is an additional service, that can be included as part of our double award winning 24/7 In the Home Programme, which support parents in their own home to develop their capacity to independently care for their children, or as a stand alone service which supports the development of a parents capacity to effectively and consistently meet the needs of their children independently and reduces the likelihood of separating children from their families.
They are suitable in circumstances such as:
- A new/young and inexperienced parent
- A parent with a level of learning difficulty
- Parents who have had negative early life experiences themselves and who have been unable to develop an effective or safe blueprint for parenting their own children
Children are not born with instruction books and parenting is not always instinctive for every mother and father. Negative early life experiences can have a significant impact because we learn to parent through our own experiences. If those experiences were abusive or neglectful, without an effective blueprint, a parent can find it difficult not to simply repeat those negative parenting patterns.
Advanced CCA have developed our Teaching, Observations and Practice Programme, which follows guidance set out by the NHS and the Department of Health. Some of our Family Support Workers are trained in either the PAMS or ParentAssess models and fully understand and can implement methods of working with parents who have learning needs that harness strength and accommodate a range of learning styles.
The use of pictorial aids, videos, role modelling and written materials ensures that parents are able to engage and learn new skills which they can be supported directly to implement with their children. We additionally have practitioners trained to deliver domestic abuse programmes and undertake more specific work around behaviour management, based on accredited training.
We provide our Family Support Worker’s with additional training and a considerable library of resources to assist them to deliver teaching that is not simply generic, but that can accommodate and adjust to an individual parent’s needs. Our Progamme begins with the development of a Teaching Plan with the allocated Social Worker, Independent Social Worker and the Family Support Worker, who will undertake all of the work with the family. The plan will consider how the work will be delivered, how it will be measured and what the intended outcome should be.
The allocated Family Support Worker will identify the work they intend to undertake with a parent during each session and then plan a guided observation, that enables the practitioner to measure whether the parent is able to implement what they have learned. Over the course of the Programme, the parents’ ability to do this both confidently, consistently and independently, will be subject of one to one reviews between the practitioner and parent and then incorporated into an evidence-based report, that can assist Local Authorities and the Court to achieve the best outcomes for children and their families.
By allocating a single worker to a family, there is an improved opportunity to develop an effective working relationship with children and their families. Our Family Support Workers work closely with parents to assist them to develop more positive parenting strategies, that can break the chain of generational interventions by professionals into their family lives and provide the foundations of change for future generations.
