context
Parents and families
Our teams are listening to parents across the region and learning from service evaluations. Here is a summary of what families expect from our services.
Keep it free. I couldn't come if we had to pay, and it must be saving money from other services.
– A parent in Carmarthenshire
Parents and families want:
- Services that are responsive and personal, built on real relationships with individual professionals
- To trust that their worries will be taken seriously
- To move between professionals and services without having to repeat their story every time
- Services that are accessible nearby at times that work for them
- To easily find out what services are available to them
- Peer support – the chance to connect with other parents going through similar experiences
- Courses and activities that build their knowledge and confidence as parents
- Better information and practical support around additional learning needs, including while waiting for a formal diagnosis
- Services that reach out to them, rather than leaving families to find their own way in
- Activities that are welcoming for fathers and partners, not just mothers
Parents and families need professionals to:
- Advertise and communicate the range of services on offer
- Listen and respond to what parents say, rather than making assumptions about what a family needs
- Be well informed about what support is available and proactively share that information with families
- Communicate with each other, so that parents are not the ones translating between services
- Share information easily and securely across services, so everyone working with a child has the full picture
- Provide support designed for fathers as well as mothers
Sector professionals
We consulted with professionals across all three counties — hearing from people working across midwifery, health visiting, speech and language therapy, family support, additional learning needs, education and the third sector, in both frontline and management roles.
Because parents have had the home visit or the chats on the phone, they've met everybody, so they know when they go to the group it's gonna be the same person there. It helps them feel a bit more secure and have the confidence to go
– Early Years Professional
Professionals tell us:
- When integration works, it transforms what professionals can do for families – and how supported staff feel in their roles
- We have excellent practice in our pilots, but it is not yet reaching families consistently across the region
- Services still vary too much depending on where a family happens to live
- Short-term, fragmented funding makes it hard to build and keep good teams
- Health Visiting is under significant pressure, and this affects the whole system
- There are families we are not reaching – particularly antenatally and in more rural areas
- Co-locating teams makes a real difference to how well professionals communicate and collaborate informally
- NHS and local authority IT systems cannot currently share information with each other, which creates gaps and duplication
- It is still not easy enough for professionals to find out what services exist across the system
- Families should find it easier to give feedback and help shape the services they use
- We need to invest in professionals and organisations outside the public sector
Professionals are particularly worried about families where:
- Family difficulties become apparent during pregnancy
- Parents have poor mental health
- People live with conflict and violence
- Children have speech, language or communication needs
- Children have additional learning needs
- Children need help as they move from nurseries and childcare to school
Professionals would like to see in future where:
- Targeted home visiting is an effective way to support families
- There’s a single set of common processes which all professionals in the region use: including a common referral process, common assessment tools and thresholds, and agreed language used to describe needs
- Services are joined up, so that families do not experience boundaries and barriers between services
- Families are able to find and access services they want and need
- Partners recognise that different communities and different family members may have different needs
- Partners are jointly accountable – where a partnership group takes lead responsibility for delivering maternity and Early Years goals
- Outcomes are monitored at an individual level, and at a population level
- Training is open to all professionals
- Teams are co-located, making day-to-day collaboration and information-sharing natural and easy
- Funding is long-term enough to recruit, retain and develop stable teams
- Antenatal contact with families is built into the system, so relationships are in place before a baby arrives
- Fathers and partners are actively included in services, not an afterthought
