Aviva Community Fund has provided £163 of match funding
Young People in Conflict with their Family (YPFC)
Reading, United Kingdom
Aim
To redirect our skills to help alleviate conflict and stress within families with young people particularly aimed at preventing homelessness
An example of how we help: feedback from a family who were running scared that their teenage son might leave home
A family were referred to Resolve because of very difficult relationships, with a real risk of their son becoming homeless. They all wanted the situation to change, but were stuck in a cycle of conflict. They accepted our offer of young person/family conflict coaching and found that it really worked for them.
The family said how they had particularly liked the warm, informal and non-judgmental way the process had been. In particular no one was labelled or made to feel bad (in contrast to all the other approaches they had tried up to that point). They felt they had gained skills and insight into how to handle their differences in the future and that as a unit they had come through this all the stronger. Above all, they were so pleased that their son had remained in the family.
A report from one of our team on the outcome of a case
This type of coaching is all about helping families to build on their own strengths and resources. “The next sessions showed there had been marked improvements. All the ideas put forward had been tried and the family had gone further, and had introduced daily family ‘check in’ conversations, where there were ground rules and turn taking, and each person per day got to choose a topic to discuss. They were demonstrating, as a family, that they cared deeply for one another and that they had the resilience to overcome setbacks and seek other ways to resolve problems.”
How the project started... and why it helps to prevent homelessness
Shortly after the start of the first lockdown we heard of the additional strain the pandemic was putting on families that were struggling with difficult relationships which often lead to young people leaving and becoming homeless. In learning of this, we set about using our mediation skills to develop a way of trying to help them. To this end we developed a virtual conflict coaching scheme aimed at families, and trained our mediators in its delivery. We have piloted this using local Councils' social and children’s services to refer cases and we have proved its worth; we have enabled a number of families to build resilience, to develop mutual cooperation and come up with coping strategies to allow them to live more harmoniously. We desperately want to continue with this work.
Our experience is that this service is genuinely valued by referrers who report that it is one that is unavailable through other existing providers in this area. They have stressed the importance of Resolve being an independent organisation, as some clients can worry about talking openly to social workers, and commented on the professionalism of the mediator/coaches.
Due to the finances allocated to the project drying up we are now having to rein back our work with families who we know we can help, and it pains us that this should be the case. A contribution to our project will enable us to continue our work and help alleviate conflict and unhappiness within families and the spill over that inevitable affects extended families and local communities.
This project successfully funded on 7th December 2021