Rochdale Relationships Matter A Manifesto for theRochdale Borough

Emily Nickson-Williams – Children’s Services

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

Rochdale Relationships Matter - A ‘Relationship Revolution’

Everybody has the right to good quality relationships. Relationship breakdown and the consequences of relational dysfunction is a social cost to our communities and a significant financial cost to services we deliver. We recognised that a great number of requests for support highlighted a need for a change in our approach to the way we design and deliver support to repair family and couple relationships.

People thrive when their relationships are strong and positive and free from conflict. It’s those around us who get us though life's ups and downs whether that’s family, friends, colleagues, school friends or neighbours. We therefore felt a whole system change approach was required that recognised this.

In 1844 a group of businessmen and traders got together to birth a global movement of co-operation. This put Rochdale on the map for pioneering new ways of behaving and relating to one another.

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How to start a relationships revolution!

• It sounds obvious but you need to develop a clear vision about what it is you want to achieve and why. In order to kick start this work we wrote a ‘Relationships Manifesto’ which was our call to action for partners. This helped us to communicate the vision clearly.

• We had a formal launch (our relationships conference or similar just like today!) and invited senior leaders to sign a pledge and put an action on a post it note.

• We linked the agenda to a ‘brand’ using twitter and a dedicated Council webpage #rochdalerelationshipsmatter

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

It really is all about presenting the evidence…

• Relationship distress is the strongest predictor of maternal psychological distress and increased rates of depression. During pregnancy Mum’s affected by stress caused by conflict impacts on the baby’s brain development because of excessive levels of cortisol.

• Babies as young as six months old, exhibit higher physiological symptoms of distress such as elevated heart rate in response to hostile exchanges between their parents when compared to exchanges between non-parental adults.

• Parenting programmes are ineffective where there are relationship difficulties that need to be attended to first. A child will continue to exhibit challenging behavior where conflict is present at home (or between separated parents).

• People living with a troubled relationship are 3 times more likely to suffer from a mood disorder and twice as likely to misuse drugs or alcohol or both.

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It really is all about presenting the evidence…

• 25% (ish) of all couples are living in a relationship described as distressed.

• In any given month over 90% of GPs see people with ‘relationship problems’ making them to the most frequently turned to professionals for relationship support.

• According to one large scale piece of research 53% of children accessing mental health services do so because of ‘family relationships problems’ making this the single biggest presenting issue.

• Three quarters of male children and young men in custody have an absent father, a third an absent mother. Over 25% have witnessed domestic abuse.

• Only 52% of children see their non-resident parent regularly. Children are damaged by protracted private law proceedings.

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

Publicity helps…

Granada News clip.

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2019-07-10/i-was-so-scared-of-my-son-i-couldnt-go-in-my-own-living-room-thats-until-they-had-relationship-support/

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Brand and identity - helps us to spread clear messages to partners and the public using posters and badges.

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

• Engage systems change leaders to work with you and think outside the box because sometimes the usual suspects are not the ‘creative innovators’ you need for change to happen. This is by far the hardest bit but once the vision is clear and you articulate the benefits (to each partner) of working relationally ‘buy in’ becomes easier.

• Develop a strategy, individual partner action plans and a performance framework.

• Report to your local Early Help/DA strategic groups and partnership boards. Use local data to highlight the need.

• The work in Rochdale has strong strategic buy in and support of our DCS, the AD for Early Help and Schools, the Chief Executive and lead members.

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What’s going on here?

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• If you imagine a group of strategic leads sat around boardroom style driving this agenda then think again. Make them work!

• Create a sense of ownership - partners are more likely to engage if they are part of the journey from the start. Our partners wrote their own action plans which they are responsible for implementing.

• Its not easy initially for partners to think about what actions they might want to state for themselves - an easy action is for partners to commit to the RPC practitioner training. This was the initial action for many of our partners and has resulted in over 600 frontline practitioners being trained to date across the partnership

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

• Local housing provider - Commitment to participate in RPC peer reviews both as a reviewer and subject.

• Children’s substance misuse service - to ensure a staff champion for family conflict is in place, ensure in our training needs analysis and staff planning so staff undertake training supportive of this wider agenda and share our own skill base where appropriate, ensure we continue to offer our supervision and case management provision to staff working with families around conflict.

• Adult Care - RBC Adult Care acknowledge RRM at a senior management level as being a key factor in our safeguarding, prevention and wellbeing agenda. RRM is being developed as a key element in the strength and asset based approach to service delivery. Adult Care considered RRM as a key element within a whole family approach to assessments and support planning.

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Plans for 2020 and beyond • Revisit our approach to our domestic abuse and family offer to ensure it reflects the growing body of evidence

i.e. when is it conflict, when is it DA. Meeting with Police colleagues to look at pathways and training.

• Following the success of our child to parent abuse programmes we will deliver a new 6 week programme for families where this is an emerging rather than entrenched issue.

• Launch of separated parents toolkit for practitioners to prevent families seeking a legal solution so that more families can agree on the best way to co-parent in harmony without the trauma of a legal process.

• Strengthen the #rrm brand, poster campaign, more relationship champions – including student relationship champions in schools/colleges - we are making a promotional film linked to RSE! & training more family ambassadors (citizens who have benefitted from support and now help others).

• For the first time in our Borough, patients will be able to make an appointment at their GP practice and meet with a qualified counsellor who has been trained by us to enable them to talk through relationship difficulties/conflict.

For more information about the relationships work in Rochdaleplease contact:

emily.nickson-williams@rochdale.gov.uk

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter

www.rochdale.gov.uk/rochdalerelationshipsmatter

#rochdalerelationshipsmatter