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In this interview, Helen, one of two Advanced Practitioners in the Leeds Family Drug and Alcohol Court Team, shares what it’s like to be a part of FDAC in Leeds and how her role supports the wider multi-disciplinary team.
When did you join the FDAC team at Barca-Leeds?
I was seconded from Leeds City Council to Barca-Leeds in 2018, my background is working within Child Protection area Social Work Teams. I qualified in 2007 with a degree in Social Work and worked in a Care Management Team as a Social Worker prior to becoming an Advanced Practitioner in 2012 and completing a few months cover for a Team Manager in 2018 before moving to FDAC. Alongside my social work role, I have previously been able to sit on Adoption Panel and a Fostering Panel in Leeds, I have been a sessional kinship assessor and I am a Practice Educator.
Tell me about your role and what it's like being a member of the FDAC team at Barca?
My role as Advanced Practitioner (AP) in the FDAC Team is to provide a social work perspective to support the team. This includes offering advice and knowledge to the team about aspects of standard care proceedings, views in relation to decision making, support with understanding processes and procedures.
Asan AP we support referral enquiries, read the DARP documentation in relation to suitable referrals, provide advice to social workers about FDAC, offer initial visits to parents considering FDAC and we support the completion of the initial FDAC assessments. AP’s hold a caseload and offer key work to parents who are allocated to them and complete all the other areas of support to parents undertaking an FDAC Trial for Change.
There are two AP’s on the team and between us, we are invited to formulation discussions and Intervention Planning Meeting discussions to ensure that we continue to think about the child’s needs and include their needs in planning. Given our training and background in relation to children, we can offer advice and support around the aspects of an Intervention Plan that are focusing on the child, as well as supporting the preparation of key work sessions linking in the child’s needs and experiences.
The role within FDAC is very different to being part of the area social work teams. We work with parents, offering them support and therapeutic key work sessions. We have more time and resources, working within a multi-disciplinary team, sharing knowledge and formulating for each parent. The hope is that we have the resources to be able to understand more in-depth the parents’ experiences and why this may be influencing their behaviours and decision making. We are lucky in that we have a very supportive team, we have the time to reflect continuously throughout a parents’ Trial for Change and it is usual for us all to have our own perspectives on different situations and this enable us to forma more holistic view. The recommendations are reached through these ongoing discussions, reflections and reviews so you never feel alone in any decision making and most importantly we’ve got time to spend with the families we support.
We have low caseloads that allow us to build relationships and try to work out how to best support each family. It helps us to understand where the difficulties might lie and allows us to really get to the core of those issues rather than just looking at the surface level. This approach helps to support longer term changes for families rather than taking a firefighting approach. There will always be safeguarding matters to address and respond to given the nature of our roles, however we have the resources and connections to be able to do this and to support families in crisis.
Given the time we can spend with each parent, we try really hard to establish relationships as soon as possible and it helps that parents have the choice to sign up to an FDAC Trial for Change. Whereas in a Social Work Team, if you reach the point of statutory involvement given the potential of significant risk to the child, parents may feel they do not have the same kind of choice. There is not choice for a parent when standard Care Proceedings are issued, however when choosing whether they would like to engage with an FDAC Trial for Change, this feels that it can offer the parent some power and control back at a time that can feel really scary and anxiety provoking for families.
You mentioned being part of a multi-disciplinary team and Leeds FDAC is also quite a small team, how does that work?
When I first started on the team, it was even smaller than it is currently and I believe we were the smallest FDAC in the country. The team expanded during the pandemic and now includes two Substance Misuse Practitioners, a Systemic Family Therapist, two AP’s and an Interventions Practitioner. We also have a Service Manager, Clinical Lead and full-time admin role.
We learn about the families that we are supporting across the team and we share knowledge in group and peer supervision which means we can be a bit more creative about the support we provide. Most of the team do key working for the families we support, and we work alongside the wider FDAC team which includes our Service Manager, Clinical Lead, Systemic Family Therapist and FDAC Judges.
We have progress reviews every 2 weeks with the Judge, which again gives a great opportunity to build a relationship not only between FDAC and the Judge, but also for the Judge to spend time with the parent. This helps us to share key information with the Judge about why a parent may be presenting in a certain way. Perhaps they hit a crisis point in the last week, they might be feeling horrendous that day, but they still want to go to the progress review. Being able to share this with the Judge helps them to understand the background information and why a parent might present in a certain way that day.
What is the best part of your role?
Knowing that your support for a parent and assessment of them is as thorough as it possibly can be because you’ve got the support of the multi- disciplinary team around you. It’s not just my opinion that has gone into an assessment and that feels so much more holistic and secure for the families we’re supporting. It’s a proactive process that you have all the way through, and it feels like it’s more collaborative in the support we’re offering. FDAC practitioners have discussions to build relationships and support transparency for parents throughout the Care Proceedings and this includes regular reviews with the Judge, meeting the Children’s Guardian, as well as the Social Work team. For parents this hopefully means that they have a better understanding of why we have reached the recommendation we have at the end of their Trial for Change.
What three words would you choose to describe the FDAC team?
These are probably not the best words. But I’m going to keep it simple:
· Supportive: I think we are supportive of the families and supportive of one another. We try to support other professionals as well.
· Kind: Again, quite a simple word to use but I don’t know anybody who hasn’t had a kind and caring response to the families or to one another.
· Relationships: These are such an important element not just in terms of the support we offer but the relationships that the team have with one another, with families and other professionals. We hope to build positive relationships that are helpful when working towards a different kind of outcome for the family.
