59: Supporting new parents through adversity – part one

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Podcast. Today's two-part GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): episode is all about early GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): intervention and supporting new GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): parents through adversity, to GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): ensure the best outcomes for GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): them and their child. GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): You're going to hear a conversation between GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Colin Smy and Ged Docherty.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Colin works at the NSPCC's GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Blackpool Better Start Service. GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Blackpool Better Start is a GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): 10-year national lottery funded GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): programme to transform services GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): in the town and change GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): childhoods through lived experience, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): science and evidence.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Ged Docherty is a Team Manager GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): at one of Blackpool Better Start's GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): 40 funded services, For Baby's

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Sake. For Baby's Sake is a GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): programme for expectant parents GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): that takes a whole family approach, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): starting in pregnancy and GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): dealing with the entire cycle GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): and history of domestic abuse, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): identifying and directly GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): addressing the trauma or traumas

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): that lie at the heart of the problem.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Colin and Ged's conversation, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): recorded in September 2023, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): will cover the importance of GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): the first 1001 days of a GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): child's life and how For Baby's GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Sake uses therapeutic, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): trauma-informed and strengths-based GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): approaches to support parents

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): going through adversity during GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): the early years.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Whilst the discussion focuses GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): on the early years, the techniques GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): that Ged mentions in this podcast GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): should be useful inspiration GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): for professionals working with GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): families at any stage of the GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): parental journey.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): The discussion will be interspersed GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): with clips from an interview we GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): filmed earlier this year with GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Jake and Charlotte, two parents GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): who are participating in the GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): For Baby's Sake programme.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Jake and Charlotte are parents GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): to a little girl, Isabella, who GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): you may hear playing and babbling GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): in the background of the recordings.

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): The couple faced adversity when GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Charlotte was pregnant with Isabella — Jake GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): was in prison for domestic abuse GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): — but For Baby's Sake worked with GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): them to overcome these challenges, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): better handle complex emotions GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): and form trusting relationships GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): in order to best care for baby

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Isabella. As part of the GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): programme, Jake and Charlotte each GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): have a therapeutic practitioner, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): Owen and Karen, who you will GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): also hear talking in these GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): clips. In the first clip, Jake GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): and Charlotte explain how they came GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): to work with For Baby's Sake.

funded programme. We're working with families in deprived areas from pregnancy to age four and we're trying to identify the opportunities for them to improve their life chances across a range of things, including health, diet, nutrition, school readiness, social emotional wellbeing and healthy gestation in birth and pregnancy. With me today is Ged Docherty. Would you like to introduce yourself, Ged.

to the work. We start in pregnancy around viable pregnancy time, so 15 weeks onwards, and we can remain working with that family with their consent until the child's second birthday — so the first critical 1001 days of a child's life.

Some of the families that we serve live in the poorest ward in England, so poverty in and of itself has a massive detrimental impact on a child and their family's outcomes without the additional complex needs associated with their parents, their parent's childhood, and their parent's past.

I am a social worker by profession and I've worked with children and families for 30 years, and across that spectrum of my practice, my learning has continued, grown, developed our understanding of children and babies and families functioning and their capacity has grown and developed.

And the For Baby's Sake model of practice, which was developed some ten years ago, clearly tells us that the work that has been undertaken with families — targeted thematic work which takes into account intergenerational cycles of harm — that how we can support families to break those cycles and that we can potentially improve a child's healthy outcomes, emotional and social, across their lifespan. And that is significant beyond comprehension.

communicate. And we know that the brain develops most rapidly at that early stage; starts out quite smooth and flat and all those neurones firing about with all the input that goes on. It's really important that we've got the opportunity for those babies to experience what's required for the inputs without it being over the top, without being negative, without being toxic. It's a bit like finding a Goldilocks zone

sometimes, isn't it? But it doesn't have to quite that complicated — not astrophysics — does it?

They now understand the impacts on their baby's developing brain of the stress hormone cortisol, which can be present if someone is a victim experiencing consistent forms of domestic violence and other associated abuse behaviours. So when we capture parents at that critical moment in time, whilst the baby's in utero, and we develop their understanding of the harm that can be caused, people then can make safer choices.

In the past, the countless times that I would have conversations with parents and they would say, "what you on about? The kids were upstairs," or "well, the baby's inside. What harm is it coming to? I never touched her." But they have no concept of the harm that was physically taking place because that baby's mother was stressed. So that is a significant piece of learning that we undertake with parents at that critical moment in time.

And then when we've established that groundwork, understanding, that then forms the basis. That's like our foundation. And then we begin to build upon and build upon and bring all of the other learning in too; about people's capacity to learn how to self-soothe, self-regulate, make safer choices, function in a different way, understand their past and the impact that their parents' past and the grandparents' past has had on their functioning and how they deal with situations.

And actually what you're able to talk about there, moving into is the social and emotional development we're looking at, and that's the critical— one of the other critical elements of that first 1001 days: that babies learn about how to regulate emotion, how to build relationships with caregivers. And I'm not going to try and be clever and list all the chemicals off, cortisol and oxytocin and the other ones, but they're all firing and going away about how they manage those

relationships. And it's interesting when you say about self-soothing as well, as adults how we do it, but it's understanding that as children and as babies, when we're a caregiver, and we can see the difference between those children, can't we, that we work with in the families who are overfamiliar, underfamiliar...

The behaviours around different people are different because they might come to— when we talk about self-soothing and crying sometimes actually it's understanding what that baby's telling you by crying. They're not using words and our language, but they're using the language that's open to them to try to get attention, to try to get affection, to try to get the love, and understanding that actually it's okay for babies to cry. And you responding to them isn't spoiling them.

Blackpool is making huge strides forward in all of the new services and training opportunities for parents, run by parents, run by professionals, that everyone can access. And our dads are gaining confidence in how they are approaching their role as a parent and a partner. And a partner in terms of being a co-parent, not just a partner to your significant other. It's about the partnership of parenting that baby.

So he stopped thinking to himself "he's dad on his own, she's mum on her own, and that's baby on her own", and started thinking of themselves as a family, as a triad, and all reliant on one another.

and I think that passes on. If someone's been violent towards a partner before. You know, it can easily happen to a family member, you know, a child that is there. I mean, someone who's violent and who has a violent outburst doesn't think what he's doing at the time nine times out of ten. It's just the red mist descends. The violent outburst happens. And then before you know it, you know, my child could be hurt. My partner could be hurt.

And, I guess, trying to turn that violence into a more better managed behaviour that deals with that emotion that you're feeling is one of the best things that will keep that child safe and stop anything happening that could harm her.

The baby had been subject to a child protection plan and the evidence that was being generated via the work that him and his partner Charlotte were doing — our consistent contact and feeding it into that statutory social work process — to the point where I came back from leave today and was copied into an email, and the family have stepped down to universal services because there is no presenting evidence of any risk to that child because their parents have been utterly

committed to making those changes. But you used the word reflect when you were talking about some of the stuff that Jake had said. Jake and Charlotte have embraced the concept of reflection, and they've used that to make their situation safer, because they are actively thinking about decisions that they've made in the past, decisions they're making in the present. What is the right thing to do? What is the safest thing to do? Why did we end up in this situation? What caused that to happen?

What could have been done differently? And it's that taking ownership of all of those aspects of your life and your behaviour, owning it, talking about it, sharing it, reflecting on it, being curious, asking questions, asking for advice, connecting to the community. And that's another thing that is really integral to the success of our For Baby's Sake families. We as a team actively promote connection to the community and what the services in Blackpool have to offer.

There is a whole portfolio of stuff out there for those families to connect to.

But in Jake and Charlotte's story, obviously with Jake being incarcerated, and a factor that we talk about regularly is understanding what a trauma-informed approach is and trauma-informed approach doesn't always just have to be about the child or just about mum as

typically happens. In your example, we're talking about dad, and I know in the video, both Jake and Charlotte, but particularly Jake, talk about past traumas they've experienced and how that's affected their upbringing and then their own parenting styles and standards.

Because a lot of parents do take what their parent or the parents have brought into their lives and they think, "oh, because my parent brought me up, this is how I'm going to do it with my child." And that's not always the best option.

You building that back up, and me being able to build that up at the same time rather than you building it up or me breaking it down; both of our competencies rise and it kind of just— we bounce off each other and able to come up with solutions to problems, something we wouldn't have

been able to do before. And making us being that way and having that self-belief in ourselves as parents and us being in a relationship is kind of just made Isabella the girl she is today, you know, happy, thriving, you know, in every minute of your life. Which is the way it should be.

And it removes those issues about where they may have come across either trauma in their own childhood that they've experienced directly at the hands of individuals, or trauma that they've experienced in interacting with services as well, which is just as difficult for some

families to come across. And then bringing that all back together has helped to knit them into part of the community and make them a community within their own right and their own family, so they're able to address those traumas that they've got and not deflect that onto their baby. Which I think then brings us up to speed with where we might talk about how does our work in that first 1001 days intervene and prevent or support safeguarding

of children, I should say. So, where you've brought us up to speed with Jake and Charlotte's story, where they're up to now — without that, what might we be looking at in terms of safeguarding? So what's so vital about the work we've done in that 1001 days early doors that's safeguarded against safeguarding in the long-term, if that makes sense.

different teams. So there may be the team who first meets the family, does a pre-birth assessment, and then the assessment is concluded. It's onto the next stage. That social worker passes that family onto the next social worker, who will do their part of their process. But we have continuously been the golden thread through that situation. Our practice-based approach is something which makes parents themselves feel safe about. Parents will often say in meetings, "Will

you tell them? Because you know, you know what I'm talking about." In terms of the work you and I often in co-production, born into care, all of that stuff — consistently, parents will say they are wary of telling their story repetitively. And some of our parents have been doing that since they were children because they may have been involved in the system themselves, subject to child protection plans.

They may be care experienced and for a significant period of time they have been telling their story. In our trauma-informed approach, we are very much led by them. It's a person-centred approach which gives them the time and space to be able to process their experiences. In giving time and space and supporting that person to process, understand, come to terms with, that in and of itself reduces — or can reduce — lots of harmful behaviours.

And it starts with the parent recognising their own harmful behaviours and how they impact on self and others, and that is the foundation of your safeguarding. If you can keep yourself and your partner safe and you have a loving, healthy, secure and strong attachment to your baby, you are going to keep your baby safe. GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): That's the end of part one of our GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): discussion on supporting parents

GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): through adversity. In part two, GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): available now, Colin and Ged GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): will talk about why it's so important GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): to involve fathers in early GEORGE LINFIELD (PRODUCER): intervention.