Interim report: Reducing Parental Conflict Programme – Local Grant Evaluation

Question 1

Acknowledgements

Accepted Answer

The authors would like to thank Matthew Garlick and Grace O’Donnell at DWP for their guidance and support throughout this evaluation to date. Thanks are also due to the local authority and partner organisation staff who contributed to the evaluation.

Question 2

Executive summary

Accepted Answer

This is the executive summary of the interim report from the evaluation of the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) programme Local Grant. To understand the process, experience and outcomes of the Local Grant, DWP commissioned IFF Research to conduct an evaluation to contribute to the wider evidence base on what works for families to reduce parental conflict.

The RPC Local Grant began in April 2022 and was designed to encourage local authorities (LAs) to continue to: integrate RPC focused practice and organisation into local services for children and families; build the capability of frontline practitioners who support parents and families, and improve the overall RPC support offer for parents. By 2023, 152 English LAs had bid for and were receiving RPC Local Grant funding. The evaluation findings in this report are based on 6 workshops with 43 LAs conducted in March and April 2023 and case studies with 9 LAs conducted in late 2023.

Key findings

RPC vision and strategy

The LAs involved in this research were positive about the continuation of the RPC Programme. They noted that the programme had supported LAs to embed support for parental conflict, as well as increase practitioner awareness of parental conflict and confidence to identify it. The programme had also raised awareness among parents about the harmful impacts of parental conflict on them and their children.
LAs saw the Local Grant as a way to further embed the RPC agenda within their LA, and to raise awareness and provide additional support to parents and practitioners around parental conflict.
The LAs involved in the case studies and focus groups reported that their partnership engagement with other organisations had been a key focus of their RPC activity to date and had largely been going well. Though challenges remained in engaging some partner organisations, including the police.
Generally, LAs reported positive effects from the integration of RPC with other national children’s services programmes (including Family Hubs and the Supporting Families Programme). Strategic leads reported working to build strong partnerships with Family Hub leads, with the ambition of RPC benefitting from being incorporated into the Family Hubs structure and agenda.

The role of the RPC coordinator was seen as an important driver of change both in terms of strategy and delivery. It was also seen as providing resource for LAs to create in-house resources and training that can be used to ensure the sustainability of the programme moving forwards.

Use of RPC Local Grant funding

The flexibility of the Local Grant funding was valued by LAs in allowing them to adapt RPC activity to the needs of their local area. Reflecting the predominant activity across all local authorities in Year 1 of the programme, the main area of spend amongst the 9 LAs included in the case study research was training and workforce development. This signalled the importance strategic leads placed on the need to upskill professionals to identify parental conflict.
Almost all 9 LAs took the decision to fund an RPC lead/coordinator via the Local Grant, a decision all strategic leads interviewed described as a key enabler of delivering their RPC activity. This pattern is also reflected more widely across LAs, with DWP data showing that over 120 out of 152 LAs had a RPC coordinator in place by mid-2023, compared to around 80 LAs in 2022.
In the first year of the programme across the 9 case study LAs, there was less focus on using Local Grant funding to deliver or purchase interventions for parents in conflict. This was primarily because LAs instead prioritised workforce development to promote sustainability of RPC. Where interventions were provided, they typically involved one-to-one support, group support, digital apps, webpages, and toolkits, with limited availability of higher cost intensive specialist support.

Experience of RPC activity

The majority of the local authorities involved in the case studies highlighted a lack of resource and staff time to attend RPC training as a challenge. For many LAs, having capacity to deliver RPC training was also difficult, especially for frontline practitioners who already had a high workload.
Although a key enabler of RPC delivery for some, other LAs said they were still in the early stages of developing partner relationships. Some LAs had struggled to encourage partner organisations to buy into RPC, mainly due to lack of time and high staff turnover. Those with more advanced partnership collaboration also cited these relationships as a way of progressing and embedding their RPC activity.

Monitoring and outcomes

Monitoring and evaluation were seen as an area of difficulty by staff at nearly all case study LAs and those who contributed to the early-stage workshops. Efforts towards monitoring progress had been made since the early-stage workshops, but LAs faced difficulties relating to resourcing and expertise in conducting, monitoring and evaluation activity.
Progress towards outcomes outlined in the Theories of Change (ToC) varied across LAs, mainly because of the differences in the activities undertaken and maturity of delivery. Where LAs cited achieving intended outcomes, it is important to emphasise that most LAs had limited robust evidence to indicate achievement of these outcomes.
Generally, more evidence was available for outcomes relating to integration than to parents and children, which were primarily evidenced through anecdotal feedback.
Key integration outcomes described by LAs included the training of staff, embedding RPC learning, and the creation of resources to disseminate RPC best practice and lessons learnt.

Evaluation next steps

Remaining evaluation activity will involve:

Research with parents who completed an RPC intervention and others who failed to attend or complete an intervention.
Interviews with LA staff to understand how identification and referral of parents to RPC interventions works, what works well and what could be improved to smooth the customer journey and maintain engagement.

Question 3

Glossary

Accepted Answer

Domestic abuse	Domestic abuse can be physical, verbal, sexual, emotional, psychological, economic, a combination of these, and include many other forms of harmful behaviour. This is reflected in the statutory definition set out in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which covers numerous forms of behaviour, any one of which can constitute domestic abuse if both the victim and survivor and perpetrator are ‘personally connected’.
Early Help	Early Help is the support provided for children, young people and their families to respond when difficulties emerge or to stop problems developing in the future. The type of support on offer varies substantially across LAs and aims to cater for a wide variety of individual needs. Many services will provide information, advice and interventions to support families. This can be offered in a one-to-one setting or as part of a group. They may also help families find solutions to specific problems.
Family Hub areas	Family Hub areas are the 75 LAs that received a share of the £301.75million Family Hubs and Start for Life Programme funding package for 2022-2025. This funding was provided to create Family Hubs in their area, which give advice to parents on taking care of their child and ensuring that they are safe and healthy. The Programme aims to join up pre-existing services, as well as to enhance them.
Frontline Practitioner	Local authority colleagues and their partners working with families including those who work for services such as social work, health visiting teams, early help and early years’ services.
Parental conflict	Harmful parental conflict behaviours in a relationship which are frequent, intense and poorly resolved can lead to a lack of respect and a lack of resolution. Behaviours such as shouting, becoming withdrawn or slamming doors can be viewed as destructive. Parental conflict is different from domestic abuse.
RPC Planning Tool	The RPC planning tool is a self-assessment of local authority RPC capability to help local authorities and their partners to deliver a system-wide approach to reducing the negative impact of conflict between parents on their children. It was developed by the Early Intervention Foundation (now Foundations) and covers 8 areas of capability. Although the tool is primarily to guide local area planning, DWP ask to see planning tools on an annual basis to help gauge progress at a local and national level.
Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Programme	The Reducing Parental Conflict Programme aims to help avoid the damage that parental conflict causes to children through the provision of evidence-based parental conflict support, training for practitioners working with families and enhancing local authority and partner services. The initial Programme ran from 2018 to 2022, with the second programme, the Local Grant funding, beginning in April 2022, which is the focus of this evaluation.
Regional Integration Lead (RIL)	They are DWP employed staff available to provide expert advice and support to local authorities and their partners and maximise the opportunities that the RPC Programme presents.
RPC Local Grant	The RPC Local Grant, which began in April 2022, encourages local authorities to continue to integrate RPC, build the capability of frontline practitioners who support parents and families and improve the overall RPC support offer to families. Under the Local Grant, RPC interventions are not provided centrally by DWP, and instead LAs can commission them themselves or build the capability of their own practitioners to deliver them in-house.
Theory of Change	A Theory of Change is a tool that maps out how and why a desired change is expected to happen in a particular context, based on the link between activities and outcomes.

Question 4

Introduction

Accepted Answer

Background and Context

Parents play a critical role in giving children the experiences and skills they need to succeed. However, studies have found that children who are exposed to parental conflict can be negatively affected in the short and longer terms.^{[footnote 1]}

Disagreements in relationships are normal and not problematic when both people feel able to handle and resolve them. However, when parents are entrenched in conflict that is frequent, intense, and poorly resolved it is likely to have a negative impact on parents and their children. It can impact on children’s early emotional and social development, their educational attainment and later employability – limiting their chances to lead fulfilling, happy lives.^{[footnote 2]}

The Government wants every child to have the best start in life and reducing harmful levels of conflict between parents – whether they are together or separated – can contribute to this. This is why the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) introduced the Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Programme. The original Programme began in 2018 and was backed by £39m for the period up until March 2021. It was then extended with additional funding through to March 2022. After this, a further phase of funding for the Programme was secured until up to 2025 – this is known as the RPC Local Grant and involved £11million for 2022/2023, with £33million committed by DWP from 2022 to 2025. This element of the funding (i.e. the Local Grant) is the focus of this evaluation.

The aim of both phases of the RPC Programme is to encourage local authorities (LAs) across England to integrate services and approaches which address parental conflict in their local provision for families. There is also an aim to build evidence on what works to reduce parental conflict and understand best practice in this area. This evaluation builds on the evaluation of the 2018-22 RPC programme, the final report from which was published in August 2023.^{[footnote 3]}

About the RPC Local Grant

This report presents interim findings from the evaluation of the RPC Local Grant. The Local Grant was introduced in April 2022 and was designed to encourage LAs to continue to:

Integrate RPC focused practice and organisation into local services for children and families.
Build the capability of frontline practitioners who support parents and families.
Improve the overall RPC support offer for parents.

The Local Grant involved a £33 million investment that was designed to build on the work started during the previous RPC Programme. The Local Grant was designed to give more flexibility to LAs to make their own plans for taking the RPC agenda forward and making it appropriate to the needs of their areas.

There were some other differences between the Local Grant funding model and the centrally commissioned model used during the previous RPC Programme. Firstly, funding was now offered to LAs over multiple years, rather than just 1 year (as with all previous grants). Secondly, under the Local Grant, RPC interventions were not provided centrally by DWP, and instead LAs could commission them themselves or build the capability of their own practitioners to deliver them in-house.

More detail on the inputs, activities and intended outcomes of the RPC Programme can be found in Annex 1 and 2, where Theories of Change developed by DWP can be found.

Report structure

This report, presenting interim findings from the RPC Local Grant evaluation, is structured as follows:

Evaluation approach and reporting: covering the evaluation objectives, evaluation activity undertaken to date and included in this report, and planned activity for the remaining evaluation.
RPC Vision and Strategy: covering the vision that LAs had for the RPC Programme in their area, a description of how LAs have moved from centrally commissioned specialised interventions to locally commissioned provision, detail on the integration of RPC with other initiatives, and detail on the approach to partnership engagement.
Use of RPC Local Grant funding: a description of RPC intended delivery and what has happened so far, how Local Grant funding has been used, an overview of practitioner training, commentary on the RPC lead/coordinator role, and consideration of the conflict-focused interventions that have been funded by the Local Grant.
Experience of RPC activity: covering experience of those delivering RPC to date, key enablers and challenges in delivering the RPC Programme, description of LA experience of support from DWP, and overview of the parent experience of RPC support.
Monitoring and outcomes: covering LAs’ approach to monitoring and evaluation, as well as early insights into the outcomes of RPC activity to date.
Conclusion and recommendations: overview of interim key findings and policy recommendations based on these.

Evaluation approach and reporting

Evaluation objectives

The key research objectives of the evaluation are to:

Assess how much progress has been made by LAs in relation to integrating RPC focused practice and organisation into family services.
Understand how the LAs have spent their funding and how this has varied across England.
Understand how LAs in different circumstances have approached specific challenges and problems in their local areas to further embed RPC and improve their overall support offer for families.
Evaluate the quality of support for parents who access specialist RPC interventions (or support with a significant RPC component) to identify key outcomes and establish if and how the overall RPC support offer has changed under the Local Grant.

A key underlying aim is to identify best practice, effective models of service configuration and delivery alongside any other lessons. This is designed to benefit other LAs and promote rapid progress in relation to embedding RPC into family services and improving the overall RPC support offer for building stronger relationships.

Evaluation approach

The evaluation of the RPC Local Grant has several strands of activity:

Early-stage workshops
Case studies with ten LAs
Qualitative research with parents (case studies with parents who received RPC support, as well as interviews with those who did not start or did start but did not complete support that they were referred to).
Interviews with staff involved in the identification and referral of parents in RPC interventions.

This report focuses on findings from the early-stage workshops and LA case study research.

Early-stage workshops

The evaluation began with 6 workshops with LAs in March and April 2023. Each workshop ran for 2 hours and included a 20-minute presentation from an LA around a specific theme, followed by a question-and-answer session, as well as breakout group discussion sessions. Between 4 and sixteen attendees attended each of the workshops. The workshops varied in focus, covering:

Engaging parents, families, faith groups and communities to design and deliver RPC
Partnership engagement, including working with health organisations and the police
The RPC lead/coordinator role
Developing a RPC support offer for parents/families
Training
Measuring and capturing outcomes

More detail on the workshop method can be found in Annex 3.

LA case studies

The second stage of the evaluation involved 10 LA case studies between late August and early December 2023. One LA that had initially agreed to take part decided not to continue due to lack of resources. This LA has been replaced in the research by Croydon, and fieldwork is ongoing at the time of writing this report. The findings from interviews with staff at Croydon will be included in the final report. More detail on the 9 LAs that are included in this report is outlined in Annexe 4.

In each LA, the goal was to interview individuals within each of the following job roles:

RPC lead: the nominated lead for the RPC Programme in each LA. Note in some LAs, this role was also called a RPC lead/coordinator.
Strategic lead (e.g. Director of Children’s Services): individuals with strategic oversight of children’s services.
Staff leading and delivering RPC training: either internal (within the LA) or external trainers (training bodies sitting outside of the LA).
Providers/staff responsible for developing/delivering interventions for parents: either internal or external providers/developers of interventions.
Frontline practitioners/key referral staff: including representatives from children’s social work teams, police, health and education.

Table 1 shows the number of interviews conducted with each job role. Each of these individuals were interviewed via one-to-one interviews or paired interviews where appropriate, with the exception of frontline practitioners and key referral staff, who were interviewed as part of focus groups. The interviews aimed to understand current and future planned RPC activity in each LA, how the Local Grant funding has been used in different areas, opportunities, and challenges to delivery, how RPC has been integrated into broader delivery, and to understand staff and beneficiary experiences.

Table 1 Number of interviews conducted in LA case studies

Job role	Number of individuals interviewed
RPC lead/coordinator	9
Strategic lead	9
Trainers	15
Providers	9
Frontline practitioners	35
Total	77

In addition to this, where relevant, Regional Integration Leads (RIL) were interviewed. RILs are DWP staff members who support LAs in the planning and operation of the RPC Programme. At the time of interviewing, only a small number of RILs were in post and so each of the 2 interviews conducted covered a broad number of LAs across the country. These interviews aimed to understand the process of moving to the Local Grant funding model, how LAs are shaping RPC provision to meet local needs, as well as to understand the experience of performing the RIL role.

Document review

As well as the qualitative fieldwork, all 9 case study LAs shared their planning tool returns from May 2023, the most recent planning tool return at the time of interviewing. It is worth noting that the planning tool returns only requested numerical data on specific RPC funded interventions being offered in the LA.

Additionally, LAs were asked to share other documents for analysis as part of the evaluation. This resulted in 27 documents being shared by 6 LAs. Documents included descriptions of referral/support pathways at the LA (created for use by frontline practitioners), posters aimed at parents that advertised RPC support, and information packs designed to explain RPC provision to parents.

Analysis

Analysis of the case study data was a continuous process (during and after fieldwork periods, and between phases) and iterative, moving between the data, research objectives and emerging themes. Data from case study interviews was entered into a bespoke analysis framework structured by key research objectives and areas of interest. The findings were systematically summarised by the research team and then triangulated through analysis sessions where key findings were discussed, and emerging themes and insights were tested.

All planning tools and other supporting documents were summarised into the analysis framework, with the findings providing useful context and additional insights that were woven through the case study analysis.

Evaluation considerations

The LAs were approached for inclusion in the case study research based on a purposive sampling approach, with an attempt being made to cover a variety of different evidenced-based RPC interventions that were being offered across the LAs, including online and face-to-face delivery and different intensities of intervention. Effort was also made to balance LAs by their status as Family Hub areas,^{[footnote 4]} as well as to get a spread across the volumes of parents LAs intended to reach through their RPC interventions. Choice of LAs was limited by the number of LAs that were willing to participate, and so a convenience sampling approach was used, based on DWP asking LAs to participate. Nevertheless, attempts were made to ensure a spread across Family Hub status and the interventions that were offered.

Qualitative case study evidence is not intended to imply prevalence but rather to illustrate the range of experiences of RPC and provide depth of understanding. It should be noted that findings from this evaluation may not be generalisable beyond the particular case study areas explored in this research. Information from some planning tools and some indicative MI data was shared by DWP and the case study LAs. Where appropriate, this is cited to provide additional context/perspective.

There have been challenges in engaging LA staff for this research. In particular, due to busy schedules, it has been difficult to arrange focus groups with the number of frontline practitioners as had been planned. Similarly, because many LAs were focusing less on providing interventions directly to parents, it was at times challenging to interview sufficient numbers of intervention providers. As a result, a smaller number of people were interviewed for the research than initially planned (albeit with more to follow with fieldwork with 1 more local authority ongoing at the time of writing).

Alongside the early-stage workshops and LA case studies, the evaluation has involved case studies with parents who have completed an RPC intervention. Due to challenges recruiting parents for the parent case study interviews, the findings in this interim report do not include the views and experiences of parents directly. Interviews are ongoing and the final report will include insight directly from parents.

Evaluation next steps

For the remainder of the evaluation, additional evaluation activity will involve:

Continuation of the parent strand, including speaking to parents who were referred to an RPC intervention but chose not to participate and those who did not complete the whole intervention as planned. We are committed to ensuring the voice of parents is captured by the evaluation.
Interviews with LA staff to understand how identification and referral of parents to RPC interventions works, what works well and what could be improved.

This research will build on the evidence offered in this interim report to provide a more complete picture of delivery and outcomes of the Local Grant element of the 2022-25 RPC programme.

Question 5

RPC vision and strategy

Accepted Answer

This chapter explores the vision for the RPC Programme in the case study LAs, as well as their views on the Local Grant funding. It then explores how LAs have moved from centrally commissioned specialised interventions (under the original RPC Programme model) to locally commissioned provision (under the current Local Grant model).

Key findings

Most LAs involved in the research were positive about the continuation of the RPC Programme. They noted that the Programme had supported LAs to embed support for parental conflict, as well as increase practitioner awareness of parental conflict and confidence to identify it. It had also raised awareness among parents about the harmful impacts of parental conflict on them and their children.
These LAs saw the Local Grant as a way to further embed the RPC agenda within their LA, and to raise awareness and provide additional support to parents and practitioners around parental conflict.
Most strategic and RPC leads/coordinators described the importance of RPC being integrated within their wider family support offer, and it not being a siloed programme. It was common for RPC to be integrated within wider Early Help support.
Generally, LAs reported positive impacts around the integration of RPC and Family Hubs. The main reasons for this included enabling LAs to increase awareness of RPC through promotion via Family Hubs and using Family Hub structures to engage practitioners in RPC training.
Almost all LAs mentioned integration of RPC and the Supporting Families Programme. The 2 programmes were felt to be naturally well-aligned and strategic leads saw the benefits of combining resources from both programmes to deliver support to parents on a wider scale.
Many LAs reported that partnership engagement was a key focus of their RPC activity to date and had largely gone well, though some challenges remained.

Introduction

The Local Grant component of the RPC Programme was introduced as a way to enable LAs to commission RPC interventions themselves or use the funding to enhance the capabilities of their own practitioners to deliver the interventions locally. This is a key change from the original RPC model where the interventions were provided centrally by DWP.

Research participants were asked within the case study interviews about their experience of this change in commissioning; most were unable to comment from direct experience, primarily because they had come into post since April 2022.

Participants were also asked about the integration of their RPC activity with Family Hubs and the Supporting Families Programme:

Family Hubs co-locate children and family services to create single access points to enable multi-agency assessments and coordinated support for families. Over the next few years, as many as 75 English LAs will have moved or will be moving towards the Family Hub model, including 7 of the 9 LAs involved in this research.
The Supporting Families Programme (previously Troubled Families) works closely with Family Hubs and helps families across England to get the help they need to address multiple disadvantages through a whole family approach.

This research sought to understand how RPC aligns with Family Hubs and Supporting Families, and what additional challenges or advantages there are when RPC and Family Hubs and Supporting Families operate together.

LA vision for RPC

The general view of those involved in the workshops and LA case studies was that since 2018, the RPC Programme had been an important mechanism in helping them tackle the challenge of parental conflict. Overall, they felt that, not only had the Programme increased practitioner awareness of parental conflict and confidence in identifying parental conflict, but it had also raised awareness amongst parents about the harmful impacts of such conflict.

I think sometimes they’re all still kind of muddied waters between being confident in identifying what is parental conflict and what could potentially be domestic abuse. RPC in our LA has helped become clearer in that distinction and identify support needs accordingly.

RPC lead/coordinator

The introduction of the Local Grant was welcomed by RPC and strategic leads in the case studies. They saw it as a way to further embed and build on the work they had already implemented around RPC. They also saw it as an opportunity to promote the parental conflict agenda more widely among both practitioners and parents, and as an opportunity to upskill practitioners and parents in identifying and resolving parental conflict.

For RPC and strategic leads, a key aim for the Local Grant was to further increase the understanding amongst practitioners of the distinction between domestic abuse and violence and relationship conflict, and to support practitioners to understand when and how to make referrals to RPC interventions.

Our RPC work is [about] separating out domestic abuse and violence to parental conflict and actually allowing practitioners to see that is a lot more nuanced and being able to understand their role as early intervention practitioners in being able to have early conversations with parents to show them the impact parental conflict can have.

Strategic lead

Local Grant funding

Overall, RPC and strategic leads were positive about the move to the Local Grant (from the previous central commissioning). They appreciated the flexibility that the Local Grant allowed them, and particularly that it enabled them to deliver RPC activity tailored to the specific challenges and needs of parents and families in their area.

It gives us more flexibility because we are embedding it [RPC], we are seeing how it works, we are evaluating it [locally]. By providing reports on how it’s going and getting feedback we can identify our gaps and fill those gaps or look at how in the future we can develop a model for it.

RPC lead/coordinator

The move to locally commissioned provision had created motivation and renewed enthusiasm for the RPC Programme. RPC and strategic leads felt this was because the RPC Programme has been constructed in a way that reinforced local ownership and gave room for LAs to find tailored solutions to challenges in their local context.

We see [the RPC Local Grant] as a way to sustain the progress we have made by investing in the workforce so that it can become a self-sustaining model in the future.

RPC lead/coordinator

RPC leads/coordinators also talked about the opportunity the Local Grant has given them to invest in the workforce, embed RPC leads/coordinators and offer more training to their practitioners. More detail is provided in the next Chapter about how LAs have chosen to spend their Local Grant funding.

[The RPC Local Grant] has enabled us to have that pocket of money to employ a RPC coordinator to co-ordinate the support and make sure everybody’s needs are met. To make sure the teams that are out there on the frontline working are actually getting the support and training.

RPC lead/coordinator

Integration of RPC into children’s services

RPC and strategic leads felt that it was important to broaden the scope of RPC by aligning it with established programmes, services or teams that offer similar or complementary support to parents. RPC and strategic leads described the importance of this in ensuring that RPC was not a siloed programme. They mentioned that this integration also helped improve the engagement among practitioners due to their existing involvement with other local programmes and it not being seen as an additional ask.

It was most common for RPC to be integrated within wider Early Help support.^{[footnote 5]} A small number of LAs also mentioned integrating RPC with domestic abuse services. This included co-delivery of RPC Programmes and co-delivery of some broader support services, for example related to sexual health and substance abuse.

If I had come along and said we have this new thing [RPC] and you can have training. They [frontline practitioners] would have said ‘urgh another thing to add to my plate or I’m sure this will blow over so I’m not going to bother’. But if it’s just part of early help and what we do as our bread and butter, then they are fine with it [i.e. to engage].

RPC lead/coordinators

Feedback from frontline practitioners also indicated that in most LAs integration had been successful to date, with practitioners reporting that RPC felt like a key part of the LAs wider offer.

It’s embedded, the tools are shared, the conversations [are] being had so people are aware of the interventions that are available for practitioners, the interventions that people can refer families on directly and the interventions that would need a more detailed conversation to go through that referral process – it all feels very connected.

Frontline Practitioner

Spotlight: Manchester

Embedding Promoting Positive Relationships Toolkit within Early Help offer

In Manchester, RPC sits within the LA’s early help support offer, with parental conflict included in the early help assessment. A relationship toolkit called Promoting Positive Relationships was also developed, which offered all practitioners a range of resources to support parents in conflict.

The aim of this integration was to ensure RPC would not be a separate piece of work but would become part and parcel of practitioners roles and help embed it within the context of limited practitioner time and capacity. Embedding RPC into Early Help also helped practitioners see it as a way to reduce the amount of work they would have in the long term.

In addition to integrating with other interventions, some LAs also incorporated the Local Grant with other sources of funding, such as the Youth Endowment Fund, to enhance the support on offer for parents by expanding the pool of funding and resources available such as training, additional staff costs, etc.

Integration with Family Hubs

Seven out of 9 of the case study areas were Family Hub areas, with 2 of the LAs being trailblazers.^{[footnote 6]} RILs mentioned that while it was a requirement to integrate RPC with Family Hubs, not all LAs had made much progress with this to date. Some LAs also said that the implementation of Family Hubs was too recent to comment on the success of integration.

Where progress had been made, RPC and strategic leads had typically focused on developing relationships with Family Hub leads and beginning discussions around incorporating RPC into the wider Family Hubs structure and agenda. Generally, LAs reported positive outcomes from these discussions. The main reasons for this included enabling LAs to increase awareness of RPC through promotion via Family Hubs and using Family Hub structures to engage practitioners in RPC training. Given the scale of Family Hubs Programme, some RPC leads/coordinators felt that strong links with Family Hubs would help generate wider engagement with the RPC agenda and generate more demand for parent support (as more parents are supported and practitioners identify parental conflict).

Having the clout/benefit of [integrating with] family hubs has given RPC a push.

RPC lead/coordinator

A key benefit of integration with Family Hubs was opportunities for partnership engagement, especially among the police, and education and healthcare practitioners. RPC and strategic leads reported that they could use the relationships developed by Family Hubs to promote the RPC agenda.

Family Hubs have been really helpful for integrating partners. We’ve pulled together a much more coherent, stronger sort of multi-agency strategic steering group that we can link RPC into as well.

RPC lead/coordinator

A similar point was made around using Family Hubs to identify more parents for RPC support. RPC leads/coordinator described families that approached Family Hubs for issues such as housing, finance, additional support needs for children, etc. were also able to speak to practitioners about relationship conflict because practitioners in the Family Hubs had received training on RPC.

In terms of challenges identified with Family Hub integration, a small number of LAs mentioned that they were struggling to encourage frontline practitioners to see the practicalities and value of aligning RPC with the Family Hubs agenda. The RPC leads/coordinators noted that some practitioners were reluctant to prioritise RPC training alongside their existing work in the Family Hubs, which they attributed to resourcing and workload issues.

Almost all LAs mentioned integrating RPC with the Supporting Families Programme. While the level of integration and partnership varied across each LA, most RPC and strategic leads noted the importance and value of integrating the 2 Programmes. RPC is also an outcome in the Supporting Families framework and there is an expectation that resources between the 2 Programmes are shared to enhance the support offer for parents.

Because of the obvious overlaps it just all comes together and dovetails particularly well with Family Hubs Start for Life and Support for Families Programme. It all underpins each other and is threaded all the way through.

Strategic lead

Spotlight: Nottinghamshire

Using multi-agency networks for referrals

In Nottinghamshire, the RPC lead was also the Supporting Families Programme manager which had helped them deliver a combined offer to parents in the area. Interviewees in Nottinghamshire mentioned that due to the scale of offer, Nottinghamshire had been able to expand RPC support to parents by utilising the multi-agency networks for referrals established as part of the Supporting Families Offer.

Partnership engagement

Multi-agency collaboration was seen as crucial to the success of RPC and overall case study LAs reported that their partnership engagement with other organisations has been a key focus of their RPC activity to date and has largely been going well. RPC and strategic leads also noted some positive progress since the early-stage workshops in March/April 2023. LAs mentioned during workshops that it had proved particularly challenging to engage staff working in health care services, schools (particularly secondary schools) and the police, mostly due to limited capacity and time amongst staff from these organisations to engage.

During the LA case study fieldwork in late 2023, most RPC leads/coordinators highlighted stronger partnerships with a range of organisations. However, some challenges remained, with LAs typically struggling with engaging the police. As shown in Table 2 below, awareness of the RPC agenda among senior leaders of partner agencies was the highest amongst LA teams and family workers but the lowest amongst police. Comparatively, there was more progress seen amongst health and education leaders.

Table 2 Awareness of RPC agenda among senior leaders of partner agencies

How aware of the RPC agenda are the senior leaders of your partners?	Very Aware	Somewhat Aware	Not Aware
Local Authority Early Help / family workers	8	1	0
Health	3	6	0
Education	2	7	1
Voluntary and community sector	1	8	0
Police	0	8	1

Source: Analysis of 9 case study LAs planning tool.

Some RPC leads/coordinators mentioned that strong relationships with senior leaders in partner organisations had been key to helping them engage frontline practitioners and build skills and knowledge around parental conflict. Senior leaders in partner organisations championing RPC were also key to keeping it on the agenda and being used by frontline practitioners.

They do want to be more involved they just struggle to prioritise this in light of all the other work that they’re doing which is why messaging coming from top down is pivotal for keeping them engaged in training.

RPC lead/coordinator

Examination of the planning tools (provided to support each case study) highlighted that where partnership engagement was strong, there was evidence of multi-agency ownership of training, delivery planning, designing practical tools and decision-making about RPC. This further exemplifies the importance of establishing strong and meaningful partnership arrangements with joint ownership of the RPC agenda locally.

Schools have developed their own flyers and leaflets for parents which adds to the feeling of a well-oiled machine in the community working towards the same shared goals.

Trainer

LAs who had successfully engaged a range of partner organisations cited the importance of being flexible and accommodating to different organisations’ ways of working and being mindful of the limited capacity of staff and working to minimise the burden of engagement.

Strategic leads also commonly mentioned having an RPC lead/coordinator to drive partnership engagement and collaboration was key. One LA mentioned that their RPC lead/coordinator has also been able to increase buy-in from senior leaders through their engagement work, which has led to more cross-organisation work and collaboration. Other examples included the value of setting up multi-agency steering groups to focus on RPC design and delivery.

It’s absolutely essential you have that strategic group to open those doors… It’s still a tough challenge getting it higher up enough on the agenda because there are other competing agendas that have got a bigger public purse and the strings attached to them.

RPC lead/coordinator

Spotlight: Manchester

Set-up of Multi-agency Promoting Positive Relationships Steering Group

In Manchester, they had a multi-agency Promoting Positive Relationships (term used locally for RPC) Steering Group, chaired by a senior leader in housing, to raise awareness of the RPC agenda in Manchester and strengthen the process to identify, assess and support families experiencing parental conflict. This group was central to developing integrated referral pathways for parental conflict.

In other LAs where partnership engagement had been less successful, this was felt to be due to high workloads, competing priorities and a high turnover of staff. This was particularly felt to be the case amongst school staff and the police. Many RPC and strategic leads felt that police staff were especially time poor when it came to engaging with RPC and struggled to dedicate resource to training or attending meetings with RPC leads/coordinators and steering groups.

Some LAs also noted that it could be a challenge for organisations that had lighter touch interaction with families to engage with RPC (e.g. schools that only saw parents at pick-up/drop-off or police who were only called when there was a disturbance), because they did not have opportunities or time to build rapport to broach the subject of parental conflict. These organisations tended to only identify parental conflict once it had reached crisis point.

Other LAs mentioned that while police were often difficult to engage, partnerships with them could have a great impact when working well and it was an aspect of partnership engagement they were looking to develop. Where partnership engagement was strong, LAs mentioned conducting weekly meetings with police to gather intelligence on referrals that may be suitable for RPC interventions.

We want to strengthen our links with the police. We get 7,000 contacts through our front door services and a large part of that is from our police colleagues … if we could support the police to understand what parental conflict is, it will help with their decision making which then might stop the amount or hoards of traffic through our door which does not meet the threshold for domestic abuse and more around conflict … that is a much longer-term aspiration.

RPC lead/coordinator

Some practitioners from partner organisations mentioned in the focus groups that whilst they felt activity had been undertaken to engage them (e.g. invitations to take part in training), more could be done to gather their views on plans for RPC activity and how it could best be incorporated into their roles/organisations.

Question 6

Use of RPC Local Grant Funding

Accepted Answer

This chapter discusses RPC how LAs have spent their Local Grant funding.

Key findings

Across the 9 case study LAs, the main area of spend for LAs was training and workforce development. The primary reason for this was to promote the sustainability of RPC across the LA, since practitioners were able to use their learning even if the funding were to end.
Almost all of the 9 case study LAs had taken the decision to fund an RPC lead/coordinator with Local Grant monies, a decision all strategic leads interviewed described as a key enabler for delivering their RPC activity.
To a lesser extent, evidence-based interventions were also funded with the Local Grant. Interventions were also provided outside of Local Grant funding, with LAs using alternative funding sources for this.

Introduction

Two Theories of Change were developed by DWP (compressed versions of these are provided in Annexe 1 and Annexe 2) to guide key evaluation research questions. In relation to the Local Grant funding, it was anticipated that LAs would:

Appoint an RPC lead/coordinator and single point of contact to engage with DWP.
Provide regular opportunities for staff training around RPC and those that have received this are then able to use RPC learning when engaging with families.
Embed evidence-based RPC interventions^{[footnote 7]} within local family offers.
Equip practitioners to address parental conflict and address this with families.

Use of Local Grant funding

LAs have primarily used the funding to deliver training to meet local needs and to fund a RPC lead/coordinator. There was less focus on using the Local Grant funding to refer parents to evidence-based interventions, which were still offered but not funded by the Local Grant. The sections below cover each of these uses of the funding in more depth. Views on and experiences of each of these are covered in the ‘Experience of RPC activity’ chapter.

Decisions about the use of the grant were largely led by RPC and strategic leads and included consulting practitioners and parents, using experience of activity prior to the existence of the Local Grant, and using data to understand local needs (e.g. via needs assessments).

Practitioner training

Strategic and RPC leads/coordinators described a focus on delivering practitioner training as a way of ensuring the sustainability of RPC activity. They also felt that the Local Grant had enabled them to provide training to a greater number of practitioners, including those working for partner organisations, and to tailor the training to meet the needs of practitioners in their area. Many LAs had prioritised the funding for this use because they felt that if the Local Grant funding were to end after 2025, practitioners would be able to use the learning from the training to continue supporting parents in conflict. They also felt that this approach meant that they could reach more parents than if they used the money specifically for delivering parenting interventions, as trained practitioners can then use RPC approaches and tools within their everyday role.

If we invest in the workforce, we will reduce to some degree the need for those kind of high-level interventions [although still understanding that these interventions needed to happen in the meantime] … most of our money we have invested in a lead practitioner who leads on supporting and working with the workforce to upskill.

RPC lead/coordinator

Table 3 below includes a breakdown of the partner workforces that LAs provided RPC training to. The most common partner workforce to receive RPC training were local authority early help/family workers. Some LAs had also made progress with training youth offending, health and education teams. In line with findings in the previous chapter, LAs had typically trained a smaller proportion of the police workforce, due to challenges with turnover and engagement.

Table 3: Estimated percentage of partner workforces that had received RPC training according to May 2023 planning tools

	0-25%	25-50%	50-75%	75-100%
Local Authority Early Help / family workers	0	3	1	5
Commissioned Early Help / family services workforce	5	3	1	0
Children’s social care workers	4	4	1	0
Specialist public health or community nurses	7	1	1	0
Police	9	0	0	0
Education services	6	2	1	0
Health visiting	6	2	1	0
Youth offending services	6	3	0	0

Source: Analysis of 9 case study LAs planning tool.

The training provided to practitioners by internal LA trainers usually involved initial sessions on the distinction between domestic abuse and conflict. Content covered included theories behind conflict occurring, raising awareness of conflict, the impact it has on children and later sessions focused on tools that practitioners can use to help parents reduce conflict. The format of this training was roughly evenly split between online and face-to-face training. Online delivery was utilised more specifically to reach a wider audience. Trainers often felt that in-person delivery was preferable as it allowed for group interaction and knowledge-sharing.

I think we’ve realised it’s better done as a team, so you’ve got different practitioners with different experiences… it’s just something about being in a group [in person] where you can feed off each other and get that experience.

Trainer

Table 4: below provides 3 examples of LA training provision to give a flavour of topic content and coverage.

Table 4 Examples of training in LAs

LA	Content of Training	Method of delivery
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough	- Difference between domestic violence and parental conflict - Identifying parental conflict - Using tools and resources to support families in conflict - Promoting father-inclusive practice - Father impacts on children and their attainment, father impacts on mothers, on themselves, and impact on co-parenting. - Final stage is learning what works for other people, assessing where they are at in engaging fathers with RPC, what brought them in in the first place, identifying barriers	Facilitator led training session Lunch webinars for one plus one
Derbyshire	- Theories and models of parental conflict developed by DWP - Emphasis on resolution following conflict and how this can be constructive and relationship enhancing. - Difference between domestic violence and parental conflict - Have some tailor-made courses for those that have some experience in RPC	Both online and face to face delivery
Torbay	- Impacts of parental conflict and outcomes on children - Recognising the signs and symptoms and how to support parents in conflict as a professional mediator - Improving parental relationships and impacts on children by looking at different tools and approaches	Both online and face to face delivery In-person skills workshop

Source: Analysis of 9 case study LAs planning tools.

The ‘train the trainer’ approach was felt to be particularly important due to learning being lost due to a high turnover of staff. It was felt that having staff who could deliver training to their teams provided the capacity for new staff to be trained and minimised the burden on RPC leads/coordinators and trainers.

I’ve got a practitioner, a trainer that’s in my team and she goes to the social care teams, she goes to the targeted teams and delivers that [training] internally.

RPC lead/coordinator

About 86% of the work we receive is from schools but what we are finding is schools come along and are being trained, but there is a high turnover of family support staff in that group, in schools, so we are having to repeat [training] time and time again… we need more partners in schools to become train the trainer.

Strategic lead

In addition to internally delivered training, some LAs utilised training designed and produced by external training providers. One LA explained that they chose a specific external provider for their provision as they had provided RPC training in the past, but momentum had been lost afterwards and RPC was not being embedded in practice. They wanted to avoid this happening again and commissioned them to keep the momentum of RPC training going. The provision from this training provider included training to improve the quality of parent relationships by improving communication and using strategies to respond to conflict, training to provide one-to-one support to couples to deal with everyday relationship challenges, and training specifically for separated parents around co-parenting. They also offered a relationship toolkit that practitioners could use to build better relationships for parents. This provision lasted around half a day and was a mix of video clips, break-out rooms, opportunities to try out some of the tools in the toolkit, and how to apply the training.

Another LA mentioned using a different external provider to increase skills and knowledge of RPC across the workforce. In this case, the provider was commissioned to deliver a Level 1 awareness training course that focused on the negative impacts children face from parental conflict, various models of parental conflict and the different types of conflict that can occur in relationships. This training was delivered both online or face-to-face, depending on staff preference, with up to 200 staff trained per year, including staff in schools, family support workers, therapeutic workers and social workers.

LAs also encouraged practitioners to access support around RPC made available by DWP. For instance, in one LA, online DWP modules were made available to any new practitioners joining the LA. After completing these modules staff can sign up to an in-person skills workshop where practitioners can share tools, video links and other information. One LA also mentioned providing recorded sessions from regional RPC community of practice events to practitioners.

We follow the training package that DWP put together. We have had train the trainer sessions for some of our partners and have had really good take-up… across the board: health; midwives; health visitors; schools and the trainer put together a specific package for police colleagues as well.

Strategic lead

Question 7

RPC lead/coordinator

Accepted Answer

The Local Grant was generally used in case study LAs to establish and fund the position of the RPC lead/coordinator. Usually, LAs recruited and embedded a new coordinator role, whilst in a small number of the case study LAs, the role naturally developed from other positions within the RPC team and became a standalone position.

I was recruited as the RPC coordinator, with a very specific job role and responsibilities…so a conscious decision [by the LA] that there was a need for the role.

We haven’t taken the decision to appoint a coordinator because it’s kind of sat within existing roles… I am overseeing it (the RPC Programme) and then we’ve got a senior practitioner leading the operational side of it.

RPC Leads/coordinators

There was also variation across LAs in the term used to identify the role. Some used RPC lead, while others used RPC coordinator. Ultimately these roles were the same and LAs used these terms interchangeably. The key responsibilities of the role included:

Managing practitioners’ engagement with the RPC Programme, especially within the context of high caseloads and limited time to engage. This was especially important as challenges were faced in keeping RPC on the radar after staff had completed initial RPC training.
Rolling out training on awareness and understanding of RPC, and how parents/children can be supported. This included assisting practitioners in having conversations with families in conflict and supporting them to feel confident in their approaches.
Running community of practice events to discuss best practices for individual cases one-on-one with practitioners. One LA was in the early stages of running monthly drop-in sessions to help practitioners feel supported to deal with parental conflict. Anecdotal feedback from practitioners suggested this was working well as a forum for questions and support.
Networking with key partners (including schools, police, youth justice) with the aim of embedding the RPC agenda across partner organisations.

Conflict focused interventions

Generally, case study LAs had not used their Local Grant to fund conflict focused interventions, though in some cases interventions were delivered via alternative funding sources. This was primarily because LAs had prioritised focusing on workforce development to promote sustainability of RPC (as discussed above). Where interventions were provided, they typically involved one-to-one support, group work, digital apps, webpages, and toolkits, with limited availability of higher cost intensive specialist support.

Analysis of LA planning tools and information gathered from the qualitative case study discussions showed that across the LAs included in the case study research, half were offering OnePlusOne (see Table 5). Those offering OnePlusOne said that this product was chosen because it was easy to use, intuitive and relevant for families. Also, OnePlusOne being split into 3 digital behaviour change interventions/courses meant it was more inclusive for parents in different situations, for example, for new and expectant parents. As this intervention is accessed online, this meant that there was potential for it to free up staff resource and time to be spent on other parents who require more intensive support.

We’re using the OnePlusOne a lot more because it’s really accessible, it works for anybody with different learning styles and things.

Frontline practitioner

Variations of Triple P were also delivered across LAs, the most common being the Enhanced Programme (3 LAs). LAs valued the modular element of Enhanced Triple P (there were 4 modules in total), as it meant they could tailor it to a parent’s requirement for specific support or area of focus. LAs noted that it requires parents to have already completed a parenting intervention (e.g., a Level 4 Triple P intervention), limiting the number of eligible parents.

Triple P Family Transitions was felt to be a useful intervention where parents were experiencing personal distress from separation or divorce. The method of delivery varied between face-to-face and virtual, with face-to-face felt to be the most effective in generating positive outcomes for parents.

Table 5: Interventions data reported in the planning tool from across the 9 LA areas (detail on each of these can be found in Annexe 5)

Conflict focused interventions	Number of LAs delivering
OnePlusOne	5
Level 5 Enhanced Triple P	3
Mentalisation Based Therapy	2
Level 5 Family Transitions Triple P	2
Parenting when Separated Programme (Parents Plus)	2
Standard Triple P	1

Source: Analysis of 9 case study LAs planning tool and LA case study qualitative data.

Although the number of different parental conflict focused interventions being offered by LAs was changing quickly during the second year of the programme, basic management information on activity in Year 1 was similar; around 50 (of 152) LAs offering one or more of the 3 digital OnePlusOne interventions and around 40 providing higher intensity, practitioner-delivered interventions. At the time of writing, informal feedback from the LAs, gathered via the RILs suggested that the overall range of interventions had improved over recent months, boosted by some additional flexibility afforded to LAs in relation to how they could spend their funding.

Details of other interventions being delivered by LAs were also mentioned during the early-stage workshops and case studies. This included LAs offering bespoke conflict resolution sessions. For example, a programme run by Tavistock called ‘Helping Parents to Co Parent Well’ was one of the bespoke programmes cited.

Other LAs tailored their provision to local needs depending on the make-up of the local population. For instance, where there was a large Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, one LA had adapted their provision to this group. They did so by working with a support organisation to address their specific needs. This involved developing resources that accounted for lower literacy rates amongst the families that they were working with.

The format of delivery for most interventions was an even split of online and face-to-face. Practitioners often felt that parents preferred virtual delivery, as this allowed them greater flexibility around other commitments, and was also preferred by those who had become used to this mode of delivery during the coronavirus pandemic. However, practitioners also cited benefits of face-to-face delivery, including greater interaction, and the opportunity of developing relationships with their peers.

Question 8

Experience of RPC activity

Accepted Answer

This chapter outlines the progress that LAs have achieved on RPC delivery to date, key enablers and key challenges of delivery, views on support from DWP and parents’ experiences of RPC provision.

Key findings

The chosen LAs were at different points in terms of progress of RPC delivery. Some LAs were at early stages and focused on raising awareness of RPC, whilst others had successfully embedded RPC training and were progressing with partnership engagement. LAs that were further ahead in delivery had integrated with Family Hubs and were more advanced in measuring outcomes from their RPC activity.

Key enablers of RPC delivery included:

Having a dedicated RPC lead/coordinator meant that one staff member had the time and workload capacity to focus on RPC activity specifically, and push the agenda forward across the whole LA.
Flexible provision of training delivered to relevant staff in LAs that accounted for busy workloads was a valuable enabler of RPC delivery.
Multi-agency collaboration, utilising existing partnerships across LAs and promoting RPC through increased referrals and engagement.
Raising awareness of RPC amongst parents increased access and engagement.

Key challenges of RPC delivery included:

Limited capacity of frontline practitioners and staff involved in RPC.
Inadequate opportunities for knowledge sharing across LAs.
Low engagement from parents with complex needs.

Progress with RPC delivery to date

Basic management information held by DWP based on activity in Year 1 showed that all LAs had been making steady progress on reducing parental conflict and had built on the previous years’ activity. The analysis also found that LAs were more mature in their progress with key elements such as strategy, workforce, services and interventions, while they were less mature in progress with partnership, community, coordinated working, outcomes, experience and evaluation.

Comparatively, in the current case studies, there is still a mixed picture across LAs on RPC delivery progress. Generally, those that were more mature in delivery were often further ahead in integrating RPC with Family Hubs and had embedded RPC throughout their wider service offer. Meanwhile those that were less mature, did have a provision of RPC interventions on offer but awareness of this was low across the LA, and so their efforts were focused on increasing this awareness and upskilling practitioners with RPC training. As shown in Figure 1:

Torbay and Derbyshire were both in the early stages of RPC delivery and focused mainly on raising awareness of RPC across their LA. They provided RPC interventions but uptake from parents had been minimal to date.
Bristol, Newcastle, Manchester and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough were further ahead in their progress with delivering interventions and raising awareness both across the LA and amongst partner organisations. They were in early stages of developing outcome measures but had more anecdotal evidence of impacts of the support (see next Chapter for more details on this). All 4 had plans to integrate the provision with Family Hubs.
Leicestershire, Nottingham city and Nottinghamshire were the furthest ahead in their RPC delivery. They had embedded RPC within their areas and were receiving positive feedback about interventions being delivered from practitioners and parents.

Figure 1. Progress with RPC Delivery across LAs, in order of increasing maturity in progress of delivery.

Local Authority	Delivery Progress
Torbay	Early stages of RPC implementation, still in process of raising awareness across LA and wider services, some interventions offered but minimal uptake so far.
Derbyshire	Have had good take up of training across the LA, difficulty engaging with the police, children’s partnership isn’t fully evolved and in a lot of debt as an LA, in early stages of intervention provision.
Newcastle	Have raised awareness across the LA, with lots of practitioners attending, struggling with management structural changes in pushing agenda forward, not assessed outcomes yet, but anecdotally positive.
Bristol	Have good engagement across the LA with RPC, next steps are to integrate with family hubs, developing outcomes measures.
Manchester	At a good stage in RPC delivery, training all delivered in house, RPC embedded across wider services, next steps are to integrate with family hubs, don’t have data on outcomes yet.
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough	RPC training has been embedded across the partnership, moving towards family hubs, have some outcomes data, but would like to develop this more.
Leicestershire	RPC is embedded across the LA, and has moved towards family hubs integration, interventions delivered well and have a waitlist as they are so popular, have struggled with measuring incomes.
Nottingham City	Have trained staff across the partnership, with interventions in place and although mainly anecdotal evidence so far, will be engaging in a regional evaluation that will measure outcomes.
Nottinghamshire	RPC training is provided across the service with practitioners aligned on the RPC agenda, will be measuring outcomes via an evaluation they are commissioning later this year.

Key enablers in delivering RPC

Dedicated RPC lead/coordinator

A key enabler in the delivery of RPC was having a dedicated RPC lead/coordinator in post. Having one staff member fully dedicated to RPC meant that they could focus all their time on RPC activity, without encountering conflicting priorities. RPC leads/coordinators had a lot of knowledge about RPC (e.g. the provision available to parents and staff, which staff were involved, how parents were responding to support), which meant they were able to raise awareness of it across the LA and move the agenda forward.

They were also able to facilitate communication with partner organisations to increase their engagement with RPC and manage practitioners’ engagement with the RPC Programme. This was felt to be especially important within the context of frontline practitioners having high caseloads and limited time to engage. The RPC lead/coordinator also played an important role in keeping RPC on practitioners’ radars once they had completed initial RPC training.

[As an RPC coordinator…] you’re really advocating [RPC] at all times and making sure it stays on the agenda and that we are responsive to what’s coming through so the needs of the people we are supporting and also our own workforce.

RPC lead/coordinator

As we’ve gone into this phase or this part of the [RPC] journey and we’ve been able to employ [name] as a coordinator, we’ve been able to get out there and work with partners more because we know we know this funding will come to an end at some point.

Strategic lead

One LA emphasised the importance of their RPC lead/coordinator and said that they “wouldn’t have achieved anything” in their absence, as they were “knowledgeable on every aspect of our RPC delivery”.

RPC Training

Training related to RPC was perceived positively across all case study LAs. It was reported to be relevant to practitioner’s roles and responsibilities, engaging and enjoyable. Trainers thought that their provision was relatable for staff and allowed them to think about applying their learning in their everyday role.

People like the course as it is very relatable, you can relate to it yourself as well as thinking of the families you are working with.

We’ll often be a little bit almost playful as trainers in helping practitioners to think about this from their point of view, of people who have been in relationships or are currently in relationships. Because I think that’s a great way in and you know, if people have tried that journey themselves, they practice using non-blameful language.

Trainers

Frontline practitioners also reported the relatability of training, and that it was applicable to a range of scenarios. Specifically, role play was highlighted as a ‘fun’ way to engage in the training.

I think it’s really good that we’re starting to talk about it more now. And we’ve been having those conversations, but now it’s been highlighted and under the topic of RPC it fits into so many areas and I’ve been using the learning.

[It is] so transferable to different situations and included loads of scenarios to pull out and depersonalise when you are with that parent.

Frontline practitioners

Additionally, when a diverse range of practitioners were in attendance this helped allow multi-agency collaboration. Frontline practitioners were able to discuss issues they were facing and work together to come up with solutions, with input and experience across a wide range of services.

It was really helpful bringing together people from different agencies and different skill sets… It was a very mixed group, so it wasn’t just all 1 agency with 1 voice, it was actually thinking about linking up social care and focus children’s centres and teaching staff, those type of things. There’s lots of kind of different kind voices and experiences in the room.

Trainer

Spotlight: Derbyshire

Training on the difference between domestic abuse and violence was helpful in referring parents on to RPC support.

The training delivered to practitioners in Derbyshire was evidence-based and helped staff to understand the importance of resolving parental conflict. The training conveyed the distinction between domestic abuse/violence and parental conflict. This was useful to practitioners in Derbyshire, as in the past, if a case was not domestic abuse, then no further action was taken. In contrast after receiving this training, frontline practitioners now felt they were able to signpost families to RPC support.

Referrals and raising awareness amongst parents

A range of methods have been used across LAs to successfully identify parents who could be referred onto RPC interventions. The first was a multi-agency approach among LAs who had strong ties with staff already working with families, to identify signs of conflict, as well as signpost to Family Hubs in some cases. In these LAs, it was common for parents to also self-refer themselves via the Family Hubs’ website.

In some more complex cases, families may be in receipt of support from multiple organisations across the LA. Where this was the case, multi-agency working was valuable as it allowed them to access RPC support alongside other provision (GPs, therapists etc.).

Usually screening questions or tools were used to determine whether RPC support was appropriate for parents, in advance of them accessing the provision.

Spotlight: Torbay

The screening tool traffic light system was useful in identifying varying levels of conflict for practitioners less familiar with RPC.

Torbay used an online Traffic light system – adapted from the Barnsley traffic light tool to distinguish domestic abuse and parental conflict. This approach highlights what kinds of behaviours to observe when looking for evidence of conflict. This tool was mentioned as especially useful for practitioners less aware of RPC agenda.

Another approach which was less common was LAs conducting weekly meetings with police to gather intelligence on number of referrals coming in and identifying those appropriate for RPC support.

We’ve been working really closely with the police commissioners and trying to get the link in there to help establish referral pathways.

RPC lead/coordinator

Using social media was a useful method to raise awareness in the local community. This helped increase engagement through signposting to support.

Spotlight: Bristol

Referrals via social media have increased awareness of RPC support in the local community.

The process of referrals has worked well in Bristol through a charity called Bristol Autism Support. They have a big Facebook presence and due to the awareness campaign, they have run in the LA, the Facebook group has a lot of conversations about parental conflict and has signposted to additional support on their website for parents who need it.

Key challenges in delivering RPC

Limited staff capacity

The most common RPC-related delivery challenge was a lack of resource and staff time to engage with it. For many LAs, having capacity to undertake RPC training was particularly challenging for frontline practitioners who already had a high workload. One LA said that their staff are overwhelmed due to a wide range of workforce development initiatives already being offered, so undertaking RPC training was not always possible for staff already struggling with their capacity.

For them [frontline practitioners] to find time or for them to even see the benefits of it, that can be the challenge. It’s the psychology of having already a very, very packed schedule and maybe not seeing the value of it or not being able to see the overlap [with their own area of work].

Provider (internal)

Some LAs struggled with attendance at training, especially for longer and more intensive courses. Whilst other LAs described overcoming this issue by running shorter sessions, as it is easier to engage staff with high workloads.

Spotlight: Leicestershire

Use of training by some practitioners was also noted as a key challenge, as they noticed some reluctance amongst staff to embed the training and learning within their everyday roles. Some practitioners also reported continuing to not feel confident about supporting parents with conflict, especially when they had been on a relatively short training course.

Experience of support from the DWP

Most LAs were happy with the level of support they were receiving from the DWP and were able to contact the RIL for support as needed. One LA said that they were able to get in touch with the national team who were very accommodating and helpful as they were on hand to respond quickly to any queries they might have. It was also felt that they were able to provide signposting to useful resources or good practice examples to support LA delivery of RPC.

If I need any support there is always somebody at the end of the phone and they have been really helpful.

Strategic lead

Some LAs mentioned a few areas where greater DWP support could be useful including:

More opportunities for knowledge sharing with other LAs that are facing similar experiences. One LA said it would be helpful to have communication with other LAs that are of similar size and with similar family needs so they could share ideas. Another LA said that they would benefit from a better overview of what is happening with RPC implementation on a wider scale across the country, as they felt like they only see a small part of the process.

I think another way of overcoming the barriers is more of that linking with other local authorities and sharing resources. I think that’s really important as well because it’s quite a lonely job.

Provider (internal)

Further promotion of RPC at a national level would help to raise the agenda and support LAs in their delivery. It was noted that similar approaches have worked well for Family Hubs. One RPC lead/coordinator said that the challenge they face getting buy-in from partner organisations could be helped by national messaging and awareness campaigns around RPC agenda.
DWP support to embed a RPC model that will be sustainable long-term and that they can continue implementing when funding ends. A few LAs were trying to sustain RPC by maximising upskilling opportunities, however, they requested DWP support to develop e-learning packages and training resources that can be continued once funding ends.
Support with monitoring and evaluation (covered in next chapter).

Parents’ experience of RPC support

This analysis relates only to professional feedback – the final report will contain insight gathered from parents.

Generally, RPC interventions had been well received and parents had provided positive feedback. Parents talked positively about their experiences of group interventions, in particularly developing peer relationships with other parents attending the support. Across LAs, frontline practitioners and providers reported that parents liked that RPC support had both men and women in attendance. Men felt more comfortable as they did not feel isolated and as if support was favoured women.

In some LAs, take-up from parents who were referred onto RPC interventions had been a challenge. Parents that were involved often had complex needs and faced other barriers in accessing support, such as homelessness. This could mean that RPC engagement was not always a priority for them and was a cause of lower engagement. A provider suggested that the gap in engagement here could be accommodated by (better) highlighting the benefits and outcomes of support to those who are referred.

Attendance at RPC interventions was described by providers and frontline practitioners as generally positive. They highlighted the importance of offering flexibility for working parents who cannot participate in interventions that take place during the working day, as well as offering childcare support to allow parents to concentrate on the intervention. Frontline practitioners also highlighted that drop-out was not always a negative outcome, as it may highlight progression relating to parental conflict or other areas of their life (e.g. employment).

There were some concerns raised about parent engagement with sessions run online amongst parents with limited digital literacy. Frontline practitioners in a few LAs said that parents had less confidence engaging with interventions delivered online as some people do not engage over videocall, although others are more vocal.

There were also more challenges faced engaging separated parents. Frontline practitioners highlighted how separated parents face unique barriers in engaging with RPC and that more perseverance is required to engage these parents.

Sometimes, especially with separated parents, I think there is a barrier within them engaging in the process because I think they are very much caught up in the separation and wanting to blame the other person for the behaviours. But actually, after you have sat and discussed it you do often see there is this lightbulb moment going ‘oh yes, I think I can’, and you do get to see measurable changes within those families.

Provider (internal)

Question 9

Monitoring and outcomes

Accepted Answer

Introduction

DWP embedded evaluation is 1 of the 4 key dimensions of the RPC capability covered in the planning tool: Plan, Lead, Deliver and Evaluate. The Evaluate element makes it clear that local evaluation should be a key element of the programme for LAs, with an expectation that local partners “find and apply external evidence” on RPC as well as “generating local evidence where there is a need to innovate.” Monitoring progress and evaluating the outcomes of Local Grant funded activities is therefore built into the functioning of the RPC Local Grant funding model. DWP asks each participating LA to use the planning tool to help them assess their own RPC capability and help them plan and prioritise future development activity.

The Theories of Change that describe the RPC Local Grant Programme outlines the core targeted outcomes, covering (further details are provided in Annexe 1 and Annexe 2).

RPC fully embedded into LA family services
LA outcomes
Services for parents and families
Parental outcomes
Child outcomes
Later-life outcomes

Monitoring and evaluation of RPC

Monitoring the performance of RPC activity and evaluating outcomes was an area of difficulty for almost all of the case study LAs, despite clear views from RPC and strategic leads about its importance. It was described as an area of “universal struggle” by one RIL, and staff across LAs raised many issues with developing monitoring and evaluation plans. The key reasons for this included resourcing, cost, and ability to create and use an outcomes framework.

We do know evaluation is really important, it’s just difficult to standardise something or to try to find something that works for everybody and is not going to be seen as extra work for the people that we’re asking to complete it.

Trainer (internal)

This difficulty in monitoring and evaluating RPC Programmes under the Local Grant was also noted during LA workshops in March and April 2023. As will be described, some evaluation and monitoring activity has been conducted since these workshops, but challenges remained.

Evidence from the LA case study interviews showed that no clear plan tended to exist around how to use data that has been collected in order to inform strategic decision-making and ongoing delivery. LAs also described a monitoring and evaluation approach that generally lacked rigour. The main reasons for this related to lack of capacity, skills and knowledge to undertake monitoring and evaluation activity.

Many examples of data collection focused more on satisfaction or more immediate output-related measures. This included monitoring attendance at training sessions, which was described by a few LAs as a key delivery outcome of their RPC activity. Similarly, data from providers was also key, with a few LAs describing using data from OnePlusOne relating to sign ups as an important part of monitoring delivery.

Evaluation questionnaires were also commonly used at the end of training modules, covering before and after ratings of knowledge, satisfaction with the training delivered, and the application of standardised assessment processes for all training delivered at a LA within the RPC Programme.

Often the monitoring that was described by LAs lacked depth in terms of actual outcomes, however. In one LA, a trainer felt that they were missing data about how training is being used by practitioners, as they only have data relating to immediately after the support finishes. Similarly, in the same LA, one trainer stated that their evaluation is merely of satisfaction, not outcomes: their key target is to hit 80% of those trained being satisfied, which does not reflect longer term outcomes. One provider at another LA echoed this sentiment, mentioning that they currently do not track outcomes over a longer period of time following the completion of training.

I definitely would say that our biggest gap at the moment is understanding whether it really has made any difference at all in the long run.

RPC lead/coordinator

LAs described particular difficulty in collecting data about parent and child outcomes and displayed a reliance on anecdotal feedback. In some LAs, it was felt that it was too early to measure outcomes for parents, which take a long period of time before being measurable. Attendance at sessions was monitored for parents across several LAs, including consideration of dropout rates over the course of an intervention. In some LAs, it was stated that parents are asked to score themselves on a series of measures before, during, and after receiving support in a post-intervention survey. Though in these LAs, they reported challenges around analysis of this data and understanding how best to use it within strategic decision making.

To an even greater extent than with parent outcomes, LAs struggled to monitor child outcomes. In one LA, it was stated that the child’s voice is only captured through the parental voice. Some frontline practitioners described difficulty in understanding the effect that interventions have had on children because of the lack of time that they spend with the families after interventions are completed.

The impact on the child is something that is the hardest thing to find.

Trainer

One difficulty with measuring child outcomes that was expressed by one LA was that it can be very difficult to pinpoint the root cause of improvements in metrics related to schooling (e.g. attendance at school), because they inevitably relate to many elements of the child’s life. Similarly, children were described as often being the beneficiaries of multiple interventions in different areas of their lives, and so it can be difficult to attribute the cause of changes or improvements to RPC-related work.

More support from DWP around monitoring performance and evaluating outcomes would be welcomed. One RIL felt that this was an area where more support from DWP could be useful, including helping LAs to develop evaluation frameworks. Sharing good practice from other LAs around ways to capture outcomes for parents and children would also be welcomed. Many LAs mentioned that they were keen to improve their approaches to capturing the child’s voice, and so assistance with this could be beneficial.

DWP reporting requirements

Reporting management information (MI) to DWP was felt by some LAs to be challenging. Some LAs felt that MI processes could be streamlined and reduced in frequency, so that they are not required every quarter.

A couple of RPC and strategic leads described some of the required information returns as taking quite a while to collate, and a few described challenges in terms of meeting the timings required by DWP. This included one RPC lead/coordinator who worked on a part-time basis stating that deadlines are often two weeks after busy periods (end of the financial year, Christmas), which is particularly challenging when working in a part-time role.

At least one LA felt that such robust reporting requirements were made even harder to justify because of the relatively small budget of their RPC Local Grant Programme.

It does feel quite a robust reporting framework, the spreadsheets have taken some getting used to and when you are getting about [RPC value], it’s a lot of work for not a huge pot of money.

Strategic lead

Integration outcomes

LAs generally felt more confident evaluating outcomes that related to integration (e.g. ensuring that RPC training and knowledge is shared across different organisations or embedding RPC-related practice into already existing ways of working) than evaluating those relating to parents and children.

One key outcome that was mentioned across some LAs related to getting broad buy-in to the RPC Programme, particularly amongst LA staff such as those in the early-help teams. Many practitioners interviewed had started to see RPC work, particularly as related to applying the learning for the training, as part of their day-to-day jobs and had the confidence to address it with parents. In a few LAs, an appreciation amongst frontline workers across multiple services of the effect that parental conflict can have on children was also seen as a key outcome that has been achieved so far. Nevertheless, this had limits, and some RPC leads/coordinators stressed that getting buy in from other organisations like the police and schools could be challenging.

You get the sense that they are learning and able to put these things into place in a positive way. I think it has made a lot of practitioners really stop and think about the effects of these conflicts in the home and what they can do to a child.

Trainer (internal)

It has been really beneficial for us to have it [RPC activity] and I would love for it to keep going because… I feel like we know how to support it [parental conflict] a lot more easily. A lot quicker and easier.

Frontline practitioner

An increased confidence to address parental conflict, engage with it, and signpost to support was seen as a key integration outcome across many LAs, which had been driven primarily through training according to several LAs. There was an acknowledgement that prior to receiving recent RPC training, many practitioners were intimidated by the idea of broaching parental conflict related issues, unaware of its importance, or because they felt that it was not their place as they were not a relationship counsellor.

I think their confidence to help parents to understand the impact has gone up and they’re confident to be able to and think about couple relationships and… join up the dots…. They are lot more thoughtful about the couple relationship than they were before the RPC agenda came in.

Trainer (internal)

Some LAs felt that giving frontline practitioners a specific RPC resource to draw upon was crucial to ensure integrated practice, which included the provision of a toolkit or guidebook to walk practitioners through the process of addressing and dealing with parental conflict when they encounter it. A few LAs also noted the importance of all practitioners, across a diverse range of services, being able to draw upon the same learning, use the same language, and access the same resources.

Spotlight: Leicestershire

In terms of the key mechanisms behind integration outcomes, having a RPC lead/coordinator was seen as key. One strategic lead noted that having an individual that could form connections was central to positive outcomes relating to integration. RPC training was the other key driver of integration related outcomes.

[One outcome is] better co-working with internal teams as the RPC coordinator crosses teams to form relationships.

Strategic lead

To further strengthen integration outcomes, some RPC leads/coordinators felt that greater outreach work was required with specific partner organisations. As discussed in previous chapters, this included more work with healthcare professionals, schools (albeit this was also seen as an area of strength in some LAs) and the police.

Parent outcomes

Several parent outcomes were consistently mentioned across LAs as having been achieved. The evidence of these outcomes was generally less strong than for integration-related outcomes (i.e. outcomes relating to changes and developments in family services); as mentioned previously much of the evidence of parental outcomes was anecdotal in nature. Outside of some attendance figures, and a few satisfaction-style surveys, all outcomes for parents were measured through informal feedback and the observation of staff at LAs who work with parents. All evidence-based parenting programmes that were being commissioned by LAs also have in-built outcome measures, although this was not mentioned by LAs in terms of measuring parent outcomes during the LA case studies.

Parental outcomes that were reported included improved communication between parents, decreased levels of parental conflict, and increased awareness of the negative impacts of parental conflict for children.

Improved inter-parental communication was noted as a key outcome for some parents across multiple LAs. Cross-generational communication was also noted as a positive outcome: often children and grandchildren learn their models of communication from older generations and replicate them, and several frontline practitioners stated that they had seen improvements in communication between parents, parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren etc.

Practitioners in a few LAs mentioned that they had personally observed a decrease in conflict and an increase in connectedness with their children within specific families. They also provided anecdotal evidence of parents and children spending more quality time together and feeling less stressed during daily activities like the school run. In one LA, this was noted specifically for parents attending the “Parenting When Separated Programme” (run by Parents Plus) who were highlighted as having a decrease in harmful conflict and greater levels of feelings of connectedness with their children. Again, this was evidenced more through anecdote than rigorous evaluation.

Across a few LAs, a key outcome for parents was an acknowledgement of the effect that conflict between parents can have on children. This was, as with other outcomes, often collected on a fairly ad-hoc basis, with evidence including feedback given to trainers from those that they have trained.

They’ve [frontline practitioners] seen some families who kind of had a light bulb moment.

Trainer (internal)

RPC trained practitioners were also seen as having the required tools to reduce conflict in other relationships. This included between parents and children and parents who were single and potential future partners, who were seen as being “pre-loaded” with the tools required for navigating successful relationships in the future.

The very first time I used it with the mum and the son, it meant that they could live together in the house and communicate rather than screaming at each other.

Frontline practitioner

Practitioners across multiple partner organisations having been provided the same or similar training was also seen as enabling a cohesive experience for parents navigating multiple agencies. This was seen as a positive outcome of integration for parents: a more seamless experience across agencies, with practitioners of various backgrounds all being able to use similar language and work towards similar goals for the parent.

Some stakeholders felt that RPC work provided parents who are not experiencing domestic abuse, but are experiencing conflict, with access to support. The existence of such support was seen as important for these parents who would have previously not received support but can now benefit from it.

[It used to be from] ‘0’ to ‘are you safe in your home, is there domestic abuse?’ Now there’s somewhere in between that to discuss. ‘How are you? How are you parenting together? … It’s opened up more conversations about conflict and stresses and touch paper points throughout relationships. I think parents have appreciated some of that.

Frontline Practitioner

The key drivers of these outcomes were described as practitioners having the ability to address parental conflict when it occurred (and having the confidence to do so) due to RPC training, access to toolkits/resources, joined up thinking/working across services, and practitioners having a change in viewpoint as to their role in addressing parental conflict.

Child outcomes

LA staff interviewed for the case studies generally had limited knowledge of outcomes for children. Some outcomes were felt to have been achieved, although most were evidenced through anecdotal feedback.

An example of anecdotal evidence of child outcomes was that frontline practitioners at one LA discussed tracking wellbeing and mental health indicators in the children that they work with. This is done through their body language, nonverbal cues, and drawings, but there was no indication that such evidence of change was collected or stored systematically.

We have had 1 or 2 bits of feedback via family workers from the child which was very powerful.

Strategic lead

Other outcomes cited included that children were enjoying more quality time with their parents, and that children do not need further intervention from services (e.g. mental health support).

One benefit for children that was stated by a few LAs was that parental outcomes inevitably follow through to child outcomes. This was summarised by a frontline practitioner who stated that “work with parents automatically affects children.” This was seen as a result of the work providing a more stable and happy home for the children but also by providing better models of communication and better relationships to emulate.

A child I was working with said that she’d noticed that mom and dad weren’t arguing as much.

Frontline practitioner

Plans for strengthening delivery and outcomes in Year 3

For most LAs, plans for Year 3 involved continuing to build momentum, and make progress with RPC activities already being delivered. For some LAs, a key focus was ensuring that more practitioners have received RPC training.

[RPC activity is] just getting the momentum running and we’ve got a big number of people [who need training] as well. So you know, by the time we get to year end of year 3, we probably will have close to 100 people training.

RPC lead/coordinator

At one LA, one training-related goal was to create a full suite of e-learning courses to cover the RPC training to free up the RPC lead’s time to focus on train the trainer activities. This was seen as helping to embed RPC training beyond the Local Grant funding model by creating resources, both e-learning modules and staff who can continue to deliver training, that are not tied to the funding.

Sustainability was mentioned as a key focus across several LAs for Year 3. This included several LAs pursuing a train the trainer model, as well as plans to focus on embedding learning in a way that would continue after the point at which funding for a RPC lead/coordinator was removed.

[Developing an e-learning course] is a key part of our sustainability drive…we need to think about what happens when the funding ends and there isn’t a me in post.

RPC lead/coordinator

Other areas of continued focus included continuing to build relationships with partner organisations. In some LAs, this included working more closely with schools, in others looking for greater buy in from the police, and in others this involved working more closely with voluntary and charity organisations. An example in one LA aiming to work more closely with a community project involving Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities to try to extend RPC provision amongst these communities.

Several LAs also had plans to improve and develop monitoring and evaluation plans. One LA wanted to do this to be able to check that they are progressing well, but also to be able to sell the benefits of the Programme to partners using data from the evaluation. In another LA, there was a focus on evaluation, with a desire to form partnerships across multiple LAs in the region for the purposes of conducting a regional evaluation.

Question 10

Conclusions

Accepted Answer

This report aims to explore how a small sample of LAs used their Local Grant funding to embed RPC into their services for families during the first 12-18 months of the 2022-2025 RPC programme. It examines key opportunities and challenges to delivery and how the LAs approached them, and how they planned and delivered RPC activity. The following chapter outlines key findings in relation to these aims.

Key findings

Progress made by LAs in relation to integrating RPC focused practice and organisation into family services

In general, LAs viewed the RPC Programme and the move in April 2022 to the Local Grant model positively. They welcomed the opportunity to take more ownership of RPC activity and delivery, and to tailor their approach to local challenges and the needs of parents.

Strategic and RPC leads/coordinators reported a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach being at the centre of their RPC activity and described the importance of RPC being integrated within their wider family support offer. For many, this meant RPC sitting within Early Help. Generally, LAs also reported that their partnership engagement with other organisations (e.g. education, health, police, voluntary sector, etc.) had been a key focus of their RPC activity to date, and that this had largely been going well. Although it had been harder to engage some partnership organisations than others, with variations between LAs.

Generally, LAs spoke positively about the integration of RPC with other national children’s services programmes (including Family Hubs and the Supporting Families Programme). Strategic leads reported working to build strong partnerships with Family Hub leads, with the ambition of RPC benefitting from being incorporated into the Family Hubs structure and agenda. Some LAs had encountered challenges to integrating RPC within Family Hubs and Supporting Families, for example difficulties helping frontline practitioners to see the value of aligning RPC with other programmes. All case study LAs indicated that furthering integration was a priority for Year 3.

How LAs had spent their funding, what they have achieved, and how this has varied across LAs during the first half of the programme

The flexibility of the Local Grant funding was valued by LAs in allowing them to adapt RPC activity to the needs of their local area. Across the 9 case study LAs, the main area of spend for LAs was training and workforce development, reflecting the predominant activity/spending for the programme as a whole. This reflected the importance strategic leads placed on the need to upskill practitioners to be able to identify parental conflict. Strategic leads also felt that the Local Grant had enabled them to tailor the training delivered to their local needs and was seen to have been complemented by creating resources (e.g. toolkits) that aligned to the ways of working in the LA.

Almost all of the 9 case study LAs took the decision to fund an RPC lead/coordinator via the Local Grant, a decision all strategic leads interviewed described as a key enabler of delivering their RPC activity. LAs offered a variety of explanations for why this was prioritised, the key one being that funding an RPC lead or coordinator provided someone who had dedicated time to progress the RPC agenda. Strategic and RPC leads also noted that the more established and embedded the RPC lead/coordinator was, the better they were able to drive forward progress.

In general, during the first 18 months of the programme there was less focus on using Local Grant funding to deliver interventions for parents. Strategic leads in the 9 case study areas noted that the main reason for this was LAs being mindful of sustainability, and planning for a time when central RPC funding might end. It was widely felt that prioritising training, workforce development and integration would have a bigger impact and help ensure the longevity of RPC as business as usual.

It should be noted that a wider range of evidence-based interventions were available in the case study LAs, but that LAs had not prioritised Local Grant funding for the use of these other interventions at this point in the evaluation.

How LAs have approached specific challenges and problems in their local area

A commonly expressed challenge was a lack of resource and staff time to focus on RPC. For many LAs, having capacity for RPC training was particularly challenging for frontline practitioners who already had a high workload. LAs that had successfully engaged frontline staff highlighted the importance of senior staff buy-in, emphasising its importance in ensuring that junior staff were supported to engage.

Although also a key enabler of RPC delivery for some, other LAs said they were still in the early stages of developing relationships with key partners. Some LAs had struggled to get buy-in on RPC from other organisations, mainly due to lack of time and high staff turnover in some partner organisations. Those with more advanced partnership collaboration also cited this as a way of progressing and embedding their RPC activity.

Quality of support and outcomes for parents who access support funded by the Local Grant

Although all the case study LAs were monitoring the performance of some RPC activities and evaluating some outcomes, this was almost universally an area of difficulty for LAs. They tended not to have a clear plan for how to use data collected to inform strategic decision-making and ongoing delivery. Some LAs also reported that DWP reporting requirements were burdensome and confusing.

Progress towards the target outcomes for RPC across the LA and for families (see those in the Theory of Change in Annexe 1 and Annexe 2) varied across LAs, mainly because of the differences in the activities undertaken and maturity of projects. Where evidence was available for outcomes, most LAs involved in this research had limited evidence to indicate achievement of these outcomes. Generally, LAs were more positive about achievement of outcomes around integration of RPC within their LA. There was less clarity on the achievement of outcomes for parents and children, due to available evidence, though some anecdotal evidence of positive parent outcomes was reported. These included improved communication between parents, decreased levels of parental conflict, and increased awareness of the negative impacts of parental conflict for children. Future research will explore parents’ experiences of RPC support and the outcomes achieved.

Considerations for Local Grant future activity

Local authority staff suggested that some additional activities could improve delivery or help to further embed the RPC agenda:

Sharing of knowledge, good practice and learning between LAs relating to their RPC activity had proved useful but could be strengthened. Useful topics could include partnership working (as some LAs had success with partner organisations that others had struggled with) and incorporating Family Hubs and the Supporting Families Programme into strategic decision-making around RPC.
Sustainability and the planning of longer-term spending was a focus for LAs and could help to strengthen the positive effects of the Local Grant. This included mechanisms for moving from ‘RPC projects’ (e.g. specific, targeted work) to business as usual (RPC embedded into broader programmes of work and structures for working), including workforce and capacity and financial considerations.
DWP could broaden their support to LAs to help them understand how they could develop their knowledge and skill around data analysis, data collection, and how to use this in decision-making. Areas in which this could be particularly useful include collection of data relating to, and the evaluation thereof, outcomes for parents and children.
LAs were also keen for RPC reporting mechanisms to be as streamlined, accessible, and as least burdensome as possible. The reporting approach has been streamlined recently to support LAs in completion of reporting, and more could be understood about the perspective of LAs regarding this new approach.

Evaluation next steps

The following strands of research remain:

Qualitative research with parents who completed an intervention and parents who were referred but either failed to start or failed to complete the intervention as planned. We are committed to ensuring the voice of parents is captured by the evaluation.
Interviews with LA staff to understand how identification and referral of parents to RPC interventions works, what works well and what could be improved.

Question 11

Annexes

Accepted Answer

Annexe 1 – RPC Theory of Change: Integration and service design

Inputs & assumptions → →	Outputs & intermediate outcomes → →	Target outcomes
Key inputs from DWP - Grant funding of up to £19m - Funding awards to individual LAs determined by the prevalence of children in low-income families (according to local area statistics to the year ending 2021) - LAs are supported by DWP Regional Integration Leads - LAs are given fit for purpose guidance on the application process and grant terms & conditions - LAs access practical support from the Early Intervention Foundation (and their successor) Assumptions - LAs take-up and make use of Local Grant funding - LAs make full use of matched funding or other LA funding sources - LA staff are able of make the additional (time) commitments necessary to apply for funding and administer the grant - LAs appoint an RPC coordinator and single point of contact to manage the relationship with DWP - DWP RILs perform effectively (e.g., helping LAs to successfully apply for the Local Grant and to make full use of their funding - LAs are receptive to engaging with RILs - RILs are able to persuade LAs of value of RPC and help them to take action - LAs engage with EIF resources and find them useful - LAs have a sufficiently equipped and resourced L&D teams to coordinate delivery of RPC related training - LA commissioners are able to identify individuals for training and navigate complex L&D resources	Strategy - The principle of tackling parental conflict is accepted and there is commitment to action. - A local vision and multi-agency RPC strategy is agreed, communicated, and woven into relevant strategic plans. - An action plan delivers the strategic approach, and progress is monitored at a senior level. - Partners share data to informs strategic decisions. Workforce capability - Multi-agency workforce needs on RPC are mapped, and capacity and skills audits or training reviews are underway. - There are regular opportunities for staff to receive training. - Trainees’ feel equipped to address parental conflict and use knowledge acquired to address interparental conflict. Partnership - A growing group of partner agencies has lead responsibility for RPC and its impact on children. They deliver actions, share funding and responsibility, and design solutions. Community - The views of children, young people and families directly inform strategy through community consultation. - Families co-design the local RPC strategy and are involved in commissioning and governance structures. Services & interventions - Information about parental relationships and support services is accessible to and understood by families. Coordinated working - Organisations are developing integrated parental conflict pathways and processes, in line with DA support pathways. Outcomes & experience - Evidence on the customer experience is collected regularly and informs service and workforce development. Evaluation capability - Interventions are evaluated and demonstrate good outcomes for families and children (i.e., fewer parents in conflict and less harm caused to children)	RPC fully embedded into LA family services - Best practice fully embedded - Others learning from achievements - Evidence of significant shifts in investment to reduce parental conflict through early intervention - RPC skills and knowledge are part of job specifications, recruitment, and competency frameworks - Senior leaders routinely draw on robust evidence to inform resource use and service design Local authority outcomes - Most of the early help, children’s social care and 0–19 health services following workforces have received reducing parental conflict (RPC) training - All of those who have been trained are using RPC learning when engaging with families - Frequent activities undertaken to support the embedding of RPC practice and support for parents such as practice sharing events or networks, newsletters or champion roles. - Has an active team of RPC trainers in their local area - Local senior leaders and partner organisations are very aware of the RPC agenda - Parental conflict is featured in in the strategic plans (including Early Help strategies or Children and Young People plans) for most LAs - Most of LAs routinely collect data on parental conflict in their area (e.g., in case management systems) Services for parents and families - Most LAs offer RPC support for parents in their area - Most LAs provide a specific pathway of support for parental conflict. - Most LAs provide a specific offer at moderate level or specialist level - A coherent portfolio of evidence-based interventions is embedded into the local family offer - LA provides an online offer such as links to RPC information or videos on their services webpages

Annexe 2 – Theory of Change: Specialist RPC Interventions (for parents)

Inputs & assumptions → →	Outputs (immediate outcomes for parents) → →	Medium-long term outcomes
Effective identification and referral processes - Correctly assessing and identifying intensity/nature of conflict - Identifying parents and children who are experiencing domestic abuse and directing them to more appropriate support Comprehensive initial assessment and developing a corresponding action plan - Identifying relationship problems and goals - Identifying problem behaviour from children - Developing a sound treatment plan Ensuring intervention delivery and success - Parents understand how the interventions can help - Parents are motivated and make an active choice to participate (i.e., they do not feel coerced) - Parents can get to the venue or participate virtually/digitally - Service providers offer good quality logistics and communicate the time and place of sessions - Where appropriate, both parents are willing to participate in the intervention (sometimes with the other parent) - Parents are willing to participate without the cooperation of the other parent - Parents are willing to participate in group sessions, where this is appropriate - Parents develop good rapport with the professionals who deliver the interventions - Parents and practitioners communicate effectively - Parents know what to expect - Parents are willing to discuss difficult topics - Parents put their learning into practice during and after intervention completion - External influences and life events do not interrupt or prevent participation	Relationship skills - Better problem solving and conflict resolution - Improved family cohesion - Appropriate and proactive limit-setting - Ability to recognise issues/barriers and address them - Positive inter-personal interactions - Giving and responding to constructive feedback - Increased empathy of each other’s views - Improved decision making and communication - Proactive strategies for respectful talking and listening - Being motivated to improve your relationship(s) - Parents work as a team to nurture and support each other - Parents able to recognise and communicate issues/expectations - Parents start planning for the future Understanding and managing emotions & behaviour - Parents more able to manage their own stress and reduce its negative effects on their relationships - Lower levels of family stress - Better understanding of the family’s challenges - Better capacity for reflection - Improved emotional awareness and regulation - Better emotional regulation and lower levels of anger - Better resilience and self-awareness - Awareness and understanding of family dynamics Parenting skills - Understand the impact of conflict on children - Ability to apply positive parenting approaches - Improved co-parenting, co-operation and parental planning - Improved inter-parental and child-parent communication - Improved confidence/ability to address children’s problems - Parents deliver same story about divorce/separation - Children are more able to manage their emotions - Parents able to work with teachers for the child’s best interest - Parents able to recognise the child’s point of view	Parental outcomes - Improved interparental communication - Better relationship satisfaction - Improved separated interparental relationships - Better satisfaction with custody arrangements (separated parents only) - Increased parent-child contact (separated parents only) - Improved relationships (familial and beyond) - Better self-esteem and improved mental health - Improved parenting practice - Enhanced family collaboration and cohesion - Improved resilience to stress and negative events - Lower family stress - Stronger parent-child relationships Child outcomes - Stronger parent-child relationship - Better emotional development (e.g., empathy and resilience) - Better conduct and reduced criminal, violent and/or anti-social behaviour - Less hyperactivity / better concentration - Improved child / youth mental health - Improved educational attainment Later-life outcomes - Improved mental and physical health - Better employment outcomes - Improved relationship skills - Better parenting skills as - Reduced use of health, welfare and other government services (e.g., family courts, criminal justice, etc.)

Note: This is a generic theory of change to represent all the input measures, immediate outputs and medium to long term outcomes that one might expect to see from a face-to-face or digital/virtual intervention with relationship and parenting component.

Annexe 3 – Early-Stage Workshops Methodology

IFF conducted 6 workshops between 2nd March and 4th April 2023. Each workshop ran for two hours and included a 20-minute presentation from a LA around a specific theme, followed by a question-and-answer session. Group discussions were then held in breakout groups around key topics relating to the workshop theme, and more generally about the Local Grant.

There were between 4 and 16 attendees across each of the workshops, however, it’s worth noting that many LAs had dipped in and out of these sessions due to competing priorities and time restraints. Table 6 illustrates the rough breakdown of all attending LAs:

Table 6 Breakdown of LAs attending workshops

Workshops	Total number of sign-ups	Number of attendees at workshop
Engaging parents, families, faith groups and communities to design and deliver RPC	15	10
Partnership engagement – Working with key areas such as health and police	24	12
The RPC lead/coordinator role	29	13
Developing a RPC support offer for parents/families	26	8
Training – Developing RPC workforce capability	27	11
Measuring and capturing outcomes	36	5

The coverage of the 6 workshops is described below:

Workshop 1 focused on engaging parents, families, faith groups and communities to design and deliver RPC. This workshop covered discussions around how LAs identify and engage with families in conflict and how they seek input from particular family types and community groups to shape their RPC strategy.
Workshop 2 focused on partnership engagement, including working with health organisations and the police. This workshop involved discussions around how LAs are engaging with key partners in their area, as well as what they are doing to educate them on parental conflict and RPC.
Workshop 3 focused on the RPC lead/coordinator role and covered reasons why some LAs have chosen to install a RPC lead/coordinator, while others have not.
Workshop 4 focused on developing a RPC support offer for parents/families and covered how LAs determine what families in their local area need and what interventions they’ve chosen as a result.
Workshop 5 focused on training, including developing the workforce’s capability around RPC and discussing how LAs identify the kind of training needed by the professionals who come into regular contact with families and children and how they are developing their training strategy.
Workshop 6 focused on measuring and capturing outcomes and covered what LAs identify as an outcome of RPC interventions and how these can be measured at the end of year 1. For this workshop, the Senior Local Development Adviser from Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) presented various tools and techniques that could be used for measuring outcomes and progression.

Annexe 4 – LAs included in the case study research

Table 7 Details of the ten LAs included in the case study research

Local Authority	Family Hub area?	Contract Package Area trial?	Bid as a cluster?
Bristol	Yes	No	No
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough	Yes (both LAs delivering this separately in their own areas)	Yes	In the process of de-clustering
Derbyshire	No	No	No
Leicestershire	Yes	No	No
Manchester	Yes	No	No
Newcastle	Yes	Yes	No
Nottingham City	Yes	No	No
Nottinghamshire	No	No	No
Torbay	Yes	Yes	No

Harold et al. (2016) What works to Enhance Inter-Parental Relationships and Improve Outcomes for Children. London: Department for Work and Pensions. ↩
Further information is available here: https://reducingparentalconflict.eif.org.uk/child-impact/ ↩
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reducing-parental-conflict-programme-2018-to-2022-final-evaluation-report ↩
Family Hub areas are the 75 LAs that received a share of the £301.75million Family Hubs and Start for Life programme funding package for 2022-2025. This funding was provided to create Family Hubs in their area, which give advice to parents on taking care of their child and ensuring that they are safe and healthy. The programme aims to join up pre-existing services, as well as to enhance them. ↩
Early Help is the support provided for children, young people and their families to respond when difficulties emerge or to stop problems developing in the future. The type of support on offer can vary a lot. Many services will provide information and advice to support families. This can be offered in a one-to-one setting or as part of a group. They may also help families find solutions to specific problems. ↩
Following a competitive bidding process, 14 local authorities were selected to be Family Hub trailblazers. Their aim was to lead the way in delivering the programme, making the fastest and most ambitious improvements to services for families, and share learning and best practice with other areas, including those not receiving funding. ↩
In line with the previous evaluation, the current evaluation focusses on specialist RPC interventions commissioned and tested by DWP, to build the evidence base in the UK around what works to reduce conflict in disadvantaged families. These interventions are listed in Table 3. ↩

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Acknowledgements

Executive summary

Key findings

RPC vision and strategy

Use of RPC Local Grant funding

Experience of RPC activity

Monitoring and outcomes

Evaluation next steps

Glossary

Introduction

Background and Context

About the RPC Local Grant

Report structure

Evaluation approach and reporting

Evaluation objectives

Evaluation approach

Early-stage workshops

LA case studies

Table 1 Number of interviews conducted in LA case studies

Document review

Analysis

Evaluation considerations

Evaluation next steps

RPC vision and strategy

Key findings

Introduction

LA vision for RPC

Local Grant funding

Integration of RPC into children’s services

Spotlight: Manchester

Embedding Promoting Positive Relationships Toolkit within Early Help offer

Integration with Family Hubs

Spotlight: Nottinghamshire

Partnership engagement

Table 2 Awareness of RPC agenda among senior leaders of partner agencies

Spotlight: Manchester

Use of RPC Local Grant Funding

Key findings

Introduction

Use of Local Grant funding

Practitioner training

Table 3: Estimated percentage of partner workforces that had received RPC training according to May 2023 planning tools

Table 4: below provides 3 examples of LA training provision to give a flavour of topic content and coverage.

RPC lead/coordinator

Conflict focused interventions

Table 5: Interventions data reported in the planning tool from across the 9 LA areas (detail on each of these can be found in Annexe 5)

Experience of RPC activity

Key findings

Progress with RPC delivery to date

Figure 1. Progress with RPC Delivery across LAs, in order of increasing maturity in progress of delivery.

Key enablers in delivering RPC

Dedicated RPC lead/coordinator

RPC Training

Spotlight: Derbyshire

Referrals and raising awareness amongst parents

Spotlight: Torbay

Spotlight: Bristol

Key challenges in delivering RPC

Limited staff capacity

Spotlight: Leicestershire

Experience of support from the DWP

Parents’ experience of RPC support

Monitoring and outcomes

Introduction

Monitoring and evaluation of RPC

DWP reporting requirements

Integration outcomes

Spotlight: Leicestershire

Parent outcomes

Child outcomes

Plans for strengthening delivery and outcomes in Year 3

Conclusions

Key findings

How LAs had spent their funding, what they have achieved, and how this has varied across LAs during the first half of the programme

How LAs have approached specific challenges and problems in their local area

Quality of support and outcomes for parents who access support funded by the Local Grant

Considerations for Local Grant future activity

Evaluation next steps

Annexes