Reducing Parental Conflict: the impact on local services
Impact of parental conflict on local services, including education, health and social care, court systems, and drug and alcohol services.
Applies to England
The impact of parental conflict on children can put an increased pressure on public services, such as education, health and social care, the courts, and drug and alcohol services.
Early intervention to reduce parental conflict could help to ease some of this pressure. It has the potential to improve outcomes across a range of measures, such as educational attainment and improved mental health.
Education
Reducing parental conflict is relevant for education services because children experiencing parental conflict are:
- less likely to come to school ready to learn
- more likely to have poor sleep which affects their attention and concentration
- more likely to have emotional and behavioural problems, including social and interpersonal difficulties with their peers
School staff members are often the first professionals to see the signs that children are being affected by damaging conflict at home.
How local services can work with educational settings to address parental conflict
There are policies and initiatives in place to provide support to children in education settings such as Operation Encompass and Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs).
Operation Encompass is a police and education early information sharing partnership enabling schools to offer immediate support for children and young people experiencing domestic abuse. It is important to ensure police and schools understand how to distinguish between domestic abuse and parental conflict and include a response to parental conflict as part of the information sharing within this operation.
MHSTs is a National Health Service (NHS) initiative, jointly funded by the Department for Education (DfE), to train mental health professionals to provide direct support to children in schools. The teams link with local children and young people’s mental health services and are supervised by NHS staff. The initiative supports an integrated approach to Reducing Parental Conflict, making parental conflict training available for Education Mental Health Professionals and also links to local referral pathways.
Key reports
Find out more about why reducing the impact of parental conflict matters for schools.
Health and social care
There is evidence that relationship distress can:
- place an increased strain on couples who are parents for the first time
- affect adult mental health
- impact on paternal post-natal mental health
- affect child and adolescent mental health
- affect children’s physical health
Find out more about why reducing parental conflict matters for the NHS.
Key reports
- Tavistock Relationships: Relationships and public health briefing – policy briefing to show why public health commissioning must prioritise couple relationships to improve the nation’s health and well-being
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House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee: First 1000 days of life:
- outlines critical evidence about babies’ brain and body development during the first 1,001 days and their life chances
- asks services to take note of this evidence
- asks government to consider the needs of most vulnerable with 6 key principles
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Foundations: Adverse childhood experiences – What we know, what we don’t know, what should happen next:
- parental conflict is or could be an adverse childhood experience both through ‘loss’ of a parent and through the potential damaging harm of frequent and unresolved conflict
- data on page 54 of the Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families Analysis and Research Pack shows that 32% of children no longer see non-resident parents after separation
- Helping kids and families living with alcohol-dependent parents - independent evaluation finds scheme helped improve wellbeing, relationships and life satisfaction of children affected by parental alcohol use and conflict
Family courts
An analysis conducted by Cafcass on effective co-parenting in the modern age revealed separated families are increasingly using the courts to resolve disputes about child arrangements. The Family Court is seeing a rise in the number of these cases each year.
Prioritising reducing parental conflict in local services can help to reduce the:
- number of families resorting to the courts to resolve their disputes
- number of applications to Family Courts
- length of time it takes for Family Court hearings to complete
Key reports
- Family Solutions Group, sub-group of Private Law Working Group Report – report which reframes support for families following parental separation
- Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases – consultation on how the family courts protect children and parents in private law children cases concerning domestic abuse and other serious offences
Local government
Local government leaders and commissioners have a key role in reducing the impact of parental conflict on children. They can integrate RPC activities in the wider system of family support for health and wellbeing, and work with their partners in the NHS, schools, the police and the voluntary sector.
This can include:
- recognising parental conflict within wider service review
- aligning and pooling resources with partners
- investing in specialist interventions for reducing parental conflict
- building workforce confidence and capability to identify and act on conflict between parents
Drug and alcohol services
Drug and alcohol misuse is associated with increased emotional and behavioural problems in children. Read about how families can be affected by parental alcohol misuse.
Find out about the Public Health England (PHE) Innovation Fund to help improve the lives of adults and children impacted by alcohol.
DWP worked on the DHSC managed ‘Children of Alcohol Dependent Parents Programme’, to consider parental conflict in the context of alcohol dependency. Find out more at Reducing Parental Conflict: innovative projects delivered to support families in conflict