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The following is a report for the Guinness Housing Trust based on a small piece of research undertaken during 2005 by a team from Manchester Metropolitan University. Although the research period was relatively brief, the research provides some insights that may be useful for any group wishing to support parents, young people and communities. The views expressed in this report should not be taken to represent the views of the Guinness Housing Trust. Names of places and people involved in the course have been changed.
Guinness Housing Trust
Cathie Pearce
Heather Piper
John Schostak
2005
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. The research brief and focus
3. Context
4. Main issues relating to the parent course and the teenage course
5. Working with young people
Research themes:
6. Having the opportunity – choice or coercion?
7. The circuitry of positives and negatives
8. Problematic Youth/problematic families
9. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Families, parents and teenagers are frequently portrayed in the media as troublesome,
problematic and in need of guidance and support. Anti social behaviour orders
have risen dramatically over the last year for Manchester in particular, and
the contemporary image is of teenagers with hoody tops and slouching shoulders.
Such images reinforce a view of young people as alienated trouble makers who
are only interested in their own self absorbing activities and who speak in
the language of “mongs” “saddoes” and “geeks”.
Initially the “Surviving Your Teenager” parenting course was set up in response to a rise in crime on a Housing Estate. The Guinness Housing Trust, supported by SAPNA (Supporting All Parents New to Adolescence), started the course for parents in September 2002, which had been devised by a course developer. The title of the course, “Surviving Your Teenager” suggests both ‘despair’ and’ hope’ as families, parents and teenagers interface with people, policy and institutions. Many of the interviews we have undertaken reflect both the ‘despair’ and the ‘hope’ that families, parents and teenagers have in trying to work with others within communities.
The extremely short timescale of this evaluation (March 2005 – June 2005) at 4.8K has meant that the findings will inevitably be limited in their depth and scope. However, the research team have interviewed a range of key people involved with the course and although the findings may have such limitations, they give some indications of the characteristics of the course and some perspectives from the people who have experienced them. We have also drawn out some perspectives from various agencies that have had involvement with the course. Last, but certainly not least, we have spoken to some young people who have attended a simultaneous course for teenagers. We are confident that the findings convey a range of perspectives and offer some considerations for the future of the course.
2a. The research brief
The Guinness Housing Trust asked a team from Manchester Metropolitan University
to evaluate the course for parents called “Surviving Your Teenager”.
The course had been devised by XXXX and piloted at a Housing estate. Previous
evaluations had been carried out on the course materials but an evaluation was
now needed on the course itself and people’s experiences of it. The twelve-week
course is now running across the borough and on the housing estate there is
a ten-week course that has been running simultaneously with the parent’s
course for the teenagers.
Eighteen interviews were carried out with key people. These included:
Current tutors
Parents from present and previous courses
Teenagers attending the course
Member of the Local Partnership
Extended school coordinator for the Local community school
Senior Education Welfare officer
Youth workers
Housing Officer
The designer of the course
We were unable to attend any of the sessions as the course had finished before
the evaluation was able to get underway. We have however attended the last session
of the teenager course and spoken to both the youth worker and some of the teenagers
who attended.
The quotes that we use throughout this report are categorised according to agencies (AG), parents (P) and the young people (YP) involved.
2b. The research focus
The research has sought to explore the following questions: What are the experiences
of the courses? To what extent do the courses address “teenage nuisance”
and parents “ability to cope”? Are simultaneous courses valued?
What is the nature of the involvement/participation of teenagers in the community?
How do schools link with such initiatives? Is there an impact in the community?
This evaluation has largely focussed on the first three questions as the time and scope of the research has made it problematic for the latter three to be addressed in any significant way. However we are confident that our findings give some constructive and useful insights into some wider issues and implications for the course.
3. Context
The estate had originally been built by Manchester City Council in the 1960s
because the city was running out of social housing. The Guinness Housing Trust
has been managing the estate for six years since taking over from Manchester
which had taken advantage of the stock transfer system to transfer ownership
of various estates to other social landlords. The residents had been involved
in the selection process to find a new social landlord and had voted for the
Guinness Trust. At that point in time people perceived the estate to be a very
rough area with a lot of social problems and that the estate was difficult to
manage. There was a large number of empty houses boarded up, tower blocks “nine
tower blocks that were definitely associated with a lot of antisocial behaviour.
They’re very typical of young transient single people who’ve not
got much consideration for community. And the stock was run down, needed a lot
of repair work which was one of the reasons for the stock transfer process because
it’s a way of bringing investment for stock improvement into an are”
(AG). During the six years many of the tower blocks have been pulled down and
work has been undertaken to improve the area. Informal feedback suggests that
the process has led to a considerable improvement of the estate. However, the
parenting project started because there was still a perception of a lot of teenage
nuisance, “lots of kids hanging around in the evenings, being a general
nuisance, graffiti, vandalism and the statistical information about the area
and the surveys that we have say that people get bugged by criminal damage –
and if you ask them about it, it’s things like damage to cars...”
(AG). Thus the course was set up in response to the issues raised by residents.
The parents were getting criticism that they were bad parents, letting their
children run around and not caring but “in actual fact they were quite
responsible parents who were just at the end of their tether.”(AG) Thus,
they needed help to improve communication between the parents and the children.
Five courses have been undertaken with the aim of getting about 12 parents on
each course. It was, however, harder to get the young people of the parents
to attend.
4. Main issues relating to the course for parents and the course for
teenagers
The parenting course “Surviving Your Teenager” has been running
at 'X' housing estate since September 2002. It was originally devised by XXXX.
Based on some of the principles of Webster Stratton approach, the course aims
to promote positive parenting and a skill base that is focused on behaviour
management strategies. It was initially piloted at the housing estate and is
now a course that has been ‘rolled out’ across the borough and is
taught by a range of tutors that include mentors from previous courses, Education
welfare officers and colleagues from other services including health services.
Some agencies have reported some positive effects of working across professional
areas to deliver the course, e.g. “It works but I am not saying that it
always works … it has been about respecting each others expertise”
(AG). “People will now request, can I work with somebody from a different
agency for my own development” (AG)? However, the ways in which professional
agendas may influence or compromise their role as tutors has been relatively
unexplored. Similarly the course is currently funded from a range of initiatives
such as Surestart and the Children’s Fund and the varying expectations
and outcomes from various funding sources may well make a coherent philosophy
and delivery of a course problematic. Although inter – professional elements
and the funding sources are not part of this brief, we feel that they may have
direct relevance to some of the findings that we have made. Perhaps the most
significant aspect in relation to this evaluation is that the course we are
evaluating has changed over time and under different conditions and agendas.
Some of the quotes included in this report make specific reference to the changes
that have taken place whilst others have referred to the ‘course’
as they experienced it directly. The reader therefore needs to bear in mind
that ‘the course’ is not referring to one event or location but
various examples of ‘the course’ being delivered albeit mostly on
the estate.
A parent’s course for the behaviour management of younger children had been in existence for some time prior to September 2002 on the {name of}estate, but there had not been any provision for parents with teenagers. The “Surviving Your Teenager” course was initiated mostly as a response to the rising crime on the estate and a simultaneous course for teenagers was also set up, although this seems to have been less successful (in terms of recruitment and attendance) and has specific issues relating to it (see section 4 ).
Although the initial idea was for the teenage course to run simultaneously
with the parenting course, the former has been designed and run as a quite separate
thing. The teenage course has had more notable problems in recruiting and the
drop-out rate has been high especially from those teenagers whose parents were
attending the parenting course. However the course for teenagers has been able
to recruit from other sources drawing mainly from the two youth workers’
local networks. From the young people who had been recruited in this way, there
had been positive support for the course and attendance had been good. Two local
youth workers have run the teenage course and the content has been based on
the Youth Work and Transferable Skills Training Course, devised by (...), Senior
Youth Worker. Interviews with some of the young people who attended the course
suggested that the relationships between the course tutors and the young people
were very good. The young people felt listened to and they enjoyed many of the
sessions that were run. The Young people cited meeting people and finding “loads
of new friends” as the best parts (YP). They spoke particularly highly
of the sessions in which they were ‘problem solving’, ‘working
as a team’ and where they could act on their ideas. This notion of being
able to act on their ideas was critical in many of the accounts and which conveyed
the importance of active participation rather than a course that was ‘taught’
or ‘delivered’ to them. There was an emphasis on ‘doing’
things in an activity based way. However, there seems to be some scope here
to develop the course materials and sessions to include an active engagement
in community, environment and social issues as well. Initiatives in other parts
of the UK such as Envision have developed a forum for Young People in which
their voices may have a more powerful influence at local level and in which
young people are able to act upon their initiatives and ideas with the support
of key people in the community. In considering how a course for teenagers may
be developed alongside the parents course “Surviving Your Teenager”,
such an approach would be consistent with offering support based on local needs
and with a central emphasis on “communication, empathy and empowerment”,
which are key elements of the course. Key researchers on Youth Issues, Hollands
and Williamson, comment, “Young people need to be provided with a voice
which actually addresses what it means to be part of the sorts of social changes
that they experience daily”.
Recruitment for the parenting course has also run into difficulties over the
last year since the demise of the (...)Parenting Partnership which was one of
the main sources for recruitment. {name of estate}has remained a ‘favourite’
venue and is a popular choice because it is “safe to go there” is
a “good venue that is user friendly, has comfortable chairs and resources”
(AG). However as a focus for local issues, some professionals expressed their
doubts “I don’t know, part of me wonders whether we have maybe exhausted
that area [{name of estate}] as well. I would say that we have done it [the
course] about six times in {name of estate}” (AG). If the course is about
responding to local needs then such issues of saturation need to be addressed
as do the philosophy/aims of the course if they seek to create supportive and
constructive social relations between parents at local level. Some of the parents
we interviewed had travelled from the other side of the borough and indeed stated
that they preferred to be “out of the area” so that they were not
known. This perhaps points to a contradiction and dilemma in that if the course
is purportedly about creating supportive networks for parents, then geography
matters. It is also a further question, and one which we address later in this
report (see section 6) as to why some parents would want to attend anonymously,
so to speak.
Whether the course is seen as a local and community resource or a more generic resource has implications for recruitment too as one professional commented:
“One of the things that we wanted to do as well was to get the parents, who then go on themselves to support. One of the groups have done that and what we have talked about, although it has never got off the ground because of time, is actually using that group of parents now to almost be facilitators or disciples for a group of other carers. Because parents will listen to other parents and I think time is crucial and I think a really good time to get parents is in the transition from primary to secondary cos they have been taking the child to primary school every day and then they just don’t go there anymore and it is about helping parents to let go as well, so timing is quite crucial.” (AG)
The group referred to is from the course that ran previous (2003 -2004) to the current one (2004-05) which was hailed by most of those we spoke to as a success. The parents had come from a closer geographical base, mostly from the {name of estate} estate, and had created a strong social bond between themselves, still meeting long after the course had finished.
Interviews with parents suggested that, on the whole, parents valued the course. Relationships were seen as supportive, constructive and non-judgemental. “You didn’t know all the things that were there to help you. You thought you were isolated…” (P). Being connected with and knowing about the role and work of various agencies was seen as important and was cited by most parents as a positive aspect of the course. The flexibility that the course has in being able to devote one or two session to parents’ requests for information or ‘expertise’ was similarly cited as a positive aspect. “You don’t know what is there to help you but if people did realise what agencies were there to help you with your problems, you could nip them in the bud before they escalate and become big problems” (P).
5. Working with the Young people
Social work, teaching and policing all interact with young people, each with
different agendas and approaches. Co-ordination depends on good communications
and the development of goodwill. However, the strategies employed by one agency
can render the strategies of another ineffective or at least difficult to employ.
For example, an attempt to prevent young people congregating in particular areas
on the estate, merely leads to those young people moving to other parts or to
other estates. This makes it difficult for youth workers to track and contact
some young people in order to build relationships and identify activities and
courses appropriate to their needs. Schools, with their emphasis on league tables
and ‘inclusion’ typically focus their energies in other directions
than behaviour in the community.
Through co-ordination it is possible to combine the work of, say the youth community service with the interests of the Guinness Trust in identifying the key issues which residents want to be addressed. Key problems that are perceived to need addressing are the lack of confidence, low self esteem and poor communication skills, of many of the youths. Hence, courses focusing on transferable skills were typically thought to be useful to reach ‘young people who needed support in terms of self esteem’, ‘Confidence building, equal opportunities (…) and also have fun’. Activities thought appropriate included ‘group work games to get them to communicate’ because ‘a lot of the young people were very quiet’. Attempting to co-ordinate such efforts with the ‘surviving your teenager’ course was thought to be advantageous. The attempt was to try and get the children of the parents also to attend courses:
“Initially it was very much about... parents go into one room and do their parenting and their children come with us (…) and so its sort of reciprocated, the parents learn, the young people learn as well but they also get to talk about how to communicate with each other, things like that” (AG).
In the courses that ran alongside the course for the parents the young people came and ‘had fun’, ‘I’m glad to say the young people never saw themselves as being there because they were a problem. They knew that they had issues.’ These were not issues that they could articulate although later during the course they could hint at them, acknowledging for example that there were problems at home “but because it was so positive, because their parents were getting trained at the same time, they felt much better about it. But ‘it’s limited, you’ve got what, one evening a week with these young people” (AG). Although limited, informal relations developed enabling the young people to ‘talk to us on the quiet’. (AG) The issues included not only problems at home but also problems with their school, making friends, bullying and many others. It was recognised that the young people needed individual in-depth support but there was no one who could fulfil this role. In the later courses, it was difficult to get the young people to attend:
“I think part of the reason certainly some of the young people didn’t come was because I think they needed an individual to go and get them and bring them” (AG)
Ironically, perhaps, although the parents were learning, it was considered by the interviewee that many did not have such skills at the beginning of the course to enable them to ensure their children also turned up. By the end of the course, when their skills had begun to develop, it was too late. This suggests that there was a need for another role where someone would go to the home to talk with the children and young people and encourage them to come to the course.
Thus, in the later courses the young people whose parents were following the parenting course had not come and so the course ran with other children. However, the course was supported anyway. That the children and young people of the parents following the course were not involved might be thought a problem but that other children were being supported at least meant something was happening for the benefit of the estate. However, the feeling was that the course was benefiting the parents so much that perhaps the focus on their children was not so much of a problem
Research themes:
6. “Having the opportunity” ……. Choice or coercion?
Although the parent course was initially a response to the perceptions of rising crime on the estate, it was generally seen by those involved in delivering it, as a supportive measure. From interviews with those involved, tutors, mentors and some parents, it was seen as a ‘lifeline’ for some parents, a place they could go and ‘share their difficulties’, where they needn’t feel ‘as if they were the only ones’ who were experiencing difficulties. The tutors and mentors emphasised ‘positive’ behaviour (a theme which is discussed in section 7), empowerment and communication. Many of the parents attended when they had heard by word of mouth “I mean when it was the XXX parent partnership there was a lot of hand holding done, if you like and they encouraged people to come along and that kind of thing (AG). As the course has ‘grown arms and legs of its own’ there have been increasing referrals from different sources e.g. EWO’s, child and adolescent unit and such referrals transgress the voluntary/compulsory boundary. In terms of recruiting numbers onto the course, such referrals were seen as a positive effect but the extent to which such transgressions between voluntary and compulsory affect both the delivery and parents’ ‘commitment’ to the course, seem less clear. One professional commented “I think what we like to look at is a balance really cos I think that helps. I mean, in the group that we are doing at the moment, we have five parents on parenting contracts, we have three couples and two single parents and obviously for them, they do not know each others’ backgrounds” (AG). However in much the same way that teachers often try to mask their labelling of children’s ability by naming groups in a supposedly ‘neutral’ way e.g. ‘circles’, ‘hexagons’ and ‘squares’, the children inevitably know the cultural thinking that is operating. It seems that by seeking a ‘balance’ within a group of parents, there is also an underlying assumption that “if you get a group of parents who are all on parenting orders it could become very draining and I think it would quickly become a negative” (AG).
Some of the professionals we spoke to referred to the importance of working with parents and there were several anecdotes of the efforts that professionals went to in trying to support and encourage parents’ confidence and social bonding with others on the course. However there is a difficult line to tread here for professionals, between active encouragement and coercion and in some instances there may be a conflict of interest within their professional agendas. Some professionals said “if I can engage the parents…..” and hoped that they might “have the opportunity to…” attend such a course whilst simultaneously asserting that “you either work with me or I will prosecute you”, with a qualifying comment that “but we would never go down the prosecution route until we had tried and tested all the avenues and got mum’s support and the child’s support” (AG). So although there seemed to be a ‘preferred’ route there were contradictions and dilemmas around this with an understanding that “well ultimately I come from a statutory agency and ultimately the parents don’t have a choice” in some cases anyway. (AG). We say well you might as well do this voluntarily because the courts will make you do it. Isn’t it better to choose yourself” (AG)? and this is where the notion of ‘choice’ may be conflated with ‘coercion’. One professional commented that there was no stigma attached to the course, saying “I don’t think there is any stigma. I think well done, congratulations. You are recognising it before it gets to the point where you are having to do one anyway” (AG).
This professional went on to say “ we only prosecute those parents who say “on your bike” We wouldn’t prosecute where we felt we were getting support from mum or dad” (AG), but value judgements need to be made here about parents who are willing to work with agencies against those who can’t or won’t. An implicit categorising of the ‘deserving’ and the ‘non-deserving’ according to professional criteria and motives. When a professional commented “we want parents to have the opportunity to…” is this then a choice or an ultimatum? – In effect “we have offered you the opportunity” can be as much about legitimating a strategy, which covers a trail of actions in an increasing accountable world. I.e. we cannot prosecute you unless we can show that we have tried other routes first and this latter scenario seems to take the course further away from its intended aims (at least in terms of how they were expressed by the person who designed the course and those who were currently teaching on it).
However, anecdotally from a variety of sources it seems that the course offers an alternative to the route of ‘naming and shaming’ or ‘ASBOs’. In one example, the parent of a child who had been causing trouble was referred to the course. The child had been told to sign an ‘acceptable behaviour contract’ where the ‘police come in and have a chat with them about it.’ The course contributed to the mother understanding why the child was misbehaving and finally this helped the child to keep out of trouble. The child had come from a ‘broken family’, had a strict stepfather as a role model but had not been to school for months because the school had excluded him. ‘I think that the parenting course helped his mother a lot because she was in despair and ‘absolutely paranoid’ about her son having an ASBO. The boy now has a job and is counted as a ‘success story’. However, how to create more success stories is difficult. Reaching the people who need the course is not easy.
7.The circuitry of positives and negatives
“If a parent doesn’t take anything away from it [the course]
other than a feeling that I’m not a failure, then it has been successful”
(AG). The ethos running along the parenting course is one of creating a
‘positive’ climate, of turning ‘negative experiences into
positive ones’ and of replacing negative behaviours with positive behaviours.
Whilst such an approach is probably important in establishing relationships,
maintaining social bonds and helping to create a sense of active participation
rather than passivity or helplessness it may also mask, disguise and silence
parents’ experiences. As human beings we are all too aware of how our
stories and narratives sometimes sound ‘negative’ to others and
our ways of expressing can be limited and distorted if we think they are received
in such a way. Efforts and encouragement by others to be positive when the positives
are not really shared or understood, can further isolate and reinforce negative
feelings.
“what I would say, what to me is the most important thing, is through all the work that you do with parents, there is a lot of emotions there. There are a lot of emotions i