About
Welcome to supporting parents who have experienced recurrent care proceedings
This website has been developed to bring together and to share more widely materials that will be relevant to anyone working with parents who have had children removed from their care through care proceedings and to provide a place to share this learning more widely.
Following an initial set of care proceedings mother’s have a one in four chance of reappearing before the family court within seven years. Many fathers are also caught up in multiple proceedings, sometimes with the same partner, sometimes with a different partner.
On this website we use the term parents who have experienced recurrent care proceedings to describe parents who have had experience of one or more sets of care proceedings, as a result of which their children have been placed outside of their own care.
These parents are likely to have experienced significant and multiple adverse experiences in their own childhood (ACEs), see for example, Felitti V (2002) The Relation Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead, and have continued to face trauma and difficulties as adults, compounded by the trauma of having their children taken away. The impact of such trauma and adversity often also leads to people falling through the nets of support and being seen as ‘hard to reach’ or ‘difficult to engage’. As a result, people can miss out on support services for children and families, on treatment services for substance misuse, on mental health services, attention to physical health problems, and also attention to contraception and sexual health.
There is growing realisation that ‘lack of engagement' is more a question of the need to develop services and practitioners about how they can reach out and engage with people in trauma-informed ways.
How this website was developed
This website has been developed to bring together research, practice knowledge and lived experience for all those who would like to better understand the issues facing parents and to ensure that they are better supported to access the services they need.
Supporting Parents Community of Practice
If you are working in a service set up to provide support for parents who have experienced recurrent care proceedings, or are interested in setting up such a service, we would encourage you to join the online Community of Practice, which meets on Microsoft Teams and provides a forum for discussion, peer support, sharing resources and training for all those working in this area. If you would like more information about the Community of Practice please contact us.
References
- Broadhurst K, Mason C, Bedston S, et al. (2017). Vulnerable Birth Mothers and Recurrent Care Proceedings: Main Findings. London: Nuffield Foundation.
- Broadhurst K, et al. (2015). Connecting Events in Time to Identify a Hidden Population: Birth Mothers and Their Children in Recurrent Care Proceedings in England.
- Alrouh B, Broadhurst K and Cusworth L. (2020). Women in Recurrent Care Proceedings in Wales: a first benchmarking report. London: Nuffield Foundation.
- Philip G et al. (2021). ‘Up Against It’ Understanding Fathers’ Repeat Appearance in Local Authority Care Proceedings. Research Briefing. Nuffield Foundation.
