The UNCRC and Family Support: A Case Study of the Early Intervention Support Service

ABSTRACT

In social work with children and families, the use of the articles of the UNCRC to inform our understanding of parents and parenting is often overshadowed by the necessary focus on the UNCRC articles as they pertain to the rights of children. Yet, the UNCRC is crucial to our understanding of parenthood because it both defines the role and responsibilities of parents and our obligations towards them as part of the broader endeavour to respect and ensure the realisation of the rights of children. One such obligation towards parents is the provision of appropriate parenting support services, which in keeping with the UNCRC principle of respect, are best designed with parents to ensure their relevance and suitability. However, because the social work profession has an ambiguous attitude towards parents; often viewing them as threats and risks to their children rather than as socially situated and resilient offering care in challenging situations characterised by structural disadvantage; support services are often designed for parents and directed towards parents, rather than designed with them. This lack of parental involvement in support service design raises queries as to how appropriate and relevant the support services are. Focusing on the implementation of a support service in Northern Ireland, and findings from 55 participant interviews, this paper applies the principles of the UNCRC to illustrate that by positioning parents as resourceful, by engaging them in the set up and evaluation of the service, local government and associated partners were able to meet their UNCRC obligations to provide parents with appropriate assistance. Informed by this analysis, the paper then discusses the UNCRC further, arguing that its implementation principles should underpin the design and delivery of all services for parents. Implications for social work policy and practice are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Parents
• parenting
• UNCRC
• family support
• children

Introduction

In social work with children and families, the provision of family support to parents (broadly defined as anyone who has a significant caring role for a child) is a key policy priority for governments nationally and internationally (Canavan et al., 2016; Daly et al., 2015; Frost et al., 2015). Indeed, the obligation to provide support is detailed in legal frameworks, notably the UNCRC. However, in social work, the use of the articles of the UNCRC to inform our understanding of and obligations towards parents and parenting is often overshadowed by the necessary focus on the UNCRC articles as they pertain to the rights of children. Yet, the UNCRC is crucial to our understanding of parenthood because it both defines the role and responsibilities of parents and our obligations towards them as part of the broader endeavour to ensure the realisation of the rights of children. One such obligation towards parents is the provision of appropriate parenting support services, which in keeping with the UNCRC principle of respect, are best designed with parents to ensure their relevance and suitability. However, because the social work profession has an ambiguous attitude towards parents; often viewing them as threats and risks to their children rather than as socially situated and resilient offering care in challenging situations characterised by structural disadvantage; support services are often designed for parents and directed towards parents, rather than designed with them. This lack of parental involvement in support service design raises queries as to how appropriate and relevant the support services are.

This paper focuses on the implementation of an early intervention family support service in Northern Ireland and applies the provisions of the UNCRC regarding parents and parenting, to analyse how and in what ways parents were engaged with to design a service appropriate to their needs. The main evaluation study was mixed methods and involved a quasi-experimental design, with pre and post-tests with 119 parents and is reported elsewhere (Sweet et al., 2020). It was supported by a process evaluation which involved interviews with 55 participants including 10 professionals with responsibility for managing the service; 15 professionals with responsibility for delivering the service in family homes; 12 parents who had used the service; and 18 stakeholders. Using findings from the qualitative interviews, it is argued that by engaging with parents, local government and associated partners were able to meet their UNCRC obligations to provide parents with appropriate assistance. Informed by this analysis, the paper then discusses the UNCRC further, arguing that its implementation principles should underpin the design and delivery of all social work support services for parents. Implications for social work policy and practice are also discussed. The paper begins by outlining policy and practice developments regarding family support before then considering the UNCRC and definitions of parents, parenting and parenthood. The study and the findings are subsequently discussed.

Family support: policy and practice developments

The provision of family support to parents (broadly defined as anyone who has the significant caring role) is a key policy priority for governments nationally and internationally (Canavan et al., 2016; Daly et al., 2015; Frost et al., 2015). Recognising the importance of the relationship between parent/carer well-being and longer-term child well-being outcomes, successive governments have invested in family support programmes as a means of tackling inequality, poverty and disadvantage and promoting well-being (Daly et al., 2015). Highlighting family support as “an umbrella term”, it is noted that activity encompasses “an array of interventions which vary greatly in terms of delivery, impact and outcomes” (Walsh & Doherty, 2016, p. 10). In a report for UNICEF that assessed the global context for family support policy and provision, Daly et al. (2015, p. 9) note the great variety in approaches and “mix of objectives relating to children, parents and family” as follows:

In relation to children there are four main rationales: furthering children's rights, ameliorating child-related risks, enabling positive early childhood development, and addressing anti- social and aggressive behaviour, especially on the part of adolescents. In relation to parents, rationales […] broad ranging include improving parental competence and increasing parental engagement with the development of their children. Among the family-related rationales are improving family functioning and child-rearing, preventing child–family separation, alleviating poverty, facilitating adjustment to demographic developments, and supporting the family as an institution and way of life.

Reflecting this, services can be universal (designed for the entire population of families) or targeted at certain groups (single carers, teenage parents, parents who live in areas of multiple deprivation); delivered at home or in the community; focused on specific issues including strengthening parenting skills; improving the quality of the child/parent relationship or more broadly to encompass the provision of emotional/social support; and delivered either by the State or by the voluntary sector (Canavan et al., 2016; Ivec, 2013). As noted by Ivec (2013), family support is a broad field with multitude of approaches shaped by wider considerations. These include (and are not restricted to): first, early intervention, prevention and outcomes; second, accountability, effectiveness and value for money; third, relationships and relational social work; fourth, human rights, inequality and social justice (Canavan et al., 2016; Featherstone et al., 2018; Ivec, 2013). Within this context, the relationship between the Convention on the Rights of the Child, parents and family support is less explored and yet the CRC sets out clear definitions of and obligations in respect of parenting as outlined below.

The UNCRC, parents and parenting

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UN, 1989) recognises the centrality of the parenting role and obliges State parties to support parents thus de facto enabling children to enact their own rights. In the preamble, the role of the family (encompassing all family types) is described as “the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children” (UN, 1989, p. 1). Parents (broadly defined to include all types of significant carer) are described as having “primary responsibility” for their child's development, for securing the conditions necessary for that development which includes giving advice and guidance bespoke to each child, in the exercise of their rights.

For example, under article 18 it states that “parents […] have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child” (UN, 1989, p. 5). Under article 27, the Convention outlines the right of the child to a “standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development” (UN, 1989, p. 8) and to parents (and others responsible for the child) who “have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capacities, the conditions necessary for the child's development”.

Throughout the Convention, children are referred to in the context of their relationship with their parents. For example, under article 2 (UN, 1989, p. 2), the State is obliged to respect and ensure the rights of every child “without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status”. Article 5 (UN, 1989, p. 2) states that parents are “responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention”. Other examples include children's identity where children have, under article 8, a right to “preserve their identity, including nationality, name and family relations” (UN, 1989, p. 3) and under article 19 children's right to protection from parents/carers/others who abuse them (UN, 1989, p. 5).

The Convention also acknowledges that parents may need support to meet their responsibilities and duties when it states in the preamble that “the family […] should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community” (UN, 1989, p. 1). Article 18 elaborates this obligation stating, “State parties shall render appropriate assistance to parents and legal guardians in the performance of their child rearing responsibilities and ensure the development of institutions, facilities and services for the care of children” (UN, 1989, p. 5). Article 27 further explains referring to, “material assistance and support programmes, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing” (UN, 1989, p. 8). In addition, article 23 makes specific reference to disabled children and their parents “recognising the right of the disabled child to special care” and “ensure […] assistance […] appropriate to the child's condition and to the circumstances of the parents” (UN, 1989, p. 6).

The Convention, therefore, positions parents as both duty bearers (that is their responsibilities and duties) and as rights holders (having rights to assistance and support). Parents are positioned as the vital intermediaries between governments and the children that they are duty-bound to empower, support and protect. Because children rely on their main carer, usually a parent, to enact their own rights in line with their evolving capacities, positioning parents as allies and empowering them to parent can be thus seen as a prerequisite to empowering children themselves. As outlined above, recent policy developments do recognise the central role played by parents and the requirement to support them, but it remains the case that the social work profession, tasked with delivering family support, can have ambivalent views towards parents and this impacts on the position of family support services (Mellon, 2017; Featherstone et al., 2018).

Social work, social constructions of parents/parenting and the UNCRC

Social constructions of “the parent” in social work policy and practice are ambiguous and, as highlighted in work by Featherstone et al. (2018), less attention has been paid to their rights and/or social workers obligations towards them. Child protection practice, for example, emphasises the potential danger posed to children by parents; and demands that social workers should approach families (and specifically parents) with an attitude of “respectful uncertainty”, more recently referred to as “professional curiosity” and/or “thinking the unthinkable” (Burton & Revell, 2017). This approach stems from the belief that social workers are engaged with parents who might not be truthful, transparent and/or where there is disguised compliance (that is, parents giving the impression of their co-operation with social services to avoid raising suspicions/concerns). Hence, rather than approaching parents as an ally or key intermediary in supporting the rights of the child, parents can be positioned as threats.

Because parental need is often refracted through the lens of parental risk (Featherstone et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2018; Saar-Heiman & Gupta, 2020), family support practice has often been viewed as the “poor Cinderella service” in comparison with child protection and a more rounded view of parents’ capacities has often been missing (Crossley, 2018; Dolan et al., 2018, 2020; Hayes & Spratt, 2012). The result of this is ongoing tension regarding the nature, type and amount of family support provision funded by the government (Crossley, 2018; Dolan et al., 2020; Featherstone et al., 2018). With the growing emphasis on the impact of social structural influences on parents and parenting, in particular poverty (Bywaters et al., 2016; Featherstone et al., 2018; Morris et al., 2018; Saar-Heiman & Gupta, 2020), the pendulum is swinging away from an oversimplified construction of parents as “threats” and “risks” and more towards an understanding of parents as socially and contextually situated and their parenting as resourceful and resilient by drawing on support from local informal networks in the context of structural disadvantage (Canavan et al., 2016). This repositioning brings with it greater possibilities to view parents as allies or key intermediaries in supporting the development of (and thereby the rights of) their children (Bouma et al., 2020; Featherstone et al., 2018).

As argued by Dolan et al. (2020), this type of approach is supported by the Convention which highlights that the provision of family support is vital in enabling children to enact their rights. Notably, the Convention does not construct children as fully autonomous and independent people nor that their rights are absolute, but rather, that their rights are contingent and conditional within the context of interdependent relationships and networks with family, carers, friends, school, community and wider society. The significance is that “Providing support to the family [parents] also provides the conditions for the exercise of other rights guaranteed by the Convention, with the family environment itself as the basis for exercising them” (Dolan et al., 2020, p. 17). In this, parents are positioned as the key partner allies in children enacting their own rights. Viewed in this way, appropriate (as referred to in the Convention on the Rights of the Child), family support services, should be designed, delivered and evaluated on the basis of engagement with and the incorporation of the views of parents at all stages rather than on the basis of what is done to parents (Bouma et al., 2020). One central consideration therefore, in determining whether State parties do indeed succeed in offering “appropriate assistance” to families, is the level of parental involvement and engagement with support programmes (Ivec, 2013; Weiss, 2017).

While conceptualisations of parental engagement vary they do predominately focus on enrolment, attendance, attrition and adherence (Piotrowska et al., 2017). Furthermore, the components of programmes that successfully engage parents vary, but in the main include being action focused, problem solving, offering strategies that are “specific, concrete and practical”, setting collaboratively agreed goals, and delivered by workers with a positive frame (Prinz, 2016). These conceptualisations of parental engagement are limited to engagement with the service once it is established. However, if as is indicated in the CRC, State signatories are obliged to honour parents’ rights and responsibilities and offer appropriate assistance, it is imperative that parents are engaged in the design, delivery and evaluation of such services because ultimately these form the most important determinants as to whether “appropriate assistance” is being offered to them. Therefore, in this paper parental engagement is conceptualised using a more participatory approach defined as creating the conditions for involvement, degree of influence over the design and delivery, and views on the impact of the service. From this the paper uses findings from a case study concerning the design, delivery and evaluation of the Early Intervention Support Service to illustrate how and in what ways parents were engaged with to ensure that the local government met its obligations to provide parents with appropriate assistance. The service is outlined next.

The study: the Early Intervention Support Service

The Early Intervention Support Service (EISS) was established in Northern Ireland under the auspices of the Early Intervention Transformation Programme (EITP). This is a social innovation programme jointly funded by various government departments and The Atlantic Philanthropies with the broad aim of improving outcomes for children and young people in Northern Ireland through establishing a range of early intervention approaches. The Early Intervention Support Service is an integrated family support model (DHSSPSNI, 2016) aiming to support and empower families with emerging needs by intervening in a timely and time-limited manner (12 weeks maximum) with evidence-informed services before difficulties become intractable. Each of the five services are mapped to geographical areas identified and demarked by the existence of ward-based indicators of high multiple deprivation. Overall multiple deprivation is calculated using the seven domains of income, employment, health, access to education, access to services, living environment and crime and disorder (NISRA, 2017). Each support service has a service manager, 2.5 therapeutic workers, 1 full-time practical support worker and administrative support. Families requiring additional support with practical, family or child related issues are referred to the service and assigned a support worker, within 10 days, who works with the family using a range of evidence-based interventions to prevent or reduce the escalation of these issues in a timely manner.

The research design and ethical approvals

The authors were commissioned to evaluate the service with the main aim of exploring whether the Early Intervention Support Service (EISS) was effective in improving parenting skills and, through this, improving outcomes for children. Appropriate ethical approval was secured via the Office for Research Ethics Committees Northern Ireland, REC ref. 17/NI/0007. A mixed methods approach was used involving a quasi-experimental design and pre and post-tests with 80 parents from across Northern Ireland. The main study design and the quantitative findings are published in detail elsewhere (Sweet et al., 2020).

The main study was accompanied by a process evaluation which involved 55 interviews with 10 professionals with responsibility for managing the service; 15 professionals with responsibility for delivering the service in family homes; 12 parents who had used the service; and 18 stakeholders. The parents involved in the qualitative interviews were those involved in the quasi-experimental aspect of the study, who then expressed a willingness to be involved in this aspect of the study. The professionals and stakeholders were identified by their role in the service. The qualitative interviews were recorded electronically, transcribed before being deleted with participants being assigned pseudonyms so they could not be identified. The anonymised interviews were stored on a secure SharePoint site and analysed in NVivo 11 using a thematic coding framework. This involved each member of the team reading the individual interviews and making a note of recurring themes. The research team met to agree on a series of themes which were to be used when coding the data in NVivo. Once the codes were agreed by the team the interviews were re-read and coded in NVivo.

Coding was conducted by a research assistant with inter-rater reliability checks conducted by a second research assistant and the principal investigator. The coding framework consisted of unpicking processes, decisions and guiding principles underpinning the involvement and inclusion of parents in the design, delivery, and experience of the service. If additional codes emerged throughout the second reading, they were agreed by team consensus before being included.

Findings

This paper focuses on findings from the qualitative process evaluation to illustrate how and in what ways parents were engaged to facilitate the development of an appropriate family support service for parents. Findings are considered next under three main headings: creating the conditions to support parental involvement in service development; degree and type of influence over the service design and delivery; and parental experiences/views of the service received. These categories are used to determine how far and in what ways, reflecting the rubric of the CRC, an appropriate support service was offered to parents.

Creating the conditions to support parental engagement in the design of the support service

The business case for the Early Intervention Support Service was premised upon an extensive period of consultation with parents, community groups, NGO's and the statutory sector. In addition to a National Children's Bureau (NCB, 2014) commissioned review of evidence, consultation workshops were held throughout Northern Ireland to collect feedback from parents, the statutory, community and voluntary sectors on what the service could look like. The consultation process took account of parental needs and fears to create the optimal conditions for maximising engagement and ensuring that parents had the opportunity to exercise their parental responsibility in the service design. For example, sessions were run by workers in Parenting NI, a voluntary support and counselling service. This mitigated against the fear and suspicion held by some parents (further explored below) that if they shared their parenting needs with statutory children's agencies there could be negative consequences for them and their children in the form of unwelcome statutory social work involvement, for example. Furthermore, to accommodate working parents, those with family commitments and those who did not feel comfortable meeting in venues outside of their local communities, consultation sessions were held in familiar local venues and at times indicated as suitable by parents.

Findings from the consultation process involving seven focus groups with 60 parents (59 female and 1 male) highlighted that parents: did not know where to go to access support; held a fear of being stigmatised if they said they were not coping; and that they were concerned about service fragmentation and gaps in services for some groups of families and children, namely those with a disability and those from minority ethnic groups, and for those in rural areas(Parenting NI, 2014, p. 66). Parents recommended that firstly efforts needed to be made by service providers to increase publicity regarding available services and secondly that service delivery needed to address the issue of stigma commonly associated with statutory service provision. The consultation exercise also highlighted that parents were positive about the model of the proposed Early Intervention Support Service.

Degree and type of influence over the service design and delivery

As noted earlier, article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child places a legal obligation on State signatories, to provide appropriate assistance to parents/legal guardians in the performance of their child rearing responsibilities which can include “material assistance and support programmes” (article 27, CRC). In applying these principles, the question is therefore how far and in what ways findings from the parental consultation exercise shaped and informed the design and delivery of the EISS, the logic being that the greater the degree of influence, the more likely the service would be experienced by parents as an appropriate service for their needs.

Findings from the research study revealed that, once set up, and taking on board the recommendations made by parents regarding accessibility, the support service workers took part in a multitude of local, grass roots events, reaching out in ways and through means suitable to local communities rather than expecting parents to find their way to them, as noted in the indicative quotes from two EISS workers below:

We’d go to fairs. […] We’ve made appointments and gone to primary schools, secondary schools. We linked in with the pastoral care for all the secondary schools. We are continuously, honestly … Went to every single event that we can.

We were attending local community events and bringing a stand out and saying who we were and what we do, and information packs sent out round […] to the GPs and to community paediatrics team meetings or coffee mornings and letting them know who we are and bringing information with us.

In addressing parental fears, it appears from the findings of the evaluation, that the Early Intervention Support Service achieved its aim of being non-stigmatising in three main aspects: the qualifications of the workforce; the offer of a voluntary, timely and time-limited service; and a focus on the development of meaningful reciprocal relationships between workers, families and children. With regards to the qualifications of the workforce, support workers in the EISS were employed from a variety of backgrounds with no requirement to be a qualified social worker. Diversity in employment history was an important aspect in terms of establishing the credibility and acceptability of the project workers within communities particularly where one parent noted there had been prior negative experiences of statutory social work involvement.

I said I was very apprehensive about … like, we’re just normal people, you know, I don't want Social Services involved in our lives you know, I … I really was very apprehensive about them coming in to work with me, because I thought that I was really being judged, or questioned.

Regarding the timeliness and duration of the service (the service being offered quickly following initial referral and being of short duration with a maximum input of 12 weeks); two parents said that:

I think it was pitched just right and didn't go on for too long either.

I really, really can't fault this service at all like in terms of coming down to the house, she does it by just herself. She also – you know, she made a promise to be there and, you know, just her, no one else unless it was something major.

Lastly and with regards to the development of meaningful relationships, parents themselves (and, as noted above, the literature) indicated that this is one of the most important elements in determining the overall experience of a service (NCB, 2014; Sneddon et al., 2014) and is further explored next. In a review of evidence regarding parental engagement, the National Children's Bureau (NCB, 2014) found that key workers who possessed a combination of the right attitude, skills base and tools (NCB, 2014) were most likely to effectively secure parental engagement. Some of these themes were reflected in parents own comments regarding their experiences of the support service.

Parental views and experiences of the service

Regarding the attitude of the EISS workers, for example, all parents valued support workers’ non-judgemental approach as indicated in one parent’s interview excerpt below:

It was nice, you didn't feel like you were being judged or anything like that, she just genuinely … you know, she was just a genuinely nice girl who was there to help, and I didn't feel anything other than that, you know, I didn't feel like she was a professional coming out to try and mark us and catch us out at all, you know, she was there definitely to support us in any way she could, which was great.

Good listening skills were also highly valued by all parents and contributed towards a good working relationship because, as noted in the quote below from one parent, they felt valued and involved:

She was very good at listening to what [name] was like as a child, you know, because they’re all individual and what would work for him and not just like a one fits all, she was brilliant that way.

With regards to skills base, all parents valued the efforts of support workers who responded quickly and flexibly, as noted in the indicative quote from one parent below:

Yes, it was really quick too, I was surprised because I thought, you know, you could be waiting months in these things, but I think that it was like the week after the service had rang me to confirm that there was an appointment being booked and it was being organised.

Another skill appreciated by all parents was not just the support workers time and skill in establishing meaningful relationships with them, but also with their children. Sometimes, for example, as noted by the parents in their comments below, the support worker stayed in the house or, if appropriate, took the child or parent out somewhere different e.g. a coffee shop or bowling alley. This one-on-one contact was appreciated as highlighted in the quote from one parent below:

It was always just somewhere where they were surrounded by people, so he was still, you know, comfortable. It wasn't just one-to-one where they stuck in an office or a room or something and he might have felt agitated or anything.

Concurrent with workers’ efforts to establish relationships with their children, parents also appreciated the direct support they received in relation to parenting. Parents specifically noted the high levels of emotional support, practical support, ideas for change and signposting on to other services that they received from support workers as noted in one parent interview excerpt below:

She did some things about behaviour. We have like the traffic light system, you know, with the warning, second warning, final warning and then obviously, the punishment, so we’ve got those that we’re using as well. We did games [… .]

In thinking further about the reasons why parents rated their involvement with EISS workers positively in comparison with their reported views of involvement with statutory social workers which were characterised by a lack of trust and fear, one contributory factor appears to be that EISS workers actively sought to engage parents in all stages of their involvement, were respectful towards the parents role, listened to their concerns and acted on these. This compares with parental experiences of statutory social work where a review of existing research indicates that parents often feel that they are not always involved and that their perceptions of their problems and how and in what ways they would like to address them are not listened to or acted upon (Mellon, 2017).

The impacts of the service

Parents were encouraged, at different points in their receipt of the service, to complete an interactive visual tool, known as the Outcomes Star, with their worker (as reported elsewhere Sweet et al., 2020). In addition, parents were interviewed regarding their views on their children's progress. Some parents spoke of improvements in their children's behaviour and wellbeing following the implementation of parenting tips given by the support workers during the time of their involvement, as noted in the indicative quotes from two parents below:

I think it has just given him a bit of confidence again. That we are not … obviously sometimes I think kids think that parents just want to make them do – make them go here, make them do this, and now he has realised that all we want is the best for him. And I think she has helped him realise that.

We have tried the charts before, not just about the toileting, we used the charts for different things, and it's never been very successful. I don't know whether it's an age thing or the fact that it was being done by someone else but he just seems a lot more eager to fill them, which is brilliant.

However, it is important to qualify parental views on improvements in their children’s behaviour and well-being because the service intervention was of limited duration (12 weeks), the study did not involve the collation of data over time to track sustained changes in children’s wellbeing, and some parents, as noted in the quote from one parent below, wished for a longer intervention period:

I would like to have it longer, definitely. I definitely wish I could say that some kids need it longer than others. I understand that for some kids, three months is plenty of time, but for [name of child], a lot of his issues are not resolved, and if she finishes they probably won't be.

Furthermore, two parents interviewed said that the weekly contact was very or too demanding and therefore experienced as less beneficial, as illustrated in the quotes below:

It was hard to fit in because it was another appointment, you know, every week […] it was like oh God I have this today but apart from that once [..] I absolutely loved it, you know, it was great to have.

I don't know if I could have done this like once every fortnight. Because, towards the end, there were things going on [making it hard to fit in a weekly visit].

Given these limitations, it is hard to be definitive about the nature, quality and duration of any changes experienced.

Discussion

Using the Early Intervention Support Service as an example, the paper has illustrated the relevance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the design, delivery and evaluation of family support services in a number of ways. First, it has illustrated how, in the design of the service, parents were engaged with as people with primary responsibility for the care of their children. In consulting with them, no judgement was made about the quality of parenting they offered, but rather their role as primary carers was respected and they were engaged with in that capacity. Secondly, it has shown that appropriate family support services are likely to be better designed with the input of parents and that the best indication as to whether the service was appropriate or not, came from data exploring parental and child experiences of the service. The feedback by the majority of recipients was positive with the service meeting parenting needs, and in turn improving some aspects of some children's wellbeing. Having said this, the limitations of the service are clear in that for some parents, a short 12-week service was not enough to deal with more chronic issues experienced by them and their children. Furthermore, the limitations of the study are obvious in that it relies on a small sample from one service, developed in one region and there is no longitudinal data to track change over time. As such it is therefore not possible to make broad generalisations but rather to offer some thoughts regarding the application of the provisions of the UNCRC, as they concern parents and parenting, to the development of family support services.

Within this context, three areas are worthy of further consideration. First, it is argued that the application of the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the area of family support provides a holistic approach that acknowledges (a) the role and responsibilities of parents in respect of their children, (b) the right of parents to support services, (c) the obligation of State signatories to honour parental rights to support services, and (d) the significance of services in helping parents care for children and ensure that their children are able to exercise their own rights. This is in keeping with similar work in this area (Canavan et al., 2016; Pinkerton et al., 2019; Dolan et al., 2020).

The challenge to policy makers and social work practitioners is that such as approach to service design, delivery and evaluation relies on constructions of parents and parenthood that are complex, contingent, nuanced and even contradictory. On the one hand, in particular in the field of child protection, parents are often primarily portrayed as threats and risks with failings primarily perceived as resting with individual failings, and yet, this approach which involves engaging with the capacities of parents to develop new appropriate support services suggests that parents and their parenting need to be understood and approached differently (Featherstone et al., 2018). To understand parents and parenting differently and engage them more consistently in service design requires new frameworks and reflective spaces in which their resiliency and resourcefulness are drawn upon (Canavan et al., 2016; Dolan et al., 2020). The co-design and co-production of family support services in line with the UNCRC principles is worthy of further discussion and reflection going forward given the limited research base to date.

Secondly, it is sometimes the case that social workers perceive children's rights as separate from parents and parents’ rights. However, the principles contained in the Convention highlight the contextual, contingent nature of rights (Dolan et al., 2020) and that a nuanced approach is needed reflecting an ecological model in which children and their rights exist in and through relationships with others, specifically their parents/main carers. To further elucidate this, the concept of relational autonomy (Christman, 2004; Herring, 2014) is useful for the development of rights reflecting family support policy and practice. Christman (2004, p. 117), explains that as a reaction to “hyper-individualism”, relational autonomy “is the label that has been given to an alternative conception of what it means to be a free, self-governing agent [to one] who is also socially constituted and who defines (their) basic value commitments in terms of interpersonal relations and mutual dependencies”. In relation to the realisation of rights for individual children therefore, parents are key and the provision of family support a core activity, since rights are relational and children rely on a certain set of social conditions (relationships and networks) that enable them to exercise their rights to choice and autonomy (Christman, 2004).

Third, a further useful area for consideration within social work policy and practice is that the Convention on the Rights of the Child should inform the development a set of indicators to ensure that the legally binding obligations towards parents, as set out in the CRC, are implemented. In this regard, General Comment No. 5 (UN, 2003) provides detailed guidance on the general measures of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Of specific importance regarding the provision of family support services is the involvement of parents in all aspects of the design, development and delivery of services (as outlined above) as well as the creation of a national database that includes information on the socio-economic backgrounds of families and children denoted as “in need” of support services. This requirement is stressed in General Comment No. 5 (UN, 2003, Part 5, para 48, p. 11).

In concluding, it is important to note that the need for family support has increased given the social crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This has exacerbated existing inequalities and has drawn attention to the urgent need to provide more support to parents (whose livelihoods, health and wellbeing have been impacted), and to children, the exercise of whose own rights has also been adversely impacted. The application of the principles contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the development of new family support services could usefully underpin future developments to ensure the protection and promotion of the rights of parents and their children.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Atlantic Philanthropies [grant number (COM/5284/16)]; Public Health Agency [grant number (COM/5284/16)].

Notes on contributors

Karen Winter

Karen Winter, a Professor of Children's Social Care, publishes in the area of social work with children and young people. Among her recent publications are Winter, K., Morrison, F., Cree, V., Ruch, G., Hadfield, M., & Hallett, S. (2019). Emotional labour in social workers' encounters with children and their families. The British Journal of Social Work, 49(1), 217–233; Morrison, F., Cree, V., Ruch, G., Winter, K.M., Hadfield, M., & Hallett, S. (2019). Containment: Exploring the concept of agency in children's statutory encounters with social workers. Childhood, 26(1), 98–112.

Paul Connolly

Paul Connolly is a professor in education and Dean of AHSS at Ulster University. His research interests include trials in education, and early childhood and peacebuilding. His most recent publications include Connolly, P., Keenan, C., & Urbanska, K. (2018). The trials of evidence-based practice in education: A systematic review of randomised controlled trials in education research 1980–2016. Educational Research, 60(3), 276–291; Dunne, L., Brennan-Wilson, A., Craig, N., Miller, S., Connolly, P., Leckman, J., Aber, J.L., Yoshikawa, H., Fitzpatrick, S., Pham, P., & Vinck, P. (2021). Promoting social cohesion and peacebuilding through investment in early childhood development programs. In Transitioning to peace (pp. 305–322). Springer.

Sharon Millen

Sharon Millen is a research assistant in education, social sciences and social work and publishes in family support, child welfare and childhood outcomes. Her most recent publication is Macdonald, G., Alderdice, F., Clarke, M., Perra, O., Lynn, F., McShane, T., & Millen, S. (2018). Right from the start: protocol for a pilot study for a randomised trial of the New Baby Programme for improving outcomes for children born to socially vulnerable mothers. Pilot and feasibility studies, 4(1), 1–14.

Daryl Sweet

Daryl Sweet is a research assistant in psychology and publishes in the areas of mental health and family support. His most recent publications include Degnan, A., Berry, K., Sweet, D., Abel, K., Crossley, N., & Edge, D. (2018). Social networks and symptomatic and functional outcomes in schizophrenia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 53(9), 73–888; Sweet, D., Byng, R., Webber, M., Enki, D.G., Porter, I., Larsen, J., Huxley, P., & Pinfold, V. (2018). Personal well-being networks, social capital, and severe mental illness: exploratory study. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 212(5), 308–317.