Shropshire Early Help – Practitioner Programme

We delivered a face to face four-day program to a range of staff providing whole family support both in schools and the local authority Early Help remit. 

The training programme aims were to link knowledge to direct practice and was mapped to area specific criteria and needs, using your internal forms and processes. The sessions focus on upskilling staff to deliver practical support to a range of clients, remaining outcome focused and understanding underlying issues to support.

The course content included

1) Effective Engagement and Communication

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the values and principles that underpin work with children and families
• Be able to build effective relationships considering personal relationships within families and why they impact on family function
• Consider professional boundaries
• Ability to address barriers to involvement
• Understand worker resilience and self-management
• Be able to reflect on own practice 

2) Skills to complete Family and individual Assessments, Tools and Planning

Learning outcomes

• Understand the process of an effective whole family assessment
• Consider strengths-based and child-centred approaches
• Understand why it is important to understand child development
• Understand how to use assessment tools to identify risk and assess needs of families
• Ability to create a family plan based on the assessment of needs

3) Supporting individuals and families towards independence and self-reliance

Learning outcomes

• Understand the importance of supporting individuals and families towards independence and self-reliance
• Understand the reasons behind lack of opportunities such as education, learning, training and employment in individuals and families
• Ability to address barriers to education, learning, training and employment within families 

Staff feedback included: 

I have really enjoyed this course. It was engaging, purposeful & one of the most enabling courses to reflect & be honest on. You created a safe & open space that made it extremely easy to learn by osmosis from the group as well as the course content. Thank you! 

Extremely useful, has improved my practice enormously