Family Help Practitioner Development Programme

Delivering Families First requires more than new structures, pathways and roles. It requires practitioners with the skills, confidence and professional judgement to work differently with children and families across the Family Help continuum.

✔ Specifically designed around Families First and current national expectations
✔ Practical, skills-based and focused on day-to-day practice
✔ Tailored to your local Family Help model, pathways and workforce
✔ Includes a Family Help practice capability self-assessment and development planning

Our Family Help Practitioner Development Programme is a practical four-day programme designed to develop the capabilities practitioners need to build purposeful relationships, understand children and families, make sound professional judgements, develop effective plans and interventions, work confidently across professional boundaries and support change that lasts.

The programme reflects the Families First Partnership Programme and the Child and Family Social Worker Early Career Standards, which DfE has confirmed align closely with expectations for practice across the Family Help continuum.

Every programme is tailored to your local Family Help model and practice framework, ensuring learning is relevant and can be applied directly in practice.

A development programme

Practitioners begin the programme with a Family Help practice capability self-assessment, helping them identify existing strengths and areas for development.

Across the four days, participants apply learning to realistic Family Help situations, reflect on their own practice and identify opportunities to take learning back into the workplace and supervision.

At the end of the programme, practitioners revisit their capability assessment and identify priorities for their continuing professional development.

Who is the programme for?

The programme is suitable for practitioners delivering Family Help, including:

• Family Help Lead Practitioners, including alternatively qualified practitioners;
• Family Help Practitioners and Family Support Workers; and
• practitioners from partner agencies working within or alongside multi-disciplinary Family Help teams.

It can also support practitioners moving into new Family Help roles as part of local implementation of Families First.

What does the programme cover?

Day 1 – Purposeful Relationships and Effective Family Help Practice
Building purposeful relationships with children and families through relationship-based, strengths-based and whole-family practice, while developing professional curiosity, confidence and judgement.

Day 2 – Child-Centred, Whole-Family Assessment and Analysis
Developing effective whole-family assessment and analysis that keeps the child’s lived experience central and considers strengths, needs, risk, protective factors and family networks.

Day 3 – Purposeful Planning, Intervention and Integrated Family Help
Turning assessment into purposeful plans and interventions, working with family networks and collaborating effectively across multi-disciplinary Family Help teams.

Day 4 – Creating Sustainable Change, Reviewing Impact and Ending Well
Supporting families to make and sustain change, reviewing impact, responding when progress stalls, building family capability and planning safe, positive endings.

What will practitioners gain?

By the end of the programme, practitioners will be better equipped to:

• build purposeful, trusting relationships and keep the child’s lived experience central;
• undertake effective whole-family assessment and make confident professional judgements;
• develop purposeful plans and interventions focused on meaningful change;
• work effectively with family networks and multi-disciplinary Family Help teams;
• recognise changing need, risk and complexity and respond appropriately; and
• support sustainable change, build family capability and review whether support is making a difference.
• use reflection, supervision and continuing professional development to strengthen their practice.