Tackling social problems experienced by troubled families costs £17 billion per year in England and Wales1, but this fails to capture the hardship and distress of those affected by domestic violence, unemployment, truancy, substance misuse, youth crime or mental health problems. Targeted family support can make a real difference to children and young people’s futures.
Our approach
Catch22’s approach stands out from others as we offer whole-family support. Our core method of practice involves focusing on strengths and using solution-focused approaches to identify what a family’s ideal future looks like. We help the family move towards that future, identifying and developing their assets themselves.
We offer flexible, evidence-based interventions adapted to the needs of each family. We are registered and trained users of the Family Outcomes Star self assessment tool, which promotes family ownership, clear accountability, regular monitoring and review and successful exit planning. Our Family Practitioners are trained in Solution-Focused therapeutic interventions.
A service tailored for results
Our relationships with families are at the heart of our work. We offer a truly flexible service built around a holistic assessment of each family’s needs and pride ourselves on going the extra mile, persisting with a family until engagement is achieved. This includes visiting them in the evenings, early mornings and at weekends if this is what is needed.
Rapid response service
We provide intensive, short-term support to families in crisis, ‘de-escalating’ crisis situations, liaising across relevant services and delivering appropriate levels of monitoring and intervention to ensure children and young people are properly safeguarded. We provide a rapid response to emergency situations to prevent admission to local authority care, where appropriate.
Domestic abuse
Domestic abuse affects many families we support. Our services work in partnership with Family Safety Units to ensure vulnerable victims are safeguarded. We feed in to local Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) arrangements and deliver bespoke therapeutic programmes for victims and children affected by domestic abuse.
Children in Need
We engage families and provide intensive support to reduce the ‘revolving door’ of repeat referrals into social services. Our staff work in self-contained local ‘pods’ supervised by a qualified social worker; each pod contains five family practitioners working with 300 families a year. Our family practitioners are trained intensively in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and work alongside volunteer peer mentors and family role models. We help families achieve their own goals and permanently reduce their need.
Volunteers
We recruit, train, match and supervise volunteers to support individual families, including social work and counselling students who gain real-life work experience in a supported environment. We identify the needs of families, alongside the development goals of volunteers, creating matches which meet the needs of both.
‘I feel more positive and optimistic that I am a good mum. I’ve learnt strategies to deal with tricky situations and have much more patience.’ Service user
Our extended offer to families
Our diverse national network of services allows us to support families through referrals into:
- alternative education provision
- apprenticeships and employability services
- youth skills-development programmes
- missing and child sexual exploitation services
- youth justice and gangs interventions
- substance misuse services
- emotional wellbeing.
Our impact
The Department for Education’s Family Savings Calculator evidenced £6.3 million in cost savings across families we worked with in Wirral.
- 90% of young people supported by our edge of care rapid response service stayed with their family at the end of the intervention and were not placed in local authority care
We measure our impact in line with the Troubled Families framework. Working with 366 families over 12 months, we saw:
- 81% of families gained education or employment for one or more members
- 87% of families improved their living conditions where there was concern
- 87% of families reduced substance misuse where there was a problem
- 85% displayed greater communication within the family unit.
Further information
- Download our two-page overview of our family support services
- Read our two-page overview of our Young People and Famillies work
Get in touch
Contact us if you have an enquiry about Catch22’s family support services and a member of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Please note that we are unable to provide emergency support or urgent responses through this enquiry form.
1 Spending on Late Intervention: How we can do better for less, Early Intervention Foundation (February 2015)
