The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has developed a national offer of parental relationship support, including face-to-face provision, workforce training and the development of tools to support practitioners when working with families, and a central ‘what works’ infrastructure to support local delivery.
From 2015 to 2017, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) piloted the Local Family Offer trial across 12 Local Authorities (LAs) in England, aimed to build learning and best practice on how local authorities can support parental relationships.
The trial informed the development of the RPC programme, which aims to promote improved outcomes for children, with a focus on disadvantaged families. Its objectives are to:
- develop the evidence base on what works to reduce parental conflict, to inform future commissioning practice
- help local areas integrate support to reduce parental conflict in local services for families.
In early 2019, DWP offered every top-tier local authority in England the opportunity to apply for Strategic Leadership Support funding to strengthen their strategic capability to reduce parental conflict.
In 2019–2020, the practitioner training offer was developed as four standalone modules with an additional ‘Train the Trainer’ component. The training was designed to to develop the confidence, knowledge and skills of anyone working with families to reduce conflict and drive more positive outcomes for children.
In 2021, DWP offered a further Workforce Development Grant to train frontline staff to deliver specialist interventions and to build capacity across the whole system of children’s services.
For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/reducing-parental-conflict-programme-and-resources
Regional Integration Leads
The team of Regional Integration Leads (RILs) are in post to support local authorities and their partners to apply the growing evidence regarding parental conflict and provide opportunities for learning and sharing practice. The regions covered are based on the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) regions.
About EIF’s work on reducing parental conflict
EIF is working with DWP to support local areas in the Reducing Parental Conflict Programme. This includes a national programme to generate and disseminate evidence on why parental conflict matters for child outcomes, developing practical tools including a commissioner’s guide and RPC Planning Tool, assessing interventions and adding these to the flagship EIF Guidebook of programmes, and building this online hub to collate key resources.