Break the cycle

Just three years ago Shereen Dann was, in her own words, "a quivering jelly in the corner of a room". A single mother with five sons, she no longer felt in control of her own children, and her middle son, Jack, was in constant trouble with the police. Without intervention, she says, she could have ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Dann was lucky. Her life changed when she was visited by a social worker from the children's charity Barnardo's as part of Family Intervention Project (Fip). Launched by the government in 2006, Fips enable local authorities – often taking a multi-agency approach – to help troubled families tackle problems such as truancy and drug addiction, with the aim of preventing criminal offending later on. Practitioners are guided by a detailed toolkit that provides step-by-step guidance and examples of best practice for establishing and carrying out a project. More funding The results from the first cohort to complete Fips (699 families) have been so encouraging – with rates of truancy, exclusion and bad behaviour at school, for example, reduced from 56% to 25% – that the government has now announced an extra £2.6m worth of funding. Enver Solomon, assistant director of policy at Barnardo's, who deliver Fips on behalf of some local authorities, says many Fip families have previously sought help unsuccessfully: "Often these families have had bad experiences working with statutory services. Because we're separate from those services, we are more able to build a relationship of trust." Dann's story is an example of what can be achieved. Her husband, the father of her two youngest children, used to beat her three eldest children with belts and walking sticks. His gambling habit meant the family constantly defaulted on rent payments and had to move from one house to another. By the time Dann left him, moving from her native Darlington in the north-east to Milton Keynes, Jack was already causing trouble: "The children have had it really hard. It affects everybody in different ways, and Jack's way was to go off the rails. I had him arrested when he was 10 because he beat me up, and I couldn't move my neck or my back. He's a big lad. I didn't like to do it but if I hadn't, he'd have just carried on." After Jack's arrest, he was taken into care for six months. Having fought successfully to get him out of care, Dann moved the family to Gateshead, mainly to enable her elder children to see their natural father. Jack, who initially seemed to be calming down, fell in with a bad crowd, and started playing truant and going missing. Dann begged social services for help but none was forthcoming. By this time, says Dann, the family had fallen apart: "It was like we were all lodgers in the same house. There were no rules because the children wouldn't abide by them, so I used to sit back and let them do what they wanted." But when Jack was arrested for stealing, Dann was referred to Fip. When she was introduced to Norma Keery, her Barnardo's keyworker, the pair clicked straight away. Instead of telling her what to do, she says, Keery asked questions like: "Where do you want to be? How can we help you get to where you want to be?" There was "no judging, no dictating," Dann says, adding: "My kids don't think of Norma as a social worker. They think of her as a friend." With Keery's help, Dann created order at home by setting clear rules, with consequences for breaking them, such as an early bedtime or pocket money being docked. Dann also started attending an "absolutely fantastic" family nurturing group – a supportive group of 10 parents who had been through similar problems. Within two years of the initial contact from Fip, Dann and her family were back on track: "Now there's very rarely any shouting in the house – you can sit down and have a conversation. I'm Mum now – I'm not sitting in a corner crying all the time like I used to be." The two youngest boys are doing well in school ("AB students," says Dann), and Jack, now 15, attends a charity called Fairbridge that helps young people get back into education or training. Dann also volunteers with Fip herself, offering support to other families. Keery's help, she says, has changed the lives of the whole family for the better: "If you come to our house now, it's a proper home – it's not a mishmash of different people living under the same roof."