Last week the Department for Work and Pensions announced that the Race Equality Foundation had been successful in our application to secure funds to support Black, Asian and minority ethnic parents better deal with conflict. The Foundation is excited to be one of only eight organisations funded under this initiative and the only one with a specific focus on minoritised communities.
We are incredibly excited to be able to offer a range of options through this funding that build on both the learning we have accrued from our work with diverse communities through our inclusive 13 week parenting programme, ‘Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities’ as well as the online programmes we introduced during Covid.
This project on reducing conflict in families includes the following opportunities for parents:
- A 13 week group based in person Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities parenting programme with information, techniques, and practical exercises to help co-parents focus on their children and reduce the frequency and intensity of harmful conflict. This is suitable for parents living together or apart.
- A 6 week online reducing parental conflict programme for co-parents to focus on their children, identify the sources of their arguments, reduce the frequency and intensity of arguments by enhancing their constructive communication (there are two programmes available, one for co-parents living together and for co-parents who live apart)
- Workshops and support to assist parents who are living apart to work towards creating an agreed workable parenting plan avoiding the need for the involvement of the private family court process.
As with SFSC, these interventions are inclusive, they are sensitive to families’ ethnic, cultural and faith values as well as emphasising the diversity of family types children are brought up in. This means the courses are suitable for co-parents as well as other main adult carers; practical examples are given for those living in extended and blended families.
We are also able to ensure collaboration is central to this project by working in partnership with other voluntary and community sector organisations, to reach families, codesign elements of delivery as well as partner in delivering the interventions.
Importantly this project will allow us to gather evidence as to what works best to reduce parental conflict for Black, Asian and minority ethnic families across the country. We will be working with Dr Anita Mehay from City University to evaluate the project and consider how the learning from this can inform both our own work and the wider sector.
