As we come to the end of 2024, the SFSC team has been reflecting on some of the amazing work we have been doing this year.
Our work around reducing parental conflict and supporting healthy relationships, including learning a huge amount about online delivery and how we can improve parent’s experience of this is something we are incredibly proud of.
Our fabulous SFSC delivery projects continue to help us develop good practice. We have demonstrated how well SFSC can support parents of young children through Family Hubs as has been spotlighting in Barking and Dagenham, as well as highlighting the value of SFSC with parents of teen children in Lambeth with our work with Safer Lambeth. And with the support of the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) and partners in Hackney, Southwark and Lambeth, we have learnt more about how SFSC can support parents of young people at risk of violence and offending. We are particularly pleased with our evening SFSC offer to fathers, accessible to any male parent or carer, at no cost from any part of London. The success of this programme highlights how Black, Asian, and minoritised men are dedicated to becoming even better fathers, challenging the negative stereotypes often associated with them.
We have also been working on enhancements to SFSC curriculums led by Bernadette Rhoden with our work with Mums United in Sheffield to deliver SFSC based sessions to young people; development of a programme supplement to support parents of neurodiverse children, and adjustments to the programme for delivery to young fathers in prison. Alongside this we are doing a long term update to all the SFSC materials including the session slides.
Whilst looking back is heartening and allows us to praise our wonderful team of staff and facilitators, aswell as give thanks to all the voluntary sector partners and statutory agencies that are such wonderful advocates for all things SFSC. This is also obviously a time for us to think ahead about the plans and opportunities for 2025.
Next year we plan to begin sharing our updated manuals and slides for delivery. We hope to streamline certificate requests and offer better online access to resources. We will also launch our positive photo library with images of diverse families that will improve the way we advertise and disseminate our SFSC work and hope that many of you will use this in your work.
We expect to publish lots of new research in 2025 including an evaluation of the work we have been doing on reducing parental conflict; outcomes of the Fathers Together study on young men in prison, and most exciting, the report of the Together Study, our five year evaluation of SFSC led by UCL. We also hope that work will start on a large impact study supported by YEF where we will work with more youth offending partners to build the evidence around SFSC with young people at risk.
We will begin piloting both SFSC for young fathers in prison with the support of UCL and City Universities, as well as our new supplement on SFSC and neurodiversity. We will roll out advance training for this new supplement which we hope SFSC facilitators will sign up for. Alongside this, training and support will carry on as always with QA, accreditation, fidelity and support observations taking place by the team and regular core training taking place – please make sure you encourage colleagues to sign up and become SFSC trained.
This is just a taster of what we have been thinking about – there will be lots more, and we are always keen to hear from all those we work with about what they would like to see in terms of curriculum developments and delivery projects so do get in touch. We look forward to continuing to build stronger relationships with you all in the new year.
