Family Group Therapy with School and Family Works

Bute House have partnered with School and Family Works to provide logistical and financial support for family group therapy in primary schools in Hammersmith and Fulham and beyond.

School and Family Works work with disadvantaged families to build better relationships between the adults and the child to avoid exclusion from school and increase the chance of success and happiness as adults.

Parents and children grow to build trusting relationships between the therapist and the school, often the first trusting relationships they have had with any authority figures, and share their challenges within a group of around five to eight families. With skilful support from the therapist, the families work together to find solutions and the school becomes a much more active participant in supporting the family through the changes that they make.

Families can self-refer, or contact is made by the therapist with the family, if school has identified a possible need for intervention. There is no time scale for support; it stops when the family feel there is no longer a need for such intensive support, usually a year to eighteen months after the initial meetings.

Family Group has helped all school staff to understand the key theory of ‘attachment’ and therefore the whole school community deals with children in a universal way that supports, and not blames, the child and family.

School staff also see that senior leaders are there to support them with the most challenging children.

The better relationships the school builds with families means they are more able to help them contact and build relationships with other organisations, like the police, housing, social care, etc.

Children learn to self-regulate and therefore are much more likely to have a successful future. They also see the important adults in their life working together to support them, perhaps for the first time.

Aims

Although much of the Bute House public benefit provision comes under our Explore programme (please see other case studies for details), the School and Family Works partnership provides another complementary model for providing support and help to our partner schools. The clinical expertise and focus on the special needs of a few children within each school is best provided by specialist organisations such as the School and Family Works. The demand for this kind of support is clearly felt in discussions between partner schools and Bute House and the provisional of therapeutic support is evidentially linked to better learning and pastoral outcomes for the children involved.

Background

Substantial financial and logistical support is given to School and Family Works.