The service provides tailored and targeted support, building positive communication within the family to reduce conflict and tension. The aims of the service are to:
The service supports young people whilst living at home or entering residential or foster care, as well as supporting young people in semi-independent supported living, to maintain their accommodation / tenancy and prevent placement breakdown.
Impact and challenges
Impact
Over the course of the last year, the service had the following impact:
- Two young people who had entered supported accommodation were fully supported by the team to return home. We worked to set guidelines and boundaries with the young people and their parents to support them moving forward in a positive way and provided them with tools for dealing with any future conflict or issues.
- Eight young people were prevented from coming into the Young People’s Supported Pathways accommodation and remained at home. The team helped to stabilise the home environment.
- 85% of young people and families reported improved relationships, more positive communication, and an increased ability to solve/deal with conflict following engagement with the service.
- Within the restorative element of the service, 100% of young people remained in placement, and 96% of reported an improvement within their relationships.
- Young people reported that, after working with Catch22, 90% of them felt safer, 95% felt that their mental health had improved, 88% felt able to enjoy life more and 100% felt more confident in their abilities to manage life situations.
Challenges
Challenges
The Mediation Team has managed to overcome various challenges to provide a highly-effective and consistent service to the young people and their families. The rise in the cost of living, and the uncertain peace and security within the world, are also bringing huge amounts of stress and fear to the children/young people and families across the borough.
There were also various staff changes within the service, with the new Mediation Coordinator who joined in October 2022, leaving the service in September 2023; The Mediation Officer who joined in January 2023 became Coordinator in October 2023, and was then the sole mediator within the service until April 2024, whilst we recruited for a new Mediation Officer. Despite this, the service continued to take on referrals and support the young people and families across the borough, and the service was able to continue to carry out all home and community visits with due care and attention.
A large-scale restructure and staff changes also took place across Camden Social Care over this year, with a lot of disruption and uncertainty resulting. The Mediation team worked closely with Camden staff to build positive and collaborative working relationships to ensure the best possible outcomes for the young people we work with.
Case study
This was a complex case which required sensitive handling and a longer-than-average involvement from the service.
This case involved a child, aged 14 at time of referral, who was referred to the service in February of 2023.
T had been removed from her parents’ care by police, following a prolonged physical assault by her parents, which was triggered by T removing her hijab on the way home from school. She no longer wanted to wear it but had been too afraid to let her parents know.
T was placed temporarily with an aunt and uncle, and we received a referral from her social worker, with a request to mediate her back to the family home with safeguards in place, and to support the family to rebuild their relationships, to support T to settle back at home and to feel safe and supported in her communications with her parents; additionally, to work with the family to agree set boundaries where appropriate.
After an initial meeting with the family to introduce ourselves, we felt that the best approach was to build up a relationship of trust with T, visiting her on her own at her school and to combine this with regular visits with T and her parents at the family home, to support the family to develop more positive communication and to listen to each other. We invited T’s brother to join, but he did not wish to engage.
T’s parents were very defensive about the incident that had occurred and wanted to ‘move on’ from it, despite the fact that the police investigation was on-going. T’s older brother was noted as having been unsupportive at the time of the incident, and it was documented by the police that he expressed no sympathy with his sister’s injuries, and he openly blamed her for contacting the police.
T was initially presented as very vulnerable and frightened, and was reluctant to engage or to speak, and maintained minimal eye contact. We visited T regularly at school in order to make her feel more comfortable with us and to encourage her to be able to open up without her parents present, as it was obvious that, for now, she was still quite frightened of their reactions. This was so that we could establish what her key concerns were, and how best we would be able to support her and the family as a whole.
After a few sessions, where we were able to reassure her that, unless there was a safeguarding issue, what she told us would be confidential, and we worked on building up her confidence and assisting her with any problems she was experiencing both at home and at school. T began to open up more and more and confided her what her most pertinent anxieties around communications with her family were and what she would like to improve in the home environment. Throughout this time Mediation also had regular meetings at the home together with T and her parents. We ensured that we approached the family with sensitivity to religious and cultural issues at all times.
Mediation also collaborated very closely with the social worker, who shared our concerns that the father had a very dominant position within the family and was very controlling of all family members, and we were mindful of this in our approach to the family work.
Mediation held regular meetings with the social worker, particularly due to the risk factors surrounding this case, to ensure that we were all working with the same aim and providing the same message to the family in our interactions.
Mediation did a lot of targeted work with the family, with a compassionate and respectful approach, around appropriate boundaries. We talked about parents establishing proportionate ‘consequences’ rather than using ‘punishments’ e.g. if T came home late, then perhaps having a privilege removed, such as no television that evening would be appropriate, but not shouting or any form of physical chastisement, which the parents accepted and agreed with. We discussed the importance of T feeling safe at home. T’s parents expressed a desire for their daughter to be more open with them and we spoke about how important their reactions are, and that T will be more open with them the less fear she feels.
We also acknowledged the parents concern for their daughter, and their family reputation, and expressed to T the importance of can improving her communication with her parents, particularly when out in the community e.g. always letting them know where she is, texting if she is going to be late home etc, thus lessening the potential for conflict.
Over a period of several weeks, in collaboration with the family, we drew up a ‘Mediation Contract’, which outlined suggestions for how the family could interact with each other without the need for conflict to escalate. The family was fully involved in the drawing up of the agreement and T said that it really improved things at home for her. She felt supported by the agreed guidelines, and overall, all family members made a great effort to work together within the parameters of the agreement; we were, however, aware that the parents core beliefs around how their child should behave were not flexible and were mindful of this throughout.
Due to the high level of support needed for this case, Mediation, in collaboration with the social worker decided to extend the involvement of mediation, something T had expressly requested as she expressed that she felt she could trust the Mediation service and was finding it very helpful personally, and for relationships with her family and also at school.
Mediation was able to work collaboratively with T to build her confidence and support her in approaching more challenging conversations with her parents, whilst being mindful of the fact that T also needed to ensure that she communicated to her parents where she was and who was with, to reduce their anxiety and thus avoid potential adverse reactions.
Mediation also worked closely with T’s school safeguarding team and gave a detailed handover before closure so that they could continue to support T, as she had benefited so greatly from our support
Feedback
“You have done incredible work with this family”
– Lead Psychiatrist, Tavistock & Portman NHS Services
“You are a wonderful soul. I thank God that he allowed you to work with us, what you have done for us is so real and thoughtful and kind. Thank you so much I truly appreciate it”.
– Mother of two children, aged 16 and 14, using our service
“Thank you for all your help and support, you have made such a difference. I really appreciate it and I will miss you so much.“
– Service user, aged 17
“I can never thank you enough for what you have done for us. You have transformed my relationship with my daughter”.
– Mother of service user, aged 16
Working in partnership
The service is deeply embedded within Camden Council Children Social Services and works in conjunction with social workers, personal advisors and the Young People’s Pathway providers.
The positive outcomes the Mediation Service provide for young people and families is based primarily on how the team works with referring social workers and the positive and consistent engagement they build with the young people. The service draws on the skills and experience of the mediators, Catch22 organisational support, along with young work principles, strong mediation and restorative approaches, whilst complementing the work of Camden Social Care colleagues.
The service has a very close working relationship with the social work team, but retains its independence, thus allowing an unbiased approach to working with our service users.
The focus of the service is different to social work, which is a statutory service. Mediation is a voluntary and independent service that is there to assist in managing relationships within the family home / young people’s pathway process.
The impartiality of the service allows the team to build trust and engagement with the young person and work towards a resolution. There can be a stigma attached to social work from young people and parents, which is not attached to our service. The approach and delivery taken by the mediators is also different due to the nature of social work and caseload. The team can invest in developing that deep trust and regular contact with the young people, as well as attending key professional meetings to support the young people. The team has a specialist skills set which includes focusing on improving relationships, reaffirming boundaries, managing conflict, and developing young people’s emotional and practical skills.
The main partnership is with the lead social workers, providing and sharing any relevant information surrounding the families and young people. The team contributes to all key multi-agency meetings and continues to maintain positive working relationships within Camden.
Over the course of the year, the team attended 243 meetings including core group meetings, professional meetings, children in need / looked after children, pathways, strategy response, and child protection conferences.
Future plans
Our vision for 2024
The Mediation Service will continue to work hard to maintain the excellent service we provide across the board to support our young people and families.
The service is now fully staffed, with our new Mediation Officer joining the service in April 2024.
We continue to receive a high volume of referrals and the service is constantly working close to, or at times above, capacity. However, we always aim to respond as soon as possible to any referral.
One key trend we have noticed is referral requests coming in for children in a younger age group 11-13, with whom we currently cannot engage. The service could potentially be extended to include these younger children, if an additional member of staff were to be recruited. We would be very happy to extend our working scope were this to be the case.
We also plan to explore targeted mediation workshops for our young people within the Pathways accommodation. This would give them the opportunity to learn positive communication skills and conflict resolution techniques.
Our promises to young people
As a service, we have made the following promises to the young people and families we support. We promise:
- to be open, honest, transparent, neutral, fair, consistent, professional and non-judgmental,
- to be available and to provide flexible appointments to best meet their needs,
- to help to keep them safe and to report any safeguarding concerns,
- to support them to sustain and retain appropriate accommodation where needed,
- to promote resilience, positive communication, stronger relationships and age-appropriate independence skills, and
- to be there for them, to listen to their concerns, and to give them a safe space to speak and share.
“You have helped me so much I don’t know what I would have done without you. I really wish it could continue until I finish school. Thank you for everything.”
– Service user, aged 15
