Closing the gap? The effectiveness of referred access family support services.

This paper presents findings from a study of the effectiveness of family support services provided through two family centres run by a voluntary agency in partnership with a South Wales local authority. It evaluates the effectiveness of family support services by looking at both the family views and a number of measurable outcomes in terms of reported changes in family functioning and the well-being of children and parents. Interventions were monitored over 6 months using a pre-test post-test non-equivalent groups design, incorporating quantitative and qualitative methods. Child well-being, family functioning and some aspects of parental well-being (related directly to the child) did improve over the intervention period for family support service users. This improvement resulted in the family support service users ‘closing the gap’ with non-service users (comparison group), to such an extent on some measures, as to be statistically significant. The qualitative evidence confirmed these improvements. The only area that did not improve, according to the quantitative findings, was that of parental well-being (not related directly to the child). This includes important factors around social support networks, such as parental confidence, social interaction and social contact. The reasons for lack of improvement in these areas are discussed, emphasizing the importance of monitoring the impact of using the service and incorporating a focus on the quality of the nature of the relationship between the worker and the service user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]