Working with families

For people who need care and support, their family is an important part of their network. However, sometimes adult social care staff can see families as a problem and difficult to work with.

Employers need to be better at working with people's families, and this starts with staff who have the right values, skills and knowledge to do this. 

We worked with the Avenues Group to develop a framework about what staff need to know and do, to work well with families, to help adult social care employers to design or commission high quality training. 

The framework is still in a draft version. During February and March 2019, we want to consult with managers, staff, people who need care and support and families about the framework. Please read the framework and fill in this short survey. 

Working with families: what do your staff need to know and do?

This draft framework explains what values, skills and knowledge adult social care staff need to work well with people's families.

It’s useful for managers or those in learning and development roles, such as HR, training staff and learning providers.

It gives ‘Things you need to know’ and ‘Things you need to do’ to set some guidelines about what learning and development around ‘working with families’ might look like. This can help you to design or commission training and give you some tips about how you can better work with families.  

Please note, this framework is still in a draft version. Please tell us what you think in this short survey. 

Download the draft guide here. 

Sample training session

The Avenues Group, funded by Skills for Care, has developed this sample training session. It’s based on training for adult social care organisations who support people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people. However, it might also be useful for other services.

We recommend that family members are involved in planning the session and take part in it.

You can tweak and build on the content to tailor it to the size of the group, and the expectations of your organisation, the people you support and their families.

Download the session plan, exercises and handouts as a zip file here. 

Or you can download the individual sessions and resources below. 

If you have any feedback about the training session, please email us.