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Save Sharing information with families
This page is about using Early Support materials and information resources with families.
Parents need information of different kinds - about local services, about options, about how 'the system' works and about particular factors that are likely to affect their child's development. Early Support has developed two sets of standard information booklets that can be used separately, or in combination with one other and other Early Support materials.
The 'Information for Parents' booklets are about specific conditions and the Background Information Booklets provide information about how services work. Other useful materials are available to download or order for free. The booklets ensure that nothing gets left out and that families in different parts of the country receive similar information. They provide standard, background material so that families can:
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dip in and out
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read everything through from start to finish
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discuss what they're reading, as they go along
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come back to point over a period of time.
The background information booklets are also available in other languages.
General principles
The process of understanding and using information is a dynamic one, which unfolds gradually. The Early Support information materials are best seen as flexible, background resources that provide a stable, shared framework to support conversation over time.
Paper materials are only tools. The practitioners who use these materials with families as part of their developing relationship with parents are the essential, invisible ingredient in the mix. Their skill lies in pacing discussion so that families get the right information at the right time in a way they can understand, and in relation to their own child's situation. It's important, as well, that families are given the opportunity to revisit information as many times as they want, so they can reinterpret what they know as time goes by and they come to understand their child's situation better.
It's everyone's responsibility to ensure that families get the information they need but lead professionals and key workers have a particular role to play.
The Early Support information materials:
- are a part of integrated service delivery, providing shared resources that can be used by everyone who is in contact with a family
- underpin developing relationships between families and the people who work with them
- support continuity of care
- promote a standard approach towards using information in partnership with families in different places.
Using the 'Information for Parents' booklets
The Information for Parents booklets are helpful when a particular condition has been 'diagnosed'. Parents who have been in this situation say that accurate information about, for example, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy or multi-sensory impairment is one of the key things they are looking for in the early days. The booklets help practitioners to answer the questions parents ask at the time of diagnosis or soon after. As with all the programme materials, the booklets are best used as a shared resource that everyone looks at together as discussion moves on and working relationships develop.
In hospital and clinical contexts, sensitive use of these booklets is recommended as a core part of good practice around the time of diagnosis. If you would like to find out more about professional practice in this area, visit the Right from the Start area on the Scope website.
However, the booklets can also be used to meet other information needs. Families sometimes like to use them to explain things about their child's situation to grandparents or friends. Early Years Settings also sometimes use them to improve their background knowledge and understanding when they're including children with particular conditions for the first time.
How to introduce the Family Pack to families
The Family Pack consists of a set of Background information booklets and a Family File intended to help families, and the professionals and agencies working with them, to coordinate the services they provide. Knowing how and when to introduce the ‘blue box’ to families is a matter of skill and experience. Those who have worked with a lot of families will understand that the material is best shared as a natural part of developing the relationship between a family and the services they’re beginning to use. However, different families need different things. Some find it more helpful for the material in the box to be introduced in stages, while others want everything, all at the same time and as soon as possible.
Where families are likely to find the Family Pack intimidating, it can be helpful to introduce elements of the pack, one by one. For example, you might start by sharing the 'Financial help' booklet or the 'People you might meet' booklet in response to the questions families ask. Or, you could introduce the Family File and only use the sheets in the 'Professional contacts' section to begin with, adding some of the other elements later, as time goes by and the pattern of support for a family settles down.
It’s important to remember that nobody is obliged to use the Early Support materials. Everyone who could benefit from the materials should know about them and be helped to use them, but the guiding principle is to use them only when the family thinks they add value.
Using the Background information booklets
These booklets are in the Family Pack and help families understand how services work. The booklets cover a range of topics and they can be used very flexibly. The whole set of booklets is relevant for families who are likely to use specialist services for some time.
However, many families use just one or two of them and many practitioners like to use or introduce the booklets separately, in response to issues and questions as they come up, for example Disability Living Allowance. Sometimes practitioners like to use one booklet with families before introducing other Early Support materials, because they think offering the whole Family Pack might be overwhelming.
The booklets reflect what families who have 'been there before' say is useful to know. They also respond to research indicating that general background information, especially explanations and definitions of services, professional roles and acronyms, is highly valued by families.
Download the contents of this page:
as a Word Document
Last updated on 26/01/2010
