Young people on the ‘edge of care’: perspectives regarding a residential family intervention programme using social pedagogic and systemic approaches- striving for ‘humane practice’

ABSTRACT Support approaches and interventions to keep families together are major goals in family welfare services. Different service models are used including some targeted at families where the assessment is part of family court pre-proceedings. Although outcomes of family interventions have been extensively researched, there is limited recent research regarding the subjective experiences of young people, their parents/carers and professionals who experience an intervention where they all live together for a short period and where mutually agreed goals and a family programme are co-created. This article presents findings from an exploratory qualitative study into a residential family learning project where families from an English inner-city local authority and professionals reside together for up to a week with engagement in intensive family work. Findings revealed mixed experiences of the intervention with a key theme being that a sense of time and space allowed the families to reflect and listen to each other’s perspectives leading to relationships improving and shifting. However, despite positive changes being made during the intervention sustaining these changes when returning home was often challenging. Findings, which are linked to the systemic idea of punctuation where families saw professionals differently and vice versa, had particular significance for families experiencing social and economic deprivation.