Family stories: investigating trauma-informed narratives, change behaviours and environments in complex family experiences

This article presents our Family Stories model identifying self-reported change behaviours and environments by families developed from our two-phase research in an inner-city area in the south of England. The research focused on parents whose families had experienced complex issues affecting the behaviour, wellbeing, learning and/or safety of children, and who had received social care support from services that had broadly adopted a trauma-informed approach. We identified parents’ self-reported change behaviours and environments, in the context of the high rate of families relapsing and returning for multiple episodes of support. We also identify key challenges to securing long-term positive change, including the barriers to nurturing a strong and successful parenting identity, in which parents are more able to sustain positive change. Our model identifies four enablers, evident in the self-reported change behaviours narrated by our participants: community, allyship, strategy and mastery.