The National Association of Community Family Trusts
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NACFT represents, coordinates the activities and promotes the development of Community Family Trusts across the UK. Community Family Trusts (CFTs) are local voluntary, community organisations that aim to promote the well-being and pro-social development of children, young people and families through innovative programmes that provide advice, education and support, principally in marriage preparation, relationship education especially in prisons, parenting education, school-based PSHE and citizenship programmes and other course-based and inventory-based programmes. NACFT's role is to facilitate and coordinate development and training, monitor effectiveness, evaluate outcomes, track national policy and research, act as a central clearing house and resource base, and provide representation. NACFT is committed to working in partnership with Local Authorities, schools, children's services, Registrars and celebrants and other voluntary and community organisations and to the evaluation of its activities. CFTs provide a volunteer base for other organisations, such as Positive Parenting, The National Couple Support Network, and Action for Prisoners' Families. For the last five years, several individual CFTs have received significant Government funding through the Marriage and Relationship Support (MARS) programme. This, however, has proved to be a mixed blessing. Whilst supporting local CFT development it has caused some narrowing of objectives and has favoured a few existing Trusts rather than encouraging the development of the CFT movement as a whole. NACFT was founded in part to correct this and has achieved much by drawing on the skills and resources of the entire CFT movement. The Government is currently establishing a new 'Children, Young People and Families' (CYPF) grant programme to replace several existing grant programmes, including MARS, in April 2006. It is intended to promote national strategic development and, for the most part, only national organisations can apply. The currently-funded CFTs will lose their funding at the end of March. NACFT has submitted a bid for CYPF funding, as Tony Blair noted at Prime Minister's Questions on 7 December 2005. He said:
The CFT vision is of a nation-wide system of basic relationship training and support for all, at all key life stages. Its aims match those of the 'Every Child Matters' (ECM) agenda but with special emphasis on that the principle that improved outcomes for children must usually be effected though improved performance of parents, carers and families. A key task is reaching the 'hard to reach'. Experience suggests that targeting on any basis is problematical as it creates a stigma. The preferred CFT method is for a universal service embedded in the ethos of relevant organisations such as schools and health centres. This, in reaching everyone, also reaches the 'hard to reach'. Although a CFT can promote suitable arrangements, success often depends ultimately on factors outside its direct control, especially the cooperation of key professionals. Several organisations have provided a useful test-bed for this approach, such as Brookside Community Primary School, Street, Somerset. |
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| top of page | Current Need | ||||||||||||||||||||
The work of CFTs is directed at a core subset of the 'Every Child Matters' (ECM) outcomes. The need for it is very powerfully demonstrated in the ECM background documents and in many other reports that identify the quality of family and peer relationships as a key factor in improved life outcomes for children and young people, including their educational attainment and pro-social development. Much useful, and expensive, Government-sponsored work has been done in recent years, but as the experience of SureStart appears to show it is often not as effective as hoped. In view of this, and while not advocating a complete change of direction, there is clearly merit in supporting the development of a relatively low-cost, innovative, research-based, community-led, preventative approach directed specifically at improving family and peer relationships and, especially, associated behavioural outcomes. This is what the CFT movement envisages. NACFT has considerable evidence, both anecdotal and from formal evaluation, of substantial demand for interventions of the type it supports and of high levels of satisfaction among participants. Across all evaluations, about 95% of participants say that they would recommend the course or activity to a friend or family member and less than 1% say that they would not recommend it. It is a key principle of NACFT that no service should be provided if any equivalent is already available. To this end CFTs generally try to survey current provision in their area. Often this is not easy as there is usually no local reporting system or data-base. Typically, in every area, there are many individuals, agencies and organisations already involved in activities that are relevant to CFT aims. Often they are hardly aware of each other's existence and operate without significant coordination. A key role of a CFT is to bring them together, to focus their activities more effectively and generally to give greater emphasis to preventative policies and programmes. New programmes are established only where there are clear gaps in provision. Experience shows, however, that in many areas such a parenting education much more activity is claimed than actually occurs. Many providers seem to over-sell their impact. Often CFTs provide staff or volunteers for other organisations' programmes rather than establishing their own. NACFT supports this approach. The same principle applies to the development of resources and programmes. NACFT is making strenuous efforts to reduce or avoid duplication of teaching and other materials. Where up-to-date, preferably UK-sourced, materials of appropriate attractiveness, flexibility, simplicity and established effectiveness exist NACFT will recommend their general use rather than support the development of alternatives. |
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| top of page | Current Capacity | ||||||||||||||||||||
The established CFTs have, in total, about 27 paid staff, 84 trustees, 536 active volunteers, £256,000 funding from DfES, and a total budget for 2005-6 of about £490,000. Sixteen local groups in England are presently registered to become CFTs as soon as start-up funding is available. The total uptake for recorded CFT-related interventions in 2004-5 was 6,242. The MARS-funded CFTs have continued to satisfy performance requirements since 2000-1 and the grant total has increased each year. NACFT evaluation is supervised by John Tripp, Senior Lecturer and Consultant Paediatrician at Peninsula Medical School and Dr Ian Bennun, Head of Department of Clinical Psychology at South Devon Healthcare NHS Trust. The last NACFT-sponsored national conference, in February 2005, included as speakers, inter alia, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Prof Al Aynsley-Green, Catherine MacGruer, Prof Jay Belsky, Sir Roger Toulson and Sir David Hart. The CFT movement has a proven ability is develop and trial innovative programmes and resources including Register-Office-based marriage preparation, prison-based couple-relationship education, school-based parenting programmes, school-based life-preparation inventories and ante/post-natal parent support. |
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The CFT movement covers all regions of England, from Plymouth to Darlington and from Stockport to Horsham and including, inter alia, Bedford, Brent, Bristol, Guildford, Loughborough, Nottingham, Poole, Reading, Somerset, Southampton, Swindon, Totnes, the West Midlands and York. Because it is volunteer-led it has developed fastest in areas with a relatively strong civic culture, but the vision has always been of a nation-wide, universal network, particularly including deprived areas and minorities. The CYPF Strategic Grant programme provides an opportunity to advance this vision by giving start-up support in relevant areas, initially based on proximity to established projects.
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NACFT is currently developing a new role vis-à-vis local groups. Hitherto quality assurance of local services has been the responsibility of local CFTs and partner organisations (eg Adult Learning and Leisure, Children's Fund, Community Safety Partnership, schools and health services). NACFT has a rolling 3-year planning system, a national activity reporting system and a national evaluation system based at the Department of Child Health, Exeter. The latter collects data from participants on demographics, expectations, perceived course quality and perceived benefits of couple support and relationship training. Resulting analysis, based on about 3000 returns, has been published and has informed planning. Henceforth NACFT will play a more central role in commissioning, monitoring and evaluating a much wider range of activities. For this purpose it is currently upgrading the reporting and evaluation process to monitor the whole range of supported activities. For each commissioned activity the commissioning process will set explicit quality standards for staff and volunteer training, personal development, performance, timeliness, effectiveness, desired outcomes and processes of data gathering, including user feedback where relevant. An NACFT committee will monitor compliance. Analysis of the resulting data will inform programme management and development planning. |
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The NACFT Handbook contains the following:
In preparation for its more active role in developing and managing programmes NACFT is adopting a proactive Equality and Diversity policy, including implementation and monitoring procedures. NACFT aims to extend the reach of the CFT movement into inner cities and to develop links with minority organisations, eg the Muslim Women's Helpline, GIRES. |
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| top of page | Child Protection | ||||||||||||||||||||
Most CFT programmes hitherto have involved adults or have been delivered in school by school staff. CFTs running children's programmes have adopted standard Child Protection policies. In preparation for its more active role in developing and managing programmes NACFT will adopt a Child Protection policy based on the following principles:
All planned CFT activities shall be subject to risk assessment. |
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| top of page | Maximising Impact | ||||||||||||||||||||
Maximising the involvement of and benefit to users is a key aim. We are continually seeking more effective methods. At present we and our partner organisations are trying:
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| top of page | Evaluation | ||||||||||||||||||||
NACFT has a well established national evaluation system based at the Department of Child Health, Exeter and supervised by John Tripp, Senior Lecturer and Consultant Paediatrician at Peninsula Medical School and Dr Ian Bennun, Head of Department of Clinical Psychology at South Devon Healthcare NHS Trust. It collects data from participants on demographics, expectations, perceived course quality and perceived benefits of various couple support and relationship training activities. Henceforth NACFT will play a central role in commissioning, monitoring and evaluating a much wider range of activities, generally aimed at improving ECM outcomes. For this purpose it is currently upgrading the current reporting and evaluation process with advice from the National Evaluation Group to capture demographics, course quality, user satisfaction, learning outcomes and pre/post relationship quality across the whole range of supported activities. Other organisations have expressed interest in using the same evaluation system, which may ultimately allow it to become a standard resource across a wide range of interventions, generating large volumes of data and valuable cross-programme comparisons. In addition, for each commissioned activity the commissioning process will set explicit quality standards for staff and volunteer training, personal development, performance, timeliness, effectiveness, desired outcomes and processes of data gathering, including user feedback where relevant. Where the intervention is aimed at improving specific ECM outcomes we will seek to develop relevant success indicators appropriate to the context. We have experience of using available data in schools, eg reported behaviour incidents and exclusions, and user-reported behaviour and perceived self-efficacy. A key part of our programme is the development and incorporation into other interventions of a battery of on-line 'talk2me' inventories. These prove to have several beneficial uses, but a key one is that they provide large amounts of anonymous data closely linked to ECM outcomes for a given population. Used regularly, eg with a school cohort, this has the potential to provide powerful medium/long-term evaluation of alternative interventions. Ultimately we hope to be able to use published neighbourhood statistics to evaluate the impact of interventions on community well-being but, unfortunately, relevant data on relationship quality and stability are not currently available. |