Reducing Parental Conflict: training and tools for practitioners and their managers
Training and tools to help practitioners and their managers discuss parental conflict.
Applies to England
The tools on this page are designed to help practitioners communicate and resolve difficulties more effectively to support parents in conflict.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and there are links to other sites that may be helpful. The tools and resources are intended to be used in the context of professional service provision for families. Contact your local authority Reducing Parental Conflict lead to find out how to access training to use the approaches and tools.
The resources aim to:
- improve understanding about parental conflict
- help practitioners to identify relationship distress (where there is a significant clinical impact on wellbeing)
- improve communication with parents
- provide initial support and help with referral decisions in local services
Identify parental conflict and relationship distress
It can be difficult to identify parental conflict as often the focus is on a child’s behaviour and the quality of parent-child relationships. A Short Guide to Working with Co-Parents is a useful resource for practitioners managing discussions with parents about their relationship.
Start a conversation
To help start a conversation about healthy relationships when working with parents, it can be useful context to understand how to measure the impact of parental conflict.
Read the Foundations guide to measuring parental conflict and its impact on child outcomes to find out about measures that can be used to assess progress for individual families. The tools in the guide can be used to highlight differences in how each parent is experiencing their relationship and to facilitate a discussion with parents about their relationship.
Difference between parental conflict and domestic abuse
The Reducing Parental Conflict practitioner training encourages practitioners to have more conversations about parental relationships. It helps practitioners to identify parental conflict and decide what interventions, if any, are needed to support the family.
Conflict in relationships is expressed through many different behaviours which can have an impact on families’ lives. When conflict is between parents, it can have negative effects on their children’s mental health and wider development.
Disagreements in relationships are normal and not necessarily problematic when resolved constructively. However, when parents are entrenched in conflict that is frequent, intense and poorly resolved it is likely to have a negative impact on the parents and their children.
There are a range of well-evidenced tools being used to assess domestic abuse. If you would like more information about domestic abuse, discuss with your line manager, local domestic abuse services or designated safeguarding lead. You can also read about and find resources for assessing harmful conflict.
The Parental Relationships Spectrum is an example of a tool to help practitioners understand whether a relationship is healthy, has conflict or is abusive.
Providing support at the right time
At different times in families’ lives, parents can experience key life events including:
- bereavement
- new baby
- new school
- separation or divorce
Parents may also experience financial difficulties, drug and alcohol issues, and mental health problems, which can all contribute to relationship distress. Many of these stress factors have been heightened during the COVID-19 crisis.
Use the Family Stress Adaptation model to ask parents about what stresses they are experiencing and provide bespoke referrals or support on those issues.
Importance of Reducing Parental Conflict training
It is important for partners and family services to:
- understand and apply the evidence-base on parental conflict
- understand and identify parental conflict, provide initial support and refer appropriately
- support long-term sustainability of workforce skills around addressing parental conflict
Access training materials on parental conflict
Training resources were developed to increase awareness of parental conflict and its impact on children, help identify parental conflict, and provide support to practitioners working with parents in conflict.
Local authorities have had the opportunity to embed materials from the practitioner training (2018 to 2021). Contact your Reducing Parental Conflict or Early Help local lead to find out more or read about the modules developed as part of the practitioner training offer.
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