Case Study: Bouncing Back

Project description

Bouncing back: Community university knowledge exchange for children and families

Developed in collaboration with the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) in Brighton, Bouncing Back links several academics and students from different university departments with community and statutory organisations, individual community practitioners, artists, parents and young people. It is co-ordinated by Kim Aumann from Amaze, a Brighton-based charity supporting parents of children with special needs.

Bouncing Back promotes Resilient Therapy™, a therapeutic method co-innovated by Angie Hart, Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton, and community psychiatrist Dr Derek Blincow between 2004-2007. Resilience is the ability to achieve good outcomes against the odds - Resilient Therapy™ (RT) is an evidence-based and user-friendly way of working with disadvantaged children and young people, and their parents/carers, which offers a framework for finding the best ways of helping them bounce back when life is particularly tough. It emphasises the need for a child to have exposure to as many healthy relationships as possible, to develop hobbies and interests and to be instilled with a sense of hope. It also emphasises the pivotal role of parents and practitioners in relentlessly looking for ways to help children bounce back.

Knowledge exchange is at the heart of the Bouncing Back project and core to CUPP, which has been pivotal to its success. 

Purpose

Bouncing Back promotes Resilient Therapy™, a therapeutic method co-innovated by Angie Hart, Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton, and community psychiatrist Dr Derek Blincow between 2004-2007. Resilience is the ability to achieve good outcomes against the odds - Resilient Therapy™ (RT) is an evidence-based and user-friendly way of working with disadvantaged children and young people, and their parents/carers, which offers a framework for finding the best ways of helping them bounce back when life is particularly tough. It emphasises the need for a child to have exposure to as many healthy relationships as possible, to develop hobbies and interests and to be instilled with a sense of hope. It also emphasises the pivotal role of parents and practitioners in relentlessly looking for ways to help children bounce back.

Knowledge exchange is at the heart of the Bouncing Back project and core to CUPP, which has been pivotal to its success.

Communities of Practice (CoPs)

Resilient Therapy™ Communities of Practice (CoPs) have been established in Brighton and in Hastings. A community of practice starts from an emphasis on what people actually do in the real world - that is, the emphasis is on learning through doing. The idea is that individuals in the CoP apply RT to their own work and/or family life, and try out their ideas with the group. This process feeds into the ongoing development of RT. CoPs are composed of individuals drawn from: children's workforce practitioners; parent carers; academics, and the voluntary sector.

CoP meetings are arranged by mutual agreement: participants meet once a month for three hours with a facilitator, with membership closed once the group is formed. The meetings take an informal but structured approach to discussions, but pay meticulous attention to community involvement: it is important that organisers have the imagination to think through how people who don't normally go to things at the university can best participate. Such facilitation includes meeting in school hours so that parents can come; giving plenty of notice so that practitioners can negotiate time out; advertising things to appeal directly to community partners and spelling out the benefit of their involvement. Events organised have included an RT Masterclass in Brighton with over 100 members of the public/local practitioners, and several training workshops across Sussex. All events are run interactively, and include a detailed evaluation questionnaire at the end of the session, from which the programme and structure of future events can be developed further.

This approach, built on knowledge exchange, together with an understanding of the research underpinning resilience, facilitates refinement of RT both in theory and in practice, and builds on what's found to be effective. A further spin-off has been the formation of a Critique and Development Group of those interested in the research side, who want to 'combine to share' and contribute to research output. A social networking site is being linked to this.

Resilient Therapy™ is going through a period of expansion and outreach. It will impact on family support practice in the community, and on teaching and research at participating universities. Future plans include the setting up of an RT website, Placement Fellowships from the community, expansion of university course provision and active researchers, the production of an RT learning programme and its delivery. Professor Angie Hart and Kim Aumann are also producing a second book on RT and adolescents. An international conference on RT is planned for 2011, at which work around Resilient Therapy™ will be examined in detail.

The Social Impact of Resilient Therapy™

As RT work has expanded, and as a result of attracting funding for various aspects of the work, it will become possible to also expand the work being undertaken to measure social impact. The process of analysing feedback questionnaires has become augmented by the routine collection of audit and evaluation data, including numbers, range of services, organisations, and events with a breakdown into parents, practitioners and academics.

There will also be the collection of quantitative and qualitative feedback data from facilitators, trainers and participants, as well as evaluative data on all learning resources. The RT website, once established, will allow further analysis of web hits and downloads. The above, combined with data on the number and range of contributions made to local, regional, national and international forums and consultative exercises, should provide an indication of input into policy and planning of children's services and mental health provision. 

Results/ Outcomes

What worked well

Since 2005, under the leadership of Professor Angie Hart, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Brighton, CUPP and Bouncing Back have worked together to:

• Translate scholarly findings into an approach designed for practitioners and parents to use in their everyday lives and work. The model was tested and refined with a team of academics, students, practitioners, parents and young people and published as Resilient Therapy: Working with children and families.
• Involve parent carers in all aspects of RT work through Amaze, a third sector organisation specialising in parent support.
• Co-write Helping children with complex needs bounce back, a book for parents which translates the messages of resilience and RT.
• Respond to hundreds of requests for information and training about RT. Community and university colleagues jointly deliver training sessions to health workers, teachers, social workers and parents.
• Produce a training film in collaboration with parents, young people and practitioners.
• Set up two ongoing RT Communities of Practice (CoPs), supported by CUPP. The CoPs are central to the knowledge exchange process and have brought together over 500 academics, students, researchers, practitioners and parents who share an interest in working with disadvantaged children to develop their own areas of work enhanced by an RT approach.
• Obtain £200,000 funding to support these activities.

It is expected that direct work through the CoPs will be undertaken with 150 families over the next two years, potentially impacting on over 200 children with constellated disadvantage. The publication of the books Helping children with complex needs bounce back: Resilient Therapy™ for parents and professionals (Hart & Aumann 2009), and Resilient Therapy: Working with Children and Families (Hart, Blincow with Thomas 2007), which have sold around 2000 copies, indicates considerable interest in RT work. 

Lessons Learnt

Sharing a passion for improving outcomes for disadvantaged children and their families gives the Bouncing Back team a clear focus. However, there has been no shortage of challenges. For example, including parents and practitioners who have no paid time for practice development and recruiting academics with little time for the intensive collaboration involved has been achieved through: sensitive timing of meetings; obtaining funding that includes provision for babysitting, payment to parents, hospitality etc; persuading senior managers of the worth of RT practice development in order to release staff time, and linking the goals of academics with desired community outcomes.

Overcoming cultural differences between community and academia to achieve genuine knowledge exchange has been achieved by constant communication, demonstrating practically the worth of academic evidence, and developing a willingness on all sides to experiment with different approaches. 

"Resilient Therapy provides a vital, timely, and empowering message of hope for all young people, parents and practitioners." Richard M. Lerner, Director of Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University, USA

"I have found RT to be concrete, comprehensive and a structuring model on which to base my approach to working with vulnerable families.  It makes the work 'feel' like a true partnership." Youth Support Team Leader

"I hadn't approached my child this way before but now I can make choices.  I feel inspired to try again." Parent of a child with mental health difficulties