Building individual and community power amongst parents can shift intergenerational disadvantage

Why Parent Power?

Intergenerational disadvantage means that a child’s future social and economic outcomes are closely linked to, and determined by, their parents’ outcomes. However, as a society, it can often seem more urgent — as well as more straightforward — to focus on children. They are seen as innocent and blameless; the state must keep them from harm. The combination of high profile child deaths and serious case reviews, along with austerity and cuts to statutory children’s services have left a children’s services system that is focused on child protection, assessments of risk and exercising of statutory powers over families rather than an appreciation of individual parent selfhood and the complexity of families’ lives. Statutory services, as a result, have a heavy focus on protecting children from harm but all too often, we fail to nurture, listen to and give agency and power to the people who actually have the most power and skin in the game when it comes to breaking this cycle and improving outcomes for children. This is of course their parents!

Parent Power, a collaboration between Oxford Hub and African Families in the UK, with support from Lankelly Chase, has been working to change this. Focusing on the Blackbird Leys area of Oxford, Parent Power aims to give more power to parents at an individual and community level to empower them to make change for themselves, their children and other parents. Parents support other parents to lead change in their own lives and participate in their community.

There’s a reason that the name draws attention to power. The relationships between families and the systems in place to protect children (schools, charities and social services) are infused with unequal power dynamics. The conventional approach of statutory services involves having power over parents, managing risk by ensuring that parents are complying with an agency-led process — one that is often poorly explained to families. This is evident in interactions between individuals too, with power dynamics between individual professionals and parents often leaving parents feeling marginalised and disempowered, rather than more confident, better resourced and more able to keep their children safe.

The Parent Power team at a team learning day

Individual and Community Power

Parent Power is working to shift these power dynamics at an individual and community level:

• Individual power- Parents should have voice, choice and agency about decisions affecting them and their children. They should choose what they want to change about their lives and how that change happens. Parent Power works to give parents the resources, confidence and skills that they need to make change for themselves and their children.
• Community power- Parents have a wealth of knowledge and assets within themselves. Parents can make change for themselves and other families when they are well organised and have access to community resources. This might mean services which are designed by parents, for the benefit of parents or having direct access to funding for them to set up their own projects. We can bring parents together to share their problems, how they have overcome challenges in the past and what support is on offer. Parent Power can also help parents realise their power as a collective in affecting change. When parents come together, effectively, they can make their voice heard, change services or create more opportunities for children and families.

It is really important to think about power in these two different ways — solely focusing on individual power misses the opportunity to build more collective approaches in communities. Parents acting together can change mindsets and perspectives for agencies and the ways in which they interact with families.

Decision-making Power

One of the ways in which Parent Power is shifting power to parents is through its own design and implementation. Parents, with Lived Experience of using support services, are fully involved in the design and implementation of Parent Power in Oxford. They have the opportunity and support to design how Parent Power works, what it focuses on, how we speak about it and who we collaborate with. Parents are employed and trained to support other parents, in Parent Peer Supporter roles.

This approach is essential to role model some of the changes that we want to see in the system, for everyone to see parents as resourceful and able to drive change for their families and in their communities. In practice, this may involve connecting a family to an early years group, helping a group of mums study to pass their driving theory test, being there for a mum who has social services involved in her life or working together to make the leisure centre more accessible to local families. At the heart of this work is not what the parents are doing, but how they are doing it: in a way that builds power for themselves and their communities. This is transformational for their children’s future outcomes and wellbeing.

Advice and tips

We have tested this approach in a specific geographical area with a specific demographic so not all of our learning will be relevant. However, some things we have learnt are:

• Putting parents in leadership roles, with the right support at the right time, leads to creativity, innovation and more trusted relationships in the community- our Parent Peer Supporters have been amazing!!!
• Staff who are in roles where they are regularly drawing on their lived experiences should have regular support and emotional supervision to process experiences and ensure that they are not taking on too much of the emotional burden.
• A diverse range of parents involved in the design is important to ensure that communications and opportunities are accessible and interesting to a range of residents and parents from different backgrounds.
• Working in collaboration with other agencies such as schools, local authorities and other charitable groups leads to a) greater outreach and deeper understanding of the views in the community b) opportunities to influence others to try things differently and work with families and parents differently
• Having a physical space in the community for parents to use and for members to create connections in the community has been hugely beneficial- we are in the Blackbird Leys community centre and it’s amazing how many connections we make every day!
• Strategy and plans should be responsive and emerging to what is going on at the time. This allows for more opportunity for collaboration with others and genuine leadership from parents who get involved throughout the process.