We have just completed another year’s reporting for Capa First Response and I thought it would be good to share some of our highlights and data. with a wider audience. Our Capa year runs from June 2022 to May 2023. In this past year we secured 3 years funding from the NLCF as well as OSPCC, enabling us to build up our service and meet the growing demand from parents & Carers as well as professionals.
We doubled our team to 10; adding freelance practitioners and a senior practitioner to the team. We have revamped our logos and website and continued to grow our multi agency collaborations. We spent the year visiting terminology and language, talking with agencies and families around what this means to them, how language can become a barrier or an embracer to getting the right support.
So what about the data for this period?
- Referrals were up 59%
- Advice and Support sessions grew by 39%
- Families supported was up by 74%
- 58% referrals were self referrals
Interestingly for us and a pattern we have seen over the past few years is the gender split for those referring to our services, with 61% being male children and 36% female children.
When I started this work in 2010 the split was far wider with male children being the most common source for referrals. Our support has been estimated to reach in excess of 600 beneficiaries not including the professionals we have trained who have gone on to use strategies to support families. We know already in the 6 months of our 2023-2024 year that we are smashing the above with demand for our services outstripping our capacity. We have started to develop new ways of working to ensure we can meet families and professionals needs and are looking forward to sharing with you our new training strategy and services.
In an area that is becoming more and more recognised within communities and the media, we need to ensure that families’ needs are being met with confidence and understanding. We need more champions within the workplace to support families and colleagues, we need services to recognise this issue sooner so we can offer the right support to all those impacted.
Multi agency working and collaboration around this area can mean escalation in behaviour is minimised and the desperation that parents and carers experience is reduced.
“I was directed to you by my child’s teacher. I’m suffering at home with violent and aggressive behaviour from my 8 year old and I don’t really know what to do”.
“My child who has a diagnosis of adhd, complex ptsd and suspected autism (undiagnosed due to her lack of engagement), is unable to regulate their emotions and is physically aggressive towards me. This has steadily gotten worse over a number of years. They are known to social care, mental health and police, but I have been ignored or blamed and left to get on with it”.
With support families lives can change around
“Services such as Capa provide a vital lifeline to parents who are suffering, before I came to Capa I did not have a name for what was happening and now I do and now know that I am not alone. There needs to be more awareness generally so that services do not blame parents or make unnecessary referrals which only makes the situation harder to bear”.
“communication with my mum is so much better, we have a much better relationship than before” 15 year old
“just to let you know we had a potential huge escalation yesterday, but me and my son managed it really well and it was so clear that seeing you was why. Thankyou” Parent of 15 year old
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