Further Training Handbook

This handbook is designed to summarise the key information and messages of the Further Training course that you have recently completed.

This Handbook covers the following topics:

  • Unit 1: Preparing to Give HOPE.
  • Unit 2: Getting your HOPE Boxes.
  • Unit 3: Launching HOPE.
  • Unit 4: Monitoring and Evaluation.
  • Unit 5: Supporting your Staff.

If you have any questions or are looking for something not covered in this Handbook, please reach out to us at info@givinghope.org.uk, so we can help you.

Unit 1

Unit 1: Preparing to Give HOPE

As highlighted in your training, establishing a HOPE Pathway in your local area is essential to driving systemic change and ensuring that mothers and babies facing separation at birth receive compassionate, trauma-informed care.

Unit 1 covered:

  1. How to setup a Giving HOPE Steering Group.
  2. Identifying possible sources of funding.
  3. Identifying governance structures and strategic partnerships.
  4. How to develop your local HOPE pathway.

Included below are the primary steps in setting up the HOPE Boxes pathway in your area:

1. Developing your steering group

Establishing a multi-agency steering group is key to ensuring the HOPE Boxes are implemented across your local system, and to secure buy-in from key stakeholders. Our list of suggested steering group members might help you think about who to invite or approach is linked here.

2. Identifying sources of funding

Use local data to establish how many HOPE Boxes you are likely to need per year, remember to include separations that happen as result of care proceedings under s31 of Children Act 1989 and those under s.20 of Children Act 1989.

Consider how many practitioners across your local Giving HOPE Pathway may be involved in supporting the use of the HOPE Boxes with mothers and babies and may need the Giving HOPE core training. If the budget is limited think about identifying key champions in each part to receive the training and cascade key information.

You may also consider pooling resources across agencies and draw upon the different ways in which the HOPE Boxes might support mothers and babies at different points to speak to key priorities within your local systems. For example:

  • The HOPE Boxes encourage collaborative care, and can be embedded both within the hospital maternity wards and in the community.
  • The Project aims to tackle health inequalities by supporting a marginalised and multiply disadvantaged group of women.
  • The HOPE Boxes are preventative, reducing the impact of loss, grief, and trauma.
  • The HOPE Boxes support practitioners by providing a way to help families in a difficult situation where there are often no words. Better equipping practitioners in these scenarios can reduce burnout and ensure compassionate care.
  • Patient choice and autonomy are at the heart of the HOPE Boxes.
  • The HOPE Boxes help keep connection between mother and baby whilst apart, aiming to reduce the trauma they experience due to separation.
  • The HOPE Boxes can help to challenge the stigma around separation, keep the baby at the centre, and reduce tensions experienced between birth parents, foster carers and adoptive parents.

While we cannot currently provide funding ourselves, we are happy to help you locate and submit bids for funding. Some sources of potential funding, for example, include local ICBs, LMNS, Children’s Social Care agencies and charitable trusts. Please contact us if we can help you with a funding bid.

3. Developing your governance framework

Early engagement with key governance structures can help raise the profile of the initiative and help secure cross system strategic buy-in. This may help with future sustainability and funding conversations. It is also important to think through lines of accountability and oversight from the outset.

4. Developing your local Giving HOPE Pathway

To develop your local pathway, we recommend mapping the complete journey of a mother and baby across your local child protection and family justice systems. At each step along their journey, consider the following questions:

It is also important to consider how well each agency involved is represented in your steering group, if leadership is required and at what levels, as well as if any training is needed to facilitate the pathway.

Wherever possible, we encourage embedding the HOPE Boxes into already existing protocols and processes to minimise unnecessary additional bureaucracy. Some examples of these could be birth plans, placement plans, and looked after reviews.

Please contact us at info@givinghope.org.uk for further information around setting up your HOPE Pathway.

Unit 2

Unit 2: Getting your HOPE Boxes

Unit 2 describes the ordering process. More information regarding dispatch can be found here.

The practitioner portal is still under construction but will become an all-inclusive hub for all things Giving HOPE. While we finalise the details, we welcome any inquiries regarding orders through email. Please contact us at: info@givinghope.org.uk.

The first step to getting your HOPE Boxes is to request a quote. Our pricing structures can be found here.

To create the quote, we will need to know:

  • Contact details
  • Organisation details
  • Dispatch addresses(s)
  • Invoicing details
  • The number of HOPE Box Pairs requested.

Please note that HOPE Box Pairs are currently dispatched in sets of 3, and requests for dispatch must be in multiples of 3.

In order to process your order we require a Purchase Order (PO). Once you have received our quote, please arrange for a PO to be created and sent to info@givinghope.org.uk. Please send us the full version of the PO, ideally as a .pdf file.

We will then raise an invoice for payment, using the PO provided. Following the payment of this invoice, we can then arrange dispatch the Boxes to you.

We understand storage space can be an issue for many organisations and try to offer maximum flexibility. We can dispatch in stages as requested over a 12-month period. Dispatch requests can be made via the practitioner portal or email to info@givinghope.org.uk.

Unit 3

Unit 3: Launching HOPE

A successful launch event is a way to build momentum and buy-in, and to celebrate the hard work of yourself and your steering group. Unit 3 Covered:

  1. The skills needed to plan an effective launch event that generates interest and secures buy-in from key stakeholders and community members.
  2. Strategies that communicate the goals and benefits of the HOPE Boxes to various audiences, enhancing awareness and support for the initiative.
  3. Collaboration across agencies and building a network of advocates to sustain momentum post-launch.
  4. Insight into engaging the voices of those with lived experience to create a meaningful, impactful launch experience.

 

Bringing practitioners together from across agencies can be a powerful start. It gives people an opportunity to ask questions more informally and to see the HOPE Boxes.

photo showing hope box in foreground

Some points to consider when planning your launch:

  • An online event may allow you to reach more practitioners and members of the community, but in-person events can create a sense of warmth and allow attendees to see the HOPE Boxes for themselves. It is worth considering which approach best suits your situation.
  • Encourage strategic leads and partners to attend and contribute to the event, fostering the collaboration essential for a systemic innovation to work.
  • Use the opportunity to think more broadly about how to improve multi-agency practices, and the quality of care for mothers and babies facing separation.

If you wish to hear more about launch events, you can listen to the podcast below, where those involved in the Lancashire-wide Giving HOPE launch event share their thoughts:

PODCAST LINK: From Numbers to Hope – What Lies Behind the Statistics? | Acast

Unit 4

Unit 4: Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring and evaluating the implementation and impact of The Giving HOPE offer is important to help ensure sustainability and improve practice. Unit 4 covered:

  1. How to develop and implement a comprehensive framework for assessing the effectiveness and impact of the HOPE Boxes initiative in your local area.
  2. Key evaluation methods, including process and impact evaluations, to gather meaningful data and identify areas for improvement.
  3. Ability to use evaluation results to inform strategic decision-making, demonstrate accountability to stakeholders, and support the sustainability and scalability of the initiative.

 

Approaches to Evaluation

Your evaluative strategy may include both:

  • Process Evaluation: How an intervention was implemented, focusing on delivery, reach, fidelity, and context to understand what worked, what didn’t and why.
  • Impact Evaluation: Measuring the outcome or changes directly attributed to the intervention, evaluating its effectiveness against the intended goal.

To build an evaluative framework, it may be helpful to consider the following questions:

  • What is the overall aim of your local evaluation? This will help you to decide what data you will need to collect, and what methods might best achieve that. Think about how the information you collect may link to any local strategic priorities. Capturing data to show impact in key areas linked to local priorities as well as the Giving HOPE principles, may help with overall funding and sustainability of Giving HOPE into the future.
  • What are the objectives of your evaluation? Once you have an overall aim, break it down into a few key topics or objectives of interest. It is important to consider how these objectives may link back to the HOPE Principles.
  • Measures: Once you know what you are looking for, you can decide what will measure the objectives you have set, and how you might collect that data.

There is often little time or resources for a full evaluation, and it is worth considering ways to make evaluations more efficient and accessible. For example, consider how data could be gathered during everyday practices so that there is minimal impact to your overall workload.

Unit 5

Unit 5: Supporting your Staff

Unit 5 covered the support needs of practitioners involved in this emotionally challenging work. This included:

  1. The impact that this work may have on practitioners and ways to conceptualise this impact.

  2. Ways to support practitioners and mitigate potential harm and burn-out.

  3. Tips for running a reflective session for practitioners using the HOPE Boxes in your area.

 

Some of those concepts that are useful for understanding the needs of staff, and building strategies for addressing them are summarised below:

  • Moral distress arises when an individual has a strong sense of the ethically appropriate action to take but feels unable to because of system barriers.
  • Moral Residue refers to the cumulative impact of unresolved moral distress, leading to persistent feelings of guilt, shame, and frustration.
  • Moral injury refers to the deep psychological, emotional, or spiritual harm caused by actions or inactions that violate an individual’s moral or ethical values, leading to feelings of guilt, shame, or betrayal.
  • Role Conflict describes the impact on individuals when they experience conflicting role expectations within their work.
  • Emotional Labour, refers to the effort required by workers to regulate and manage their emotions to meet the expectations of their professional roles.
  • Role stigma refers to the negative perceptions attached to certain professions, particularly those tasked with difficult or controversial decisions.
  • The concept of vicarious trauma was developed by psychologists specialising in trauma work. It refers to the emotional and psychological impact on practitioners who are repeatedly exposed to the trauma of others.

We have all these stories, and, like you said, we don’t forget them. We are going through it with these women, just perhaps in a different perspective. And I am not saying as painful but we are living it with them. And that is challenging, because we are just building a book of these stories of all these women, and we remember them by name and we remember every little detail. So yes, it does have an emotional impact, I think.

-Midwife, (Mason at al. 2022)

Running a Reflective Group to Support Practitioners

It’s important to promote reflective practices, creating space within group and individual sessions where practitioners can express and process the challenges of their work. A healthy organisational culture is essential to this, and while there needs to be organisational mechanisms for supporting staff, there is also an imperative for self-care.

We recommend reflective group sessions to support practitioners. One framework for this session could be the Gibb’s Reflective Learning Cycle, illustrated above. Available here is a guide to running your first reflective session. In this session we recommend you explore any issues raised during training, share pathway plans and timeframes, build collaborative relationships and identify support needs going forward.

Future Sessions

Regular Giving HOPE reflective sessions for practitioners working with the HOPE Boxes, provide an opportunity for local leads to receive regular feedback on how the Giving HOPE offer is working locally. It is also an opportunity to identify any problems, build inter-agency collaboration and offer peer support to practitioners. Their frequency will depend on local variables, but we recommend 3-4 meetings per year. These sessions should be a safe space to reflect on practices, receive support, identify issues and problem solve together.

Points to consider:

  1. How will you create a safe and open environment where staff feel comfortable sharing their experiences of moral distress and other challenges?
  2. How can you facilitate discussions that not only focus on individual experiences but also explore systemic issues and potential solutions?