Birmingham Pathfinder’s Shared Authority work boosted by funding from the National Lottery

The core of our work at Birmingham Pathfinder is focussed on developing the most effective approach to supporting families who are struggling or in crisis. We are hugely proud of our developing model of family support, and yet long-term aspirations for our families go way beyond helping them tackle the problems that they are facing. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of our model is what we call our ‘shared authority’ work, whereby our more established Pathfinder families go on to become change agents in their own right.

In spite of the significance of the issues that some of our families are dealing with we are so often struck by the strength of their desire to contribute, and to ‘put something back’; and so often humbled by the resilience, resourcefulness and strength that they display. We have also learned, over the course of our development of our model, just how powerful it is to shift from a ‘doing-to’ to a doing-with’ mindset. The idea of ‘withism’ is discussed in detail by Adam Lent of the Kings Fund here.

Our ‘shared authority’ work has grown out of these observations and learnings, and is grounded in the conviction that full-spectrum help does not end with ‘fixing a problem for a client’, or even with ‘helping them to fix their own problem’ – it builds towards helping someone to become a helper themselves.

By providing long-term, ‘support-on-tap’, our model of family support inevitably builds the relationships and trust that lend themselves to a more relational, ‘alongside’ approach to addressing a family’s problems. Not only does this mean that they are able to provide live feedback into the helping relationship about what is working and what could be done differently; but it also goes further than enabling a family to input into their own support: it also enables them to start looking for ways to make a change outside of their own family.

‘Shared Authority work’ looks different for different people:

• Groups of parents who have graduated from our PIE for parents and NVR courses (which teach ‘psychologically-informed parenting skills) have chosen to continue meeting, organising their own regular coffee mornings to provide one another with support in applying the principles that they have learned.

• Motivated by her own experience of gaps in the support available for parents like herself, one mother of a child with SEND (special educational needs and/or disability) has established the ‘REAL SEND support group’, a group for parents with children with SEND who meet regularly at our central office and offer each other peer-to-peer support.
• Some Pathfinder parents have even become ‘Parent Associates’, who dedicate regular voluntary time to pursuing projects of their own devising, supported by Pathfinder staff.

• One of the latest initiatives launched by Pathfinder parents are ‘Pathfinder Pitch-ins’: groups of pathfinder parents get together to tackle problems for other parents or members of the wider community. Their first undertaking was to assist a fellow parent with decluttering her flat, and more recently they helped redecorate a room for another parent who had had a ceiling cave-in (pictured here). Their long term aspirations are to extend the pitch-ins to members of the wider community who need their assistance.

This doesn’t mean that there is always a linear progression from ‘needing help’ to ‘being a helper’. In fact another pillar of our ‘shared authority’ value is recognising that people can be both at once. Or that people’s progress can take a step back. This is why we stay available for our families even after their case with us is no longer active, and the way that this enables our shared authority work is another reason why our ‘support on tap’ approach to support is such a key feature of our work.

In April we were extremely fortunate to receive grant funding from the National Lottery Reaching Communities fund which will support us to maintain and develop this work for the next three years. It has been a huge honour that such an established funder as the National Lottery has recognised the value and importance of our shared authority work and we are truly excited to see what will be possible with three years of security and development for this aspect of our work.