An early intervention project to reduce offending and anti-social behaviour among vulnerable young children in central Scotland is being proposed as a model for other local authorities.

The Matrix project, which is led by Barnardo’s, was piloted in 1999 with funding from the Scottish Executive and the Treasury’s Invest to Save initiative (pound;600,000 so far). It is now to get an extra pound;100,000 from the Executive’s Changing Children’s Services Fund.

Cathy Jamieson, the Minister for Education and Young People, says: “Local authorities will be encouraged to take forward other projects based on this model to enable vulnerable children and their families to reap the benefits.”

The Matrix team, based at the Barnardo’s Scotland office in Stirling, works with social work and education services in Clackmannanshire, Falkirk and Stirling as well as with the Reporter’s Administration and Central Scotland Police. It aims to enhance children’s development by intervening in systems that affect them, strengthening protective factors and reducing those which contribute to offending behaviour. It works in the contexts of home and family, school, the local community and wider society.

At any one time the team works with 12 children aged eight to 11 and their families. The extra funding in the next financial year will almost double this figure to 23.

The new support for Matrix comes after an evaluation report by the Social Work Research Centre at Stirling University, which looked at 17 children and their families with whom the project had finished working.

In the two years up to September 2001, the project had accepted 23 referrals. The report says there have been immediate successes.

l Almost all the children have shown a marked increase in pro-social behaviour.

* Almost all have shown a significant improvement in their behaviour at school.

* Those children who had been engaging in offending behaviour have shown a dramatic reduction in offending.

* All the parents have engaged with the support on offer and have made positive changes to their parenting.

Matrix works with families for just over a year on average. The most common problems cited are children’s anti-social behaviour (at home, at school and in the community), aggressive behaviour and difficulties with peers, and parents unable to control their child and establish boundaries. Voluntary contracts are drawn up between families and their Matrix worker and a list of goals is set to address their difficulties.

Offending-related goals aim to stop children offending. Educational goals include considering other people’s feelings, improving home-school links and better relationships with peers. Community goals find positive interests for the children and their parents. Child-related goals help the children to explore their feelings and develop internal behaviour controls, while parent-related goals aim to develop positive family bonds, boundaries and confident parenting.

“We try to identify children between eight and 11 who are struggling in all settings - school, home and the community,” says Katie Lamb, the Barnardo’s Matrix service manager. “They are referred by schools and social workers together but families have to agree.

“In general I think we may only be scraping the surface, given that our catchment area stretches from Bo’ness to Callander, but at least we know we are working with those most at risk,” she says.

“All referrals are voluntary and I think they feel it’s easier to work with us because we are in the voluntary sector. They know we can’t take their children away from them, which is a common fear.”

The Matrix team comprises four social workers, one community education worker, one family support worker and an administrator. They are particularly pleased with their engagement with parents, which was commended by the report.

“We focus on the family, not just the child. We see both separately and together at least once a week,” says Mrs Lamb.

“We work on parenting skills and look at the parents’ own problems, which might be about finance or housing. We also run two successful parent groups, where they can share problems and know they are not alone.

“If a child is well attached to its family, it is less likely to get into bother. So we encourage family activities, anything from going swimming or going to the park to playing board games together.

“When we first meet the children it is apparent that parental control has gone or at least that parents feel it has gone. So we support families and make links with social work and school in order to get control back,” she says.

Feedback on Matrix suggests that families feel they are listened to and appreciate the encouragement and advice to use local authority services better and in an assertive rather than aggressive manner.

“I think we can be more responsive simply because we work with a small number of families intensively,” says Mrs Lamb.

Lack of parental supervision is a big risk factor in cases of children who can be out in the street until midnight (perhaps straight from school), mixing with older children who might be offenders. Establishing routines, such as fixed meal times, becomes part of the family agreement and Matrix workers will search the streets at night with the parents looking for their wayward youngsters.

Parental neglect can also be a big risk factor where parents have given up on their children.

“With most families there is a chance for change because we are intervening early,” says Mrs Lamb.

One Matrix case concerned a family of two parents and four children aged six to 14. All the children have been on the child protection register for physical abuse. The parents were very open about the fact that they used physical punishment.

The children were engaging in anti-social behaviour at home, at school and in the community. They were often known to be out late and their parents couldn’t get them to come in. Smacking wasn’t working.

The parents spent time with the Matrix worker looking at rules and routines in the home. In fact, there were no set meal times and no pre-arranged times the children had to be home by.

A plan was drawn up for set meals and coming in times. The parents agreed to have tea ready at the same time every evening and the children agreed to come home for it. Coming in times were agreed according to age. A board was put up in the kitchen to post the agreed times and the day’s menu.

The whole family was committed to the plan. Putting it into practice was a huge challenge but support was provided by the Matrix worker and a local authority worker. Between them, one was there at teatime four nights a week and the visits sometimes involved going out with one of the parents to look for the children. Gradually the routine began to fall into place.

Alongside this routine, family outings were organised, partly as rewards but also to encourage the family to spend some fun times together.

Ultimately, a situation where no one was in control was turned around by careful planning with the parents as active participants. They have regained control, but they haven’t just learned new ways to control their children; they have a new approach to family life and they all enjoy it more. Most importantly for the children, attachment to family is a key protective factor.

The Matrix evaluation report puts the referred eight to 11-year-olds into three categories: lLevel 3, those who have a history of referrals to the Reporter on care and protection grounds and two or more referrals on offence grounds. This is the high-level offending category.

lLevel 2, those with a history of care and protection referrals who are referred on offence grounds for the first time. This is the early intervention category.

lLevel 1, those who have not been referred to the Reporter on offence grounds but have a cluster of factors in their lives which place them at risk of offending behaviour.

“With children of this age there is still a huge potential for change, even if their negative behaviour is established. It can be very hard but you have to work with hope,” says Mrs Lamb.

“There’s an approach which talks about children who are vulnerable but invincible. It’s a question of finding that resilience in a child and building on it, as well as applying these resilience factors to other children.”

At the beginning of the project the team was wary about approaching families because, in effect, they would be labelling their children as potential offenders, but they found that the families were already worried about the risk. The Matrix approach, however, does not address offending directly.

“This is because of the age of the children,” says Mrs Lamb. “A child might have two offences, for example, but be behaving aggressively or violently at home or in school. We address the behaviour in order to reduce aggression and make the child more pro-social, enabling him to get on better with others, to make friends and so on.

“Using a traffic lights system, if a child has been bashing somebody in the dinner queue at school, for example, we hold the child at amber or caution until he realises he shouldn’t do this before giving him a green, all clear signal.

“We also use cartooning in a similar way, where the child’s drawing of the stages of what became unacceptable behaviour can be pinpointed and discussed.”

Community links are important in the rehabilitation process, as a child excluded from school might also be excluded from the youth club or community centre for the same behavioural reason. (Most Matrix children are in mainstream education.) Part of the Matrix team’s work is to negotiate entry or re-entry into such places.

“Parents and children often need help to access these facilities,” says Mrs Lamb. “We take children to these activities as a way of bridging them in, so that they will make use of them themselves.”

A significant minority of Matrix parents have literacy problems. Where this is the case, the project workers help to get them into adult literacy classes.

“Making the parents more successful helps their children educationally and helps with child-school links,” says Mrs Lamb. “One child’s teacher actually took on helping to correct the parent’s adult literacy work.

“It’s good for the child to see their parents’ commitment to learning.”

From Mrs Lamb’s perspective Barnardo’s Matrix is very much about education. “Anything that’s about changing behaviour is about education,” she says.

“We want to help teach the child informally, in partnership with them and their families, to build on skills that are already there.”

SCHOOLS’ VIEWS OF MATRIX INTERVENTION

SUSAN GOSLING

Headteacher, Bankier Primary, Banknock, Falkirk

People at Matrix really are at the sharp end because they are dealing with children who have already been a long way through the system without success in changing their most undesirable behaviours.

“These tend to be children with the most serious and intractable behaviour problems. So even very small steps forward should be considered a big success.

“In our case, a Matrix worker was assigned to a child with the most serious behavioural difficulties. His behaviour was extremely challenging and any measures we had put in place internally or via external agencies had not resulted in any marked improvements.

“When Matrix became involved, we still did not see any major improvements. This is not a reflection on Matrix but it does reflect the nature of the difficulties.

“However, there were benefits from their involvement. The Matrix worker provided desperately needed respite for the family and teachers in times of great stress. She acted as a mediator; supported and befriended the child; supervised and observed him in the playground; helped the child set targets, some of which he achieved, and offered strategies to help change the child’s behaviour. She helped us maintain the child in mainstream for longer than would otherwise have been possible and helped school staff to see things from other perspectives.”

LYNN PATERSON

Depute headteacher, Bannockburn Primary, Stirling

Matrix provides a very beneficial service, acting as a third party and link between school and home.

“The Matrix worker understood how the child was bringing problems into school and she could relate educational targets to behaviour problems. If the child was running out of class, she gave positive reinforcement to bring the child back in and rewarded her on a points basis.

“She helped with the child’s behaviour in class and in the playground. There was a marked improvement.

“She was realistic about what the child could attain and spoke in a way the child could understand. She was practical in her approach, sensible, professional and a good listener.

“There was a close relationship between the school and Matrix. I’d definitely make use of Matrix again if I could.”