How do the Family Caring Trust courses work?
All are easy-to-run, flexible, courses for groups of 8-12 participants. For each course there is a Leader's Guide with simple, clear instructions for each session (including a script which facilitators may use if they wish). Secondly, there is a Participant's Handbook (with case studies, skill-practice ideas, simple exercises and short chapters written in simple, jargon-free language). Each participant needs a copy of the Handbook – this needs to be borne in mind when ordering, as only one copy is included in the kit. In most of the courses there is also audio-visual input (DVD and video format) presenting typical family situations.

Where do the programmes come from?
The programmes, designed to provide support at all stages of the family life-cycle, have been developed and tested in co-operation with statutory and voluntary agencies throughout Britain and Ireland (see Value Base and Evaluation). Participants in the groups are enabled to improve their skills and develop more honest, respectful relationships in their families. The situations presented in the books and CDs/videos come out of a variety of age ranges and different social and ethnic backgrounds. Elizabeth Burgess of the Parkside Community Project in Wandsworth writes,

“We've facilitated sixteen of your courses since 2000 with encouraging feedback. In the last two years we're having more racially and culturally mixed groups, including people from four different continents, and they work well together. Your inclusion of people of different ethnic origin in the DVD is important for all groups but even more so for such mixed groups.”

How Family Caring Trust is Different

Not doing for others what they can do for themselves
Family Caring Trust is quite different in some respects to other parenting organisations in the UK.  Back in the 1980s, when the Trust was being set up, inspectors from the Dept. of Health visited, sat in on trainings, studied our materials and talked frankly with us.  They told us that they had had the experience of new organisations which had mushroomed and become overnight successes, then the charismatic individuals who had built them up moved aside and everything had collapsed.  So they pointed to an important plank of government policy in relation to community development (which has also steadily increased in emphasis in official documents since then).  The policy (and advice flowing out of it) is as follows:
“Work through the existing voluntary and statutory structures in society. There is no need to re-invent the wheel or duplicate what is already in existence, so please value the experience, wisdom and expertise of organisations that have already borne the heat of the day; your goal is to affirm them and work through them, not to replace them.”
This advice ties in with the Principle of Subsidiarity (“Do not do at National level what can be done at local level.”)  It also ties in with one of the key principles of our courses, namely, Rudolf Dreikurs’ maxim, “People become responsible when they are given responsibility, so do not do for others (children or adults) what they can do for themselves.”

Making ourselves invisible
Family Caring Trust took this advice to heart, and set up a Charity which is quite different to most other bodies in the country:

• We do not organise or set up any of the courses that use our programmes – we only work through other organisations.. 
• So we work through NHS Trusts, Borough Councils (Early Years and Child Care Departments), Community Education, schools and Adult Education services, Psychological services, Churches (usually Marriage and Family Life Commissions of Church dioceses), and a variety of voluntary organisations like Barnardos, the Children's Society, NCH, Spurgeons, Parenting Matters, Mothers Union, Billericay Parents Forum, etc. 
• All of them are encouraged to develop their own induction policies, facilitator-training programmes (normally accredited by OCN), and to do their own evaluations. 
• Family Caring Trust supports their initiatives and provides resources for them but does not directly organise them. 

This, then, was what the Department of Health encouraged us to do – almost to make ourselves invisible.  Although we have reached over half a million parents throughout Britain, Family Caring Trust is not a household name like other national charities; most people haven’t heard of us.  We were encouraged instead to avoid the media and let the organisations we supplied do their own media work and take the responsibility (and obviously the credit) for what was their own parenting initiative.  We were to stay in the background. 

The Advantages of not having a ‘top-down’ model
Initially, this may seem like a weakness, in that we do not keep tight control over things, but it has also been a great strength.  History teaches us that too much structure can lessen creativity and dis-empower – Michael Parkinson said recently that the BBC had gradually introduced more professional structures and that everyone joining now had a degree in media studies – but that much of the creative, innovative pioneering spirit had been lost!  Whereas our experience has been that organisations appreciated not having to fit into a Family Caring Trust ‘structure.’ As a result, they took on parenting support as their own initiative, not ours.  They weren’t “working for us” or doing our programme, we were merely offering them a tool that helped to affirm and empower them.  Our programmes have allowed them to become more effective and creative – this has been acknowledged by many organisations, including Barnardos and the Health Visitors Association (CPHVA).
There were other strengths that arose from the creativity and freedom felt by bodies throughout the country when they felt ‘ownership’ of our materials.  They saw parent support as their initiative, they did their own evaluations, sometimes with a variety of university departments (see ‘Evaluation’ on this website).  They also gave us a wealth of feedback (negative as well as positive – reflected in our newsletters) and made suggestions for changes which we invariably adopted.  And they availed of their own in-house training – or bought into the Open College Network training which was developed by Hallam Caring Services and was then made available to all.
We are appreciative now of the advice we got from the Department of Health, for the direction in which that took us and for the distinctive ethos which Family Caring Trust developed as a result.  The guidelines the Department offered us took us away from the ‘top-down’ model, and many innovative developments have consequently flowed from that.  In the process we have learned some very practical lessons in fostering community development.