​With the festive period over, getting back in the school routine can be a struggle for both children and parents.

The routine you worked so hard to establish can feel like a distant memory after bedtimes and everyday activities have been disrupted, meaning back-to-school can be a stressful experience for all involved.

We’ve put together some tips to help make school mornings less stressful.

Plan ahead 

Prep lunchboxes, PE kits, book bags and school uniforms the night before to avoic dashing around trying to find things and causing additional stress.

It will allow more time in the morning to focus on breakfast, washing and getting dressed.

Check any homework has been completed and placed in school bags the night before. This could avoid an argument in the morning.

Get up early 

Leave plenty of time for everyone to get up and ready.

Think how long it will realistically take to get ready in the morning and give yourself an extra 15-25 minutes to allow for anything that may not go to plan.

Make sure children know what time they need to get up and prompt them in the morning if they struggle.

Structure 

Try to follow the same routine each morning so children know what is expected of them and when.

It will differ among households so sit down with your children and come up with your routine as a family.

Sometimes children respond better to seeing it written down or in pictures and can use it as a checklist.

It also helps parents to give prompts to remind children which step they should have reached.

If children struggle with breakfast, ensure it is at the same time each morning to help them get used to it in their routine.

Giving children small choices about what to have for breakfast will help, such as what jam to put on toast or what kind of cereal they would like.

Getting up in plenty of time will also help breakfast to become a stress-free event.

Review 

If your morning routine isn’t working, review what works and what you find stressful to make adjustments.

Click here to download PDF of this article.

A family support charity in Staunton, near Newent, has won an £800 boost for a mums and dads art project.

Community Family Care’s grant from the Thomas Wall Trust will enable it to launch an art journal project for parents struggling to cope with the demands of family life.

The aim is to help build their confidence and self-esteem by allowing them to explore their thoughts and feelings, using art journals as a coping tool. The pilot course will run for  six weeks, starting in February.

Sasha Hart, manager of Community Family Care said: “Parenthood isn’t always plain sailing and finding yourself unable to cope can bring some mums and dads to a state of near helplessness.

“We have run art journal courses for children with a lot of success. This grant will enable us to use many of the same techniques to help their parents.”

The Thomas Wall Trust, established in 1920, provides grants to charit ies that can make a real impact in improving the lives of local people.

Parenting column by Sasha Hart, family care manager at Community Family Care, Staunton

The holidays are around the corner and many families will have a busy social calendar.

Having visitors or going to visit friends and relatives can lead to a variety of problem behaviours in children such as showing off for attention or having tantrums.

Children can learn problem behaviour is overlooked when others are around and can use it as an opportunity to misbehave, turning what should be a fun visit in to a stressful time for parents.

Here are some simple tips.

Plan ahead 

Prepare your child for having visitors. Tell your child who is coming and what you would like them to do.

It is often useful to plan some activities to keep children entertained or take some activities with you.

Try to plan visitors or visits at times that don’t disrupt your child’s usual routine – tired and hungry children are less likely to be happy.

Rules 

Setting two or three simple rules can remind your child what is expected of them.

For example, say excuse me if you need to speak to mum or dad, share your toys, play nicely with others.

Discuss the rules with your child, along with rewards and consequences and remind them of the rules.

Agree on a small reward with your child if they follow the rules.

Praise

Give your child lots of praise each time you see them behaving well so they are not having to misbehave to get attention.

Check in on them every 10 minutes or so and engage them in a different activity if they are starting to get bored.

Consequences 

If your child starts to misbehave, get close and gain their attention by using their name, tell them what you want them to stop doing and what you would like to see them doing instead.

Follow up with a consequence if they do not do as you have asked.

Review 

Once the visit is over review what went well with your child to reinforce the behaviour you would like to see next time.

If there was a problem following one of the rules remind your child of the rule and set a goal for next time.

Click here to download PDF of this article.

Our 'thanks' to Santander Foundation piece was featured in the November 29 issue of The Forester.

Community Family Care is delighted to receive a £3,000 grant to fund art workshops for children.

The four groups will take place in Gloucester and will enable young people who are experiencing difficulties to explore their thoughts, feelings and emotions through art.

Community Family Care’s Art Journal project was launched in response to the need for effective emotional and mental health support for some young people. It has helped to improve the emotional wellbeing of more than 100 young people in the last year.

The donation was provided by the Santander Foundation which offers Discovery Grants to UK registered charities for projects that help disadvantaged people in local communities. 

Community Family Care, based in Staunton, is a registered charity which supports families all over Gloucestershire. 

Manager Sasha Hart said: “We’re delighted to receive this grant from the Santander Foundation. Our Art Journal project has helped young people with self harm, self-confidence and anger issues to use art to reflect, learn new coping strategies and improve their emotional wellbeing. 

“Thanks to Santander we’re now able to offer the project to even more young people.”

Amy Slack, Manager at the Santander Foundation, said: “The Santander Foundation makes hundreds of donations every year to good causes throughout the UK. We are committed to playing a key part in the community and we are delighted to be supporting Community Family Care and hope the donation makes a real difference.”

Parenting column by Sasha Hart, family care manager at Community Family Care, Staunton

The battle at bedtime after a long day can be extremely stressful for many parents.

We all want our children to have enough sleep so that they are well rested and ready for next day.

Parents also need time of their own in the evenings to unwind after a busy day.

When a child is unable to sleep or is not in a good sleep routine it has an effect on the whole family.

We’ve put together some tips for establishing a bedtime routine and getting children into good sleeping habits.

Monitor

All children are different. Some will sleep anywhere and everywhere and others will approach sleep as an enemy and will fight it at all costs.

The key is to understand what works for your child and incorporate this into your routine.

If sleep is an issue for your child, start making a diary to look for triggers to a poor night’s sleep and to identify anything that helps support sleep for your child – usually there is a pattern.

Consistency

The idea of a bedtime routine is that it is just that – a routine. It needs to be consistent each day to allow your child to understand what happens at  bedtime and for them to feel relaxed.

Give your child a reminder at each stage of your routine, such as “after we have a bath we clean our teeth” and “once we’ve cleaned our teeth we put our pyjamas on”. This will also help them to remember what happens at bedtime.

Visual routines with the steps written up with pictures can help.

Remember that they won’t necessarily fall asleep as soon as they are in bed so factor in time in bed preparing to sleep. This could be time reading a story or talking about their day.

While in bed keep the lights low to support a calm atmosphere.

If you have more than one child, stagger bedtimes so they can each benefit from your time before bed.

Calm

Encourage calm activities before bed, rather than active play. Not all children will recognise when they are tired or feel sleepy, so sometimes we need to help by winding them down and creating a sleep-inducing environment.

Bedtime needs to be relaxing and quiet so try to limit other activity in the house around this time. A warm bath before bed will also help children to start  relaxing and get ready for sleep.

Incentives

If your child struggles with following the routine use incentives.

For example, if each evening your child refuses to put their pyjamas on, create a reward chart so that they can earn stickers each time they follow your instruction and put their pyjamas on.

Small rewards, such as staying up an extra 20 minutes at the weekend, are free and can be good incentives.

Don’t Stress

If you are stressed by bedtime and feel anxious about trying to get your child to sleep, the chances are your child will pick up on this and it won’t help the situation.

Getting into a routine takes time and if your child is a difficult sleeper, things won’t change straight away.

​With back-to-school time approaching, preparing to get back in to the school routine can trigger a range of emotions in parents and children.

Parents may feel a sense of relief they don’t need to provide all-day childcare combined with sadness that extended time as a family is over.

Children may feel apprehensive about going back, be unsure about a new teacher or friendship groups, or they may be feeling excited about a new term and  seeing friends again.

These mixed emotions, combined with need to get back in to the swing of a school day, can mean that the first few weeks of term are fairly stressful. 

We’ve put together some survival tips to help you get through it.

Be prepared

During the first few weeks of term your child is likely to be tired, and therefore more likely to misbehave or be irritable.

They have gone from prolonged time at home and fun activities to a very structured day consisting of a cognitive overload of learning and social interaction.

Factor this in when booking in other activities and allow your child some downtime.

Routine

Try to prepare your child for the change back in to the school routine ahead of
time.

If you know they struggle in the mornings start getting them up earlier in the final couple of weeks of the holidays and get back to regular bedtimes.

Talk through the routine with your child so they know what will happen.

Establish a regular time to go to bed, get up in the morning, and time to leave  for school.

Visual aids may also help both you and your child with the routine: have a chart with the times and what usually happens to act as a reminder.

Get back in to a regular homework routine as soon as possible - children will often have more homework than the previous year at school and will need to keep on top of it from the start.

Plan ahead

Be as organised as you can to help things to run smoothly. Do as much as you can the night before to help with those first mornings getting back into your school routine, and allow extra time in the mornings to avoid a mad rush.

Make a list of any paperwork or letters you need to deal with for school and pop important dates on to your calendar when you get them.

Remind your child ahead of time what usually happens when they are at school,
for example what time they need to be up, when homework days are, or who will be picking them up from school.

Make time to talk through any anxieties your child may have and offer lots of reassurance.

Take Five

Parents often use the first weeks of back to school time to catch up with things they were unable to do during the summer, whether that’s work, washing or deep cleaning the house.

Remember that parents are human too and everyone needs downtime – take five
minutes to savour a cup of tea in peace and quiet.

Click here to download PDF of this article.

Parenting column by Sasha Brown, family care manager at Community Family Care, Staunton

Fussy eaters and the ongoing mealtime battle can be a nightmare for many parents and can lead to some stressful mealtime experiences.

You want them to eat something nutritional but all they want is chocolate or anything but fruit and vegetables.

It is a natural response for children to fear unknown foods and go through stages of having different preferences.

Here are some tips to help.

Don’t stress

If a lot of pressure is put on children to eat certain foods it can be stressful for both you and them if things don’t go to plan.

This can lead to negative experiences associated with that food.

Encouragement to eat and try new foods needs to be a positive experience for everyone involved in order for it to be successful.

Don’t stress about the small things – as long as your child has had enough to eat, is it the end of the world that they haven’t finished all of their peas?

Sometimes simply trying food is a really positive start.

Get involved

Encourage children to help with cooking.

Giving them manageable tasks that get them involved with mealtimes can encourage them to want to try the fruits of their labour.

Involve them in picking meal choices – we all have days when we don’t quite fancy some things and crave others so if your child picks what they fancy it, can aid success.

Make it fun

Make trying new foods and eating more fruit and veg a positive experience for children.

Start early on and make it a regular family activity to try new things.

Positive exposure to new foods on a regular basis encourages children to like and try new things.

Try dipping fruit in chocolate or yoghurt or cutting vegetables into fun shapes for a different way of presenting foods to children.

Get clever and hide fruit and veg in things that your children will readily eat – sweet potato chips are a great alternative to chips and a spaghetti bolognese is a great way of blitzing a load of vegetables into the tomato sauce.

Set a good example

Eating together can help set a good example to children. If you’re a picky eater yourself children will assume that is normal mealtime behaviour and will imitate it.

Get involved in trying new foods with your children and use older siblings to aid in reassuring younger children that the new food is yummy.

Review how you get on with different foods and remain positive – you can always try and introduce them again at a later date.

Click here to download PDF of this article.

Community Family Care is pleased to offer two half-day training workshops designed to give school Family Support Workers a comprehensive introduction to the role.

After attending the workshops, participants should have a practical toolkit and a framework for dealing with family support issues within a school setting.
 
Day 1 – Practical Skills

• What is family support?
• Lone working
• Supervision/ support
• Professional boundaries
• Communication skills

 
Day 2 – Toolkit

• Recording information
• Assessment tips
• Problem solving (common parenting problems/ issues)
• Signposting to other services

​Feedback from participants:
​
“I came to the workshops just starting out in the role of supporting families. I have learnt so much. I can feel confident taking on the role!”
 
“The delivery of the sessions with shared experiences was great.”
 
“I came away with lots of new ideas and activities to try with children and families.”

​Community Family Care has launched a ground-breaking support service for schools. 

From September 2017, primary schools who subscribe to the Family and Child Support for Schools Service (FACSS) will be able to get help from a professional child support worker by calling a family support hotline.

The experts provided by Community Family Care will offer case-specific support, advice, information and guidance.

Sasha Brown, Family Care Manager for CFC, said many primary schools fall through the net when it comes to family support. 

“With social care thresholds rising, an increasing number of young people and their families are falling through the support net. 

“Schools find themselves taking on more responsibility for issues that fall outside of their education remit. They are experts at teaching, but they don’t always have the expertise or resources to provide family support. Nor do they have the budget to employ a family support worker.

“Often the role becomes an add-on to a teacher’s workload – and teachers have little or no back-up.”

FACCS is a unique subscription service that gives schools access to independent advice, information and guidance from experts at an affordable cost. It can also provide toolkits for intervention, training, supervision and access to a network of Family Support Workers and peer support groups. 

“It’s all about early intervention,” said Sasha. “If we are able to guide schools and families along the right lines at primary school, it can prevent all sorts of major issues developing further down the line.” 

Anyone interested should contact sashab@communityfamilycare.co.uk.
  
Community Family Care helps families, children and young people in need of support. It seeks to improve parents’ confidence, help with routines to get children to school, or more complex support dealing with challenging behaviours at home.