Shared Training and Assessment for well-being (STRAWB)

This pilot study was run by researchers from the Rees Centre (Nikki Luke and Valerie Dunn) and the University of Sussex (Robin Banerjee and Helen Drew) to test a new package called STrAWB (Shared Training and Assessment for Well-Being).

We worked with foster carers, social workers, young people, and mental health experts to develop the package, which aims to help the key adults in looked-after children’s lives to support their well-being.

The STrAWB package consists of:
a) A training course that brings together foster or kinship carers and teachers to increase their understanding of mental health and well-being;
b) A set of surveys completed by the carer, teacher, and the child, that tells us about different aspects of well-being both at home and at school; and
c) A mental health specialist who looks at all the answers to the surveys and uses these to create a profile of strengths and needs for each child, which is fed back to carers, teachers, and children’s social workers with practical recommendations for support.

In 2017-18, STrAWB was trialled in a small pilot study with 18 children.
Foster carers and teachers gave positive feedback: they particularly valued the opportunities for improved communication and integrated working. Examples of resulting changes to practice included securing counselling sessions on the basis of the evidence provided in a child’s profile, and re-locating teaching assistant work within the classroom to maintain peer relationships for another child.

The feasibility study

Between 2020-2023, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded a feasibility trial of STrAWB. The study was a collaboration between the Rees Centre, the Universities of Sussex and Southampton, the London School of Economics, University College London and the Anna Freud Centre, and the Institute of Psychiatry. [Full author details are at the project report link below]

We wanted to find out whether STrAWB was useful for foster carers, designated teachers and other professionals. This was a small study to allow us to see if it would be possible to do this with a larger number of children in the future, so that we could see whether the STrAWB programme improved the well-being of children in care.

We randomly put children, their carers and designated teachers into one of two groups. Only one group received the full STrAWB programme, which was delivered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both groups completed questionnaires about the child’s well-being at the start and again a year later, to see if it was possible to collect this sort of information across time. We also spoke to those who took part to see how they found it, whether it was useful, and whether anything needed to change.

Due to the pandemic we were not able to find the number of people to take part that we needed, so we could not show that a bigger study would be possible. But those who participated thought the project was useful and much needed and felt that splitting children into two groups to see if STrAWB improved well-being was acceptable. Final project report https://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/phr/published-articles/NGXR5244

Award ID: NIHR127799, value £502,639.15