This week NWG are taking to social media to keep the focus on working with parents as safeguarding partners. You might be thinking, “have I missed an awareness-raising day or week?” and the answer is “No!” But that is even more of a reason that we continue to think about families who are experiencing abuse from outside the family home.

Building and Rebuilding Relationships

Lockdown 2.0 has created even more challenges and uncertainty as we continue to live at a distance from our loved ones, friends and networks. This is even more difficult for families where, in addition to this, they are also experiencing fear, distress and anxiety due to the exploitation of their child and the impact this has on the whole family. For many families, professionals are the only people they can talk with about their child’s exploitation especially as they are physically and emotionally isolated from their friends, extended family and community. Families may need support to strengthen and rebuild the relationships with their children, their families and their networks. As we tentatively come out of lockdown, the need to keep connected with each other as professionals and to connect and reconnect with the families we are working with is paramount, whether this is face to face or online.

Looking After Ourselves

Small acts of kindness have punctuated what has been such a challenging and difficult year. We continue to hear of workers going that extra mile to keep a lifeline open to families and of communities coming together to reach out to the most vulnerable. As workers, we also need to retain small acts of kindness for ourselves so that we can keep going. Energising our wellbeing into winter will look different for all of us – a lunchtime dog walk, a solitary bath with candles, playing an instrument, homemade cake with a cuppa, jumping around the kitchen to your favourite tunes or meeting up in the park and having walking meetings. Time away from screens where we can reconnect with ourselves and others is essential to our own wellbeing.

What are we doing at NWG?

We wanted to share over the coming week all the resources that have been developed to enhance your work with families. We have created short vlogs on our training, sharing resources and we will be sharing a video which is centred on the voice of families to raise the profile of empowering and working alongside families which we hope you will share with your colleagues and network.

We are taking over NWG social media because parents deserve that platform. Please can you:

· Follow our posts #NWGFamilies

· Download our resources

· Join the NWG network to access more of our resources, training, and blogs.

· Tell us about the work you are doing so that we can share that with colleagues

Help families stay connected through these difficult times and let’s stay connected with them.