Supporting parents who experience repeat proceedings
Supporting parents who experience repeat proceedings
Delivered online using Teams
12:00 - 13:30 Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Join a webinar that will explore how services across the country are working to offer more compassionate, coordinated support to parents who are at risk of repeat public care proceedings with respect to their children.
We will outline key messages from national research, including evidence on prevalence, the impact of trauma and loss, and the strong moral and financial case for specialist support.
The session will trace the development of recurrent care services and share updates from the latest research, including forthcoming work from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. We will also reflect on the implications emerging from policy developments considering what they mean for practice.
The webinar will showcase examples of effective local implementation, highlighting the approaches, partnerships, and conditions that enable services to make a meaningful difference for parents.
We will also consider how we prevent recurrent care from happening in the first place. Drawing links between pre-birth and recurrent care work, we will introduce key research and resources, discussing what effective early help looks like when delivered through a trauma-informed, relationship-based approach.
Learning outcomes
As a result of taking part in this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand the evidence on the prevalence, causes and impacts of recurrent care, and why specialist support for parents is needed.
- Recognise effective approaches to developing, implementing and sustaining trauma-informed recurrent care services.
- Identify key insights from recent research and national policy recommendations, including implications for local practice.
- Apply learning to practice by making links between pre-birth and recurrent care work to improve early, preventative support for families.
Audience Types
Practitioners
Principal Social Worker (PSW)
Senior leaders
Senior practitioners
Social workers
Strategic leads
Commissioners
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Relationships and effective direct work | Promote and govern excellent practice | Shaping and influencing the practice system | Purposeful and effective social work | Creating a context for excellent practice | Designing a system to support effective practice
CQC - Effective | Caring | Responsive
PCF - Values and ethics | Rights, justice and economic wellbeing | Intervention and skills
Services for parents who have experienced recurrent care proceedings: Where are we now? Findings from mapping of locally developed services in England – Research Report (2021)
This report provides an overview of existing, specialist services in England for parents who have appeared in one or more sets of care proceedings (commonly referred to as recurrent care proceedings).
Working with recurrent care-experienced birth mothers: Online Resources
Social workers, lawyers and judges have long been aware that some women return to court as respondents in care proceedings after having already experienced the removal of one or more children in previous proceedings. These resources bring together material from a Change Project with information, reflections and practice examples provided by those participating.
Working with recurrent care-experienced birth mothers: Resource Pack (2019)
In 2017, a team at Lancaster University published the final report of a Nuffield-funded research study into Vulnerable Birth Mothers and Recurrent Care Proceedings (Broadhurst et al, 2017). The Lancaster team, Research in Practice and colleagues from the University of Essex wanted to collaborate to support the use of the research findings to inform more effective ways of working with this population.
If the above event (or occurrence of an event) is displaying as 'Event Full' and you would like to be added to a waiting list, please email events@researchinpractice.org.uk detailing the required event title, event time and date.
We will contact you should places become available.