12 Aug, 2024
“I used to say it felt like magic - but it isn’t magic, it’s hard work for women and Pause Practitioners. Building relationships, sharing pain, grief, shame, loss, understanding trauma, developing coping skills, containment, seeing things through, starting again, being brave, keeping going, working with family, holding hope, building resilience, listening, really seeing the woman, staying, being consistent, doing what you say. None of this is magic but it leads to amazing change.”
We were thrilled to sit down with Paula James, Quality and Innovation Lead at Pause, to learn more about their work and the impact it has on the women that they support. Read on to learn more.
Paula joined the Pause network in 2018 as Practice Lead for Pause Doncaster working to embed Pause practice locally in Doncaster. She joined the National team as a National Practice Lead in April 2021 and became Quality and Innovation Lead in August 2023. Prior to this, Paula worked as a Youth and Community Worker and Participation Manager in a national charity for 15 years and is passionate about working with women and learning from them as ‘experts by experience’. She completed her MA in Social Work in 2015 and worked in Child Protection before moving into her role with Pause, which combines both her child protection experience and her extensive experience of working face to face with girls and women, raising awareness of their needs and campaigning with them to achieve change. She is passionate about relationship-based practice as the foundation for change and providing opportunities that make a positive difference in women’s lives. Outside of work, Paula is a volunteer for Re-engage and enjoys exercise and hiking.
Please note, all views reflected are the individual’s own, and not representative of their employer.
Can you describe the primary mission of Pause and how it aims to support women who have experienced repeated removals of their children?
As part of our mission to ensure no family experiences the removal of a child more than once, we deliver an 18-month intensive programme, working with women who have had children removed from their care. We work with women when they’re not pregnant and they don’t have children in their care, so she can fully focus on herself, often for the first time.
In addition to working directly with women, we also work to influence the policy and practice that affects the lives of families with experience of children’s social care. Central to this is learning from and working with women – through data collection, consultation and co-production – to ensure their voices are part of system changes.
Can you explain the role of a Pause Practitioner and how they build trust and rapport with the women they work with?
We take a relationship-based approach, so the relationship between a woman and her Pause Practitioner is central to our practice model. Every woman we work with is different – they have different past experiences, needs and goals for the future. This means that while our model therefore has some key elements (as shown in the below graphic), the programme looks different for each woman.
Practitioners take responsibility for building the relationship, working at the woman’s pace, when and where she feels comfortable. Our 16-week ‘engagement’ phase gives women the opportunity to get to know their practitioner and build trust in them, and to decide what areas they want to focus on. This can include practical, therapeutic and emotional support. The Pause approach is one of ‘high challenge and high support’: practitioners are skilled in being compassionate but also not afraid to challenge women and work through difficult times, including rupture and repair of relationships.
Find out more about the relationship between a woman and her Pause Practitioner in this short animation.
How does Pause address and support women who have experienced domestic abuse, and what measures are in place to ensure their safety and wellbeing?
Domestic abuse is the most common reason why children are referred to children’s social care and almost all the women that we work with are, or have been, subject to domestic abuse. However, women who have had children removed from their care are often forgotten about, leading to continued abuse and retraumatisation.
These women are often ineligible for support from specialist domestic abuse services, as women who have children in their care are prioritised for refuge placements. Even when specialist support is offered, they may struggle to engage due to ongoing coercive control or their mistrust of professionals. Further, a lot of support services requires the woman to leave the relationship in order to access them but, for a variety of reasons, they may not be ready to yet. At Pause, we consistently fill this gap in services. Much of our work with women is around helping women to recognise abuse addressing the impact of domestic abuse and accessing the right support, and also helping professionals to understand the unique challenges facing women subject to domestic abuse who have had children removed from their care.
These unique challenges include women continuing to experience abuse (including coercive control) when they try to maintain relationships with their children. For example, we work with a significant number of women, whose children are placed in the care of their paternal family, who report feeling trapped to stay in a relationship with their abuser through fear they otherwise would be prevented from seeing their children.
We are also beginning to gain some really distressing insight into women’s experiences of the family court and how domestic abuse is responded within the court and by legal professionals, including:
- Women, who despite having injunctions against their abuser, are not protected in family courts and are forced to attend at the same time as their abuser
- Professionals dismissing or minimising the impact of domestic abuse
- Legal orders being made that require women to facilitate contact with their abuser.
What are some of the most significant challenges Pause staff face when working with women who have experienced trauma and repeated removals, and how do they address these challenges?
Women who have had children removed from their care often struggle to trust professionals. Pause Practitioners think carefully about how to approach each woman. This includes thinking about how we make contact and share information about the programme and also the resources we take when we meet them – this can be a care pack, a hot drink or a bunch of flowers if the meeting is around an important day for the woman. It is important that engaging with Pause feels different to the recent interactions with professionals that led to the removal of the woman’s children, which often have felt traumatising.
Women working with Pause often have high levels of complex, interconnected and unmet needs. Other services often do not understand the impact of child removal on women and how this influences their decisions. They may feel women are making ‘unwise’ decisions and choices and this can impact how they view women and the service they are offered. For example, if a woman is offered a refuge out of area but has contact with her children that she will then be unable to attend, she may not choose to take the refuge place. Professionals may see this as her being unwilling to work with them, when in reality she is prioritising her children over her own safety.
Pause Practitioners work holistically with women on their goals and aim to remove barriers to working with us and other services through working with women at their pace, on days and times that work for them and in spaces where they feel most safe and comfortable. By rebuilding that trust between women and services, the ultimate goal is that women need us less and can access the right services in future.
How does Pause measure the success and impact of its interventions on the lives of the women and their families?
The success of the intervention is different for each woman – it may be an improved relationship with their children, new friendships, having somewhere safe to live, feeling safe in their relationship, accessing services independently to meet their needs, feeling a part of a community or finding ways to manage feelings of loss and shame. Whilst women are on the programme, we support them to review their progress across a number of standardised priority areas (as in the model above), as well as their own individual goals.
Women also share feedback and narratives with us throughout their Pause journey and these demonstrate the huge difference Pause makes to them and their families. We also see huge improvements in terms of women’s self-esteem and confidence levels. Many women go on to get involved in Pause’s national influencing work, such as co-producing our podcast series, recording videos and contributing to research and reports.
Our Pause Programme has also been independently evaluated to show that it also helps end repeat removals, avoiding trauma for families, reducing the number of children in care, and saving money. Delivering the Pause Programme in a local area results in a reduction of an average of 14 infants entering care per area each year, and for every £1 spent on the Pause Programme, there is a saving of £4.50 over four years, and £7.61 over 18 years.
In what ways does Pause collaborate with other organisations and agencies to provide comprehensive support for the parents in the programme?
On a local level, our practices work collaboratively with Local Authorities, charities, organisations and agencies to ensure women get the support they need – be that help from housing services or drug and alcohol support. Practices support other professionals to understand the barriers women face to working with them and to think about how they can ‘do things differently’ to make their services more accessible and meet women’s needs.
On a national level, we collaborate with other organisations to deliver awareness raising workshops, share learning, strengthen our voices within the sector and amplify our influencing asks.
From your perspective at Pause, what future policy changes or developments do you believe are essential to better support families at risk of having their children taken into care?
At Pause, we use the evidence and expertise we gather through our work with women to work to improve the systems and services that impact families with experience of children’s social care. Our influencing priorities are:
- To improve the children’s social care system, so that no family experiences the removal of a child from their care more than once. You can read more about our policy asks to end repeat removals
- To ensure safe, supportive relationships between families and children can be built and maintained when a child is in care.
- To eliminate the disadvantages facing families with experience of children’s social care, such as domestic abuse, poverty and homelessness.
Listen to our co-produced podcast series, In a Mother’s Mind, to hear more from women about the issues that affect them and where they’d like to see change.
Reflecting on your time with Pause, what has been your proudest moment or most significant achievement with the organisation?
My proudest achievements have been sharing in the joy of women’s journeys, seeing them change, grow and achieve things they never thought possible. Seeing women who are at the lowest point in their lives develop hope and begin to dream again is a privilege I am grateful for every day.
I used to say it felt like magic – but it isn’t magic, it’s hard work for women and Pause Practitioners. Building relationships, sharing pain, grief, shame, loss, understanding trauma, developing coping skills, containment, seeing things through, starting again, being brave, keeping going, working with family, holding hope, building resilience, listening, really seeing the woman, staying, being consistent, doing what you say. None of this is magic but it leads to amazing change.
