Britt, K., O’Connor, B, Babic, R., Knight, S., & Imms C. (2025)

Plain language summary:

Family-centred service aims to build family capacity to support their children, but behaviours supporting capacity-building vary. We used a survey to explore the experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of service providers related to family-centred service, and what they think influences family-centred service in practice. Participants described family-centred service as a way of ‘knowing’, ‘being’, and ‘doing’, which relied on collaborative partnerships with families. We found that the way participants understood and described family-centred service influenced how they approached their work with families. Participants described their ability to work in family-centred ways was influenced by elements related to themselves, and influences beyond themselves. We found that education is needed to align providers’ understanding of family-centred service with contemporary evidence. In addition, to sustain and promote family-centred service in practice, strategies tailored to each context are required to support providers to balance competing priorities for themselves, families they work with, and surrounding services and systems.