About Tyre Hill House
Tyre Hill House is a specialist residential family centre in Worcestershire providing assessment and support for parents and children.
We work with families where there are questions about parenting capacity and a child's safety, wellbeing or development. Families live with us while we build a detailed understanding of their strengths, needs and circumstances, and assess whether parents can provide safe and sustainable care for their child.
Our approach combines rigorous, independent assessment with warmth, specialist expertise and purposeful support.
Our approach
We believe a good assessment needs to understand more than what a parent can or cannot do at a particular moment.
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We want to understand what the child needs, what the parent can currently provide, what may be affecting their parenting and what happens when the right support is provided.
This means parents have opportunities to learn, practise and receive feedback during their assessment. We look at whether learning can be put into practice, whether it makes a difference to the child's experience and whether positive changes can be sustained.
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We work openly with parents about what is being assessed, what is going well and where concerns remain. Our approach is relationship-based, restorative and trauma-informed, while remaining independent and firmly focused on the safety, wellbeing and lived experience of the child.
Warmth and rigour are not opposites. We believe families can be treated with care, dignity and respect while assessments remain evidence-led, impartial and professionally robust.
Our approach
A multidisciplinary approach
Our multidisciplinary team is central to how we work.
Tyre Hill House brings together experienced assessing social workers, clinical psychology, early years and child development expertise, and specialist practitioners in domestic abuse, substance misuse and care experience.
Family support workers are also an important part of the multidisciplinary team, working alongside families throughout everyday life at the centre. They observe, support, coach, model, listen and provide feedback, creating an important part of the evidence gathered during an assessment.
Other specialist expertise can be brought in where a family's needs require it.
Rather than different professionals working separately, the team brings its knowledge together through regular multidisciplinary formulation and review.
Psychological formulation helps us develop a shared understanding of the family: their history and experiences, relationships, strengths, difficulties, risks and the factors that may be affecting parenting. Weekly case formulation enables continuous review and adaptation as our understanding of parents grows.
That shared understanding then informs the assessment, the support offered to the family and what we need to understand next.
Assessment and support working together
At Tyre Hill House, assessment is not simply a period of observation.
Everyday family life provides important evidence about parenting. We see how parents respond to their children, manage routines, recognise cues, provide care, cope with stress, respond to difficulties and use the support around them.
Alongside this, families receive a planned programme of parenting and child development work, reflective support and opportunities to practise skills.
Where needed, this is complemented by specialist work relating to areas such as domestic abuse, substance misuse, trauma, emotional regulation, learning needs, neurodivergence or the parent-child relationship.
This allows us to consider not only a parent's current parenting capacity, but their capacity to learn and change.
We look carefully at whether parents can understand concerns, use feedback, develop and practise new skills, apply learning in different situations and sustain changes with less support.
Our approach
Fair and individual assessment
No two parents learn, communicate or process information in exactly the same way.
ParentAssess is embedded within our approach, with staff trained across the organisation so that accessible and adapted practice is not confined to individual assessment sessions.
Our team is also trained in understanding learning disability and communication needs.
Where a parent needs information presented differently, we adapt. This might include using straightforward or visual information, breaking tasks into smaller steps, modelling and practising skills, repetition, giving additional processing time and checking understanding.
We also consider neurodivergence and other communication or sensory needs when planning an assessment.
The purpose is simple: parents should understand what is expected of them and have a fair opportunity to participate, learn and demonstrate what they can do.
Relationships matter
Families coming to Tyre Hill House may have experienced trauma, loss, domestic abuse, previous care proceedings or difficult relationships with services.
These experiences can affect trust, relationships, emotional regulation and how someone responds to being assessed.
Our staff use relationship-based, restorative and trauma-informed approaches to create an environment in which difficult issues can be explored openly and respectfully.
Staff are trained in mediation and de-escalation and in approaches that help people work through difficulties and repair relationships following conflict.
Understanding behaviour more accurately supports better identification of what needs to happen for a child to receive safe, consistent and emotionally responsive care.
Parenting assessment
Building on strengths
Assessment inevitably considers difficulty and risk, but these are not the only things we look for.
Our approach, anchored in the Child First evidence-base, also considers strengths, relationships, identity and the experiences that can help people develop.
We use pro-social skills, activities, interventions and meaningful roles to create opportunities for parents to experience achievement, responsibility, connection and positive contribution.
This may happen through parenting, relationships, and the range of activities available at Tyre Hill House or participation in the wider community.
The intention is to help parents recognise and build on their strengths and develop a positive sense of themselves as parents and as people, while allowing us to assess whether this contributes to meaningful and sustainable change.
Parental SUPPORT
Supporting parents with care experience
We have eight individual apartments all with their own front door access. The appartments have been furnished and decorated to meet the needs of families enabling them to live independently whilst having access to extensive communal facilities.
All apartments are ensuite with a kitchenette compromising of an integrated fridge, microwave, kettle, sink and storage cupboards for food and crockery. The apartments have been designed to separate living and bedroom-like studio accommodation.
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Information for families
We work with families who need to have their parenting assessed for lots of different reasons, how and why families have come to us will be individual to that family.
What families can expect
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Before arrival
Before a family comes to Tyre Hill House, we work with the referring professionals to understand why the assessment is needed and what questions it needs to answer.
We also consider the family's individual needs, including any communication or learning needs and adjustments that may make the assessment more accessible.
Where possible, parents will have information about Tyre Hill House and an opportunity to ask questions before arriving.
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Arriving and settling in
When families arrive, our priority is helping them understand their surroundings, meet the people who will be working with them and know what to expect.
The early part of the assessment helps us get to know the family and understand their starting point.
Parents are encouraged to tell us about their own goals, worries and understanding of the assessment, as well as anything that might help them participate.
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Everyday life
Much of an assessment takes place through ordinary family life.
Parents continue to care for their children, prepare meals, manage routines, attend appointments, play and spend time together.
There will also be planned, targeted sessions, meetings and activities depending on the family's assessment plan.
Staff are available throughout the day and night. Their role includes keeping children and families safe, observing family life, providing support and coaching, and giving parents opportunities to practise and develop skills.
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Reviewing progress
Families should not have to wait until the end of an assessment to discover what professionals think.
Progress is reviewed continuously by the multidisciplinary team. We consider what the child is experiencing, what is going well, what we remain worried about, what support has been provided and whether anything is changing.
Parents receive regular feedback and have opportunities to understand and respond to what is being considered.
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Preparing to leave
Towards the end of an assessment, the focus increasingly turns towards what happens next.
Where safe and appropriate, this can include opportunities for parents to demonstrate greater independence and show whether learning can be maintained with less support.
Transition planning considers what the child and parent will need after leaving Tyre Hill House and what support may be required for progress to be sustained.