Lasagna is a play co-created by women working with Pause North East, Open Clasp Theatre Company and Pause national team. It is based on the experiences of women who have lost more than one child from their care, and celebrates community, generosity and humanity.
Since Lasagna was premiered and went on tour, it has been used for training purposes to ensure the voices of birth parents are heard by frontline practitioners and decision-makers. In this blog post, we hear about one council’s experience of incorporating Lasagna into their core training programme.
In March 2023, Durham County Council teamed up with Open Clasp Theatre Company and Pause to arrange for a group of multi-agency frontline practitioners – who work with children, young people and families – to attend a live showing of Lasagna at the Gala Theatre in Durham City. This was followed by a Q&A session.
As the feedback from attendees about the value and impact of this event was so positive, Durham County Council was keen to roll this opportunity out to other practitioners.
The aim was to utilise Lasagna and create a space in which practitioners could consider:
- The support for birth parents following the removal of children, particularly when domestic abuse was a factor
- The impact of an abuser’s use of coercive control on family functioning and parenting
- The ways they could build trusting relationships with victims and survivors of domestic abuse who no longer have their children in their care
The council approached the Pause national team, who created a reflective learning session incorporating a screening of the Lasagna film to use in County Durham.
The session is being piloted by managers working across the children’s social care sector and the feedback has been very positive. Once these pilot sessions are completed in April 2024, they will be opened up to frontline practitioners and will become part of the core domestic abuse training delivered in County Durham.
Jac Tyler, Strategic Manager, Children and Families (East) at Durham County Council, said:
We are committed to improving the knowledge and skills of practitioners in order to effectively respond to domestic abuse. Understanding and identifying coercion and control and addressing victim blaming language is a key focus of the training we deliver.
The Lasagna production provided a welcome opportunity for us to bring the victim’s voice and the devastating impact of domestic abuse into our training workshops.
The enthusiasm from those who attended has been incredible, with people describing Lasagna as ‘extremely powerful’ and as giving a ‘real insight into the impact of trauma’. It has led to participants taking steps to change their own practice, challenge assumptions and influence change.
We started by offering the Lasagna workshops to the management team and it has proven so effective, we now plan to roll it out to the wider workforce and partners. Our aim is for Lasagna to become part of the core domestic abuse training delivered in County Durham.
