8 March 2010

Local action on child poverty

Marnie CatonHead of Information & PerformanceChildren’s Services

SSRG Conference

Workshop Outline

• National & local context• Outcomes for children & young people in

Islington• Our approach to poverty• Issues• Where next?

Child poverty – the national picture

• Poverty - expressed as children in households below 60% median income is measured by Households Below Average Income survey:

– HBAI 2006/7 – 2.9 million below 60% medianHBAI 2007/8 – 2.9 million below 60% median

• Poverty expressed as children in households dependent on out of work benefits:– DWP claimant count Aug 07 – 3.19 million– DWP claimant count Aug 08 – 3.16 million

• 600,000 children had been lifted out of poverty by 2007, but there is no data reflecting the developing recession and children in low income and materially deprived households have returned to 2004/5 level. London has seen no progress this century

Child poverty – the London picture

• Why has progress on child poverty in London stalled since 2000?

– Concentration of groups at risk of poverty– Multiple barriers to getting a job– Lack of part time job opportunities– Lack of affordable and flexible childcare– National tax and benefit system not responsive to London’s

regional needs

• All characteristics that are more heavily concentrated in inner London boroughs such as Islington

What is Islington like?• Population of 195,000

• 40,000 children and young people aged 0-19

• Highly mobile young single population and growing older population

• Chic by jowl – very mixed economically with many living on less than £10k p.a. and some on £100k+

• Very disparate skill levels – many below Level 2 and a few highly skilled professionals

• Lots of recent immigration – eastern and southern Europe; north, east and west Africa; Turkey and Middle East; older generation from Bangladesh and South America – but pretty much everywhere

• Over 120 languages

• Very densely populated – lots of small flats – few larger family homes

• Sizeable social housing sector – over half of children live in public housing

Outcomes for CYPImproving but poor measured by many of the national indicators:

• Ranked 143rd for Level 3 attainment at 19 nationally

• 5th out of 7 boroughs for NEETs in Central London – approx. 400 young people – 7.8% of 16-18 year olds (London average is 6.1%)

• 31st in London for GCSE attainment at 16 – 45% against national average 50.7%

• 19% young people with learning difficulties & disabilities are NEET

• 16th in London for obesity of 10 year olds at 24%

• 32nd in London at end of Foundation stage (at rising 5) at 36%

• Lowest decrease in Inner London for teen pregnancy : rate at 54.8 per 1,000

• High proportion of children in need referred to social care – above national and statistical neighbours

But on the bright side….• Progress at GCSE has been substantial – one of the fastest

improving boroughs in England• Rates of youth offending reducing – by over 15% since last year• NEETs falling – rate has halved since 2006• Staying on in learning has risen to over 91% from under 80% in 3

years• Investment in early years with 16 children’s centres covering whole

Borough• Improvement in breast feeding rates and reduction in infant mortality• No schools in special measures – many ‘outstanding’ – in 2001 there

were more than 10 in special measures• Outstanding FE college

GCSE – Narrowing the gap - Free school meal and non-FSM pupils

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

2006 2007 2008 2009

% 5

A*-

C E

M

England FSM

England non-FSM

Islington FSM

Islington non-FSM

Our CYPPlan priorities therefore….

• Giving young children the best possible start in life• Outstanding learning in every Islington School• Every child enjoying going to school every day• Young people having the best possible qualifications,

experiences and opportunities for adult life• Islington’s children in care enjoying the lives we want for our

own families• Keeping children safe at home, in school and in the community• Families and communities raising aspirations for learning and

work

Addressing root causes - poverty• 95% of our YP NEET live in families where no one works• Disproportionate number of poor school attenders live in workless

households – persistent absence (less than 80% attendance) a serious problem right from early years through to secondary school

• High proportion of mental ill-health – both in adult and child populations• Substance misuse is high – main difficulty with NEETs re-engagement is

chronic substance misuse• 48% social care referrals as a result of domestic violence• 10% children living in over-crowded housing• 43% children living in lone parent households• Local debt levels analysis identifies lone mothers as carrying most

unmanageable debt (Rocket Science 2009) • Cost and access to childcare• Aspirations

Child poverty: Islington in London – Aug. 2008

Islington's position in London

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

LAs with inner London characteristics

%a

ge

Child poverty in Islington

• Index of Child Well-being 2009 – Islington 4th worst local authority after Liverpool, Tower Hamlets and Manchester

• Measured as number of children in households on out of work benefits, Islington remains second worst in UK

• Number of children living below 60% median income cannot be measured at LA level – however, local data shows over 92% of children in households claiming HB/CTB are in poverty

How many children affected

• 45% of child population live in workless households – 18,000 children and young people

• 73% of these live in lone parent households

• Only 14% of children are in low income working households

In our project we decided to focus on families with younger children

• 3,800 children 0-4 live in workless households

• 4,500 children under 7 live in lone parent families living on income support

Islington scale of child poverty (from HB/CTB data)

• Children in workless households: 14,336 (86%)

• Children in working households (below 60% median) 1,197 ( 7%)

• Total children in poverty by both measures: 15,533 (93.5%)

We have found through matching data almost 4,000 more children in poverty

Our response• 2007 – Islington Strategic Partnership co-sponsors the Child Poverty toolkit,

developed by Child Poverty Action Group and Inclusion

• 2008 – ISP includes targets for reducing child poverty in LAA

• 2008 – Islington Council agrees additional child poverty actions under the London Child Poverty Pledge and recognises priority in revised CYP Plan

• 2009 – The council and partners develop a programme to help people survive the credit crunch

• 2009 – Islington Council agrees additional child poverty actions under the Child Poverty Innovation pilot

• 2010 – introduction of free school meals to all primary school children

Child Poverty Pilot

• The need to renew the drive against child poverty was acknowledged in Ending Child Poverty: everybody’s business (March 2008). It linked education, safety, health, and housing in a partnership approach to tackling poverty at local level:

– “front line workers involved in the delivery of public services need to ensure their work benefits children from poor backgrounds and closes the gap in outcomes between children from low income families”

– “third sector organisations … should be key partners in planning and delivery at all levels … particularly in supporting the most hard-to-reach groups and raising aspirations”

Islington’s Child Poverty Innovation Pilot

• The pilot brief called for innovation that can be replicated across other local authorities

• Evaluation and learning are key required outputs

• Islington’s bid was successful because – It was based on intelligent use of HB/CTB together with child data– It had ambition to make progress on child poverty sustainable through

integration within mainstream services

Innovative use of data

• Our bid delivered something central government cannot do: a local measure of poverty defined as 60% of median income

• But our matched data does more than measure poverty – it identifies:– Lone parent / couple status– Tenure, including owner occupiers– Landlord (as potential delivery partner)– Income details– Number and ages of children– Languages– Whether family uses services already– Address

How we are doing it

• Big matched dataset of children and families

• Analysis of need

• Provision of regular updates to front line teams

• Good partnership working

• Changing processes across the agencies

How we joined the data together

• We assessed the systems that were in Islington that held data about children

• In total there are about 200,000 records about children in ten IT systems

• Created a matched data set from these sources

• Data Sharing agreements with partners

• We built one large database to hold data from each of the records and created a ‘master’ record for each child

• The database now holds 40,000+ records, one for each child who lives in Islington

Phase 1: Data sources

Data was initially loaded according a matrix of reliability

of the data.

From this point forward, all new

births will be loaded, and then the master record will be added to when the child accesses other

services.

Easier to extract data

from some sources than

others

Database now has 40,000+

records

Use of the data in poverty pilot

• Able to produce very accurate numbers of target families and children

• Lists of target families within each Children’s Centre catchment area, with contextual data

• Pre-populate new project system for handling case-work with pilot clients

• Lists of children for linked project activity such as our 2 year old pilot which ensures we can quickly identify families most likely to benefit

• Centres and caseworkers can decide in advance how best to approach families – e.g. use of bi-lingual community outreach worker for Somali families; social worker where family already known to social care; lead professional where child has a disability….

Monitoring & Evaluation

• Provides a very accurate baseline• Ability to pull activity data together from across various

administrative systems to produce monitoring on services contributing to the pilot

• Spin-off evidence for school and children centre self-evaluation – better inspection outcomes!

• Ensures valid samples for qualitative work being undertaken by us and the national evaluation team

• Helps identify further questions and issues quickly – e.g. too few clients taking up income maximisation offer – able to see their current benefit status quickly and investigate reasons further

Mainstreaming

• To have an impact on child poverty after the pilot funding period we need to embed interventions in frontline services across the multiple agencies:

– Housing– Health– Adult social care– Children’s services– Regeneration– Employers / Business

• To provide personalised services through which “someone with a disability, low skills and child care needs can easily access support to help them manage their health condition at work, in training or childcare” – National Audit Office

Project targets and outputs

• Targeted support focusing on

– Households with children 0 to 4 years– Lone parents with children 0 to 7 years– All households with income below 60% median– Working families with earned income but no tax credits– Families with disability (parent or child)

• Outputs include– 2,300 income maximisation checks covering all target groups– 800 parents / households engaged in the employability pathways– Improved business processes to ensure action on child poverty is sustainable

• Employability pathways – unlike LAA targets – are linked to progress towards employability, resilience and well-being, not just movement into employment.

Benefits to residents

• Plan casework more accurately and saves time for clients

• Clients do not have to fill in lots of forms – spend time on ensuring consent is obtained and understand service offered better

• Identify inequalities in access because of barriers such as language and address them

• Parents able to find out about services they want or need more easily

• Parents involved in focus groups expected us to use the information they have given us for various purposes

Project linkages

• Personalisation agenda in adult social care and health

• NICE guidelines on employment retention

• Housing Trailblazers

• Improved Access to Psychological Therapies project

• Jobcentre Plus

• Think Family project

• Family Support strategy

• Extended schools programme

• Children’s Centres

• Islington Debt Coalition

• Adult Careers Service (Advancement Network Prototype)

• HMRC (tax credits)

Issues – so far

• This is not a short life project – whole system change – complex business processes to analyse and change

• Quality of data in source systems!

• Essential to automate data matching and processing – too time-consuming otherwise

• Timeliness of data matched

• Security of data and security of transfer of data to end users

• Accessing other useful data sources – e.g. DWP data on job seeker clients

• Lack of data on children who attend school outside borough

• Ensuring clients have given informed consent – practitioner training issue

What next?

• Child Poverty Bill – Act will require Needs assessments to be done

• Link to CYP Plan Needs Assessment and commissioning requirements

• Using the data better to predict needs – work with health on this• Better sharing with government departments – DWP and HMRC?• Better targeting of services to people’s needs – better use of

resources• More qualitative work with children and young people on how

they feel about their futures• Check in with parents that we are going in the right direction