Helping Families update

Children & Young People Scrutiny Committee April 2013

What is Helping Families?

• Salford’s Helping Families programme is a targeted and joined up approach to supporting families with multiple problems. 

• Through Helping Families, the City Council and its partners are working together to help families improve economic prosperity; raise aspirations and achievement; make a positive contribution to a safe and stable living environment; and improve long-term life chances for the whole family. 

• Helping Families will deliver Salford's commitment to the Department for Communities and Local Government Troubled Families programme; to engage and support 835 'troubled families' over the next three years. 

Who are we helping?Helping Families will engage and support Salford families that have problems, including parents not working and children not in school, and causes problems, such as youth crime and anti-social behaviour.

In identifying who we work with, families must meet two or more of the following criteria:

•Young person(s) involved in crime or member(s) of the family involved in anti social ‐behaviour;•Child(ren) in the family affected by unauthorised absence or exclusion from school;•Adult(s) in the household out of work and claiming benefits.

We know that families with these problems are also more likely to have other related problems, such as domestic violence, relationship breakdown and poor mental or physical health.

How we know success for families Helping Families is about working together to ‘turn around the lives’ of families with multiple problems. This means supporting the whole family to achieve better outcomes, sustain better outcomes and prevent problems from repeating.

There are clear success measures linked to the Payment by Results arrangement with government, these are:

•Children are attending school;•Reduction in anti-social behaviour and Reduction in youth crime; and•Parents are moving into work.

Success is measured across the whole family. This means that working to tackle problems in isolation is not enough. If outcomes improve for one member of the family but get worse for another member of the family, we will not have succeeded. 

How are we helping families?Helping Families will build on what we know works for families in Salford. That means focused, personalised support for the whole family that draws on the expertise of a multi-agency Team Around the Family and is co-ordinated by a person that the family trusts.

Helping Families Case Co-ordinatorHelping Families Case Co-ordinators are the main point of contact for the family. They will: co-ordinate a package of support; reduce overlap and duplication; monitor family plan and report to Helping Families Locality Panels.

How is this different to what we do already?Helping Families will build on the existing skills and assets of practitioners from a range of backgrounds. It is about bringing in expertise from the Team around the Family - not about doing everything on their own.

The role of a Helping families Case co-ordinators is to co-ordinate support for the whole family in a way that helps the family to turn problems around, sustain outcomes and prevent problems from repeating… with any family member.

Helping Families Factor: “A whole family approach isn't about a mum in a family going on a parenting course, a 17 year old

on a YOT programme and an 8 year old on a behaviour improvement plan. That is just working with different

individuals in a household at the same time. Whole family working is about understanding and responding to the

rhythms of the family.” (practitioner)

Salford Helping Families Delivery Model

LP North LP South LP WestLP East Central

LP Central

SteeringGroup

- Strategic Overview- Perf Monitoring

- Challenge & support

TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF TAF

The Troubled Families Cohort

Teams Around The Family- Operational Delivery

Locality Panels- Case allocation

- Performance monitoring

GM Toolkitsavailable on SharePoint

Interventions: Including but not limited to: BIT, Family Group

Conference, Evidence Based Parenting, Children's Centres, Domestic Violence, Strengthening Families,

Drugs & Alcohol, Family & Adult Learning, Legacy Future Jobs Fund

Key features: TAF comprises Lead Professional and relevant services as decided by the Locality Panel. Primary functions to work with the family / front line delivery. Data capture via the GM Toolkit. Day to day management of the family done within the TAF via the Lead Professional. Where necessary seek specific funding from Locality Panel to help assist the family.

Services: Including but not limited to: IYSS, Childrens Services (EIP, Housing Officers, Skills & Work Officers, EWOs,

Family Support Workers).

Performance Reports

Data

Key aims and benefits of Helping FamiliesAims

Support the family to independence;

Look at the whole family context;

Resolve issues at earliest opportunity;

Be family driven not service driven;

Identify a lead worker/ family broker;

Simplify the system.

BenefitsTackling the cost of dependency – the cost to families and the cost to public services;

Better long-term outcomes for families;

Reducing demand for public services;

Removing duplication to realise financial savings for public services;

Opportunity to build workforce capacity.

Progress to date

• We have identified 479 families• We have started working with 302 families• We are currently verifying performance to determine how many

families have already been ‘turned around’. Early indications are that around 150 families have achieved outcomes eligible for Payment by Results.

• A further 1500 names have been sent to DWP for cross-referencing and Salford has committed to start working with a further 418 families in year 2 (i.e. 50% of our total cohort); bringing the total number of families we work with in years 1 & 2 to 718 out of a total cohort of 835 

 

Issues and opportunities• A number of risks have already been identified in Salford, that we are looking to address in

order to maximise the Public Service Reform benefits of the Troubled Families programme, which include:

 

– The need for an intelligent and integrated ICT system to identify and case manage families who are already troubled or at risk of becoming troubled.

– Consistent data sharing and management processes to support integrated working

– Shared accountability and regulatory frameworks to drive integrated working

– Whole public sector approach to resource planning and allocation, including commissioning.

– Workforce reform to engender integrated working, moving towards more generic/homogenous roles

– Communications strategy underpin workforce reform and help unfreeze resistance to change

 

• In order to make sustainable changes, the focus needs to shift from a reactive agenda of turning around the lives of troubled families to a more preventative agenda focussed on early help. This is key to Salford’s approach.

Questions