Helping Families update
Scrutiny Select Committee Meeting March 2013
Nick Page
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:
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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-ordinator
Helping 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
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
Steering
Group
The Troubled Families
Cohort
- Strategic Overview
- Perf Monitoring
- Challenge & support
Panel to help assist the family.
Locality Panels
- Case allocation
- Performance monitoring
Performance Reports
LP North
LP South
LP
Central
LP West
LP East
Central
Teams Around The Family
- Operational Delivery
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
TAF
Data
GM Toolkits
available 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
Services:
Including but not limited to: IYSS, Childrens Services
(EIP, Housing Officers, Skills & Work Officers, EWOs,
Family Support Workers).
TAF
Key aims and benefits of Helping Families
Aims
Support the family to independence;
Look at the whole family context;
Resolve issues at earliest opportunity;
Be family driven not service driven;
Benefits
Tackling 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;
Identify a lead worker/ family broker;
Simplify the system.
Removing duplication to realise
financial savings for public services;
Opportunity to build workforce
capacity.
Progress to date
• By September 2012 a total of 208 families were already receiving
targeted or specialist support from local partners.
• Since September a further 55 families have been reviewed by
Locality Panels bringing the total number of families that we are
currently engaged with to 263. This means that we are well on
track to meet our target of 300 families.
• We are currently verifying our performance return to determine
how many families we have already ‘turned around’. Early
indications are that around 100 families will have achieved
outcomes eligible for Payment by Results.
Issues and opportunities
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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:
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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 (Place Board) 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.
Salford approach: improving the way we do business
through cooperation & integration
Joining up
delivery for
families
Joining up our
investments
Integrated
delivery of
effective
interventions
Joint investment
Systems and
organisational
culture
Reforms to
intelligence,
information
management,
workforce
capability etc...
Questions