PRESS RELEASE: For immediate release
For more information, please contact Hamir Patel at Hamir.Patel@champollion.co.uk or on
020 3544 4947
CATCH22 AND CHESHIRE EAST COUNCIL PILOT NEW SCHEME TO SUPPORT CHILDREN
The government has awarded £1.4m to Cheshire East Council and social business and charity
Catch22 for a project to find new ways of supporting children who need help from social services.
The money, from the Department for Education’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme,
will be used to develop and test innovative approaches to assisting Children in Need, who require
additional support services for their health and wellbeing.
Demand for children's services has been rising continually for the past seven years and the
resulting pressure on local authorities’ resources means it is vital to bring in new thinking and
skills to improve outcomes for vulnerable children.
Catch22 and Cheshire East Council have a successful 11-year relationship and will test a new
approach with innovative staffing and a delivery model that combines the expertise of the social
work profession with the experience and creativity of a social business.
Launching this summer, a pilot project in Crewe will tackle underlying problems with tailored and
intensive early interventions with children and families. By reducing repeat escalations, the
scheme will reduce social care team caseloads and reliance on agency social workers, making
the service more cost-effective.
Four new children in need teams, split into pods and made up of non-social work qualified family
practitioners, will work with families. They will be supported by peer mentors and a qualified
social work practitioner will supervise each pod.
Tony Crane, Director of Children’s Services, Cheshire East, said: “Cheshire East Council’s
mantra is early intervention. We believe prevention is better than cure. A core focus of our
service is ensuring our children and young people are safe.
“Partnership work is the core of our strategy to prevent such harmful situations. The right
services at the right time is our aim and we are delighted to be working with experts at Catch22 to
ensure the most vulnerable in our society receive early help.
“Our goal is a care system that is easy to access and understand, that offers a suitable level of
care to ensure we provide the best results in a cost effective way. We must make a difference for
children, helping to make Cheshire East a great place to be young.”
Chris Wright, Chief Executive of Catch22, said: “We are delighted that the DfE has awarded
us the opportunity to pilot a new model for delivering services to children in need in Crewe.
“We are keen to build on our experience and to work in partnership with Cheshire East Council.
“We have long held the view that success is determined largely by creating the right kind of
environment to deliver services – one where professionals build trusting relationships, help
service users themselves identify the value of positive change, and support them to navigate that
path.
“I believe we have developed a model with Cheshire East that embodies these principles and
which will realise a positive outcomes for vulnerable young people.”
Ed Timpson MP, Minister for Children and Families, said: “This innovative programme will
deliver real results for Cheshire East’s vulnerable children and families by focusing on the things
that really matter and placing them at the heart of decision making.
“Having worked as a family lawyer in the care system for over a decade, I have seen time and
time again how ensuring vulnerable families have the specialist help and support they need –
when they need it – can help transform their lives, and I’m hugely excited to see what this venture
achieves.
For more information about Catch22 please contact Hamir Patel at
Hamir.Patel@champollion.co.uk or on 020 3544 4947.
For more information about Cheshire East please contact Steve Brauner at
stephen.brauner@cheshireeast.gov.uk or on 07971 770548.
Notes to editors:
About Catch22
Catch22 is social business with significant experience and expertise working with children, young
people and families with complex needs. We provide a range of Intensive Family Support, Family
Counselling and Mediation services across the country. Through our ‘whole family’ support model
we support children and their families to make positive, lasting changes when they are struggling
to cope with linked and complex issues in their lives.
Launching this summer, the pilot will run in Crewe, and innovations in the service will include:
 Non-social work qualified Family Practitioners and use of ‘Community Capital’ to
increase resources available to children’s social care and challenge current statutory
guidance;
 Pod team structures to change the structure of traditional children’s social care teams,
encouraging collaboration and best practice sharing;
 Personalised practitioner training budgets to enable teams to be more responsive to
their own training needs and the needs of the community in which they are based;
 Holistic, intensive and child centred approach to CIN delivery to move away from
reactive interventions towards addressing underlying needs and causes of concern, and
will prevent the unnecessary escalation of cases;
 Ethnographic research to ensure increased participation and engagement of children
and families in the on-going development of the service and interventions.
For more information visit www.catch-22.org.uk
About the DfE Innovation Programme
The aim of the DfE Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme is to provide support to local
authorities and other organisations to develop, test and spread more effective approaches to
supporting adolescents in or on the edge of care. More information can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-services-innovation-programme
ENDS