Surrey’s Family Support Programme – case study 2
Introduction
Surrey’s Family Support Programme highlights what can be achieved when public
agencies work together. The programme (our response to the Government’s
Troubled Families initiative) aims to improve the lives of vulnerable families whilst
also saving public money and so far it has helped over 500 families across the
county. Local ambitions to significantly expand the Family Support Programme
formed part of Surrey’s successful bid to join the Public Service Transformation
Network (PSTN) and it is now one of six areas of work in Surrey’s Working Together
Programme.
Delivering Transformation
In 2012 public agencies in Surrey agreed that families with multiple and complex
needs were the responsibility of all agencies and that agencies needed to work
together to successfully support these families. The Government’s Troubled Families
initiative was an opportunity to change the way services operated and Surrey has a
target of turning around the lives of 1,050 families by May 2015, based on the
Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) Troubled Families
criteria.
The Surrey Family Support Programme is designed with district and borough
councils leading the local coordination. The county council provides the overall
coordination to enable partners to provide much more effective local support to
families, sharing common practices and working toward common goals for and with
the families.
Through the Family Support Programme partners - including the county council, 11
borough and district councils, police, NHS, probation, schools and the Department
for Work and Pensions - have joint aims of:
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prioritising families with the greatest difficulties
improving outcomes for all the vulnerable families who take part
improving the quality and volume of multi-agency work, by introducing a single
assessment and plan
developing effective family support practice and a sustainable model of
partnership
moving away from high cost acute services to lower cost preventative
services
Each district and borough council has a local programme, delivered by one of six
local teams operating across Surrey. The local team brings together practitioners,
from across different agencies, as a Team Around the Family (TAF), with one
member taking on a lead professional role. All families in the programme undergo a
single multi-agency assessment of their needs and have a single multi-agency
support plan. The plan is developed and reviewed with the family by the TAF who
meet every six weeks. In addition to support from the TAF, all families are given a
period of intensive support by a locally based family coordinator. The intensive
support lasts for an average of 18 weeks and after this the family continues to be
supported by the TAF for up to 12 months.
The programme has started using innovative social media to bring together all the
agencies supporting vulnerable families in each district and borough. The Patchwork
Professional Networking Tool is a simple, secure, on-line application that shares the
minimum personal data – client name, address, date of birth, and telephone number
– and Patchwork is being used to link up practitioners who work with vulnerable
families. Patchwork is currently being piloted in Mole Valley and South East Surrey,
with plans to roll it out across the rest of the county.
So far the Family Support Programme has already supported over 500 families and it
aims to support another 500 families by the end of the year. In recent feedback from
a family in Surrey Heath, the mother said “thank you so much, it has been helpful. It
is thanks to the programme that I have been able to put measures in place around
my two sons’ behaviours and the Family Support Programme has provided a lot of
help”.
Further Transformation
It is estimated that at any given time there may be up to 7,000 families with multiple
and complex needs living in Surrey. Partners in Surrey have the ambition to scale up
the current services to support 5,000 families with a wider range of needs over the
next five years. The expanded programme will include support for families living with
domestic abuse, pre-school children, low income, offenders, mental health,
unemployment, adult social care needs, families who frequently visit accident and
emergency, and families at risk of homelessness.
Surrey’s local plans are very similar to the government’s plans for phase 2 of the
Troubled Families Programme and partners were delighted that Surrey was invited
to become an early starter of the next phase of the national programme. We are
incorporating the expanded Troubled Families Programme into Surrey’s Working
Together Programme arrangements as part of developing a sustainable multiagency approach to working with vulnerable families.
Partners are in the process of designing the expanded programme and work is
underway to review what’s working well and what could be improved in the existing
programme; to understand the needs of the most complicated families; and to design
multi-agency interventions to support families with a wider range of needs.
Conclusion:
The Surrey Family Support Programme highlights what can be achieved when
partners in the public sector work together systematically. Over the next few years,
partners’ continued commitment and growing ambitions for working together will
make a real difference to the lives of many vulnerable families across Surrey.