Background Paper for Scrutiny Topic Group – THRIVING FAMILIES
8 March 2013
INTRODUCTION
Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) has been working with partners since April 2012 to
establish a new Thriving Families (TF) service under the multi-agency governance of the
Health and Wellbeing Board (via the Thriving Families Board), incorporating the
government’s Troubled Families Payment by Results initiative.
This is a priority area for HCC and partners and aims to set out a clear, joined up
approach to supporting families with multiple and complex needs across the continuum of
support:
 Ensuring families get the right support at the right time that helps them to achieve
greater independence, improves outcomes and prevents escalation of need;
 Focusing on earlier intervention – preventing vulnerable families and individuals
from developing complex needs;
 Focusing at the community level to help improve communities which are most in
need;
 Reducing the cost to the public purse.
Thriving Families Programme is positioned at the top end of Targeted on the continuum of
support as set out in ‘Meeting the Needs of Children and Families in Hertfordshire’1. This
work will address key partnership and HCC priorities:
 Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2013 – 2016: Flourishing Communities – Helping all
Families to Thrive2
 Corporate Plan 2013 – 17: Opportunity to get the best out of life - effective
measures to support families with complex problems3
 Children’s Services Improvement Plan 2012 - 13
The service will aim to empower families with multiple and complex needs to achieve
better outcomes and therefore prevent escalation of problems, by ensuring a safe and
effective service, which responds quickly and intensively to the families’ needs. The
service delivery approach will utilise the widely recognised and evidence based family
intervention model. This model ensures that one worker co-ordinates the multi-agency
support on behalf of all family members and appropriately considers the use of both
sanctions and rewards as part of the approach.
Meeting the Needs of Children and Families in Hertfordshire – Hertfordshire Children’s Trust Partnership,
February 2010
2 Healthier People Healthier Communities, Hertfordshire’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2013 – 2016,
November 2012
3 HCC Corporate Plan 2013 – 2017, HCC, DRAFT February 2013
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1
Senior partner commitment has been secured via the multi-agency Thriving Families
Board arrangements under the Health and Wellbeing Board. As part of this programme,
five new Thriving Families teams (operating across double districts) have been
established through a re-structuring of existing HCC resource with effect from 1 February
2013. The operational model for these directly managed teams and aligned partner
resources maximises the use of frontline workers, thus ensuring that the impact of this
change for children, young people and families is minimised and in particular that those at
the high end of the targeted needs continuum will be supported. Partners are now in the
process of aligning resource – in cash or in kind - to deliver more effective joined up
working under the agreed operational model – including commitment to the Action and
Impact meetings, to hold cases as Lead practitioners, and to commit resource to Team
Around the Family arrangements.
This scrutiny will focus on the most vulnerable ‘Troubled Family’ cohort and will not look at
wider Early Intervention or Safeguarding & Specialist interventions.
QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED
1. How are we identifying and engaging the most vulnerable families?
In April 2012 the Government, through Louise Casey’s Families Team (Department for
Communities and Local Government - DCLG), released the Financial Framework for the
Troubled Families Programme4. This set out the detailed process for identifying families
eligible for the TF programme and thus additional funding through a ‘payment-by-results’
scheme when successful outcomes are achieved.
To be eligible for support under the Troubled Families initiative families must currently
EITHER meet all three of the criteria set by government OR, meet at least two of the
government criteria plus be identified by local intelligence as a family at risk of not thriving.
The government criteria relate to worklessness, anti-social behaviour / under 18s
offending, high level non attendance at school. Local intelligence will consider the
following additional presenting needs:





mental health;
substance misuse;
domestic abuse;
adult learning disabilities and difficulties;
risk of homelessness.
4
Financial Framework for the Troubled Families Programme, Department for Communities and Local
Government, April 2012
2
There are four mechanisms by which the most vulnerable families will be identified:




data matching process - 1121 eligible families identified;
from end February, other eligible families will be identified in ‘real-time’ against the
criteria via the ‘front door’ of Customer Service Centre/Targeted Advice Service
(CSC-TAS). This will include self-referral where families contact HCC to seek
help;
where vulnerable families are of concern locally - access to the service via a
Service Request and local discussion at the monthly multi-agency Action and
Impact review meetings;
eligible families where there are no longer child protection concerns ‘stepped down’
from Specialist and Safeguarding Services using current process.
Hertfordshire has agreed with the DCLG to support a minimum number of families over
three years to achieve the target of 1350.
TF Programme
Year 1 2012/13
Year 2 2013/14
Year 3 2014/15
Projected no. of families Cumulative Engaged (end Feb 13)
450
672
228
450
1122
1350
243
Initially families have been approached via practitioners already working with them or
where they are already known to the family - in the two early adopter districts (St Alban’s
and Three Rivers) and countywide via HCC targeted teams (Intensive Family Support,
Targeted Youth Support, Early Intervention & Targeted Support). This process involves a
number of key agencies and, as the programme matures, will include all agencies across
Hertfordshire e.g. districts, police, health visitors, children’s centres, Family Support
Workers in schools, housing workers, GPs and voluntary community sector providers.
Families will be able to self-refer and Thriving Families support will be a valuable
additional option for cases coming into CSC/TAS. Local partner validation exercises were
carried out in the pilot areas, with the learning informing the Action and Impact review
process now established countywide.
Existing family needs are established using a revised Family CAF, and service provision
is mapped. A multi-agency Thriving Families (TF) Action and Impact review (monthly
sessions set up in Double Districts from February) will monitor the family needs, design
and commit resource to a bespoke family action plan and agree a lead practitioner, who
will act as the family’s dedicated point of contact and will help to coordinate and drive the
services and activities detailed in the plan. The TF action and impact review meetings will
track and monitor the progress of families, providing local ownership, leadership and
accountability - to ensure that change is effected to improve family outcomes. Where
necessary, issues may be escalated to TF Board level or to the relevant commissioning
group under the Health and Wellbeing Board structure.
The Thriving Families Teams, now established, will play a key role in seeking to engage
families who are identified as vulnerable and who may not want to engage with the
programme at the outset – perhaps due to a poor experience of services in the past. This
reflects the persistent approach necessary to ensure that the most vulnerable families do
not fall through the gap.
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2. How have we improved the experience of families in accepting
support from us?
We recognised from the outset that, in order to come up with a different way to help
families, we needed to understand the challenge from ‘their’ point of view, rather than
‘ours’. During the Insight Phase (April – September 2012) we have drawn upon and
considered a wide range of evidence to re-shape our collective partnership approach to
service delivery, and to inform the operational model:
 Social Research with Hertfordshire families who have multiple and complex needs5
 Research with Hertfordshire Families (and front-line workers) supported by the
Intensive Family Support Teams6
 3 x Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) reports –on what
families said7, on evidence and good practice8; and on cost9
 Internal review of the current ‘Family Intervention/Think Family’ pilot projects in
Hertfordshire
 In-depth case review process to better understand ‘what is going’ for families and
how our response can be improved
Taking all of this learning, having considered the evidence and listened to families’ own
experiences, our Thriving Families operational model was designed over the summer
2012 and was signed off by the TF board in autumn 2012. An HCC organisational change
process then commenced to rationalise and re-structure existing internal resource,
bringing together a range of early intervention/targeted teams to establish the core
Thriving Families teams from 1 February 2013. Partners are now at different stages in the
process of re-designing and aligning resource to meet their commitment to the agreed
delivery model requirements. The delivery model is summarised in the TF Board update
published in January 2013 (attached as Appendix 1).
The experience of families has been central in designing and re-shaping the Hertfordshire
approach to better meet the needs of vulnerable families. The consistent themes
extracted from the research and evidence reinforced a strong ‘voice of the families’ asking
that we keep it simple. Five ‘Family Intervention Factors’, subsequently identified
nationally in the DCLG report of December 2012, have been built in to the Hertfordshire
operational model:
1. A dedicated worker dedicated to the family
2. Who looks at what’s really happening for the family as a whole
3. And gives practical hands-on support
4. With an assertive and challenging approach
5. Backed by an agreed plan and common purpose among relevant services
5
HCC Thriving Families Report, iMPOWER Consulting Ltd, May 2012
Troubled Families in Hertfordshire: A research project for Hertfordshire’s Thriving Families programme,
University of Hertfordshire, July 2012
7 Listening to Troubled Families, DCLG, July 2012
8 Working with Troubled Families – a guide to the evidence and good practice, DCLG, December 2012
9 The Cost of Troubled Families, DCLG, January 2013
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Put simply this can be described as 1 family, 1 action plan, one lead worker, and a Team
Around the Family. Our aspiration involves change at three levels – for families, for
services and for systems. We are at an early stage, building a firm foundation for a longerterm cultural change process that will improve outcomes and experiences for families
sustainable beyond the DCLG payment-by-results programme.
Five double-district bases have been created, providing for the first time countywide
intensive family support services that work with the recognised, evidence-based Family
Intervention model. We are already working with 243 families through the Thriving
Families initiative. The establishment of these new arrangements will enable further
scaling up of activity with families to enable HCC and our key partners to meet our agreed
targets set by government and improve outcomes for 1350 families by 2015.
Hertfordshire’s progress was endorsed on Thursday 24th January 2013 when two
members of the central DCLG Families Team visited. The Team wanted to see at first
hand the model, structures and processes that HCC has established in order to deliver
intensive family support to the identified troubled families - including assessing the
strength and commitment of the partnership we have in place to support our aligned
resource delivery model. Key questions were around the county's capacity to accelerate
delivery and meet DCLG targets, our unique delivery model and the training and induction
programmes being put in place to support delivery.
During a very positive day DCLG met with the Thriving Families senior leadership team,
families currently being supported by the programme, practitioners and partner agencies
before attending the TF Partnership Board meeting. The DCLG guests expressed
themselves confident of our ability to respond to the escalating demands of the
programme and meeting the targets agreed for the end of year 1 (March 2013) and further
scaling up in year 2. They were particularly impressed by personal testimony of clients,
the commitment of a wide range of partner organisations, senior-level buy-in to the
principles of both the ‘Troubled Families’ agenda as represented at the Board meeting
and the wider early intervention and prevention ambition being adopted by HCC and
partners.
“…We came away really impressed by the strong vision and partnership which should
mean many more families benefit from the coordinated and effective approach we heard
about on Thursday [24 January 13]…”. Catherine Turner, Families Team, DCLG
3. To what extent can we demonstrate early progress in improving
outcomes for these families?
Thriving Families is an investment for the future as a long-term programme that aims to
enable ‘troubled families’ to transform their lives for generations to come through
providing the support they need in the short term and the tools to sustain that change in
the long term. The Family Intervention model evidence base10 shows that we will need to
work proactively with families for an average of 12 months to effect sustainable change –
and it is this extended proactive engagement that achieves successful outcomes both for
families and to the public purse by reducing the reactive cost over time. Sometimes
referred to as ‘short and fat’ – a sustained intervention over 12 months - rather than ‘long
10
Working with troubled Families, DCLG, December 2012
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and thin’ which reflects the journey that many families have experienced over a ten year
period or more, where they move in and out of eligibility criteria and services.
Evidence to support early progress in Hertfordshire in improving outcomes for families is
drawn from a range of sources both quantitative and qualitative, and can be also
described through improving the experiences of families from accessing re-designed
support/systems alongside direct impact on outcomes.
Quantitative
 1211 families identified out of 1350
 243 engaged against target of 200 at end of January 2013
 Families engaged across all ten Districts in Hertfordshire and cases being reviewed
from February 2013
The data drawn from the national evaluation11 of family intervention projects (including
Hertfordshire pilots) shows good evidence for the original Family Intervention model with
consistently strong outcome data since 2007:
 59% reduction - Anti-Social Behaviour
 36% reduction - Child abuse issues (neglect, emotional, physical and sexual)
 52% reduction – Education (truancy, exclusion or bad behaviour at school)
Qualitative/Other
 Family testimony - see Appendix 2
 Benefits to partners e.g. B3 Living housing – seeing the benefit so increased own
resource to working in this way
 Through case studies – building to include cost-benefit calculations when DCLG
launch the national tool in March 2013
 Benchmarking progress against other Local Authority areas
NEXT STEPS
By commencing on a journey to create a culture change backed up by systems change,
we can evidence early progress in terms of improving the family journey and experience,
on the way to improving family outcomes. The system reflects the principles built in to the
service re-design and partnership commitment to establish 1 family, 1 action plan, 1 lead
worker and a Team Around the Family:


whole system approach - joined up way of meeting the needs of all these families
that is better for them – their experience improved; our service response made
simpler from the families’ perspective – building on the Family CAF tool and what
works
simplified mechanism for sharing information about our families in a way that uses
local data/intelligence effectively to identify and help access the support that they
need before needs escalate, without them having to re-tell stories or complete
different forms and multiple assessment processes
11
Lloyd C., Wollny Y., White C., Gowland S. and Purdon S. (2011) Monitoring and evaluation of family
intervention services and projects between February 2007 and March 2011, Department for Education
6




remove the inefficiency and bureaucracy in the system that will save us money –
be clearly understood and accessed by families, with a ‘simpler’ holistic offer, that
promotes independence and family actions linked to clear, measurable outcomes
build strong local partnership relationships (Action and Impact reviews) - trust and
understanding, increasing local responsiveness, taking collective ownership and
responsibility (with a clear lead and agency accountability), informing decisions and
targeting resources where they can have the greatest impact on family outcomes
access to a Family budget enabling a timely response to meeting needs linked to
clear outcomes in the family action plan
generating local ambition to improve aspirations and outcomes for families and
encouraging local responsiveness and innovation e.g. engaging families and
communities in co-producing sustainable solutions
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Appendix 1 - Hertfordshire’s Thriving Families
Aims
A new Thriving Families service is being established, which will be integral to
Hertfordshire’s Thriving Families programme, incorporating the government’s Troubled
Families Payment by Results initiative. The service will aim to empower families with
multiple and complex needs to achieve better outcomes and therefore prevent escalation
of problems, by ensuring a safe and effective service, which responds quickly and
intensively to the families’ needs. The service delivery approach will utilise the widely
recognised and evidence based family intervention model. This model ensures that one
worker co-ordinates the multi-agency support on behalf of all family members and
appropriately considers the use of both sanctions and rewards as part of the approach.
The operational model for Thriving Families Teams maximises the use of frontline
workers, thus ensuring that the impact of this change for children, young people and
families is minimised and in particular that those at the high end of the needs continuum
will be supported.
OBJECTIVES
The objective for Hertfordshire’s Thriving Families is to enable families to tackle the
barriers that stop them from thriving and provide support that sustains this progress for
generations to come. This will be achieved by a more flexible and innovative approach to
how services are delivered and commissioned across Hertfordshire, including
personalised commissioning through the development of ‘family budgets’ and sustained
community engagement.
Hertfordshire’s Thriving Families is an early intervention programme which incorporates
the government’s Troubled Families initiative. To be eligible for support under the
Troubled Families initiative families must currently either:
1. meet all three of the criteria set by government, or,
2. meet at least two of the government criteria and be identified by local intelligence
as a family at risk of not thriving
The government criteria relate to:
 worklessness
 anti-social behaviour / under 18s offending
 non attendance at school
8
Local intelligence will consider if the following additional presenting needs are a concern:
adult mental health; parental drug and alcohol misuse; domestic abuse; adult learning
disabilities and difficulties; young people’s substance misuse and young people’s mental
health issues; risk of becoming homeless.
Hertfordshire has agreed with the DCLG to support a minimum number of families over
three years.
Troubled Families Programme Projected number of families
Year 1 2012/13
450
Year 2 2013/14
672
Year 3 2014/15
228
CONTINUUM OF NEED
Hertfordshire Thriving Families activity is located in the targeted area of the continuum of
need as set out in the ‘Meeting the Needs of Children and Families in Hertfordshire’
report. Principally working with families with complex and enduring issues which hamper
their ability to thrive, however support will be available to families subject to statutory
plans where the lead practitioner seeks additional, holistic family support. ‘Step-down’
cases will also be accommodated as appropriate within the TF programme of family
support. To promote and encourage early intervention with families in need of support, a
standard referral pathway will be provided which will enable practitioners from any service
to refer cases for consideration of inclusion within the programme, via the Customer
Service Centre and Targeted Advice Service (TAS).
THE OFFER
The service being offered to families by the new Thriving Families Teams will be an
intensive family support service, delivering evidence based interventions directly to
families, often in the family homes on an individual or group basis. The service will adopt
an assertive, authoritative and challenging approach to the work with families. Examples
of interventions include assessing and supporting improved parenting skills, challenging
anti-social behaviour and using the Graded Care Profile tool to assess and respond to risk
of neglect. The TF teams will embed a motivational interviewing approach - in line with
Hertfordshire’s agreed methodology for working with families.
Families will be engaged by local practitioners and following the pathway described in the
table below, existing family needs are established using a revised CAF, and service
provision is mapped, a multi-agency Thriving Families action and impact review will
consider the family needs, design and commit resource to a bespoke family action plan
and agree a lead professional, who will act as the family’s dedicated point of contact and
will help to coordinate and drive the services and activities detailed in the plan. To provide
consistent review and evaluation, family plans will be monitored and adapted as
necessary to achieve progress, by the TF action and impact review on a regular basis.
Family Lead Practitioners will either be Family Intervention Workers from the core TF
teams or practitioners from other agencies. The Family Lead Practitioner will be
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determined either on receipt and review of the case by the TF team manager or in
complex cases, at the initial Thriving Families action and impact review. The decision will
be based upon the existing relationship between practitioners and the family entering the
TF programme, the complexity of their circumstances and needs and the intensity of the
support required to help the family move forward. Family Lead Practitioners who work
away from the TF teams provide an ‘aligned’ service and will be fully supported by the
resources available within the TF programme to enable them to effectively support the
families they are working with.
Further updates and information can be found at; www.hertsdirect.org/thriving
10
Case study:
Presenting Information
• Mum lives with 3 children under 12 on her own; 12, 10 and 6.
• Mum’s income support will soon stop and instead she will be eligible for Job Seeker’s
Allowance however, she has never had a full time job. Mum is worried about finding work,
having never worked before and owing money to pay day loan companies leading up to
Christmas.
• Mum is in and out of relationship with dad of 2 youngest children, who is now on remand.
• Prompted by concerns relating to domestic abuse between mum and partner, there have
been two core assessments have been conducted on the family in the past 3 years.
• Eldest child regularly does not attend school and spends his days with older children on
the estate which has recently resulted in an ASB order. Primary school where 2 youngest
attend, report both children often arriving late.
Agencies to be involved
• Police, schools, JobCentre Plus, Probation service, registered social landlord, district ASB
team, Integrated Services for Learning. Children’s social care team not involved currently.
Acting as Family Lead:
• Assess needs of whole family, as a result of home-visits and appropriate meeting with
children on their own. Assessment will include dad who is on remand.
• Convene meeting with key family members, and agencies involved in the case and
outcome focused support plan agreed e.g. school to support with X, police to support with
Y.
• Establish time frames and assess the impact of dad’s release from custody including
developing a programme of support to enhance his parental role for the children in the
family
• Introduce support plan to address domestic violence from perspective of behaviour
modification and impact on young children.
• Convene regular review meetings
• Report progress to Team Manager for sharing at double district Review and Action
Planning meeting as appropriate
Provide direct intervention:
• Appropriately challenge mum’s current management of children’s behaviour and motivate
her to prepare to change own behaviour
• 1-1 or group based parenting support programme, supported by practical help to establish
effective morning and evening routines
• Consider and carry out if appropriate, specific assessments e.g. young carer’s
assessment, graded care profile assessment, parenting capacity (adult learning difficulties)
• Supporting fathers to access appropriate courses such as the Caring dads programme to
support their role within the family.
• Provide practical support to initiate mum’s attendance at significant meetings (e.g.
JobCentre Plus and money advice appointments)
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>>>>Best practice introduced
Research &
Validation
<<<<< Monitoring and Evaluation >>>>>
Initial contact
& consent
Assessment of
whole family need.
Continuous learning >>>>>
Action Plan agreed. Resources
committed at appropriate level.
Working with Families to
deliver improved outcomes
Intensity of case
Integrated Services for
learning / Education
Support Centres
Data
Analysis
Districts
Data
Validation
Thriving Families
Teams (1.2.13)
Children’s Centres
Voluntary &
Community groups
Health workers
Family
action & impact
review
Designs
& resources
bespoke TAF Plan
Lead
Family
Practitioner
assigned.
Family led by
Core Thriving
Families
Improved family Outcomes
Reducing cohort
SfYP/TYSS/EITS
Youth Connexions
Family CAF
Data
Collation
Map current family support providers
Police / Probation
Family led by
Aligned
Approach
JobCentre+
Housing Providers
Embedded case review process
School Partnerships
Learning in real time to inform future direction
Accurate as of 1.2.13
Aligned Thriving
Families Service
Joint activity
Core Thriving
Families Service
12
THRIVING FAMILIES OPERATIONAL DELIVERY
The Thriving Families programme in Hertfordshire will be delivered through a partnership
approach and following the process described in the flow chart above. The core resource will be
the Thriving Families Teams who will be deployed across the county but who will retain the
flexibility required to ensure that they respond effectively to changing patterns of families in need
of support.
The operational team structure will consist of with 44 full time equivalent (FTE) posts as follows:
Job Titles and Grades
Operation Manager M5
Team Manager M3
Senior Family Intervention Worker H9
Family Intervention Worker H7
Support Officer H4
FTE
1
5
10
23
5
Thriving Families Teams will be organised on a double district basis in line with other operational
teams within Services for Children and Young People. By including two Senior workers in each of
the 5 teams, we provide a foundation from which additional Thriving Families Workers can be
recruited at a later date (on fixed-term contracts) in preparation for years 2 and 3 of the Troubled
Families initiative, to meet Hertfordshire’s family engagement and outcome targets.
With the exception of the support officers, each role in the team will share the following core
functions:
 assessing risk
 practicing safeguarding responsibilities
 assessing the needs of the whole family
 reviewing family progress against agreed plans and desired outcomes
The post holders of the new roles will attend Hertfordshire’s new learning and development
programme of Children First training, including Motivational Interviewing, Solution Focused
interventions and Resilience and Decision Making which is the agreed methodology for working
with families in Hertfordshire across the continuum of support. Post holders will also be
considered for the Work with Parents Level 4 Family Intervention qualification. Post holders will
need to be familiar with child protection thresholds and have up-to-date safeguarding and
integrated practice training.
THRIVING FAMILIES OPERATIONAL TEAM BASES
Teams in the new structure will be based in five double district locations as follows:
 Watford and Three Rivers team: Otley Way Family Centre, Otley Way, Watford WD19 7TB
 Broxbourne and East Herts team: Crossbrook Street Health Centre, 125 Crossbrook
Street, Cheshunt, EN8 8JH
 Stevenage and North Herts team: Swingate House, 2nd Floor, Swingate House, Stevenage
SG1 1AF
 Welwyn / Hatield / Hertsmere team: County Hall.
 Dacorum and St Albans team: Apsley
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HCC Thriving Families Operational structure model.
This model represents the initial resource allocation across the five double-district areas however these resources offer flexibility to enable adjustment
between areas according to emerging trends and demand profile. Additionally, aligned partner resources committed to support Thriving Families will also vary
according to local structures and an example structure is depicted below. These structures are however subject to local variation and potentially alteration.
Thriving Families
Operations Manager
Team Manager
Watford & Three Rivers
Team Manager
North Herts &
Stevenage
Team Manager
Welwyn Hatfield &
Hertsmere
Team Manager
Dacorum &
St. Albans
Team Manager
East Herts &
Broxbourne
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Senior Family
Intervention Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Support Officer
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Family Intervention
Worker
Support Officer
Support Officer
Support Officer
Support Officer
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Appendix 2 - THRIVING FAMILIES PROGRAMME
Department for Communities and Local Government visit - January 2013
Feedback Meeting with Families
As part of the DCLG visit, we arranged for three families currently being supported via the
Intensive Family Support Teams (Thriving Families Teams from 1 February 2013) to meet
the DCLG visitors and senior management to talk about their experiences (positive and
negative) of services in Hertfordshire. Case studies were prepared for visitors in advance
to outline the issues/challenges faced by the individual families, and to summarise the
interventions to date and highlight any early impact (e.g. improved school attendance,
reduced crime or anti-social behaviour etc).
All three families were supported by the worker who is now engaged with them, and
responsible for the co-ordination of intervention and support to them. The families were
broadly asked three questions (although the nature of this depended on the dialogue with
each of the families and their confidence in telling their stories):
 What have we done?
 How well have we done it and how could it be better for you?
 What difference has it made?
Themes and Issues
The families openly described their experiences and there were many common themes
which are summarised below. As notes were not taken, to ensure a focus on the families,
the “quotes” are in the spirit of what was said rather than verbatim:
 Without exception, the role and impact of the current workers were praised both the
challenge and the support e.g. “it felt like they were interfering at first”; “they
challenged me…and that is what I/my family needed”; “they are always there for me,
helping me to learn how to stand on my own two feet”; “they made me think and take
responsibility”
 Previous experience of services was reported as inconsistent e.g. “they came, told me
what to do, and then they went away again”. Families said they appreciated the ongoing relationship with the whole family that has been possible with the current
workers.
 Families recognised that these workers gave them practical ‘hands on’ support and
showed them how to do things - modelling behaviour - giving them a way of being
and helping them to “get the right things” from other agencies and with time to help
them to “help ourselves” – “…she showed me how to phone and ask for what I needed
and get an appointment…and I can do that for myself now”; “she helped me to talk to
the judge [about an eviction]…without her I would have let it all go on without me being
involved”
 The persistent/assertive/challenging approach of the workers in supporting
families to make changes was a strong theme….”he wasn’t going to go away, he was
there for me and my children”; “sometimes when you make an appointment for next
week, when I am having a good day [with mental health issues], by the time the
letter/day comes….I have deteriorated, and so I don’t turn up…it is easy to hide or not
to answer the door….but I know she will be on my doorstep and will not go away”
 Families felt that workers didn’t tell them what to do 9as different to some previous
experiences with services), rather they helped them to take some ownership of their
own challenges – to see what needed to change and how it might be possible to
make that change
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
The agreement of action and co-ordination of support was appreciated, however a
shared frustration for families and workers was when they identified something that
would help and it was not available e.g. “the others (agencies) did not turn up for the
meeting” or “there is a long waiting list”
Impact
All three families that we met said that “I would not be where I am today without the
support of my worker”.
For Family 1, this meant that she had established clear boundaries with her children
around behaviour, school attendance and reducing anti-social behaviour in the
community. “There is not so much shouting in our house or with my neighbours….
[worker] has helped me to learn to stay calm and talk more”. With the support of her
worker “yesterday, my son wrote letters of apology to everyone [re incident of ASB]…he
would never have done that before, he understands why what he did was wrong”. She
ensures that her children are in bed at a reasonable time “…he comes downstairs and I
take him back up to bed.[repeated several times]…it is exhausting, but it is working and
he knows I won’t let him get away with it…I am in charge.”
Family 2 described how they are now dealing with issues around drug use, mental health,
domestic abuse (intergenerational), physical disability, crime/ASB, school attendance
through the support they are receiving. “It’s still not easy, and we know we have more to
do, but it feels like we are a family again”. At the end of the feedback session mum said “I
can honestly say that if I were not being supported in this way, sorry, I am getting really
upset….but if I were not being supported, I would be dead now”.
Family 3 “…wanted to come in today so that you know how much help we have received
in the last two weeks”. The worker has supported Mum to manage and “because of my
mental health, it would have been easy for me to stick my head in the sand and to let it all
[legal proceedings] wash over me….but [worker] was with me every step of the way”.
There was a strong message about early intervention, as mum said that “…had I known
about this support earlier, I might have sorted things out before now and we wouldn’t be in
this position”. Mum said “….we are in a hostel, and it is tough, but we actually had a good
time together last night…..we even laughed together”.
A huge thank you to all three families for sharing their experiences so honestly with us. This
learning will be embedded in the new service.
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