Transcript Slide 1

Think Family:
Strengthening collaborative
working between families
Caroline Prichard and Lia Borgese
Department for Children, Schools
and Families
Developing the potential of parenting and family support
to improve child outcomes
• We know that evidence based parenting programmes work and have lasting
effects in improving behaviour even in cases where parents are initially
reluctant to receive help.
• A review of evidence based parenting programmes by the National Institute of
Clinical Excellence shows significant long term effects in improving children’s
behaviour (of between 1-10 years).
• Despite this:
•
Problems with supply and availability
•
Agencies don’t refer
•
Or don’t refer early enough
•
Targeting & reach
•
Issues about quality of practice
So what are we doing to expand parenting and family
support?
Three main strands of activity:
• Supporting local authorities to develop
parenting support
• Developing the workforce
• Increasing targeted provision
Supporting local authorities
•
In 2006 LAs asked to appoint single
commissioners of parenting support and
to develop a parenting strategy by March
08
•
Majority of LAs have strategies in place
and are now moving to an
implementation phase
•
Parenting Implementation Project to test
effective practice in developing parenting
strategies to develop a national
framework for all LAs
Supporting the workforce
•
•
The National Academy for Parenting Practitioners
•
Mission - To transform the quality and size of the parenting
workforce across England so that parents can get the help
they need to raise their children well
•
Training in evidence based programmes & skills needed to
work with parents – training starts this month
•
Provide ongoing support to practitioners; through individual
and group consultancy and online services.
•
Developing the evidence base
Plus feeding into wider workforce development e.g. Children’s
Workforce Strategy for 2020
Increasing parenting and family support services across
a spectrum of need
Increasing needs
Early
signs
of risk
Parenting programmes
• Parenting Early
Intervention
Programme
• Parenting
Experts
Whole Family Support
• Family
Pathfinders
• Family
Intervention
projects
Of course some families
need more than help with
parenting and this needs to
be one element of ‘whole
family’ support
High
Needs
But of course some families need more than just
parenting support …
Too often parent’s pass their own problems onto their children, creating a
never-ending cycle, generation after generation which becomes difficult to
break. We are still not doing enough to interrupt inter-generational patterns of
social exclusion.
•
63% of boys with convicted fathers go on to be convicted themselves
•
Parental alcohol misuse is a factor in more than 50% of child protection cases (and there
are 350,000 children with drug addicted parents/ 1m with alcohol addicted parents)
•
1:4 children witnessing domestic violence have serious social and behavioural problems
•
Children from the 5% most disadvantaged households are more than 50 times more likely to
have multiple problems at age 30 than those from the top 50% of households
Rather than waiting for the first signs of risk to emerge in children, we could do
more to predict future risk by picking up signals from the family as well as a
child
Such as the 2% or 140,000 families with children experiencing 5 or
more disadvantages
Percentage of families with children experiencing 5 or more disadvantages
2.2
2.1
2
1.9
2
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
%
Basket of indicators of disadvantages includes:
• No parent in the family is in work
• Family lives in poor quality or overcrowded housing
• No parent has any qualifications
• Mother has mental health problems
• At least one parent has a long-standing limiting illness, disability or
infirmity
• Family has low income (below 60% median)
• Family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items
The consistency of
this figure over
2001 to 2004
suggests that
improvements
such as the
reduction in child
poverty may not
be reaching such
families
Multiple disadvantage can cast a long shadow
None
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 or 2
3 or 4
5 or more family disadvantages
18
16.3
10.4
7.3
6.2
4.5
2.8
12.5
11.1
11.9
10.2
9.7
6.5
8.1
5.6
4.3
1.4
8.9
7.7 7.5
4.9
5.4
2.9
1
Well below
Child suspended Not seen friends in In trouble with
Child spent less
Child admits
average at English or excluded in last
last week and
police in last year than an hour on running away from
(2005)
year (2005)
never goes to
(2005)
physical activity in home before (2004)
organised social
last week (2005)
activities (2004)
Time to ‘Think Family’ ?
“Every Child Matters is already transforming
the way services are delivered for 0-19 year
olds. ‘Think Family’ extends this model to
include adults’ services and puts families firmly
at the centre”
• Developed by the Social Exclusion Taskforce
in their Families at Risk Review
• Reaching out: Think Family (June 2007)
• Think Family – Improving the life chances of
Families at Risk (Jan 2008)
• Currently being tested by 15 Family
Pathfinders
• Funding to help every Local authority develop
the model from 2009 -10
What is ‘Think Family’
This extended the logic of collaboration from ECM to beyond children’s services
• Better co-ordination of all services to support families at risk
Systems change
• Changes to delivery systems and workforce culture to ensure consideration of the
family context to need
• Critical to earlier and more effective intervention with families at risk
• 15 Family Pathfinders testing how this might be implemented
Whole family support
• Need for more provision to deal with risk in families and how it inter-relates
• Whole family support available at different levels
• Including very intensive support (building on the FIP model) for the most risky
families
Improving the response of services and systems to
vulnerable families
Identification
Better systems for identifying and engaging families at risk (those with
multiple and complex problems putting their children at risk of poor
outcomes)
Whole family
assessment
Building on the CAF, which looks at the needs, strengths and interrelation
of problems of the whole family
Multi agency
support plan
Managed by lead workers who case work families, working directly with
them and co-ordinating other service involvement
Improved information
sharing
To enable early identification and interventions
Joined up planning &
commissioning
To ensure the full range of evidence based programmes and interventions
to meet family needs
Integration between
adult and children’s
services
At all levels of local services – such as clear accountability for families
through joined-up governance to and a common vision and agreed
outcomes for families across services as part of the LAA process.
Think Family needs to be part of the next phase of ECM reform
The ECM Framework
Integrated frontline delivery
Integrated
processes
Integrated
strategy
Inter-agency
governance
•
Multi disciplinary teams: ‘team
around the child’
•
Lead professionals
•
Information sharing across
local children's services
•
Common Assessment
Framework

Single Children & Young
People’s Plan

Pooled budgets to support joint
commissioning of services for
children
‘Think Family’
•
‘Team around the family’
•
Lead worker for the family to
coordinate multi-agency plan
•
Information sharing across children’s
and adults services about family
needs
•
Whole family assessment
•
C&YP and Parenting Strategy
includes the contribution of adults’
services to family wellbeing
•
Common vision and agreed
outcomes for families

Single outcome framework
C&YP
•
Pooled budgets to support joint
commissioning of services for
families

Director and lead member for
Children’s services
•

Duty to create LSCB
Nominated senior lead to ensure
clear accountability for outcomes for
families
•
Strategic leadership of TF (on CT
board?)
Family Intervention Projects (FIPs)







A dedicated key worker with low caseloads who works intensively with
the whole family.
Taking a whole family perspective to assessment and the development
of support packages.
Use of a contract setting out the changes that are expected, the support
that will be provided (building on strengths) and possible consequences
if changes are not made.
The use of persistent and assertive working methods.
Effective multi agency arrangements (referrals panel, information
sharing, agreeing the objectives of intervention etc).
Accredited parenting programmes are delivered and services (such as
health) are brought in and coordinated around the family.
Nominated health professional (NHP), to signpost and make appropriate
referral to health services.
Recent evaluation shows the effectiveness of the model
in tackling risk factors in families
Start
72%
Education
45%
65%
Health
51%
65%
Poor parenting
Family breakdown
Domestic violence
Child protection issues
End
31%
26%
10%
22%
8%
20%
9%
Base: Families who completed the intervention (337)
Expansion of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) to reach
20,000 families by 2011
65 Projects aimed at families involved in
persistent ASB

2008 budget announced new projects
aimed at tackling child poverty and inter
generational worklessness.
Number of Family Intervention Projects 2006-11

Youth Crime Action Plan announced
projects to target families with C&YP at risk
of offending in every local authority

2008-09: 30 new projects

300
250
200
150
100
50
0
2006-07
National roll out over 09 -11

2007-08
2008-09
2010-11
Expansion of Family Intervention Projects to reach
20,000 families by 2011
New Models
“Child Poverty FIPS”

Announced in 2008 budget

2008-09: 10 projects started in October 2008

Further expansion over 09 -11 (around 32 in total)
“Crime prevention FIPS”
§
Announced in Youth Crime Action Plan
§
A project in every local authority
§
2008-09: 20 projects to start in January 2009.
§
National roll out over 09 -11
Testing the model with
families with multiple
problems other than antisocial behaviour e.g.
intergenerational poverty &
worklessness, substance
misuse etc
Focus on specific types of
risk in families e.g. prolific
parental offending, domestic
violence etc
Focus on specific age bands
of children e.g. 0-5, 5-10, or
10+
In time the various ‘FIP variants’ may merge into joined up intensive whole family
support for families at risk
FIPs-health impact in families

80% of parents had poor health/mental health problems

47% of families affected by domestic violence, high number of children
at risk

High proportion of children with ADHD, emotional & other problems

Over 50% of the children are obese and overweight, with very poor
nutrition
Role of the Nominated Health Professional - where health works well

Participation on steering group and multi-agency panel;

Effective communication between agencies & whole family assessment, including
age appropriate children’s services;

Links into teenage pregnancy, DAT, school nurses, GPs, psychologists,
paediatricians, CAHMS and health visitors which help to create networks,
nutrition and obesity prevention.

Knowledge of commissioning and levers
Where do we need to get to?
A integrated and appropriate service response to all families at risk
How will this be achieved ?

Joined up Family Intervention Project type provision sufficient to
meet the needs of the most extreme families (whatever their
combinations of problems)

Changes in attitudes, culture and behaviour at local level and on
the front line (achieved by ‘Think Family’, workforce reform and
Children's Trusts) to identify and intervene early with all families
at risk
However – need to be realistic. This is a massive change process that will take
significant investment and time to deliver. But the potential gains are huge
High
Medium
Low