Transcript Presentation to Name Surname 31 October 2006

Local action on child poverty
Marnie Caton
Head of Information & Performance
Children’s Services
SSRG Conference
8 March 2010
Workshop Outline
• National & local context
• Outcomes for children & young people in
Islington
• Our approach to poverty
• Issues
• Where next?
Child poverty – the national picture
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Poverty - expressed as children in households below 60% median income is
measured by Households Below Average Income survey:
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2006/7 – 2.9 million below 60% median
2007/8 – 2.9 million below 60% median
Poverty expressed as children in households dependent on out of work benefits:
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HBAI
HBAI
DWP claimant count
DWP claimant count
Aug 07
Aug 08
– 3.19 million
– 3.16 million
600,000 children had been lifted out of poverty by 2007, but there is no data
reflecting the developing recession and children in low income and materially
deprived households have returned to 2004/5 level. London has seen no
progress this century
Child poverty – the London picture
• Why has progress on child poverty in London stalled since
2000?
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Concentration of groups at risk of poverty
Multiple barriers to getting a job
Lack of part time job opportunities
Lack of affordable and flexible childcare
National tax and benefit system not responsive to London’s
regional needs
• All characteristics that are more heavily concentrated in inner
London boroughs such as Islington
What is Islington like?
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Population of 195,000
40,000 children and young people aged 0-19
Highly mobile young single population and growing older population
Chic by jowl – very mixed economically with many living on less than
£10k p.a. and some on £100k+
Very disparate skill levels – many below Level 2 and a few highly
skilled professionals
Lots of recent immigration – eastern and southern Europe; north, east
and west Africa; Turkey and Middle East; older generation from
Bangladesh and South America – but pretty much everywhere
Over 120 languages
Very densely populated – lots of small flats – few larger family homes
Sizeable social housing sector – over half of children live in public
housing
Outcomes for CYP
Improving but poor measured by many of the national indicators:
• Ranked 143rd for Level 3 attainment at 19 nationally
• 5th out of 7 boroughs for NEETs in Central London – approx. 400
young people – 7.8% of 16-18 year olds (London average is 6.1%)
• 31st in London for GCSE attainment at 16 – 45% against national
average 50.7%
• 19% young people with learning difficulties & disabilities are NEET
• 16th in London for obesity of 10 year olds at 24%
• 32nd in London at end of Foundation stage (at rising 5) at 36%
• Lowest decrease in Inner London for teen pregnancy : rate at 54.8 per
1,000
• High proportion of children in need referred to social care – above
national and statistical neighbours
But on the bright side….
• Progress at GCSE has been substantial – one of the fastest
improving boroughs in England
• Rates of youth offending reducing – by over 15% since last year
• NEETs falling – rate has halved since 2006
• Staying on in learning has risen to over 91% from under 80% in
3 years
• Investment in early years with 16 children’s centres covering
whole Borough
• Improvement in breast feeding rates and reduction in infant
mortality
• No schools in special measures – many ‘outstanding’ – in 2001
there were more than 10 in special measures
• Outstanding FE college
GCSE – Narrowing the gap - Free school
meal and non-FSM pupils
% 5 A*-C EM
60
50
England FSM
40
England nonFSM
Islington FSM
30
20
Islington nonFSM
10
0
2006
2007
2008
2009
Our CYPPlan priorities therefore….
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Giving young children the best possible start in life
Outstanding learning in every Islington School
Every child enjoying going to school every day
Young people having the best possible qualifications,
experiences and opportunities for adult life
• Islington’s children in care enjoying the lives we want for our
own families
• Keeping children safe at home, in school and in the community
• Families and communities raising aspirations for learning and
work
Addressing root causes - poverty
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95% of our YP NEET live in families where no one works
Disproportionate number of poor school attenders live in workless
households – persistent absence (less than 80% attendance) a serious
problem right from early years through to secondary school
High proportion of mental ill-health – both in adult and child populations
Substance misuse is high – main difficulty with NEETs re-engagement
is chronic substance misuse
48% social care referrals as a result of domestic violence
10% children living in over-crowded housing
43% children living in lone parent households
Local debt levels analysis identifies lone mothers as carrying most
unmanageable debt (Rocket Science 2009)
Cost and access to childcare
Aspirations
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Child poverty: Islington in London – Aug. 2008
Islington's position in London
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Child poverty in Islington
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Index of Child Well-being 2009 – Islington 4th worst local authority after
Liverpool, Tower Hamlets and Manchester
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Measured as number of children in households on out of work benefits,
Islington remains second worst in UK
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Number of children living below 60% median income cannot be
measured at LA level – however, local data shows over 92% of children
in households claiming HB/CTB are in poverty
How many children affected
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45% of child population live in workless households – 18,000 children
and young people
73% of these live in lone parent households
Only 14% of children are in low income working households
In our project we decided to focus on families with younger children
• 3,800 children 0-4 live in workless households
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4,500 children under 7 live in lone parent families living on income
support
Islington scale of child poverty (from HB/CTB data)
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Children in workless households:
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Children in working households (below 60% median)
1,197 ( 7%)
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Total children in poverty by both measures:
15,533 (93.5%)
14,336 (86%)
We have found through matching data almost 4,000 more children in
poverty
Our response
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2007 – Islington Strategic Partnership co-sponsors the Child Poverty
toolkit, developed by Child Poverty Action Group and Inclusion
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2008 – ISP includes targets for reducing child poverty in LAA
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2008 – Islington Council agrees additional child poverty actions under
the London Child Poverty Pledge and recognises priority in revised CYP Plan
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2009 – The council and partners develop a programme to help people
survive the credit crunch
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2009 – Islington Council agrees additional child poverty actions under
the Child Poverty Innovation pilot
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2010 – introduction of free school meals to all primary school children
Child Poverty Pilot
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The need to renew the drive against child poverty was acknowledged in
Ending Child Poverty: everybody’s business (March 2008). It linked
education, safety, health, and housing in a partnership approach to
tackling poverty at local level:
– “front line workers involved in the delivery of public services need to ensure
their work benefits children from poor backgrounds and closes the gap in
outcomes between children from low income families”
– “third sector organisations … should be key partners in planning and
delivery at all levels … particularly in supporting the most hard-to-reach
groups and raising aspirations”
Islington’s Child Poverty Innovation Pilot
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The pilot brief called for innovation that can be replicated across other
local authorities
Evaluation and learning are key required outputs
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Islington’s bid was successful because
– It was based on intelligent use of HB/CTB together with child data
– It had ambition to make progress on child poverty sustainable through
integration within mainstream services
Innovative use of data
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Our bid delivered something central government cannot do: a local
measure of poverty defined as 60% of median income
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But our matched data does more than measure poverty – it identifies:
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Lone parent / couple status
Tenure, including owner occupiers
Landlord (as potential delivery partner)
Income details
Number and ages of children
Languages
Whether family uses services already
Address
How we are doing it
• Big matched dataset of children and families
• Analysis of need
• Provision of regular updates to front line teams
• Good partnership working
• Changing processes across the agencies
How we joined the data together
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We assessed the systems that were in Islington that held data about
children
In total there are about 200,000 records about children in ten IT
systems
Created a matched data set from these sources
Data Sharing agreements with partners
We built one large database to hold data from each of the records
and created a ‘master’ record for each child
The database now holds 40,000+ records, one for each child who
lives in Islington
Phase 1: Data sources
Data was initially
loaded according a
matrix of reliability of
the data.
From this point
forward, all new births
will be loaded, and then
the master record will
be added to when the
child accesses other
services.
Easier to extract
data from some
sources than others
Database now has
40,000+ records
Use of the data in poverty pilot
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Able to produce very accurate numbers of target families and children
Lists of target families within each Children’s Centre catchment area,
with contextual data
Pre-populate new project system for handling case-work with pilot
clients
Lists of children for linked project activity such as our 2 year old pilot
which ensures we can quickly identify families most likely to benefit
Centres and caseworkers can decide in advance how best to approach
families – e.g. use of bi-lingual community outreach worker for Somali
families; social worker where family already known to social care; lead
professional where child has a disability….
Monitoring & Evaluation
• Provides a very accurate baseline
• Ability to pull activity data together from across various
administrative systems to produce monitoring on services
contributing to the pilot
• Spin-off evidence for school and children centre self-evaluation
– better inspection outcomes!
• Ensures valid samples for qualitative work being undertaken by
us and the national evaluation team
• Helps identify further questions and issues quickly – e.g. too few
clients taking up income maximisation offer – able to see their
current benefit status quickly and investigate reasons further
Mainstreaming
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To have an impact on child poverty after the pilot funding period we need to
embed interventions in frontline services across the multiple agencies:
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Housing
Health
Adult social care
Children’s services
Regeneration
Employers / Business
To provide personalised services through which “someone with a disability, low
skills and child care needs can easily access support to help them manage their
health condition at work, in training or childcare” – National Audit Office
Project targets and outputs
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Targeted support focusing on
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Outputs include
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Households with children
0 to 4 years
Lone parents with children 0 to 7 years
All households with income below 60% median
Working families with earned income but no tax credits
Families with disability (parent or child)
2,300 income maximisation checks covering all target groups
800 parents / households engaged in the employability pathways
Improved business processes to ensure action on child poverty is sustainable
Employability pathways – unlike LAA targets – are linked to progress towards employability,
resilience and well-being, not just movement into employment.
Benefits to residents
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Plan casework more accurately and saves time for clients
Clients do not have to fill in lots of forms – spend time on ensuring
consent is obtained and understand service offered better
Identify inequalities in access because of barriers such as language
and address them
Parents able to find out about services they want or need more easily
Parents involved in focus groups expected us to use the information
they have given us for various purposes
Project linkages
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Personalisation agenda in adult social care and health
NICE guidelines on employment retention
Housing Trailblazers
Improved Access to Psychological Therapies project
Jobcentre Plus
Think Family project
Family Support strategy
Extended schools programme
Children’s Centres
Islington Debt Coalition
Adult Careers Service (Advancement Network Prototype)
HMRC (tax credits)
Issues – so far
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This is not a short life project – whole system change – complex
business processes to analyse and change
Quality of data in source systems!
Essential to automate data matching and processing – too timeconsuming otherwise
Timeliness of data matched
Security of data and security of transfer of data to end users
Accessing other useful data sources – e.g. DWP data on job seeker
clients
Lack of data on children who attend school outside borough
Ensuring clients have given informed consent – practitioner training
issue
What next?
• Child Poverty Bill – Act will require Needs assessments to be
done
• Link to CYP Plan Needs Assessment and commissioning
requirements
• Using the data better to predict needs – work with health on this
• Better sharing with government departments – DWP and
HMRC?
• Better targeting of services to people’s needs – better use of
resources
• More qualitative work with children and young people on how
they feel about their futures
• Check in with parents that we are going in the right direction