Families at risk often have to deal with numerous agencies, but a new scheme that works across adult and children’s services to recognise the family as a unit could stop people slipping through the net.
Herpreet Kaur Grewal
Families at risk often have to deal with numerous agencies, but a new scheme that works across adult and children’s services to recognise the family as a unit could stop people slipping through the net, finds Herpreet Kaur Grewal.
Lisa’s drug use started when she was 13. Now 25, she has a three-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was for a time placed on the Child Protection Register because Lisa was unfit to care for her. She previously had two children removed from her care.
A project in Sheffield called Phoenix Futures Sheffield Family Services helped Lisa become drug-free. Through it, she gained parenting skills by working with a health visitor and other support staff. The project also helped Lisa to take computer classes and gain a place to live in her local community. She is once again the primary carer for Sarah.
Phoenix Futures Sheffield Family Services is the sort of project that works across adult and children’s services to help families at risk – an approach endorsed in a report published last week by the Cabinet Office-based Social Exclusion Task Force (R&R, 11 January, p1).
The core message of the report, the latest in a series of studies from the task force on families at risk, is that council-run adult services should support “whole families, not just individuals”. The Government has said that the best way to do this is through local initiatives that have proved successful, such as Family Nurse Partnerships, nurse-led home visiting programmes during pregnancy, and Family Intervention Projects, designed to support families involved in antisocial behaviour.
To take the approach further, the Government has announced £16 million to establish 12 to 15 family pathfinders designed to improve outcomes for families at risk, including the most disadvantaged, which it says are not being effectively engaged and supported by existing services. According to the Cabinet Office, the pathfinders will try to build up a “hard and fast” evidence base of approaches that work. Councils can now apply for pathfinder status, the report says, with the three-year projects to be launched in April.
Through the pathfinders, councils are expected to work with partners such as the NHS and the voluntary and community sector to focus more on the needs of families rather than individuals, so the most needy people with multiple problems – such as Lisa – do not slip through the cracks of the system.
This will include work to build on the Every Child Matters agenda introduced in 2003 in an attempt to join up children’s services. Pathfinders will also be expected to embed early intervention and prevention approaches.
Pathfinder representatives will also come together on a forum that will feed into the development of national government policy on social exclusion. The report says the forum will “begin to build consensus on what works, but (will) also highlight local variation and diversity of approach”. The Cabinet Office is also encouraging local services to adopt the principle that contact with any one service offers an “open door” into a system of joined-up support. For example, a probation officer or housing officer who identifies the language difficulties of a client will refer them to English for Speakers of Other Languages training, says the Cabinet Office.
Social exclusion minister Ed Miliband told Regeneration & Renewal that the Government would not wait until the end of the three-year pathfinder programme to discover what lessons could be adopted into national policy.
He said: “We want to get going quickly in terms of learning lessons. It’s not a case of: ‘Let’s have some pilots and then come back in three years.’ We will have a whole collaborative forum within the pathfinders where they will come together and be talking to each other about what is working and what is making a difference. We will be trying to learn those lessons as quickly as possible for national policy.”
Practitioners working with vulnerable families have broadly welcomed the approaches in the report, but say the real test will be whether they are adopted locally. Caroline Abrahams, head of programmes for children and young people at the Local Government Association, says this will depend on how councils exercise their strategic leadership. “The proof of the pudding will be in the eating,” she says.
The plan to work across adult and children’s services is another way to break down the barriers between different parts of local government that typically hinder service delivery. In many cases, Abrahams says, local areas are already being encouraged to try and work across agencies for better all-round results. “(This) is another way for them to demonstrate their working (across silos),” she says.
Jenny Frank, programme manager for charity the Children’s Society’s Include project that supports children who care for their parents, is also hopeful. She thinks councils will be more likely to make the effort to focus on families because of government signals and training done by bodies such as her charity. “If they’re hearing messages from our training and the Cabinet Office … I hope (these ideas) will be taken on board by local authorities, but it will take time,” she says.
Miliband is certainly keen to promoted the proposals. “To lots of people, systems, reform and processes on the ground may sound rather dry, but they can actually make all the difference to people’s lives and that’s what this project is all about,” he says.
“We can’t simply say from the centre: ‘Here is the blueprint. Here’s how it will work.’ What we need to do is learn from people on the ground who are doing this already and who will be doing this under the pathfinders to find out how national policies and what happens on the ground need to change.”
– Think Family: Improving the Life Chances of Families at Risk is available via www.regen.net/doc.