Agenda item

To report on the performance to date of the Early Help and Prevention Service.                                                                                       

Gareth Morgan, Head of Early Help and Prevention, reported that the Early Help Service was part of the Early Help Partnership, which was responsible for delivering the outcomes from the Early Help Strategy.  The service was responsible for delivering Tier 2, non statutory family support for vulnerable children, young people and families in Haringey since October 2015. The service aimed to reduce demand into statutory and high cost services and develop wider community resilience.  There were a number of opportunities that arose from partnership working, which included creating additional capacity, building local networks and aligning increasingly scarce resources amongst statutory and voluntary partners.  There were also threats, especially arising from the funding model that was currently in place. 

In the first six months of the operation of the service, it had supported 716 families.  Of these, 175 had achieved sustained outcomes.  There were currently 409 family cases that were open.  237 children and young people had been stepped down from statutory services and only 6 had been re-escalated into statutory service provision.  This compared well with figures for re-referral into statutory provision for cases that had been closed but which had not received early help support.

The aim was to enable families to stand on their own two feet and engage with local networks to remain self sufficient.  A locality model had been introduced and the teams were positioned in locations and covering areas based on a needs analysis that would allow them to have a roughly equal workload.

He responded to the Panel’s questions as follows:

·         The relationship with schools and childrens centres was developing quickly and positively.  The service now supported children attending 92% of the borough’s schools.  There was also a dedicated worker who provided support to children and young people in alternative provision, such as the Tuition Centre, the Octagon and the London Boxing Academy.  Each Children’s Centre also had a named family support worker who visited at least twice per week for half a day. 

·         The Troubled Families initiative defined “vulnerable” as families having multiple needs.  It was accepted that this was not a helpful or definitive term.  There was no specific legal definition that the service was bound by but the service aimed to take a broad view of what it constituted. 

·         The funding for the service came from three sources;

Ø  The Council provided core funding, which constituted approximately 30%.  This was the only source that the Council had direct control over;

Ø  £1.35 million from the schools block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG); and

Ø  The national Troubled Family programme. This was partly based on outcomes.

·         The Youth and Participation Service was now a part of the Early Help service.  A universal service was currently provided at Bruce Grove and Muswell Hill youth centres as well as some targeted interventions.  A summer programme of activities at both centres was also being provided. In addition, youth engagement co-ordinators and youth practitioners were now part of locality teams.  Funding for youth services had nevertheless been reduced significantly.  Links with other providers of youth services were also being improved.

·         Panel Members emphasised the importance of work with young people as a diversionary activity.  Mr Morgan stated that, in addition to the services provided by the youth offer, there was also provision from community providers such as Mac-UK and Project 20/20.  Efforts were also being made to extend the range of provision at Bruce Grove. 

·         Before families were stepped down, a reducing level of support was provided by Early Help to prepare the family to stand on their own two feet.  This included ensuring they were linked into local universal provision.  It was important to enable improvements to be sustained.  Contact was maintained with families so that they were able to address any issues that arose in order to help them keep on track and remain independent.

·         The service worked holistically with the whole family and children were therefore always part of developing the family support plan.  In addition, the service had also commissioned an inter-active tool called the “Outcome Star” that identified areas of concern in respect of children and young people, and enabled progress made by families to be evidenced.

·         There were a number of factors that contributed towards the development of partnership working.  This included the Early Help Partnership Board, which helped create buy-in by senior officers and assisted with the development of a strategic vision.  The consistent offer provided by Early Help across the borough had allowed other services to identify opportunities to work alongside the service and align their boundaries with the Early Help.  Support for young parents was also included within the partnership through the Family Nurse Partnership programme.  There were areas that were being developed further including work to address Anti-Social Behaviour and improving links with the Police.  Good progress was being made in developing links with schools and Children’s Centres though.  There was evidence that that new approach was working and, in particular, that the locality model was helping to develop stronger local networks and build capacity that could ultimately reduce demand for statutory services.

·         Family support workers provide a range of support including practical hands on assistance in the family home.  For example, they could help families to attend GP appointments and assist parents with the setting of boundaries for children and young people.   They could also help with signposting to services and provide advocacy and support to socially isolated families.  A library of case studies was being developed which it was hoped to share.  This would supplement the hard data that was produced.

·         Gambling addiction was taken into account when assessing need as part of consideration of financial exclusion and was a vulnerability that the service was aware of.  

AGREED:

That the progress made to date by the Early Help Service be noted.