Agenda item

To receive an update on the Family Help Strategy 2024-2029, which was approved at Cabinet in March 2024. The Strategy is currently in the design phase as part of Phase One, this item will provide an update on the progress of the strategy, prior to it returning to Cabinet in March 2025.

This item provided an update on the Family Help Strategy 2024-2029, which was approved at Cabinet in March 2024. The Strategy was in the design phase and a further update on the Strategy was due to be presented to Cabinet March 2025.

The Chair welcomed to the meeting Councillor Cusworth, Cabinet Member of Children and Young People Services (CYPS), Kelly White, Assistant Director for Early Help and Anne Hawke, Head of Service for Performance and Quality.

The Chair invited the Cabinet Member of Children and Young People Services to introduce the report, during which the following was noted:

·       The Strategy aligned with the Government vision, which was to transform Childrens Social Care. The Strategy focused on Family Help, to ensure timely and effective support for families.

·       There was an emphasis on a collaborative whole system approach, which involved various services to support families. The Strategy aimed to provide support at the earlies opportunity, to avoid escalation of concerns and reliance on statutory services.

·       The Strategy would give special consideration to the challenges faced by teenagers and their families.

·       The Strategy was implemented through co-location arrangements in the Family Hubs, which offered a range of services and support. An example was provided of the recent launch of the baby packs at Brookfield Family Hub. The focus of the Family Hubs was building resilience in families and supporting them through problems independently, through supportive working ways and the co-location of services and advice.

The Chair invited the Assistant Director for Early Help to provide the presentation, during which the following was noted:

·       There had been a lot of work completed across the Partnership, such as engagement with service users, children, families, partners and beyond.

The Key vision and Key Principles-

·       Early Help was a shared responsibility and was everyone’s business. Early Help was not a Council run offer; it was a partnership approach.

·       Children, young people and families would receive the right support, at the right time, in the right place, from the right person. It was important to recognise the right person to support a family and this was often not a council officer.

·       Early Help had purposeful conversations and provided support to improve outcomes.

·       Early Help worked restoratively with children, young people and families.

·       Prevention and early help support was better than late intervention. 

·       Public, voluntary and community sector organisations had combined to create the early help system and worked together to meet the needs of children and their families.  

·       Family Help provided the right support at the right time so that children could thrive with their families.

Shared Responsibility-

·       The service had an Early Help assessment which was used by the Council and all partners across the partnership, such as schools. This was a standalone assessment, if a family was required to escalate to social care intervention, this was another separate assessment. This was recognised as difficult for families as they were required to tell their story twice, as a result of this a new revised assessment had been developed called a Family Assessment of Need.

·       The new revised assessment document could be undertaken bypartners, Early Help employee’s and Social Workers, if there was a statutory intervention required.The benefits of the new assessment document were that partners could use it to demonstrate their intervention, it could be added to as children moved through the services, which would avoid duplication and it would be familiar document for families.

·       There were eight Early Help Teams across the borough, who were aligned with the Council’s Social Care Teams.

·       There was a new Early Help specification which outlined the family support offer to children and families. The benefits of the new specification were that it provided clear service standards, would ensure a consistent and transparent approach to support for families, would ensure families receive the right help when they need it and that all offers of help would be provided before stepping up to social care.

·       A toolkit had been developed for Integrated Working Leads (IWL’s) to support partners, particularly schools, this would continue to help families where this was the best option for the family. The benefits of the toolkit were that it reduced reliance on RMBC Early Help allowing the team to work with more intensely with targeted families and improved school confidence and resilience.

The Right Support at the Right Time-

·       Social Care Advanced Practitioners would provide consultation, help and advice to Early Help Teams where they were looking to escalate families to social care. In situations where threshold was clearly met,there would be no delay for children. However, where further support could be offered to a family, the advanced practitioner would assist in attending joint visits or would provide oversight and advice. The benefits of this arrangement were that it was locality based, so decisions were made by those who best understood the family and culture, it ensured all options of help would be explored prior to stepping up to social care and would reduce reliance of social care. The arrangement offered additional oversight and would prevent unnecessary step-up and straight back down, ensuring a greater consistency for the family.

·       The co-working framework was reviewed to ensure it provided clear criteria. There were some situations where a family would have a Social Worker and a Family Support Worker which could be overwhelming for families. This has been reviewed to identify in what circumstances this would be appropriate. The benefit to this was that it would reduce the number of professionals a family would be expected to engage with, which would free up some early help capacity, to offer more intensive support to targeted families and reduce escalation to more costly statutory services.

Teenagers-

·       The service was building on the pathways that were already available. Such as, developing a new step-down process for children exiting the Youth Justice Service and/or the Evolve Team, to ensure on-going would be planned and understood.

·       Engagement and focused work was on-going with young people in Year 12 and Year 13, whose Employment, Education and Training destination was ‘Not Known’.

·       Direct work was on-going with young people who were not in employment, education or training, to support them with engagement into employment, education or training.

·       There was an offer of a ‘Keep on Track’ group programme in secondary schools across the Borough, for an identified cohort of year 11 pupils who had been identified as being at risk of becoming not in employment, education or training.

·       The service delivered regular street-based, detached work with young people, this could be in response to areas of identified need within communities, as part of a wider partnership approach.

·       The Service led the delivery of Operation Keepsafe, which was a multi-agency assertive outreach programme in response to intelligence and/or to meet an identified need, such as anti-social behaviour (ASB) or child exploitation (CE) and other concerns related to young people’s wellbeing and safety.

·       There were targeted youth groups within localities, which were based on areas of locally identified need.

·       There was universal youth work across the partnership, these services were provided by the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS).

·       There was a greater promotion of online support through the Evidence Based Hub, such as Triple P Teen, which was available in person and online and the Solihull Approach School Years Teen Life.

·       The benefits to all this work were that there was early intervention prior to young people becoming not in employment, education or training, a greater level of wrap around support to prevent re offending and Anti-Social Behaviour, a warm step down for children exiting Evolve and a reduction toescalations into Social Care services. 

Summary-

·       Social Care assessments remained with social workers, however Section 17 support was provided by both Early Help and Social Care, depending on the required level of need, with checks and balances in place.

·       Need led work was undertaken across the partnership and support was provided to partners via Integrated Working Leads, to ensure that partners were doing all they could to support.

·       Early Help would exhaust all options of support, prior to escalation to social care, except for concerns of significant harm, where there would be no delay in safeguarding children.

·       The service was building in additional safeguards to support Early Help to continue the work in line with the Working Together 2023 Framework.

·       There was a new assessment tool for all assessments to prevent a ‘stop start’ with families.  

·       There was a new teenage pathway which would recognise their vulnerabilities.

·       There was the promotion of the Family Hubs and an online offer of support.

The Chair thanked the relevant officer for the presentation and invited questions, this led to the following points being raised during the discussion:

·       The Early Help service was based on consent, therefore people needed to want to work with the service. However, the introduction of the advanced practitioners enabled the service to help people who were unclear about engaging with an Early Help offer, for some families, without help they would require further support from Social Care. For example, there would be some circumstances where people did not consent to Early Help support, however there was other safeguards in place, and it was deemed safe for Early Help to step away. In other circumstances where there were no other safeguards in place to support children and families, this would be escalated to Social Care. In the most concerning circumstances where there were concerns around potential or significant harm, a strategy meeting would be convened to consider harm.

·       The service aimed to work restoratively with families, restorative practice and Signs of Safety had been the operating model in Rotherham for a long time and the service were skilled in this area. It was apparent how many families the service had conversations with, which had led to the families wanting to engage as they could see the benefits of engaging with the service. The service often completed work by proxy, by supporting other professionals who had established relationship with the family, such as a drug and alcohol councillor, to agree the engagement with Early Help moving forward.

·       The Lead Professional would be identified and agreed via discussions with the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Team (MASH). The Lead Professional would co-ordinate the plan for the family, this could be the school who would undertake the Early Help assessment and become the co-ordinator and reviewer of that plan, or often this would be a family support worker. There would be regular Team Around the Family Meetings (TAF’s), which would bring the family together and all the partners offering support to the family. If there were any safeguarding concerns, the Lead Professional would be a qualified Social Worker.

·       A written response would be provided which would contain further information on the training offer that was available to the voluntary and community sector, and the accessibility of the training offer for the voluntary and community sector, if they were not members of the Children’s and Young Peoples Consortium and were not paying a fee to Voluntary Action Rotherham.

·       The service was focused on improving the Family Hubs online offer and were aiming to build on their audio and visual online offer.

·       The Strategy was a public document and was as accessible as possible so that young people could read and understand the Strategy. A new glossary sheet would be developed to sit alongside the Strategy, and this would be shared with the Commission.

·       Schools were the most significant contributor to the Early Help Assessment, alongside Council staff. The service had good relationships with schools across the borough, Early Help Managers linked in with all schools and held regular meetings with schools.

·       The Assistant Director for Commissioning and Performance within Children’s Services had a jointly funded role with the Council and the Integrated Health Board, this ensured a strong link between the two services. The Assistant Director for Commissioning and Performance within Children’s Services was completing a piece of work with colleagues, on how to reduce the waiting lists within the CAMHS service.

·       The new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements and associated documents were circulated to members of the Commission for questions and comments, in January 2025.

·       Section 11 arrangements were still in place for partners and Rotherham was second highest nationally in relation to partners completing Early Help Assessments, this provided a strong foundation to build on.

Resolved:- That the Improving Lives Select Commission:

1)    Consider and acknowledge the update provided.

2)    Request that the Assistant Director for Early Helpprovides a written response with further information relating to the training offer and accessibility of the training offer for the voluntary and community sector.

3)    Request that the Family Help Strategy document be circulated to members.

4)    Request that a new glossary sheet relating to Family Help is developed and shared with the Commission.