Agenda item
Working with families initiative
The presentation will cover:
· The background to the Brent Working with Families project and its links to the government’s Troubled Families Initiative
· Progress on developing a new approach to working with families
· The outcomes expected from the new approach
· Taking the project forward
This item will be presented by Phil Newby.
Minutes:
Robert Hardy, Project Manager, gave a presentation which highlighted the vision of the working with family’s initiative as well as an update on the project so far. He felt that resilience was key in families and a family would not deliberately be in their position but would be there as the result of an incident to one or more family members tipping the family into a precarious position. The initiative would look at the underlying cause to a families problems rather than treating just the symptoms and recognise that although early intervention was key, some issues were entrenched across generations.
The project was a Brent project consisting of numerous partners and work had been carried out into exploring current excellent practice and building upon that as a base as well as the earlier troubled family’s initiative. It was explained that Government had identified 810families in Brent under the previous troubled families initiative which would be used as the target figure for the working with families initiative, with 300 families worked with in year one, 405 year two and 105 in year three. The families had been identified using a set of four criteria including a set of Brent specific criterion and the families for the first year had been identified and work was being undertaken into identifying the families for year two.
It was clarified that there was potential for the council to inherit the funding from another local authority if a troubled family moved into the borough or for the family to continue to use the services they need. It was hoped that the scheme would help more than the government target of 810 however 810 families were to be targeted to receive the upfront funding and funding if outcomes were achieved from central government, a total of £2m. A three pronged approach was being undertaken; creation of a multiagency hub, a family support service and the development of a wider services aligned strategy. It was felt that a swifter, joined up approach of initial contacts was required as 11000 contacts are made, 5000 of which referred by the police but only 2000overal resulted in an initial assessment.
Members queried what the budget for the project was and whether funding from other departments would be used to fund the project. It was explained that £2m over three years would be paid by central government and services would be reassembled. It was noted that 26 posts had been identified for the project and a savings target of £1.3m had been identified.
Members expressed concern over families seeing the scheme as an incentive and purposefully presenting themselves as a troubled family. It was explained that the scheme was challenging and families would not necessarily want to face the challenges of the scheme which the hoped would prevent the scheme from acting as an incentive.
Members queried the level of partnership working as previous schemes had failed and expressed particular concerns as the Police did not have a relationship with persons. It was clarified that all partners were fully engaged and due to the pressures all agencies were facing, they were committed to seeing the project succeed. Regular discussions took place with partners who were involved on the partnership board and various other mechanisms to ensure the success of the project.
During discussion the reporting mechanisms of the project were queried. It was clarified that 6 monthly reports go to CLG however greater mechanisms are measuring the outcomes of the project were being developed.
Councillor Pavey queried the exploration of a family nurse partnership scheme as this had been proved to be the most successful method of early intervention. It was reported that a scheme had previously been looked at but rejected by the PCT due to costs, it was agreed that further information would be provided to members.
RESOLVED:-
that the presentation be noted