Agenda item

This item is a presentation and provides an overview of Brent MASH “Front Door”. The presentation highlights the aims of the service, core elements and partnership working. The presentation also highlights the performance of the service and benefits to service users.

Grace Fagan, Principal Officer for Brent Family Front Door (BFFD), began by introducing Nicky Case from Family Solutions and Jacinth Jeffers from Health Economy as well colleagues from the Metropolitan Police and advised the Committee that they may also ask questions of these officers as well as herself in regards to MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub).

Members were informed that MASH went live in July 2013 and it provided an aligned service so that families could access the support services they needed promptly and efficiently. MASH allowed the different agencies involved to be better at matching services with the needs of the community. Grace Fagan detailed the five core elements of MASH, explaining that these elements were not specific to Brent and had been agreed by all London Stakeholders. All partners involved with MASH were located on the same floor in the Civic Centre, although not all of them were there 5 days a week, they could be reached immediately which helped with information sharing between the different partners. This was detailed as one of the benefits of MASH as joined up working meant they could intervene earlier and ensure that people were quickly signposted to a wide range of services within the community.

Members were advised that Brent had been part of research carried out by Greenwich along with five other boroughs. Greenwich had compared pre and post MASH data from all of the boroughs. In Brent, within a couple of months of MASH being introduced the number referrals had fallen by six. It was explained that once MASH had collated all the relevant intelligence from the different agencies regarding an individual or a family, they were only allowed to hold that information for six months. Grace Fagan concluded stating that MASH had been set up as a new service with One Council funding for one year and therefore the service would be reviewed in June 2014.

Members enquired why MASH was only able to keep the information for six months. They also enquired how many gangs MASH had identified as being operational in Brent and what action MASH could take against the gangs that had been identified. Members welcomed agencies within in Brent working together and asked if they also worked with other boroughs. They concluded their questions by asking how the financial benefits of the service would be calculated.

Grace Fagan responded by informing members that although they were only able to hold on to the collated information in regards to a referral for 6 months, the individual agencies still had the intelligence they held themselves. Therefore the intelligence gathered on a family or individual was not lost after 6 months. Also Brent did work with other MASHs in other boroughs when needed. In regards to the number of gangs operational in Brent, it was stated that MASH had identified 33 gangs. It was explained that this may be a higher number than the committee were aware of as MASH processed all gang activity even small gangs that only contained a few people. Grace Fagan added that MASH was limited by what they could do by law in regards to gangs.  However they were able to identify people who were at risk and work with other agencies to safeguard them.

In conclusion Nicky Case from Family solutions stated that they had a cross benefit calculator that they used to help determine how much intervention cost per person or family and then how much each family was costing them post intervention. Grace Fagan stated that they were hoping that the long term benefits of the service outweighed the financial costs.

Members noted the presentation and thanked Grace Fagan and the other attendees for their time.