Agenda item

To provide an update on the progress of Family Wellbeing Centres (FWCs) and Family Hub and Start for Life programmes.

This item provided an update on the progress of the Family Wellbeing Centres (FWCs), Family Hubs and Start for Life programmes. This update also included the Family Wellbeing Centre Annual Report for 2023-24.

The Chair opened the item by welcoming three parents who used the FWCs to the meeting and invited them to tell the Board about their views and experiences on how services were working for families.

Wahid told the Board that he and his 9-month old daughter had used the FWCs and found them very helpful, particularly for information and signposting to health services and legal advice. All the help the FWCs had provided had been really appreciated and he felt that the centres were something positive in the borough. In terms of accessing the services as a father, he highlighted that he was not treated any differently as a man and he was welcomed by all the staff within the FWC.

Isra informed the Board that she was a migrant refugee who worked in co-production, researching migrant health, and she particularly appreciated the initiative the Board had taken to include service users in this discussion. Her experience of FWCs had been very helpful for her because she did not have her family in the country for support and could turn to FWCs for advice from someone she trusted. She expressed appreciation for the staff within the FWCs, and when she attended sessions feeling stressed about the challenges of parenting, the staff there helped her to think in a way that best supported her and her family. Isra highlighted that she had not known about FWCs until her daughter was one year old when her health visitor had mentioned it to her, and whilst she had been attending other playgroup sessions with her daughter, she felt that FWCs were distinguished from other organisations in the way the staff supported families, with the triage service being very well managed, taking a holistic approach.

Khadra introduced her two and a half year old daughter to the Board who had attended the meeting with her. She began her remarks by informing the Board she had not known about FWCs when her daughter had been born. In the first year of her life, her daughter had been diagnosed with multiple medical conditions and at one and a half years old had been diagnosed with a learning disability. At this time Khadra had felt isolated and overwhelmed and asked for support from her paediatrician. Her paediatrician had referred Khadra and her daughter to a FWC, which she informed the Board had changed their lives. She expressed gratitude to her key worker who would see them face to face when needed, called her every fortnight, got them in touch with SEND playgroups, referred her to a course for managing behaviours in autistic children, and arranged for a play therapy specialist to visit her home and help them adapt play to their needs. She concluded that this had helped her adjust and kept her family socially engaged, and she was very appreciative for all the different support available.

The Chair thanked parents for their remarks and invited officers to make any further comments before opening up to those present.

Palvinder Kudhail (Director of Early Help and Social Care, Brent Council) informed the Board that many parents had a range of experiences from the extensive level of support available at FWCs, which was demonstrated in the feedback in the annual report. She drew the Board’s attention to section 7 of the annual report which detailed the outcomes that were being achieved from each of the different activities that occurred at FWCs. Serita Kwofie (Head of Early Help, Brent Council) drew attention to Appendix B of the report, which detailed the Best Start for Life Programme and the extensive joined up collaborative working taking place in FWCs both through the core delivery, Start for Life delivery, and the localised approach taken to meet local need and be responsive to changing needs.

The Chair then opened up the discussion to those present. In considering the report, the following points were raised:

·         Members were pleased by Brent’s innovative approach of combining different services into one location to target support to those in need, in response to the closure of children’s centres which had happened across the nation following funding cuts. They thanked parents for detailing their experience of using the services and the benefits they had found from having different organisations in one place.

·         Members asked the parents present whether they had any feedback on what they would like to see at FWCs going forward or if they thought anything could be improved upon. The parents fed back that longer sessions would be appreciated and suggested one-hour sessions could increase to 90 minutes, particularly for those who were travelling further to attend sessions. They also highlighted the need to reach parents earlier. Isra highlighted that she had not known about the FWCs until her daughter’s one year review, and then she had not accessed the service straight away due to hesitancy and difficulties finding information and availability online. Khadra’s child had been almost 2 years old when she had learned about FWCs, and whilst she could recall her health visitor mentioning them at her first appointment she was already taking in a lot of different information, making it difficult to retain information about FWCs. She suggested further follow ups and written information for parents to read at home would be useful in spreading the message.

·         Noting the feedback regarding difficulties using the website and booking sessions online, members asked whether the online information was useful, up to date, and parents were able to interact with it. Parents fed back that the timetables were often not up to date, but they were able to call their key workers for more information. However, one parent had now been discharged from their key worker so did experience issues where there were no sessions showing on the website, meaning their child missed a session, and as SEND sessions were once every month it could be a long period of time before they could access another session. Officers agreed to look into these issues and how the offer was sustained going forward in terms of sessions moving around the borough.

·         Members asked how parents could provide feed back on issues they were experiencing in accessing FWCs and other issues they were facing and how those feedback mechanisms were built into the operation of FWCs. Serita Kwofie explained that the Brent Parent Carer Forum supported families to provide first hand feedback on any issues or areas for improvement. From feedback regarding the timeliness of the FWC offer, this had now been recognised and officers were ensuring that was a repeated offer. Working with new birth data, officers were ensuring they targeted families who had recently had a new birth and doing so in a systematic way so that there were workers attached to different locations. The Board emphasised the need to have a systematic approach to messaging, understanding when parents were most likely to hear and retain the information and repeat messages in different ways at follow up contacts. Nigel Chapman reassured the Board that the number of families registering year on year had been increasing significantly, meaning the message was getting out there, but he acknowledged that there was always more that could be done to increase awareness.

·         Patrick Laffey responded from a CLCH point of view, who provided the local health visiting services. He would take away the issue of timeliness of messaging for the team to look at what the offer was and the potential for a standard pack of information. The team would also look to use the various mandated opportunities when the service saw new parents and their babies to provide those messages.

·         The Board asked whether there was a physical limitation that may be reached in terms of capacity with the growing number of families accessing FWCs and the increase in services available at FWCs. Serita Kwofie confirmed that was a challenge that the team looked to address. FWCs did not have every service delivered at the same time, with a rota system to manage capacity, but as the teams attempted to increase the services available in the centres and the number of families accessing FWCs that was something that needed to be considered in terms of how to continue to support families within those spaces and whether there was a need to look elsewhere.

·         Parents highlighted a barrier for families in terms of digital literacy and also language barriers. They were advised that FWCs did have a range of staff who spoke community languages and also had access to interpreting services, with some programmes ran with facilitators in a language that was not English.

As no further issues were raised, the Chair drew the discussion to a close, welcoming the progress on FWCs and Start for Life and congratulating the team on the work delivered. Members thanked parents for their honest feedback and asked officers to take back their comments regarding early signposting to FWCs, issues with the website and digital exclusion. It was also suggested that an abridged version of the report be made available to the public to celebrate the work. The parents present thanked the Board for listening to their feedback and expressed some positive feedback for particular staff members within the FWCs. One particular FWC staff member, Mamta, was thanked for helping with potty training and providing advice without judgement, and all parents felt the staff were very well trained and passionate.