COM0015

Written evidence submitted by Family Action

1. Family Action’s work is wide-ranging and includes help for parents-to-be, the provision of many Children’s Centres in local communities, intensive family support, emotional health and wellbeing services, counselling, mediation and therapies, support in schools, financial grants programmes and training and consultancy. Our experience from our services, currently numbering over 130, of what works to achieve reductions in harm and inequalities for children has led us to submit evidence to this inquiry.

2. Our Intensive Family Support Services help families, reducing harm and inequalities for children, by working in partnership with all family members and dealing with each family’s problems as a whole rather than responding to each problem, or person, separately. Key features include:

• Appointment of a key worker for each family
• Working with families at critical times of the day to establish routines – first thing in the morning, bed time and tea time routines, etc.
• Increasingly we offer small grants to families who need it for basic necessities e.g. bedding
• Working in close partnership with other agencies that are working with the family or signposting to them
• Giving parents with mental health and other chronic conditions a ‘toolbox’ to self-manage their conditions better

3. The key worker ensures joining up of local services as well as building a trusting relationship, which helps families to understand the issues they face. We use a variety of support methods, including one to one support, facilitated family discussions, direct observations, support to attend appointments, role modelling and group work. All of the interventions include co-production in their development, delivery and review and we ensure that the voice of the child is heard and documented.

4. Our Intensive Family Support service model is task-focused and intervention lasts for an average of 12 weeks, for up to 10 hours a week. We also deliver Troubled Families services and these may provide support for up to 12 months. We offer practical, flexible family support tailored to the family’s needs. Support can take place in the home, Children’s Centre, school or other community setting as appropriate. All our services are led by qualified Family Support Workers with a multi-agency approach. Support may include:

• Development of healthy routines for the whole family
• Development of parenting skills
• Work to improve self-esteem, confidence and communication skills
• Development of relationship skills to assist families to access wider social networks
• Support for families to engage with health, education and social care services
• Access to practical advice about benefits, work and housing, for example 

5. Our Intensive Family Support Services lead to a number of outcomes that contribute towards reducing harm and inequalities for children. These include:

         Children and young people are protected from harm and are safe at home with their families.

Because Intensive Family Support is able to work with families frequently and at times when they most need the support, we are able to quickly build relationships with them, helping to engage families in tackling their issues. We work in partnership with health and social care professionals to implement Child Protection Plans and work on resolving the issues that led to the creation of the Plan. In one of our services:

        64% of children who had a Child Protection Plan when we started working with them were off the Plan by the end of the intervention

        57% of children who were Children in Need (CiN) when we started working with them were no longer CiN at the end of the intervention.

An independent evaluation by The Centre for Excellence in Outcomes has shown our Building Bridges Family Support services reduce the need for:

        Local authority care for children by 30%

        Care Programme Approach by 53%

        Common Assessment Framework Team Around the Child Single Agency by 48%

        Common Assessment Framework Team Around the Child Multi-Agency by 33%

It must also be noted that in some cases our support provides further evidence to social care professionals that carers are unable to meet the needs of children or young people, which therefore ensures the safety of the child or young person and decreases the risk of accumulative harm.

         Children, young people and families are able to make positive choices about their lives, health and wellbeing, and avoid engaging in risky activities.

Because empowerment and co-production are at the core of our model we find that family engagement is good, which leads to the development of positive decision making. We assist parents/carers to look at choices and the consequences of these, enabling them to make more appropriate choices in the future. In this way they are more equipped to make informed choices, resulting in better outcomes for themselves and their children.  This obviously goes a long way to reducing harm and improving inequalities that children may face.

         Children and young people have improved emotional health and well-being.

Wishes and feelings work is completed with children and young people to help them explore their feelings around their life structure and relationships.  Support is also provided to families to ensure there are fully aware of the developmental and emotional needs of their children relevant to their age and understanding. Through the completion of this work families often develop more positive communication which benefits their wider emotional health. This ensures that children do not suffer harm to their mental health.

         Children are ready for, attend and achieve at school.

This reduces future inequalities for children by equipping them with the skills needed to reduce the generational cycle of disadvantage. Where necessary parents are encouraged and supported to engage with schools and nurseries in regards to concerns or as part of their Child Protection or CiN Plans.  In addition, family members are helped to understand the importance of education and their contribution to their children’s achievements through positive reinforcement.  Work is completed with children and young people individually, which addresses their self-esteem and ability to achieve.

         Parents demonstrate improved parenting skills and are supported to access services to address issues that impact on parenting e.g. substance misuse.

Parents are supported to build up their own support networks, or access appropriate universal or targeted services. We support parents to sustain relationships with supportive extended families, as well as other professionals such as health visitors, who will carry on supporting the family once our intervention has ended.  As our intervention is time limited, this aids longer term positive outcomes, reducing the potential harm to children even once our support has finished.

6. Given that the outcomes above show that Family Support services clearly contribute to reduced harm and inequalities for children, we ask the the Children’s Commissioner uses her role to influence Local Authority spend in this area. Family Support services need to be protected from the deep financial cuts that are disproportionately affecting children’s services.

October 2015