Scrutiny Board 2 - Appendix 1
REPORT TO:
Scrutiny Board 2
Coventry Children and Young People’s Joint Commissioning Board
REPORT FROM:
Assistant Director – Children’s Social Care and Early Intervention, Assistant
Director – Commissioning and Transformation, Public Health Consultant
TITLE:
Developing an Early Help Strategy
PURPOSE:
To share the draft Early Help Strategy and invite comment to support finalisation
of the document.
1.
Executive Summary
1.1
This Early Help Strategy sets out a Coventry approach to identifying the needs of children and
families early and working in partnership to deliver better outcomes, develop sustainable families
and reduce demands on social care and health. This builds on good practice already developed
locally and supports the delivery of the Childrens Services Improvement Plan. It is important that
this Early Help Strategy is endorsed and owned jointly by all local partners engaged in delivering
Childrens services including; Coventry City Council, Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning
Group (CCG) and Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust (CWPT).
2.
Recommendations
Scrutiny Board 2 is recommended to:
A) Note progress in developing an Early Help Strategy.
B) Make comment to the Children and Young People’s Joint Commissioning Board on how the
draft could be improved in advance of finalisation through appropriate governance structures.
Children and Young People’s Joint Commissioning Board is recommended to:
A) Consider comments made by Scrutiny Board 2.
B) Oversee the completion of the draft strategy, its endorsement and subsequent implementation.
3.
List of Appendices
• Appendix 1: Draft Coventry Early Help Strategy.
4.
Background
4.1
The January 2014 Ofsted inspection report of Childrens Services in Coventry identified that the
existing early help and intervention strategy in Coventry had not been fully implemented and that
not all partners were engaged in the early help offer. In order to ensure full engagement and
implementation, the strategy has been revised and updated (Appendix 1).
4.2
This Early Help Strategy sets out a Coventry approach to identifying the needs of children and
families early and working in partnership to deliver better outcomes, develop sustainable
families and reduce demands on social care and health. Our strategy is based on the definition
of early help which is to, “intervene early in a child’s life or early in the onset of a problem.” Our
approach to Early Help is for a:
Whole family focus through a family centred model with integrated services and
processes across 0-18 years (and to 25 year olds for SEND).
4.3
Coventry has 83,800 residents aged 0-19 years old (2012). Effective early help is particularly
important for Coventry with 810 children and young people on Child Protection Plans (December
2014) and Children in Need. Our looked after population of 623 children and young people
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(December 2014) remains high in comparison with statistical neighbours. The ‘toxic triad’ of
domestic violence, mental health issues and drug and alcohol abuse are significant issues for
some Coventry parents and therefore Coventry children. High levels of demand lead to significant
financial costs against a backdrop of significant public sector financial pressures. While the
majority of Coventry families do not need support over and above universal services, there are
some families with deeply entrenched multi-generational challenges.
4.4
However, Coventry has already developed good practice for early help through several multiagency initiatives including: Troubled Families, the Common Assessment Framework and Acting
Early. This strategy outlines our approach for building on this good practice and developing a
model that is family-based and based on strong relationships between families and professionals.
5.
Risk Management
5.1
The Children and Young People’s Joint Commissioning Board Business Group will oversee the
progress of the strategy, which will feed in to the Joint Commissioning Board.
5.2
Key risks associated with delivery and implementation include support and drive from all partner
organisations, commitment to operational resource deployment, and the financial implications
within the context of reducing budgets within the City Council, and increasing demand for services
within the health and social care economy.
6.
Participation and Engagement
6.1
In 2014 there was a range of activity with partners to reach a common understanding and
agreement of what agencies should deliver across the system for early help. This strategy seeks to
encapsulate that.
6.2
The draft has been shared with:
• Coventry City Council, People Directorate.
• Coventry and Rugby CCG.
The indicative formal sign off timetable is as below:
Date
Milestone
17th April 2015
Deadline for further comments back from partners.
12th May 2015
Endorsement by Childrens Joint Commissioning Board.
May 2015
Sign off by partner organisations governing bodies.
June/July 2015
Sign off through Local Authority political process.
6.3
As partners are already broadly in agreement for the work to be done to deliver improved early
help outcomes, partners will progress implementation where it is pragmatic, sensible and
resourced, and not wait for final sign off before starting.
7.
Implications
7.1
This strategy should be used to shape early help work across Coventry. It is imperative that all
partners work in an integrated way to deliver the strategy, and early intervention in a child’s life, or
onset of a problem
7.2
Ultimately, the implication for children and families will be to stop problems escalating, and
therefore, to improve outcomes for young people and avoid significant costs for public services.
This will be measured and monitored through the range of indicators attached to the plan.
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8.
Contribution to Key Objectives
8.1
This strategy will contribute to the delivery of early help outcomes for Coventry children and
families within:
• Early help component of the Children’s Services Improvement Plan.
• Coventry and Rugby CCG Children and Young People, and Maternity Transformation
programme.
9.
Equality Impact Assessment
9.1
An Equality and Consultation Analysis will be completed and accompany the final strategy
document.
Report Authors:
• Yolanda Corden - Assistant Director – Children’s Social Care and Early Intervention
([email protected] )
•
Pete Fahy - Assistant Director – Commissioning and Transformation, Coventry City Council
[email protected]
•
John Forde - Public Health Consultant, Coventry City Council, ([email protected])
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Appendix 1
Coventry Early Help Strategy (Draft)
The significance of Early Help
This Early Help strategy sets out our approach to identifying the needs of children and families
early and working in partnership to deliver better outcomes, develop sustainable families
and reduce demands on social care and health. Our strategy is based on the definition of
early help which is to, “intervene early in a child’s life or early in the onset of a problem.” Our
approach to Early Help is for a:
Whole family focus through a family centred model with integrated services and
processes across 0-18 years (and to 25 year olds for SEND).
Successful Early Help can only be achieved through the ownership and actions from all
agencies and professionals involved with children and families. It is intended that this Early Help
Strategy will be formally signed off by Coventry City Council, Coventry and Rugby Clinical
Commissioning Group and Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust and is endorsed by
schools and other partners. Coventry has developed good practice for early help through
several initiatives including: Troubled Families, the Common Assessment Framework and
Acting Early. This strategy outlines our approach for building on this good practice and
developing a model that is family-based and based on strong relationships between families
and professionals.
Effective early help will contribute to our shared vision for Coventry children and young people
for, “Coventry children and young people to have supportive families, live safe from harm, their
level of achievement, health and wellbeing improves and they have positive and fulfilling lives.”
This vision is underpinned by our objectives that: children do well at school, children and young
people are safe at home and in the community, children and young people are healthy, teenage
pregnancy is low and young people achieve economic well-being.
The case for Early Help is compelling and well-documented. Over the past few years several
reviews1 have taken place - led by Graham Allen MP, Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Dame Claire
Tickell, Professor Eileen Monro and Sir Michael Marmot. These have demonstrated the
importance of acting early both in the age of life and the onset of problems to stop problems
escalating that lead to significant costs for children, families and for public services. The Marmot
report set out clearly the significance of early help in the early years of a child’s life:
1
Reviews include: Early Intervention: The Next Steps. An Independent Report to her Majesty’s Government (2011), Graham Allen MP; The
Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children from Becoming Poor Adults (2010), Frank Field; The Early Years: Foundations for Life, Health
and Learning (2011), Dame Claire Tickell, The Monro Review of Child Protection (2011), Professor Eileen Monro; and The Marmot Review
(2010)
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Giving every child the best start in life is crucial for securing health and reducing health
inequalities across the life course. The foundations for virtually every aspect of human
development – physical, intellectual and emotional – are laid in early childhood. What
happens during these early years, starting in the womb, has life-long effects on many aspects
of health and well-being.'
Our Early Help success measures
The Early Help indicators and success measures across Education, Health and Social Care and
across the 0-18 year old age range are set out in the Appendix. These will be measured to
demonstrate the impact and effectiveness of our Early Help strategy.
Our guiding principles
The way that we work with families, groups and organisations is significant to being successful
and achieving our vision. The following set of principles guide the way that we work. Our
principles are:
•
Put families first and enable parents’ capacity to be built. Parents have the primary
responsibility for and are the main influence on, their children. Services should enable and
challenge families to be more resilient, capable and positive influences on their children and
should take a whole family approach whilst ensuring that the voice of the child is strong.
•
Build trusting relationships with families and with practitioners. This also means taking a
partnership and team approach and that professionals stick with families rather than just
referring on.
•
Enable the development of personal and community networks so that families access
informal support.
•
Encourage early help to be everyone’s business – owned by all organisations in Coventry
working with children, young people and families.
•
Understand the root cause and challenges rather than just presenting issues.
•
Identify needs at the earliest opportunity followed by swift and easy access to the right
support.
•
Deliver and target the right support at right time and flexibly so that when needs have been
identified, that the right type of support and services are available rather than delays which
can lead to problems escalating.
•
Focus on what works and has a proven evidence base.
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•
Professionals work flexibly in line with the needs of families.
•
Use our shared resources and assets more effectively and creatively together. This includes
our buildings, finances and most significantly people – the strengths of families and
professionals.
•
Families are involved in shaping, designing and delivering services themselves.
Our Coventry context
Coventry has 83,800 residents aged 0-19 years old (2012). Effective early help is particularly
important for Coventry with 810 children and young people on Child Protection Plans
(December 2014) and Children in Need. Our looked after population of 623 children and young
people (December 2014) remains high in comparison with statistical neighbours. The ‘toxic
triad’ of domestic violence, mental health issues and drug and alcohol abuse are significant
issues for some Coventry parents and therefore Coventry children. High levels of demand lead
to significant financial costs against a backdrop of significant public sector financial pressures.
The majority of Coventry families do not need support over and above universal services. There
are some families with deeply entrenched multi-generational challenges. The range of services
and support for children and families are identified in our Early Help service guide. We currently
have significant multi-agency initiatives in place to address these issues. These include:
Troubled Families. Phase 1 of the programme has supported 634 Coventry families to turn
their lives around. These families need to meet criteria of anti-social behaviour/crime, education
and workless-ness. Coventry is an early adopter of the phase 2 national programme and we
will focus on a further 3,130 families can benefit from the expanded programme over the next
five years.
Acting Early. The Acting Early model is based on integrated teams working together to deliver
a robust universal ‘core offer’ and through that delivery identify those children and families
requiring additional targeted early support. It is a key component of the Coventry Early Help
offer to the 0-4 year population. Through delivery of the ‘acting early’ programme we aim to
work in partnership with parents: to prevent infant mortality, improve parental health and
maximise early child development, nutrition and readiness for school.
We aim to;
• give disadvantaged and vulnerable children a better start in life;
• reduce the costs of dealing with later health and social problems; and
• provide effective, sustainable and scalable preventive approaches in pregnancy and very
early life.
There are currently 6 Acting Early sites across Coventry: Hillfields (Demonstrator), Tile Hill
(Demonstrator), Foleshill, Longford, Henley and; Binley and Willenhall.
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Multi Systemic Therapy (MST). MST is an evidence based programme aimed at preventing
children and young people from entering care or custody through intensive family support and
therapeutic intervention, led by a team of highly qualified systemic therapists and a clinical
psychologist. The MST service is jointly delivered by health and social care and provides 24/7
support to children and young people aged 11 to 17 who are identified by the intensive case
and support panel.
The Common Assessment Framework (CAF). CAF is a key part of the strategy to shift the
focus from dealing with the consequences of difficulties in children's lives to preventing things
from going wrong in the first place. It is a multi-agency approach to conducting an assessment
of the needs of a child or young person and deciding how those needs should be met.
How we will deliver
The following pieces of work will be taken forward which collectively will deliver against our
success measures. Each of these have a plan in place or will have one developed shortly:
•
Embed and roll out our Acting Early (0-5 year olds) initiative so that universal/universal
plus professionals complete early targeted work with children and families and
professionals, who hold risk and pull down specialist support rather than tending to refer on.
•
Integrate early years’ services including children’s centres, health visitors and Family
Nurse Partnership, building on the evidence and best practice identified in the Early
Intervention Foundation publication ‘Getting it Right for Families’ (2014).
•
Deliver the Early Learning programme so that government participation targets for 2, 3
and 4 year olds are met. This includes developing and optimising the Coventry PVI
childcare sector.
•
Focus on the ‘toxic triad’ of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse. This includes
the development of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court work.
•
Implement Troubled Families phase 2 so that we meet the government targets of
impacting 3,120 families over the next five years.
•
Building on the learning from ‘Acting Early’ develop our integrated school-age early help
offer by developing strong partnership relationships between schools and early help
services, parents and young people
•
Developing our parenting offer so this builds on good practice and becomes more
embedded.
•
Refocus our targeted work including edge of care services with a strong focus on issues
that lead to children becoming looked after.
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•
Deliver the Early Action Neighbourhood Fund with a specific focus on developing
personal and community networks and changing the relationship between families and
services.
•
Deliver effective health promotion, to empower families to have an influence over their
own health through positive lifestyle choices.
•
Develop our collective workforce in strengths-based working, working with parents as well
as children, developing personal and community networks – to provide support and
challenge and to work to the guiding principles.
•
Implement consistent processes for assessment across all organisations.
•
Focus on group work bringing together parents and families to work effectively together.
•
Use our children’s services buildings more effectively by considering different ways of
operating them and maintaining an appropriate balance between home-based services and
building based services.
Our collective resources
Together as partners we invest significantly in Early Help activities across Coventry. Financial
figures are currently being developed and will be included in the final version for sign-off.
Governance
The Children’s Joint Commissioning Group Business Group will oversee the progress of the
strategy feeding into the Children’s Joint Commissioning Board. This document sits alongside
the following documents2:
• Children’s Services Improvement Plan3 that identifies how children’s services will be
improved in Coventry.
• Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning Group Transformation Programme plan
• The Coventry Early Help Service Guide that sets out the services and support that children
and families can access categorised by universal, targeted and specialist services; and
• The Coventry Common Assessment Framework procedures4 set in the context of the
Promoting
Children
and
Young
People’s
Wellbeing
model
2
http://search3.openobjects.com/mediamanager/coventry/fsd/files/coventry_early_help_service_guide_-_november_2014.pdf
3
http://www.doitfordaniel.co.uk/docs/Children-s-services-Improvement-plan.pdf
http://coventryscb.proceduresonline.com/pdfs/caf_guidance.pdf
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Appendix – Early Help Success Measures*
Age/stage
Across
0-18 years
Indicators
Numbers of children looked after
Number of Children in Need
Number of referrals into social care
Numbers of children with child protection plans
Numbers of children with repeat child protection plans
Special school - % pupils with less than 85% attendance
0-4 years
(Early
Years)
Low birth weight of term babies
Child development at 2 – 2.5 years
Take up of Early Learning places for two year olds
Take up of Early Learning/Nursery Education places for three & four year olds
Excess weight in 4 – 5 year olds
School readiness (national measures collected at end of reception year: language and communication,
personal/social/emotional development, physical development)
4-11 years
(Primary)
Primary school % pupils with less than 85% attendance
Excess weight in 10-11 year olds
Educational attainment and progress – KS2 Attainment 2013 (% at Level 4+ Reading , Writing and Maths) (Education
Data Team):
- All Pupils
- Pupil Premium
- SEN
KS2 expected progress
- Reading
- Writing
- Maths
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11-18 years Youth offending out of court work
(Secondary) Secondary school % pupils with less than 85% attendance
KS4 Attainment %5+ A*C
(inc English and Maths) (Education Data Team)
- All Pupils
- Pupil Premium
- SEN
KS4 Expected progress 2013
- English
- Maths
Teenage pregnancy - under 18 conceptions
16 – 18 year olds not in education, employment or training
*Latest Coventry performance against these measures will be included in the final Early Help strategy
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