Agenda item

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Portfolio Holder for Children Young People and Education introduced the report on the Early Help Partnership Strategy. Catherine Underwood, Corporate Director of People Services, Ailsa Barr, Director for Integrated Children’s Services and Veronica Fairly, Supporting families Co-ordinator gave a presentation outlining the strategy and the work currently under way. They highlighted the following points:

a)  Early help support is mainly delivered through the four Family Hubs which act as a single point of access for whole family support and services from conception up to 19 and up to age 25 for children with special education needs or disabilities. The hubs provide a range of services which aim to provide holistic support, clear referral pathways and links to partner organisations. There are four hubs in total, located in Bestwood, Broxtowe, Meadows and Hyson Green.

b)  The Early Help Partnership Strategy was launched in October 2023 as a way of improving partnership working and ensuring a multi partner response to need across the city. The strategy has a number of aims and priorities around building resilience for families, embedding a whole system approach and joined up partnership working.

c)  The five main priorities of the Strategy each had a subgroup working to push forward and establish their work. Priority 1 is to embed a whole system approach with work being undertaken to agree practice guidance, ensure access to all materials in a variety of formats and in the 5 most prevalent languages used in the city. Additional work is ongoing to ensure partnership access to electronic records and information, and to standardise language and documentation.

d)  The second priority is around partnership working, with work taking place to develop an updated communication and marketing strategy. The website has been launched and has had an encouraging number of visitors, and work to refine the collective Core Offer continues with partners. Work is focusing on how to communicate with the harder to reach families, with advertising being placed in a range of public places, such as GP surgeries, and community centres. All Councillors have received details of the family hubs offer and how citizens can access the services.

e)  The third priority is around workforce development across the partnership and developing a cross partnership training plan. A Strategic Steering group has been established and a number of subgroups have been set up to ensure that services across the partnership are aligned. Work is underway to share various training resources across the partnership to allow collaborative and joined up working where all practitioners feel supported and informed. 

f)  The fourth priority is around measuring the impact of the Early Help Partnership and creating an audit tool. Work is ongoing with partners to develop and agree key performance indicators,  and develop a consistent approach to gathering feedback from service users.

g)  The fifth priority is around funding and identifying sustainability options for the Partnership and how funding can be pooled. Work is happening to develop a sustainability strategy for 2025. The Council and partners are applying for a variety of funding streams to collaborate and maximise value.

h)  Although the partnership is established a vast array of work is underway to maximise the benefits of this collaborative partnership way of working. Recruitment is underway for grant funded vacancies to support the work of the Family hubs. There is further work needed to align the inhouse Early Help services with the wider Early help system and KPIs need to be agreed and monitoring implemented.

During discussion the following questions were asked and responses given:

i)  Committee members asked whether this Partnership was an expansion of the Priority Families work, and whether it was modelled on work found elsewhere in the Country. The development of the Partnership was a response to demand for services as the City came out of lockdown and is an expansion of the work done around the Priority Families programme. The way Early Help services are delivered across the Country differs from authority to authority, with no two Councils approaching it in exactly the same way. This particular model, with practitioners from partners embedded across different organisations has been developed by the City in response to the needs of the citizens. It has been possible to adopt elements of best practice from a number of different authorities operating similar models, but the Nottingham model is further progressed than many authorities at present.

j)  Committee members highlighted that although the services offered are for 0-19 and in some cases 25, the family hub spaces are very much geared towards young children and lacked space that would appeal to teenagers. They highlighted that there was dedicated space within the Councils property portfolio that was already geared towards older children and teenagers. This is a recognised issue and the process to update and diversify the appeal of the spaces within the Family Hubs is underway. Consultation has taken place with teenagers and young people to establish what they would like to see in the dedicated space that would make them feel comfortable.

k)  Committee members queries some of the statistics within the report, highlighting that they included numbers of young people identified to be at risk of criminal exploitation, but did not include numbers of those at risk of sexual or financial exploitation.

l)  Committee members questioned how the Authority defines at risk as only a small number of the identified young people were referred to the national referral mechanism. The National referral mechanism has very strict criteria for referral but an internal review is underway around how the Council uses it to consider whether more referrals should be made and the outcome of those referrals that are being made with the aim being that every child who should be referred, is.

m)   Committee members raised concerns that the report highlights that the cost of living crisis is having a more acute effect on private renters, and that the recent budget agreed to cut advice services for the private renting sector. Work is already underway to explore options to deliver the advice services in a different way and to continue to effectively distribute the energy vouchers. The Council is working with the voluntary sector to ensure support is available, but it will look different to how services have previously been delivered.

n)  Committee members asked whether the Council had applied for Pathfinder status and if not, what was being done to learn from the first phase. Unfortunately, due to the Ofsted rating of Children’s service the Council was not able to apply for Pathfinder status. Officers are meeting with counterparts from Lincolnshire Council, that has Pathfinder status, and although the two authorities are very different it is still possible to take learning from the work done. Officers will also be looking further afield to other Councils such as Telford and Sunderland for more similar authorities with Pathfinder status as well as Wolverhampton.

o)  Committee members asked for more detail on the work being done to develop the KPI’s for measuring the effectiveness of the Early Help Partnership, and whether they would be shared with the committee. Work is underway with partners to establish a standard set of KPIs. Discussions have taken place with other authorities but as no authority runs the same model direct comparison is difficult, but there have been some good ideas and thoughts around good practice. The Subgroup is working on the initial draft of the KPI’s being careful to ensure that the right targets are being set and the right metrics are being measured. These KPIs will then be signed off by the Steering group and can be shared with this committee. These KPIs will be under review to ensure that the right data is being gathered and that they give an accurate indication of the impact of the Partnership.

p)  Committee members highlighted that support for children and young people with mental health issues were often very hard to access. They asked how the Early Help Partnership work would help to support families around access to mental health support.  CAMHS is a mental health service commissioned by the Council through the ICB. There is work underway within the Council to better link these services with school services. The way funding is currently structured it is more beneficial for CAMHS to remain outside the partnership but for the system to have well developed pathways for referral and joint working with CAMHS. In some cases, there are long waiting times for referral to these specialist services and within the Partnership work is being undertaken to establish additional support for families waiting for referral. There is some very good practice in schools that is being used to help shape the services available to support children and parents.

The Chair thanked the Portfolio Holder for Children Young People and Education, the Corporate Director of People Services, the Director for Integrated Children’s Services and the Supporting Families Co-ordinator for attending the meeting and for answering the questions Committee members posed.

Resolved:

1)  The Strategy (page 18) outlines that 232 children out of 5383 of those assessed were at risk of child criminal exploitation (CCE). The Committee recommends that this also includes sexual and financial exploitation.

2)  That the KPI’s proposed to monitor the Strategy are shared with the Committee.

3)  Recommends that there is a review of the statistics outlined on page 10 of the Strategy.

4)  Recommends that the Council explores how it can make its buildings and services more teenage friendly.

5)  Recommends that the Council uses existing service provisions to support families with the cost of living crisis and child poverty.