Reducing Family Poverty Helping Families

1. Reducing Family PovertyHelping Families 18th December 2012 Nick Page & Mat Ainsworth

2. Aims of this session • To provide an update on Child Poverty levels in Salford • To explain proposed national changes to measuring Child Poverty • To describe how the Helping Families model of integrated public service delivery can help achieve the city’s aim to reduce family poverty • To explain how Salford is informing Community Budgets work

3. Child Poverty The 2010 Salford average for children living in poverty is 28.6%, there has been a slight drop when comparing the 2009 average of 29.2%. The 2010 average for England currently stands at 20.6%, again showing a slight drop from the 2009 average of 21.3% In 2008 this was equivalent to income levels before housing costs of: • £225 per week for a single adult with two dependent children under 14. • £294 per week for a couple with two dependent children under 14. This means that families living in poverty may have less than £11 per day per person to buy everything they need. Children and families are officially considered to be living in poverty if the household is either out of work and in receipt of benefits, or in receipt of tax credits where the reported income is less than 60% median income. Data Source: HMRC September 2012

4. Proposed new Child Poverty measures • Income & material deprivation • Worklessness • Unmanageable debt • Poor housing • Parental skill level • Access to quality education • Family stability • Parental health Gov’t recognises these dimensions are: • interrelated, • not exhaustive, • and there are others that would be good to include but are difficult to measure e.g. parenting style & skill Salford’s strategy to tackle family poverty is based on the multi-dimensional nature of poverty and has some synergy with the new proposed measures. Our strategy and delivery is based upon the need for joined up working around the whole family, with shared outcomes across agencies. It is broader than income, but increasing family prosperity is a critical outcome for Salford.

5. What is Helping Families? • Salford’s Helping Families programme is a targeted and joined up approach to supporting families with multiple problems.  • Through Helping Families, the City Council and its partners are working together to help families improve economic prosperity; raise aspirations and achievement; make a positive contribution to a safe and stable living environment; and improve long-term life chances for the whole family.  • Helping Families will deliver Salford's commitment to the Department for Communities and Local GovernmentTroubled Families programme; to engage and support 835 'troubled families' over the next three years. 

6. Who are we helping? Helping Families will engage and support Salford families that have problems, including parents not working and children not in school, and causes problems, such as youth crime and anti-social behaviour. In identifying who we work with, families must meet two or more of the following criteria: • Young person(s) involved in crime or member(s) of the family involved in anti‐social behaviour; • Child(ren) in the family affected by unauthorised absence or exclusion from school; • Adult(s) in the household out of work and claiming benefits. We know that families with these problems are also more likely to have other related problems, such as domestic violence, relationship breakdown and poor mental or physical health.

8. How we know success for families Helping Families is about working together to ‘turn around the lives’ of families with multiple problems. This means supporting the whole family to achieve better outcomes, sustain better outcomes and prevent problems from repeating. There are clear success measures linked to the Payment by Results arrangement with government, these are: • Children are attending school; • Reduction in anti-social behaviourand Reduction in youth crime; and • Parents are moving into work. Success is measured across the whole family. This means that working to tackle problems in isolation is not enough. If outcomes improve for one member of the family but get worse for another member of the family, we will not have succeeded. 

9. How are we helping families? Helping Families will build on what we know works for families in Salford. That means focused, personalised support for the whole family that draws on the expertise of a multi-agency Team Around the Family and is co-ordinated by a person that the family trusts.

10. Helping Families Lead Professional Helping Families Lead Professionals are the main point of contact for the family. They will: co-ordinate a package of support; reduce overlap and duplication; monitor family plan and report to Helping Families Locality Panels.

11. How is this different to what we do already? Helping Families will build on the existing skills and assets of practitioners from a range of backgrounds. It is about bringing in expertise from the Team around the Family - not about doing everything on their own. The role of a Helping families Lead Professional is to co-ordinate support for the whole family in a way that helps the family to turn problems around, sustain outcomes and prevent problems from repeating… with any family member. Helping Families Factor: “A whole family approach isn't about a mum in a family going on a parenting course, a 17 year old on a YOT programme and an 8 year old on a behaviour improvement plan. That is just working with different individuals in a household at the same time. Whole family working is about understanding and responding to the rhythms of the family.” (practitioner)

12. Salford Helping Families Delivery Model

13. Key aims and benefits of Helping Families Benefits Tackling the cost of dependency – the cost to families and the cost to public services; Better long-term outcomes for families; Reducing demand for public services; Removing duplication to realise financial savings for public services; Opportunity to build workforce capacity. Aims Support the family to independence; Look at the whole family context; Resolve issues at earliest opportunity; Be family driven not service driven; Identify a lead worker/ family broker; Simplify the system.

14. CommunityBudgets & Troubled Families First phase of the pilot finished 31st Oct and a Troubled Families business case has been submitted detailing, for the 4 exemplar areas of Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Oldham; The new delivery models Changes required to deliver the models - cultural, organisational, financial Aggregated Cost Benefit Analysis - estimated costs £138m v £224m benefits

15. The ‘Asks’ of Govt Work with DWP and BIS on Investment Agreements that allow GM to benefit from financial savings from increasing employment levels. If the pilot proves effective then rapidly scale up and roll out to a wider range of key outcomes for govt and expand focus to prevention and early intervention Govt & national inspection agencies – OFSTED, HMIC – to amend their inspection arrangements to reflect the new approach to public service delivery

16. Salford approach: improving the way we do business through cooperation & integration Joining up delivery for families Integrated delivery of effective interventions Joining up our investments Joint investment Systems and organisational culture Reforms to intelligence, information management, workforce capability etc...

17. Questions