Enhancing Children's Services: A Comprehensive Vision for Manchester

1. Future vision for Children’s Services : MASH, Early Help and Integrated Public Services Julie Heslop – Strategic Lead Early Help and Prevention 17th February 2015

2. Background • Ofsted Inspection and subsequent Improvement Plan • Volume of activity and demand • Significant outlier on LAC – requires reduction strategy and improved outcomes • Multiple front doors and no integrated triage and assessment process • Troubled Families Programme performing well • Confusion re thresholds and better coordinated early help offer • Corporate priorities – neighbourhoods, community and economic growth • Development of Triage Team for Domestic Abuse Notifications in September 2014

3. Priorities Keep children safe, healthy, aspiring and achieving: so they are able to enjoy and contribute to Manchester’s future success Narrow the gap for vulnerable children and young people Support families to be independent and resilient, bringing up their own children wherever possible (challenge the cycle of deprivation) When it is the best and safest option: ensure high quality alternative care is provided for children

4. Principles • Focus on the child and their journey • Work with whole families to change behaviour and outcomes • Intervene at earliest possible opportunity to ‘make a difference’ • Bespoke support that recognises the diversity and levels of needs • Integrated front line services, co located and co designed • Avoid multiple assessments and ‘drift’ in the system • Lead/key workers who are confident to exercise professional judgment and work assertively with families to move them on

5. What are doing differently now? Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub Early Years Delivery Model Key worker role

6. Manchester’s Safeguarding Hub went live on 1st December 2014 to provide a better, more integrated response to Safeguarding concerns within the City. The membership has increased the original multi-agency Domestic Abuse Triage Team and now includes: Social Workers, Police, Health, Education Caseworkers, Early Help Co-ordinators and Troubled Families representatives. The Hub is based within the Town Hall Extension in a secure environment. Currently the Hub triages notifications of Domestic Violence where there are children in the family and safeguarding notifications for children at Risk of Harm.

7. Benefits of Integrated Working Feedback from MASH staff – Increased awareness , understanding and communication across agencies Responses are integrated and coordinated at earliest point of contact Promotes consistent understanding of risk across agencies Improved identification of risk allows for earlier identification of need – this has been especially demonstrated for Health through the earlier identification of pre-birth contacts requiring support from the Vulnerable Babies unit.

8. MASH Next steps Consolidation Additional partners – probation, YOS, housing Performance Framework Learn and evaluate Strengthen Early Help

9. Key recommendations Munro report: Professor Eileen Munro recommendations concluded: “the government place a statutory duty on local authorities and their partners to ensure enough provision of early intervention services are in place - therefore ensure the need to make every child and family who fall beneath child protection thresholds an “early help offer” of tailored services and resources.” A number of publications have highlighted the need for partners to deliver a coordinated, targeted and evidence based early offer of help; particularly to those families who are most vulnerable or have more complex needs.

10. Working Together- working differently: Effective Early Help, outlined in ‘Working Together’ (March 2013), relies upon local agencies working together to: ‘Identify children and young people who would benefit from early help; Undertake an assessment of the need of early help; and Provide targeted early help services to address the assessed needs of a child and their family which focuses on activity to significantly improve outcomes for the child. Local authorities […] have a responsibility to promote interagency cooperation to improve the welfare of children’. (page 11)

11. Offer of Early Help Early Help potential to deliver services in most cost effective way Effective offer of Early Help will strengthen the role of the MASH Outcome of MASH Enquiry for Early Help managed via EH Team Strengthen this via refresh of EH Strategy and Levels of Need Consultation and workshops underway Develop Early Help Hubs

12. Early Help Hubs Public Services integrated at local level Role of voluntary and community sector Clear step up and step down arrangements – MASH and safeguarding Clear offer of Early Help

13. Challenges Scale Volume and demand Pace Improvement Measures

14. Outcomes • Reduce the flow of future safeguarding cases • Reduce the number of unnecessary referrals • Better and earlier diagnosis of needs • Timely, effective, tailored support for families • Lower rate of escalation through the safeguarding system from referral to Child in Need status to Child Protection • Ultimately fewer LAC (to Core Cities average of around 900) • Significant savings for a range of partners from complex dependency including employment, health, offending, school and police demand • Increase in families able to succeed through the provision of universal and early help services

15. Your role and contribution I will …