Building Successful Families

1. Building Successful Families

2. … ‘Building Successful Families’ in Sheffield • Building Successful Families Programme aims to improve a range of outcomes for people in Sheffield through distinct ways of working, including: • Education • Less crime and antisocial behaviour • Work and less poverty • Better health and wellbeing • Access to community facilities and housing • Individual and family resilience and family functioning • Customer satisfaction and engagement with services • Working with a range of services and partners across the city, to provide extra help and support to the families who need it the most • Encompasses the Government’s ‘Troubled Families’ programme – we intentionally framed our response more positively: • this programme will be more successful if we don’t stigmatise or set up unnecessary confrontation • want to focus on where families will be at the end of this programme

3. The Government’s ‘Troubled Families’ programme… • Our ‘Troubled Families’ are: • All those families who meet all three of these dimensions; plus, • Families which meet two of the dimensions and our local discretion filter A payment by results scheme will operate, whereby, we can claim up to £4,000 per family, for up to 1,680 families in Sheffield, if we can demonstrate success Three year programme: 2012/13 – 2014/15

4. Government’s criteria for identifying ‘Troubled Families’ • Households with 1 or more child with a proven offence in the last 12 months; and/or, • Households where 1 or more member has been involved in anti-social behaviour in the last 12 months * • A child has been subject to permanent exclusion; three or more fixed school exclusions across the last 3 consecutive terms; or, • Is in a PRU or alternative provision because they have previously been excluded; or, is not on a school roll; and/or • A child has had 15% unauthorised absences** or more from school across the last 3 consecutive terms. • Households which also have an adult on DWP out of work benefits (Employment and Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Carer’s Allowance, Income Support and/or Jobseekers Allowance, Severe Disablement Allowance). • Our ‘Troubled Families’ are: • All those families who meet all three of these dimensions; plus, • Any families who meet two of the dimensions and our local discretion filter (see section 4.3 of this briefing) • By implication, some of these Troubled Families may not have dependent children in them. However, the PbR approach has an emphasis on child-centred outcomes (e.g., improved attendance; ‘reduction in offending rate by minors’) * A range of measures are suggested, but local discretion is advised ** We intend to use 15% absence to measure this *** This dimension should be considered after the other two have been considered, and for those household who meet one or two of the other dimensions, for data sharing reasons Source: CLG

5. Additional, local discretion factors • Already included • Adult offending – any offence committed by an adult offender living at the address in the last three years (South Yorks Police) • Domestic Violence – domestic violence reported as being committed by or against a resident at the addresses in the last three years (South Yorks Police) • Safeguarding concern – if the child/family has ever been known to children’s social care • Homelessness – if a homeless case has been opened for this address (the children living at this address) since July 2010 • Not yet included • Adult mental health • Children’s mental health • Poverty • 3+ school moves • Sexual exploitation • Problem drinking/substance misuse –

6. Distinct ways of working Multi-agency working Employment support Education Social care Police Housing Etc Health Intervening earlier, before costs escalate and outcomes deteriorate Working with the whole family or household, with the family at the centre Keyworkers: Single point of contact to make sure families are getting the right support at the right time Work persistently and assertively with families Where appropriate, personalising budgets / making budgets work in a more co-ordinated way Virtuous cycle of more resilient families and more resilient communities Stronger Community setting

7. Some of our progress so far… • We have identified around 1600 families who meet the criteria set out by the Government, and/or our local discretion factors • Around one-third of these families are already ‘open cases’ to MAST, Children’s Social Care, Housing High Support, Youth Justice and IYSS (but may be slightly more…) we intend to work more intensively with families who meet the criteria, by… • …providing additional capacity in the services that support these families, particularly the MAST teams, so that frontline workers – key workers – are able to: • spend longer with the family each week and potentially work with families for longer periods of time • Address the needs of the whole family; good assessment, outcome based intervention, the workforce skilled at family engagement • Putting systems in place to support whole family working (needs assessment, case management including products and processes, workforce development, data sharing etc.) • Developing better operational and strategic links with wider services (like housing, youth services, community development teams to better coordinate our approaches to families with complicated problems) • Identifying gaps in service provision that prevents the families becoming successful

8. Our expectations about keyworkers We will expect keyworkers to: • Gather intelligence: work with the family to understand their situation, needs and aspirations • Build a strong rapport with the family –a particularly-important step • Identify which services the family needs, when they are needed, and coordinating the work of these services so that the family accesses them at a suitable time and a suitable order • Work persistently and assertively with families to support them, and ‘hand-hold’ (e.g., accompanying to meetings) and advocate on their behalf; as well as challenging the and communicating tough messages to the family when appropriate • Planning and delivering a phased exit strategy, to avoid a ‘boomerang’ effect, of outcomes temporarily improving for the family but then deteriorating • Finally, we’re keen to further explore the concept of families themselves becoming role models and actively working (e.g., as keyworkers) with other families We are discussing the necessary support and ‘permissions’ that keyworkers will need to help them work in this way

9. Key Points We are not setting up or commissioning a completely new ‘Troubled Families Service’. We are growing our existing services to meet the needs of these families Focus on system change and legacy beyond 2015. We want results that are right for Sheffield not just chasing ‘outcome payments’. We may need to commission some specific provision for some families, but will focus initially on getting the services that are already there to work more efficiently and effectively The keyworker role is essential – support, robust challenge and time to really get to know and build trust with the families.