EARLY INTERVENTION AND PREVENTION STRATEGY 2012-15 Summary Plymouth Children, Young People and Families Partnership
INTRODUCTION Why do we need early intervention in Plymouth? We know that effective early intervention can transform lives helping parents back into work, stabilising children at school and removing the barriers to living healthy and productive lives. The most effective early intervention considers the whole family and puts in place as much support as necessary, for as long as it is needed. We know that there are a number of vulnerable children, young people and families in Plymouth, who are more likely to experience difficulties in their lives and may need support to help overcome them. These children, young people and families are likely to be: Those with alcohol and/or drug/substance misuse issues, or those living with a parent or carer with these issues Families affected by domestic abuse Those involved with the police or criminal justice system Children, young people or adults with mental health issues Families experiencing poverty, homelessness or long term unemployment Those at risk of entering or re-entering Children s Social Care Teenage parents and pregnant teenagers Young people who are regularly missing school or college Young carers Those with disabilities or special educational needs (SEN) Asylum seekers and refugees Those with past trauma and low resilience Families where the ability to parent is limited. The main problems facing families with children who have a child protection plan are domestic abuse (31%), unsafe parenting (25%), drug misuse (13%), alcohol misuse (11%), sexual risk from an adult (8.5%) and parental mental health issues (8%). Appendix 3 of the Early Intervention and Prevention Strategy provides a more detailed analysis of the needs of vulnerable children and families in Plymouth. For some families, their problems will have continued for several generations and the cycle will be very difficult to change.
WHAT IS EARLY INTERVENTION? Early intervention is defined as responding as soon as possible to the needs of children, young people and families who are vulnerable to poor life outcomes. It aims to put services in place and offer support before things get worse, to help the family move on from their difficulties and lead happier and healthier lives. Early intervention therefore aims to promote better long term life outcomes for families and in doing so, also prevent them needing more intensive and higher cost services in the future, such as children s social care or the criminal justice system. Early intervention might involve one service provider for example counselling if a parent is terminally ill or has died. Or it might involve a number of different agencies and service providers, all working together to support a family.
WHAT ARE WE CURRENTLY DOING WELL? Early intervention is already happening in Plymouth. Various services aim to support children, young people and families to prevent their difficulties getting worse. Examples of current good practice include: Children s centres operate as a hub for services for children aged 0 to 5 and their families, able to draw on a wide range of expertise to offer support in a neutral setting. Operation Encompass ensures police notify a trained key adult in schools across the city the morning after a child has experienced or witnessed domestic violence. This enables children to be supported as soon as possible after an incident has occurred. When an adult presents at the city s drug and alcohol services, workers are trained to consider the needs of the children in the family and whether a multi-agency response is needed. The Family Intervention Project (FIP) has achieved good outcomes with families by using an assessment of the whole family to inform response planning. The Excellence Cluster implements multi-agency support teams with police, educational psychologists, counselling and therapeutic professionals across schools in the city. A number of services have been given a role to provide dedicated key workers for assertive outreach and sustained involvement with complex families.
WHAT STILL NEEDS TO BE DONE? The early intervention and prevention strategy identifies a number of areas that we need to further develop to deliver better early help to children, young people and families. These development areas include: Review our investment in services, making sure there are sufficient resources to meet need early enough to prevent things getting worse Improve the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) process by ensuring that assessments and multi-agency plans focus on needs of the whole family, rather than individual children and young people Monitor CAF plans to make sure they are improving outcomes for families and preventing them needing specialist services or crisis interventions Bring together services via single points of access, so that families don t have to re-tell their stories to a range of different people, and to ensure that different professionals work together effectively to meet the needs of the families Ensure that where families have multiple and complex needs that are getting worse despite intervention, we have the right system in place to review their need and provide additional help Ensure we provide enough targeted support to reduce risk-taking behaviours in young people Make sure our workforce have the right skills and support to deliver the right help to families Improve the way partners work together
HOW WILL WE KNOW THAT EARLY INTERVENTION IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE? Our performance is measured regularly. If early intervention works effectively we would expect to see the following changes: Increasing the rate of participation in education, training and employment by 16 to 18 year olds Reducing the gap in attainment at key stage 4 between the most and least deprived neighbourhoods in the city Narrowing of the gap in the lowest achieving 20% in Early Years Foundation Stage Increase in the take up of child related benefits previously unclaimed Reduction in the number of hospital admissions caused by unintentional and deliberate injury to children and young people Reduction in the number of families with children in temporary accommodation Lower levels of domestic abuse Reduction in the percentage of children and young people who are persistently absent and at risk of exclusion in secondary school Reduction of those persistently absent and at risk of exclusion in primary school Reduction in first time entrants to the criminal justice system Reduction in the rate of teenage pregnancies Reduction in households where no one has a job Reduction in crime and anti-social behaviour Increase in the number of children benefiting from an early years place Reduce the number of inappropriate contacts made to Children s Social Care Continuing to monitor the number of children requiring statutory child protection intervention Reduction in acquisitive crime and anti-social behaviour Improvement in health through take-up of immunisation, breastfeeding and weight management Increase in choice and personalisation for disabled children and their families Reduction of harmful effects of mental ill health by increased access to psychological therapies for children, young people and families
Increase support for parents Reduce harm in families from alcohol and drugs Easier access to mental health services Increase participation of children in school, and of parents in work or training Protect children from the harmful effects of domestic abuse
BENEFITS AND COST EFFECTIVENESS OF EARLY INTERVENTION There is considerable evidence indicating early intervention is cost effective and when delivered in a timely and effective way, will help transform the lives of vulnerable young people, families and communities. It is an important investment because later interventions are considerably less effective if they have not had good foundations. (The Marmot Review : Fair Society, Health Lives 2010) Studies also illustrate the cost benefits: An Incredible Years parenting programme with children diagnosed with disrupted behaviour costs an average of 1,344 over a six month period to improve a child s behaviour. Without intervention, it is estimated that an individual with conduct disorder costs an additional 60,000 to public services by the age of 28. (Early Intervention: Securing Good Outcomes for all Children and Young People, DCSF2010) The cost of poor literacy is estimated to be between 5,000 and 64,000 for each individual over a lifetime, with the vast majority of these costs due to lower tax revenues and higher benefits. In comparison, the cost of the Reading Recovery programme is approximately 2,609 per pupil, with evidence that 79% of children who participate will be lifted out of literacy failure. The cost of permanently excluding a child from school is 300,000, which includes educating the child elsewhere and the bill from deploying services such as social care, benefits and the probation service. The estimated cost to the individual ranges from a reduced chance of securing stable employment to the risk of them becoming involved in substance abuse. (The National Behaviour and Attendance Review, Interim Report Sept 2007)
PARTNERSHIP WORKING To progress this early intervention work we need local partnerships to take coordinated, comprehensive and prolonged action to ensure vulnerable children, young people and families experience substantially better outcomes. Ofsted has commended the Children and Young People s Trust partnership working in Plymouth as outstanding at both the strategic and operational level (Ofsted 2010). This has been achieved through a strong track record of collaborative working across key organisations: primary and secondary schools, Public Health, NHS Plymouth, Plymouth Hospitals Trust, Plymouth Community Healthcare, GPs, police, voluntary and community sector and the Council s adult and children s services. There is a strong commitment from all partners to continue to collaborate to improve outcomes for children and all partners have a significant contribution to make to achieve this ambition. To deliver early intervention, Plymouth Children and Young People s Trust commit to: Seek opportunities to align resources and join-up commissioning Prioritise and target resources to those who need them most Ensure efficient use of resources and value for money Work collaboratively with children, parents and local communities to develop solutions to improve outcomes, giving people a stronger sense of ownership and control of their services Continue to develop strong collaborative relationships between partners, including schools, the voluntary and community sector, police and GPs, to ensure inter-agency service delivery to meet the needs of those most vulnerable or at risk.
BACKGROUND POLICIES NATIONAL POLICY Key National Policy papers have recently been published which inform early intervention and prevention work. They are: The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults (December 2010) by Frank Field MP; A review of Child Poverty and Early Intervention: The Next Steps (January 2011) by Graham Allen MP. Both these reports highlight the importance of the first years of a child s life and the need to ensure secure strong foundations for a child s cognitive, language and social and emotional development. They emphasise the link between exposure to parental poverty, mental ill health (including postnatal depression), addiction and violence in the first five years of life with negative outcomes for young people including poor examination results, higher rates of teenage pregnancy, lower rates of employment, higher rates of depression, suicide and substance misuse. The Munro Review of Child Protection by Professor Eileen Munro (May 2011) also recommends that early help is provided to both prevent abuse or neglect and improve the life chances of children and young people and is clear about the critical part this plays in child protection. She emphasises the need for co-ordination of early help and ensuring clear mechanisms to identify children suffering or likely to suffer harm. This also forms a key aspect of the new Ofsted inspection framework for Child Protection. The Child Poverty Act 2010 creates a duty for local authorities and their partners to cooperate to tackle child poverty in their area. They are required to prepare and publish a local needs assessment and also to prepare a joint local child poverty strategy. The Government s troubled families agenda is focused on families who are engaged in crime or antisocial behaviour, who are out of work, and whose children are not in school.
LOCAL POLICY Plymouth s Early Intervention and Prevention Strategy has been produced in response to the national policy context and the analysis of local needs. The Plymouth Children and Young People s Trust was created in 2008, bringing together agencies from across the city to consider local need and plan the most effective way to improve services. At a time of great change nationally, improving services for children and young people continues to be an important aspiration for Plymouth. The Children and Young People s Trust developed the city s Children and Young People s Plan for 2011-2014, which has early intervention as a key priority: Prevention and early intervention are critical. We will provide the right help at the right time to ensure the needs of children, young people and families who are vulnerable to poor outcomes are identified early. Plymouth has already chosen to use the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) to deliver early intervention because we know that putting in place effective plans around the child and family is the most effective way of responding early to need. Plymouth already has a dedicated team in place whose role is to offer training, advice and support to workers in services across the city, to enable them to undertake CAF assessments. The success of the CAF process relies on those workers then organising the response to the families needs, by bringing together the right services in a multi-agency plan. It therefore continues to be crucial that partner agencies ensure staff within their services understand their role in implementing the CAF when designing and commissioning services.
The full Early Intervention and Prevention Strategy document can be read at www.plymouth.gov.uk Early Intervention Strategy Summary Published by Plymouth City Council April 2013 CONTACT Joint Commissioning Team Plymouth City Council Civic Centre Plymouth PL1 2AA T 01752 668000 E commissioningteam@plymouth.gov.uk www.plymouth.gov.uk