Decision details

Children’s Social Care and Early Help have a transformation plan supported over four years by the Reform Investment Fund with resources provided through the government’s Troubled Families programme. This is part of a wider Greater Manchester programme.
Part of the plan is the creation of an analytical team which will:
•Further develop:
-the data hub (which brings together data about individuals and families from different sources - such as social care, early help, education, police and Department of Work and Pensions),
-the systems for routinely matching data and updating the hub,
-systems which enable the operational use of the Hub by staff in the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) who need to gather relevant information to inform service allocation decisions;
-the information governance arrangements which support the Hub and wider information sharing around provision of safeguarding and support;
•Undertake analysis of the impact of service interventions and the different outcomes achieved for individuals and families;
•Co-ordinate this analysis with the wider programme of service performance analysis undertaken by Business Intelligence for Children’s Services;
•Undertake analysis of individuals and families to inform development of systems for identifying at an early stage those families whose children are at risk of experiencing escalating problems in order to provide an evidence base to inform effective early intervention.
The work of the Team will inform focused re-design of services and pathways in order to support delivery of evidence based approaches to early intervention which deliver better outcomes for residents and reduce the need for the involvement of specialist services – for example, helping over time to reduce numbers of looked after children.

RESOLVED - That:
Option C New Analytical Team
•An analytical team dedicated to this agenda would bring about the pace of delivery required.
•Will be aligned to the wider organisational agenda so that can benefit from, and contribute to, corporate developments.
•It would take advantage of expertise already in BIS.

Option A Do Nothing
Doing nothing would mean that the ambition for Children Social Care and Early Help would not be achieved. We would not be in a position to understand cohorts, design services appropriately or improve the service or outcomes
Option B Achieve under Current Capacity
The work described above is being delivered within current capacity up to an extent. However the pace of delivery is not at the required level for the service to achieve its ambitions. This is because current capacity is responsible for statutory reporting, performance reporting, wider business intelligence support to the organisation as a whole in addition to the above requirements.
Option C New Analytical Team
•An analytical team dedicated to this agenda would bring about the pace of delivery required.
•Will be aligned to the wider organisational agenda so that can benefit from, and contribute to, corporate developments.
•It would take advantage of expertise already in BIS.

Option A Do Nothing
Doing nothing would mean that the ambition for Children Social Care and Early Help would not be achieved. We would not be in a position to understand cohorts, design services appropriately or improve the service or outcomes
Option B Achieve under Current Capacity
The work described above is being delivered within current capacity up to an extent. However the pace of delivery is not at the required level for the service to achieve its ambitions. This is because current capacity is responsible for statutory reporting, performance reporting, wider business intelligence support to the organisation as a whole in addition to the above requirements.

- Early Help Service
- AD Community Services
- Children's DMT
- Director Children Services
- Executive Director Commercial and Corporate Services