Agenda item

Update on development of Early Help

Minutes:

The Committee was provided with an update on the development of the early help offer for children and families in Oldham and the connections to other areas of activity, including place-based working. The update also highlighted linkages to a range of other work relating to prevention and early intervention in the Borough.

 

Work in relation to the development of the early help offer for children and families, moving in focus from Oldham Family Connect to the development of the multi-agency early help offer with a strong commitment across the Children’s safeguarding Partnership to make early help everyone’s business, was reported.  This development responded to the 2018 statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ and included addressing parental issues such as poor mental health, drug and alcohol misuse and domestic abuse which impacted upon the lives of children in the family. “Working together…” highlighted the need for local organisations and agencies to work together to identify children and families who would benefit from early help; undertake an assessment of their need for early help; and provide targeted early help services to address the assessed needs of a child and their family which focuses on activity to promote outcomes for the child. There were three levels of need identified, and the measures to address these needs were outlined in the submitted report.

 

There had been an ongoing reorganisation of the internal targeted early help teams with the new structure going live on 1st April 2021. Key drivers for change had been strengthening the multi-agency effectiveness of early help; establishing integrated multi-agency working arrangements; preventing the needs of children and families from escalating; and reducing the need for children and families to be transferred between teams.  The reorganisation formed part of the wider multi-agency rollout of a district delivery model across Oldham, with many partners organising service delivery around the five districts.  Multi-agency district teams would be able to deliver better outcomes for children and families because of greater knowledge of local communities and closer working across agencies being developed.  Other developments and projects being progressed across the partnership were further reported and considered.

 

The demand for early help over the past year was considered.  A drop in demand following the onset of Covid-19 in March 2020 was noted, but numbers subsequently rose again. There had been clear peaks at the points children returned to school, reflecting the numbers of referrals for support made by schools.  It was anticipated that the return of children to school in March 2021 would result in a further increase in demand for early help support, reflecting the pressures on families during Covid-19. During this period early help teams had prioritised having regular face-to-face contact with families in order to ensure the visibility of vulnerable children, an approach adopted across all services supporting children and families.

 

Further to queries concerning the allocation of workers to districts, the Committee was advised that the allocation of workers was reflective of service demand, being driven by the number of cases and families requiring help.  This would be reviewed over time and changed, if necessary.  The internal restructuring was in process and was expected to be completed in the coming weeks following which a small number of vacancies may remain.  Staff had been asked to indicate location preferences, for example, they may have worked in a particular area previously or may have language skills, but office bases were now considered less important as staff would be visiting family homes and could also work from their own home. Positive Steps had been commissioned to deliver the all age intervention service and this service had a full complement of case workers.  It was confirmed that the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) would continue to work centrally to maintain social care oversight.

 

The monitoring of services to BME and other hard to reach communities was queried, particularly as Covid had made it difficult to pick up cases.  The recording of services provided was recorded but not to the quality wanted by the Service.  The Committee was advised that a performance improvement activity was underway to improve data quality, Members expressing interest in having sight of such data.  Comment was made to training provided for parents and a request made for the title of training such as ‘parenting skills’ to be reconsidered, it being suggested that this might be off-putting for a number of reasons.

 

The locations for District Team Mangers was queried, along with what might happen to current buildings.  The Committee was advised that discussions in this regard were still ongoing, but it was intended to make better use of current buildings and that the use of Teams during the Covid period might point to the use of ‘touch-down’ points at Hubs where Managers might use of  facilities, provide courses etc.  Local governance arrangements had yet to be resolved and were being looked at collectively to determine how best to meet the needs of children.

 

RESOLVED that developing approach to the multi-agency early help offer be noted.

 

Supporting documents: