New front door for families and children led to ‘phenomenal’ surge in requests for help
New front door for families and children led to ‘phenomenal’ surge in requests for help
A new social services system aimed at getting quicker, better help to children and families has enjoyed “phenomenal” success in its first few months.
The “Family Help Front Door” was launched in April with a new team of experts. It was meant to support children and young people as early as possible and reduce the need for the council to step in and assess a child’s care and support needs by law.
Councillors were told how the new front door, previously described as the cornerstone of a transformed system, had fared so far. Kellie Wigley, the council’s head of service for early help, youth justice and youth support, said they focused on “ensuring that our children in our borough received support at the earliest opportunity”.
She told the council’s people select committee on Monday (September 7): “We’ve made a really strong start. The impact is clearly quite evident.”
She said they held sessions with schools, health and voluntary sector organisations: “We’ve helped to really reinforce the principle that early help was everybody’s responsibility. That was really the vision for the front door, reducing the need for statutory intervention and getting families support far sooner.
“Compared to the same period of last year, requests for early help have increased by 29%, which is phenomenal. We’ve increased referrals to partner agencies by 94%, which is vast.
“That is decreasing the level of demand on us as a local authority. The number of contacts remaining with our early help practitioners has almost tripled.
“Most notably, the contacts progressing to statutory assessment have reduced significantly, by 61%. We’re seeing far fewer moving through to statutory assessment, which is indicative that we are providing support far sooner and earlier with families to prevent that escalation.”
She said they were talking more with the council’s partners: “We’re having conversations with our referrers about when it’s appropriate to make a referral, when not, and what support they can offer to children and families to prevent escalation to statutory assessment if that’s not needed. We’ve really moved away from that transactional process of referrals coming in and us progressing.”
She said people were seeking support from an online triage tool: “Already that’s been accessed 1,800 times. We’ve measured the footfall and 5,400 referrals have been made through our new digital portal platform, which is fantastic.
“That’s reducing the demand equally on the front door as well. We’ve embedded dedicated family help navigators.”
Now she said they were trying to simplify things for professionals, children and families, pinpointing gaps, training partners and getting more partners using family hubs: “They’ve continued to be a real significant strength in Stockton’s early help offer. We are really well attended, we have a lot of services and provision delivered from our family hub bases but we’re hoping to increase that much further.
“We’re looking specifically around strengthening some of that support for families with children with additional needs, and developing the online offer as well. Overall I think it’s fair to say the evidence is suggesting we’ve started to see a real positive cultural change.
“We are increasing that collaboration and I guess we’re moving into a space of shared responsibility, improving the outcomes for children and families. We’re going to continue to closely monitor the impact of the front door and family help arrangements to make sure we absolutely are getting the decisions right for our children and young people.”
Committee member Councillor Barry Woodhouse said the new system was stopping issues at an early stage: “I suppose it’s a bit like an illness, if it’s diagnosed in early doors it doesn’t have to go on to significant and complex treatment.
“Rather than have loads of statutory requests, you could have a quick five-minute meeting with a group of people saying ‘this is what needs doing’, so it stops the process. Or, if it necessary, to develop it more quickly.
“The progress is great. So well done you all, it’s encouraging.”