Index Number: / No. 2.01
Document: / Early Help Impact Analysis December 2015
Approved by: / Northumberland Safeguarding Children’s Board
Date Published: / December 2015
Review Date: / June 2016
Lead Officer: / Mary Connor, Senior Manager, Early Help and Intervention and Adolescent Services
Description: / Northumberland’s analysis of impact of actions taken to date regarding its strategic approach to early help

EARLY HELP IMPACT ANALYSIS DECEMBER 2015

The Early Help Strategy 2014-17 in Northumberland was signed off and endorsed by the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and the Families and Children Trust (FACT) Board in July 2014. It was subsequently reviewed in July 2015 and the action plan updated. The strategy contains a number of aspects which have been progressed.

Early Help Assessments

In January 2014 work had been undertaken through the Early Help Early Intervention sub-committee for the LSCB to rebrand and redevelop the Common Assessment Framework form. This was done by a small multi-agency task and finish group led by the Senior Manager for Early Intervention and Prevention and resulted in a launch of the whole family based Early Help Assessment. Northumberland’s approach to the use of the Early Help Assessment is through a multi-agency sign up to it as the assessment tool for those families who require early help.

The launch of this was supported by four locality based events for multi-agency professionals attended in total by over 300 people.

31 multi-agency staff were trained to train others in using the Early Help Assessment. An update training session was undertaken with these staff in March 2015 linking the Supporting Families (Troubled Families) Local Outcomes Plan to the Early Help Assessment planning process.

There have been 521 people trained in EHA from 1st April 2014 to present day.

Services which have received the EHA training are:

  • All Locality Inclusion Support Teams (education support services)*
  • All school partnerships
  • Community Support Team staff*
  • Family Nurse Team
  • All children’s centre staff including family support workers within Children’s Centres*
  • Some child minders
  • Health visitors
  • Midwives
  • Children North East (family support)*
  • YOS ( Intensive Family support workers)*
  • Family Recovery Programme Staff (Intensive family support workers)*
  • Visual Impairment Service*
  • Sensory Support Service*
  • Portage*

(Services starred are those which are internally delivered or directly commissioned by Northumberland County Council)

There have been 954 Early Help Assessments registered with the database between October 2014 and November 2015. These are broken down by Agency as below:

No EHA’s Registered Oct 14 – Nov 15

Early Years - Children's Centres / 86
Early Years - Other / 16
Education - Non School Service / 30
Education - School / 372
Health - Health Visitor / 133
Health - Midwife / 16
Health - Other / 8
Health - School Health / 21
Nursery Manager / 2
Social Care / 220
Voluntary & Community Sector / 7
Youth - YOS / 34
Youth - Youth Service / 2
(blank) / 7
954

Outcome Star Training

Outcome Star is an engagement tool which enable practitioners to work with a family to assess where they are using a solution focussed scoring tool which covers a range of aspects affecting their lives. It is an evidence based tool which is widely used across the country Outcome Star-unpacking the evidence.

Northumberland adopted its use in July 2013 and up to November 2014 174 people have been trained

91 from Northumberland County Council

15 from Northumbria Health Care Trust

1 from NTW

41 from Schools

27 from Voluntary and community sector

Early Help Locality Hubs

From the beginning of May 2014 we have piloted first and then mainstreamed a multi-agency hub approach to all referrals for Early Help in the South East of Northumberland. This started initially with the Blyth area but from November 2014 widened out to include Seaton Valley and Cramlington.

From March 2015 a Hub has also been held in the Central locality and from November 2015 Hubs have been held in the North and West locality.

There have been some referrals which have been inappropriate because they are already open to a specialised service such as the social work team or because parental consent has not been gained before the referral has come in.

We also have a 0-4 protocol between the area social work teams and the children’s centres. This means any children under the age of 4 where a decision is made to not progress a referral from the social work team are referred to the children’s centre to follow up; in some areas this is done by a phone call, in others through a letter being sent out.

Below is a breakdown of the numbers of referrals which have come into the Hub since its start:

Referrals to the hubs

Central / 713
North / 62
South East / 1373
West / 70

Impact of Early Help Activity

The increase in the numbers of Early Help Assessments over the last year is a very positive sign that other agencies are taking more ownership of supporting families with lower levels of need.

A proxy indicator which demonstrates the growing confidence in the Hub model is the lower number of referrals going to the social work teams from the Hub since it was fully established.

Number of referrals into the hub / No. opened to Childrens Social Work 6 months later / % opened to Childrens Social Work 6 months later / No. opened to Childrens Social Work 12 months later / % opened to Childrens Social Work 12 months later
Sept 14 / 36 / 11 / 30.5% / 7 / 19.4%
Oct 14 / 47 / 6 / 12.7% / 1 / 2.1%
Nov 14 / 103 / 15 / 14.5% / 5 / 4.8%

Early Help Services

Within the local authority there are a number of teams which offer Early Help services. These are:

  • Childrens Centres-providing universal and targeted services to children 0-5 and their families
  • Family Recovery Programme-providing intensive family support to families with complex needs who fit the Supporting Families criteria
  • Childrens Support Team-providing short term family support
  • Northumberland Adolescent Service-providing a range of early help services to targeted and vulnerable adolescents
  • Locality Inclusion Support Teams-provide support for children to access education provision

We are also currently piloting having some additional early help staff managed by a dedicated senior practitioner based within our urban social work teams to support with the duty decision making, the step down of cases and acting as lead professional in a small number of cases where a family have complex needs but don’t meet the threshold for children’s social work. This has worked very effectively from August 2015 with an overall reduction of referrals by 23% from June 2015 and a bigger reduction in the Central locality teams where the majority of resource has been based of 48%.

To build on this we are now piloting the decision making at the ‘front door’ for all new or closed cases from the West locality being made through the Central locality duty system.

Mary Connor

December 2015