Actions to support more Birmingham children to move out of poverty 2011-13

Responses required, 2011-14, in Birmingham(from child poverty needs assessment) / Actions identified by partners for implementation in 2011-13
The size of the issue requires sustained activity over the 2011-14 period. It will need more coherence for some current activities and will also need some new ways of working. Most of the relevant agencies are reshaping their operating models in ways that have the potential to better address adult and family needs.
Opportunities will be taken to do more, to do things differently, or to commission new services – where these have some leverage on issues of child poverty.
Where there are financial or capacity restrictions on support activities there will, wherever possible, be a focus of such support on the localities most likely to have large numbers of parents in poverty.
Improving child health and wellbeing, and closing health gaps that relate to poverty, will be a priority for the emerging Health/Wellbeing/Public Health arrangements in the city. /
  • The priorities, agreed by partner agencies, to improve outcomes for children and families (across 2011-14) will be driven by new ways of working put in place in 2011-12. The new ways of working will be operating as early in 2011-12 as recruitment and Equality Impact Assessments processes allow. Birmingham will act as a pilot for the use of social impact bonds as a new way of funding early interventions with families.
  • The new arrangements include an element of locally commissioned changes which should impact on more disadvantaged families, most of whom are families experiencing higher than average levels of poverty.
  • Some of the activities jointly commissioned will be ones attempting to close health gaps across areas with high/low child poverty levels. The scale and location of interventions to close health gaps and improve children’s wellbeing will be related to levels of chid poverty.
  • Where choices have to be made in service delivery or commissioning, the varying levels of child poverty will be one factor taken into account.
  • BeBirmingham strategic partnership will hold a continuing set of Summit sessions, drawing on a wide spread of agencies in the city. These will focus on issues of health and wellbeing; housing developments; and, crucially for the child poverty agenda, social mobility and economic success. Each Summit will identify the salient issues, the key points in the context at the time, and the next steps for development. The strategic partnership will establish a Commission that will interrogate issues of social mobility within Birmingham. Child poverty will be a strand of that Commission’s work.

Support will be more intense in some areas but this will not solely rely on small area projects. The potential solutions will be seen as part of the main programmes of a range of agencies.
Birmingham will not bring about changes at the required pace and scale if the complexity around child poverty is seen as ‘everything requiring something else to be done’. There will be a clarity about those things that can have more immediate impact on family poverty, and those things that are medium/long term changes. /
  • The wards with highest levels of child poverty continue to be the same as those several years ago, despite improvements at Lower Super Output Area and closing of the gap to city average. The levels of child poverty in these wards continue to require substantial change to be made. There will be little work that is one-off, project, pilot, etc in nature – almost all activities will be to develop or deliver an improved set of mainstream responses that are able to address the issues of children in poverty at the scale and the pace necessary to bring about substantial change. The developments that can impact on levels of child poverty are already largely within City Council Directorate Plans and partner agency Development Plans.
  • Over recent years there has been considerable activity to strengthen the capabilities of individuals and systems within neighbourhoods. This will continue via a Neighbourhood Core Group. Developments at neighbourhood level will be led by local communities, by faith groups and by voluntary organisations. This will provide a mechanism for focusing on closing very local wellbeing gaps and for engaging eg Registered Social Landlords.
  • Birmingham has been successful in three bids for neighbourhood community budget developments, covering Shard End, Castle Vale and Balsall Heath neighbourhoods. These represent 25% of the national programme and will be taken forward as a unified set of developments with learning being fed into a national Challenge and Learning network of fourteen local authorities. These developments will enable local communities to play a leading role, working with statutory agencies, to shape local services so that they better meet the neighbourhood needs.
  • Whilst there is an acceptance that many of the influences on child poverty are interconnected, agencies will be expected to be able to report on the specific developments listed later in this framework. An annual progress report on developments to reduce child poverty will be drawn from reports from identified agencies, with minimal additional bureaucracy. A task-and-finish Social Inclusion Commission, independently chaired, will seek new solutions to entrenched problems in the city’s high disadvantage/high child poverty neighbourhoods with a clear focus on further closing of gaps and increasing social mobility.
  • Birmingham City Council (via the Strategic Director for Development) chairs aWest Midlands Economic Inclusion Panel, which brings together key decision-makers and leaders from the private, public and voluntary sectors to champion the wider and more consistent deployment of good practice in tackling worklessness, and to identify the means to fill crucial gaps in current employment and training provision. This panel will sustain its focus on two major themes: (a) harnessing public sector procurement to increase access to jobs and skills opportunities for local people, and (b) consistent, evidence-based research into the impact of multiple labour market disadvantages on the individual’s chances of being workless. This research underlines the continuing need to focus on addressing, ‘in the round’, the specific combination of risk factors faced by individuals and specific groups,rather than trying to tackle each risk factor in isolation. This local approachhas been welcomed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Most of the agencies with some leverage on child poverty issues are currently moving to new models of service delivery. A new operating model for services to children, young people and families will be the main change driver to support improvement in outcomes. The key features are more effective use of resources through integrated multi-agency working and teams, plus additional and specialist support for those children who need it. There will be clear working relationships between universal settings, such as schools and children’s centres, and the providers of additional and specialist support. A key feature of the new service will be improved targeting of resources to the most vulnerable children. /
  • A new model for meeting the needs of families/children will be introduced by July 2011 and be fully in place by March 2012.
It will depend on good assessment processes, clear pathways and a common understanding of thresholds across all agencies. Appropriate services will be commissioned via children’s centres, schools and colleges, particularly because the vast majority of children and young people - including those with complex and additional needs – spend most of their time when not at home, in universal settings. Key principles that run through the model are:
  • Children and young people will have their needs met as close to where they live as possible.
  • Transition from one level to the next will be smooth and seamless.
  • Wherever possible, children’s needs will be met by universal services in schools, colleges and children’s centres.
One of the main elements of the model is the introduction of Integrated Family Support Teams, which will bring together different professionals and ensure there is a lead professional to co-ordinate the plan for the family. These teams will be based in a locality and work closely with the universal settings in that area i.e. schools, colleges, children’s centres and GP practices in order to meet the needs of children who require additional support beyond that which the universal setting can provide. These teams will link closely to aligned child protection teams and city-wide teams supporting children with complex needs, those in care and those with complex disability and health needs.
The Integrated Family Support Teams will provide early intervention and support for families whose needs are below the threshold for social care and specialist support. Having this service in place will provide greater support for schools and children’s centres, and will reduce the number of referrals going to social care. Through the locality teams, children will be receiving the right level of intervention. Social work resources will have a stronger focus on the most vulnerable children including children with child protection plans, children in care and children in families with complex needs.
Early intervention and inclusion services, as part of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, will be aligned with family support mechanisms within localities. In addition there will be a city-wide specialist service for children with substantial disabilities. Support to reduce days of learning lost because of disruptive behaviour will be organised via school behaviour partnerships.
One of the key aims of the new children’s services model is to integrate a wider range of partners into the new support mechanisms. A shared workforce plan will be written by all relevant agencies. The intention is that these will be multi-agency. Birmingham City Council is working alongside the health and the police agencies to maximise their involvement in the model and the teams.
In order to get some direct impact on levels of child poverty in localities, there will be an encouragement of close working between Integrated Family Support teams and employment services. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has commissioned local delivery of a European Social Fund(ESF) family intervention programme focused on employment support outcomes for families with multiple problems. DWP announced the appointment of the prime contractor for this programme in the West Midlands area in October 2011. A series of post-tender negotiations with the City Council and other key local partners are taking place prior to scheduled contract and delivery commencement in December 2011. Over 4000 Birmingham families are expected to be supported through this contract.
  • City Officers’ pre-tender discussions with the nine agencies that submitted tenders for the West Midlands region (a £28 million pound contract over three years) set out some delivery principles that providers will adhere to in Birmingham. Key points within this approach are:
  • The provision will be integrated into both the developing Family Common Assessment Framework delivery model being trialled in the Community Based Budget pathfinder in Shard End, and the Co-design model for multi-organisational employment support being adopted in a set of DWP endorsed developments.
  • The prime contractor will explore alignment and possible secondment of staff to act as family advocates within the newly developing Children, Young People and Families Locality teams
  • Identification and referral of priority families into the provision will be through an integrated referral gateway led by the City Council
  • Prime contractor supply chains should be sustainable and reflect direct delivery involvement from the key local infrastructure, including third sector agencies.

Any developments around child poverty will be based on common understandings, and clear recognitions of where authorities to make changes may lie.
Actions to limit the likelihood of children remaining in poverty will be incorporated as far as possible into the emerging range of main programme activities. /
  • Attempting to reduce levels of child poverty is everyone’s business. At the same time there are larger impacts that can be made if key agencies focus on changes to their immediate priorities (in conjunction with others). Examples are Jobcentre Plus introducing appropriate local work programme arrangements; employer networks encouraging local businesses around a few specific work-related issues; housing networks focusing on provision of decent homes in adequate numbers, etc. Agencies will continue to be worked with, separately and collectively, to identify their specific developments to reduce levels of child poverty.

Birmingham members of the Local Enterprise Partnership will seek to establish a range of additional jobs, and employability routes, that provide access to employment for low skill/low qualification parents.
Activities to increase the overall employment rate, to reduce worklessness, and to increase household earnings will be delivered in ways that are open to low income parents. Outreach activities around main programmes will provide routes for low income parents to become more employable or to take up work that pays. Employment/employability advisers will be part of networks of support available around children’s centres and schools in high child poverty areas.
Birmingham members of the Local Enterprise Partnership will have a strand of focus on employability of young people, in particular those young people who are likely to be parents over the next few years.
There will be an improved approach to the development of English language, and other skills, for those adults seeking employment (particularly where these are likely to be parents). /
  • The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has agreed a framework that has Business, People and Places as its key strands. Amongst the Partnership’s aims are the creation of an annual average of 10,000 private sector jobs (net); developing a much more highly skilled workforce; and improvements in transport and digital connectivity. All of these aims are for an area larger than Birmingham but there will be a strong emphasis on employment/employability for Birmingham residents.
  • As part of the wider Local Enterprise Partnership activity there will be an Employment & Skills Board for Birmingham which will address four key challenges:
  • The low skills base in parts of the area;
  • Levels of youth unemployment;
  • The need to develop closer, more effective links between education and businesses;
  • The need to ensure that current and future skills needs are understood, planned for and delivered in the context of the larger vision for development in the area
  • There will be an increase in the number of jobs available to city residents, including residents of areas of high child poverty. In addition to resources from the Growth Fund it is expected that the Local Enterprise Partnership will use a substantial allocation of the Growing Places Fund to generate further economic activity. The approval of a city-centre enterprise zone will also allow retained business rates to lever in additional private sector investments that will bring increased job creation in the city.Birmingham City Council is also using its procurement powers to lever suppliers to bring forward appropriate jobs and to create apprenticeship opportunities. This is estimated to be able to produce 5400 jobs over 5 years with a proportion of these coming in 2011-12. Similar leverage will be looked for via the City Council’s planning agreements.
  • The Employment Access Team will continueto work with developers and employers to help them meet their contracted training and employment targets. These opportunities will then made available to organisations supporting unemployed priority residents into employment and apprenticeships.The Employment Action Team will also work with the City Council’s planning function to ensure that developments and end-use employers are linked to the city’s priority to raise employment rates through Section 106 clauses/agreements. Over 30 Targeted Recruitment and Training Agreements are in place allied to key development sites across the city.
Current examples include Network Rail(in respect of the John Lewis Partnership store creating circa 650 new jobs); Tesco Swan Centre, Yardley and 18 additional retail units(circa 500 jobs); Longbridge Town Centre(an umbrella Targeted Recruitment and Training Agreement has been signed off with St. Modwen for the 10,000 projected jobs to be created on site, and a virtual team established to support recruitment as the site develops).
Current examples of Employment Action to support priority customers into employment and apprenticeships across strategic sites include:
Birmingham Gateway New Street Station (367 construction jobs and 315 workforce development opportunities; to October 2011, 92 local residents had secured employment, including 6 new apprenticeships);