Positive changes for children at the edge of care

PROJECT

L-Edge

PURPOSE

To create positive outcomes for at-risk children and young people on the edge of being taken into care

FUNDING

£75,000 for 18 months from BBC Children in Need

BACKGROUND

Charity St Giles Trust launched the London Edge of Care (L-Edge) project in November 2020 to support families with children at risk of entering care.

Issues affecting those involved in the project include disability, mental health problems, substance misuse, domestic violence, relationship breakdown, poverty, poor housing and poor engagement with education.

ACTION

St Giles Trust uses people with experience of different situations to support others struggling with similar problems. The L-Edge project employs one caseworker with experience of the care system. She has been supported by two young people employed through the government’s Kickstarter scheme and one volunteer.

Children and young people have been referred to the project by children’s social care services, healthcare providers and other St Giles Trust projects. By the end of July 2021, the project had worked with 16 children aged between five and 18 plus 24 siblings. Since then, three more families have joined the project while some of the original families have moved on.

Six of the 16 children initially referred to the project did not attend school. Six aged 11 and older were victims – or suspected victims – of child criminal exploitation, three were victims – or suspected victims – of child sexual exploitation and one eleven-year-old girl was a victim of both.

The project aims to provide practical help with issues such as housing and debt to give children an improved sense of safety and security. It also helps parents and carers to build their parenting skills, increase their confidence, manage their emotions more effectively and enhance how they interact with and support their children. Where children are at risk of, or are being, criminally exploited, the project provides practical and emotional support to help them understand how they have been groomed and move away from those situations.

The first few sessions will see the caseworker meet the family to find out more about their circumstances and put together a care plan and risk assessment. “A lot of the families are affected by domestic violence so we might be applying for non-molestation orders, or establishing a support network,” says Nicola Holdren, children and families manager at St Giles Trust. “We begin with the basics like housing, benefits, and school – a lot of the children don’t even have uniforms.” An interim evaluation of the programme, carried out in October 2021 by JH Consulting, found most families involved with the project were being supported with at least four urgent and often interlinked priorities.

The project will also start to engage families in other activities such as taking children to parks, museums and restaurants. Parents might be referred to the St Giles Trust Pantry, which provides fresh produce and advice on creating healthy meals. “It is about engaging with families and developing social skills as well as providing food,” says Holdren.

Valerie*, a single parent of two children with special educational needs and disabilities, experienced significant childhood trauma, suffers with anxiety and agoraphobia, and uses cannabis daily. The L-Edge caseworker was able to get her on a waiting list for counselling when her social worker said that was not possible because of her cannabis habit. The caseworker was also able to signpost Valerie to financial support for school uniforms and transport to school.

“I like the social worker but she’s never got time. She tells me she’s done something and it turns out it was for someone else she’s seeing,” says Valerie. “It really makes a difference having the caseworker’s help because she’s been through similar things and really gets it.”

Central to L-Edge is the concept of “future-proofing” – ensuring families have the skills and resources to avoid a “revolving door” cycle of involvement with social services. “For example, if we’re working with a family whose benefits are wrong, first time round we would make that call but talk them through the process,” says Holdren. “The next time it would be them on the phone.” There is no limit to the amount of time families can engage with the project.

Future-proofing also involves helping families, who may be wary of engaging with outside agencies, understand the benefits of working with social services, and supporting parents to recognise warning signs of involvement in criminal or sexual exploitation. “Families can be quite dismissive, saying ‘It’s just a bit of weed’ but we break it down for them. Where is he getting it? Who is he coming into contact with? What are the risks?” says Holdren. Repairing relationships between children and parents, and between parents, also helps to lessen future risk by creating a more resilient family unit.

Last year, L-Edge worked with Little Angel Theatre in Southwark on a four-day superhero-themed puppet workshop. “When an older child in the family is part of a gang, younger children get less time with the parents as mum and dad are trying to help the older child,” says Holdren. Children and parents were encouraged to think about their own “super power” to help them focus on strengths rather than weaknesses then created puppets to showcase those powers.

Challenges have included engaging with social workers and other agencies and maintaining clear boundaries between what the project is able to offer and the responsibilities of the local authority. “Once agencies are involved it is quite easy, it is getting them to realise we are there,” says Holdren. Covid brought its own challenges but has also been a factor in the project’s success, as L-Edge continued to engage with families when other organisations did not. “Families were reaching out to agencies like Citizens Advice but they were closed,” explains Holdren. “We were able to offer support, which built up a rapport quite quickly.”

OUTCOME

None of the children of families engaged with the project have been taken into local authority care to date, even though several families were on the cusp of court proceedings to remove children when they were referred to the project. The interim evaluation focused on the 16 families – with a total of 40 children – who took part in the project before July 2021. It found 10 families had received support for child sexual exploitation, seven had been supported to help children return to education, 10 had received parenting support and eight mediation to repair family relationships. Twelve families had received support to access community activities with 11 referrals to the St Giles Trust Pantry.

Three families had improved housing situations, three improved parenting and parent-child communication and two had improved financial circumstances. Of the 16 children who were initially referred, six children had improved safety while five had improved health and wellbeing.

The evaluation points out any improvement is hard won and starting points are very low given the complexity of need and the deep-seated disadvantage faced by these families. “Progress takes time and there are frequent setbacks along the way,” says Holdren.

WHAT’S NEXT?

St Giles Trust’s peer adviser programme recruits people who have experienced disadvantage and are able to use their past experience to advise and support others. Peer advisers are also able to study for a qualification in information, advice and guidance while undertaking supported work placements. The charity had hoped to include peer advisers in the L-Edge project on top of the support from the caseworker but this proved difficult because of the pandemic. However, the trust plans to include peer advisers in the project going forward and hopes to recruit another caseworker.

The Children in Need funding comes to an end after 18 months but the charity has put bids in for further funding. It hopes to roll the programme out across all London boroughs then to Kent, Surrey and Wales.

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