Putting the fire behind early intervention

It’s been a busy time for champions of early intervention in children’s services.

On 15th April 2013, the Early Intervention Foundation was launched, marking a key milestone in the government’s pledge to tackle problems faced by some of the UK’s most vulnerable families.

Chair of the foundation, Graham Allen MP, spoke at an annual children’s services event hosted recently by Capita. In his speech, he underlined the critical role of local government in establishing early intervention nationally, and explained how the foundation aims to support this initiative.

The event was a valuable opportunity for children’s services staff to hear about initiatives across the country which are cutting crime, encouraging school attendance and enhancing the overall health and wellbeing of the nation’s children and their families.

With the fledgling foundation now up and running, it seems likely that early intervention will play a greater part in shaping public services in the coming years. But Graham Allen highlighted a real need for examples of successful early intervention projects to be shared through the foundation as this will be key to improving the lives of more vulnerable children and families.

The wealth of data being collected on children and families by council staff will be fundamental to underpinning the next stage of the early intervention journey. Information from schools on attendance and achievement along with data from agencies involved in health and social care and the police can help councils to gain a greater understanding of the real issues that families face.

Many local authorities are making excellent use of this key data to identify and help their most troubled families, or take action to improve the prospects of children who are at risk of becoming Neet (not in education, employment, or training).

Mr Allen has called on local authorities to work with the Early Intervention Foundation to identify key areas where their ability to implement successful early interventions is limited by barriers to data sharing.

I would be interested to hear the views of those of you working with children and families on what can be done to make data sharing simpler to support the foundation in driving the early intervention agenda forward.

Phil Neal is managing director at Capita Children's Services