The coming six months will be crucial in setting the course for children's services into the mid-2020s, says Jo Casebourne, chief executive of the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF). She says the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review - due to take place in the autumn - comes at a time of heightened policy interest in the challenges facing vulnerable children and families, and growing recognition that there needs to be more emphasis and spending on early help services.
"The spending review is a real opportunity," she says. "It is an obvious vehicle to translate the upswell of interest into action."
The foundation, set up in 2013 by former Labour MP Graham Allen, gathers and shares latest knowledge on best practice in early help with policymakers and service providers, and Casebourne has spent many hours recently meeting senior civil servants and politicians to discuss the need for greater investment in prevention and the benefits it will reap.
Linking departments
"Our role is to help individual departments in their thinking and we're doing that for the spending review and supporting internal discussion," she explains.
"We're also trying to bring government closer together - because we are funded by multiple departments, we are in a unique place to ask ‘how is one department's policy linking to another's policy?'.
"We are talking to the Cabinet Office and Treasury about what a joined-up spending review settlement should look like for vulnerable children. We still don't think we know how much is being spent on vulnerable children as a whole - it's still not easy to get that data. Is what's being spent across government being done in an effective way? Do we have a central strategy? Our report Realising the Potential of Early Intervention calls for a government taskforce to do some of that join up and it feels like it needs that senior ministerial approach. In the meantime, we are in there doing that ourselves."
The report, published last November, highlights the fragmented nature of early intervention policy - six government departments are responsible for different early help programmes - and makes the case for a taskforce to co-ordinate spending and improve initiatives. While government departments are broadly convinced about the value of early intervention, winning over the Treasury is harder.
"Early intervention is about investing in long-term outcomes," says Casebourne. "You don't see the benefits of school attainment, which leads to better labour market outcomes, when you're working with a group of two-year-olds on early language development - it's going to take time to see the results of that investment.
"It's not a savings mechanism, it's an investment in outcomes for children and we should care as a country about that."
Troubled families
Casebourne admits there are still "massive gaps" in the early intervention evidence base to demonstrate the impact on improved outcomes. However, she points to the recent analysis of phase two of the Troubled Families programme to illustrate that it can be done. The analysis, published in March by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, found families involved in the programme and receiving support through it were less likely to have children taken into care than a control group.
The evaluation is "an excellent example of government putting serious time and resources into assessing whether a big social policy actually works", she says.
"It's not impacting every outcome, but is having a positive impact on some measures. We think that's because there's been this consistent focus on the quality of evaluation and long-term outcomes. That rigour has helped make the case for the programme - given the acute pressures in social care it is vital that this funding continues."
Securing the future of the Troubled Families programme is high on the list of Casebourne's spending review priorities - the £440m, five-year funding programme ends in March 2020, with no indication yet of what, if anything, will come next.
"It is one of the ways early help is funded and if it didn't continue, it would remove most funding for early help locally," she says.
Rather than just a continuation of the existing programme, the foundation is making the argument for a more ambitious approach, with more outcomes being added and funding levels increased.
"We think more can be done about delivering more intensive evidence based support to some of the families with the most disadvantages," she explains.
"There's a whole range of intensive parenting support that we know works for families with complex needs - some councils can fund that as part of, or alongside, Troubled Families, but it's not happening everywhere."
Programme evolution
Another evolution of the programme should involve the skills development and recognition of the early help workforce, says Casebourne.
"That hasn't been happening in a centralised way, but all the evidence suggests that's important if you are to get good outcomes for children," she adds, contrasting it with recent efforts to boost the status of children's social work.
"Social work is a profession and has workforce bodies such as the What Works Centre for Children's Social Care," she explains. "Early help isn't as formalised - there's not a single profession, qualification nor workforce body.
"We think there's a role for the next phase of the Troubled Families programme to put more structure around that as workforce development hasn't been a focus so far, that's been left to councils to work out individually."
Other key spending review policy priorities include support for vulnerable parents of children aged 0-5, youth knife crime, and what comes out of the cross-government review of services for children in the first 1,000 days of life (see below).
"The country is desperate to return to domestic policy making and face the big issues," says Casebourne. "There is a social responsibility for us to ensure children have the best opportunity in life - if we can't unite around that, then what can we unite around?"
Role of health visiting key to first 1,000 days review
The EIF is sitting on the academic advisory panel of the first 1,000 days review led by Andrea Leadsom MP. The review is looking at what support is provided for children from conception to age two across six government departments with the aim of developing recommendations for better coordination of services. Health visiting, specifically the five mandatory early health checks, play a central role in this agenda, says Jo Casebourne.
"We know they work to pick up a range of issues for families - if those checks aren't happening, it's a real problem," she says. "Let's get the basics right and ensure there's enough funding to deliver the mandated checks.
"We think there should be a more intensive health visiting programme for the most vulnerable families as they most need the support health visitors provide and can then refer them onto the evidence-based programmes."
The review is also looking at the role of children's centres, as it has been commissioned by the Department for Education to understand the role of children's centres in providing effective support for parents and communities.
"That's going to focus on helping local areas make informed decisions about how they should configure services and integrate locally; for some it might be children's centres, for others it might not," Casebourne adds.
