First 'innovation' funds handed to tri-borough councils
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
London's tri-borough children's services are to receive £4m from the government's innovation fund, the first award to be made under the initiative.
Speaking at a Department for Education “innovation” networking event, children’s minister Edward Timpson, said the combined children’s services of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster, have been handed the cash in order to “completely redesign their entire children’s social care system from within”.
It is hoped that the changes will allow for better use of expertise and evidence, and mean professionals get to spend more time with children and families.
Part of the changes will involve using “detailed modelling and tracking” to identify and support children at greatest risk of coming into care as adolescents, Timpson said.
“We’re putting in £4 million of funding from the programme in recognition of tri-borough’s truly impressive ambition and the opportunity it offers to test a new way of doing things and blaze a trail for others,” he added.
“I hope tri-borough’s success inspires you all to come forward with other ingenious and enterprising schemes.”
The tri-borough authorities have said the new model will:
- Create more time to work with families, by cutting down on bureaucracy and changing the focus from plans and paperwork to hands on, intensive work
- Ensure families with complex needs have one person working with them who can build a trusting relationship with the family to address issues, rather than referring families to multiple agencies and departments
- Develop staff expertise, knowledge and confidence to make them more effective in helping families to change
It is hoped the initiative will lead to a 20 per cent reduction in numbers of looked-after children and those subject to child protection plans, as well as a "significant" reduction in people needing repeat support, and an improvement in morale, job satisfaction and retention of quality social workers.
Andrew Christie, executive director of children’s services across for all three councils, said: “Under our pilot, social workers will work more intensively with families to better understand and help them tackle their difficulties.
"They will help families to build on their strengths and to help them improve their parenting so that children can remain safely at home.
“Our pilot will act as a blueprint for social work services focused on practice, rather than process.”
The funding is the first to be awarded to a service or organisation through the scheme, which launched in February.
The government has said its priority areas for the first year of the programme will be developing new models of social work practice and rethinking support for vulnerable adolescents in, or on the edge of, care.
Timpson has said there will be more funding through the initiative in subsequent years.