Intervention projects help to cut care figures, DfE research suggests
Neil Puffett
Friday, October 21, 2011
Areas with established family intervention projects are seeing fewer children taken into care, emerging research by the Department for Education (DfE) has suggested.
According to a senior civil servant in the DfE, statistics currently being collated show that elements of family intervention work may be addressing issues that could otherwise have led to children being taken into care.
Speaking at the National Children and Adult Services (NCAS) conference in London, Nick Lawrence, head of the DfE’s families at risk division, said trends are emerging but stressed that more work is needed on the data.
"Some data suggests those areas that have had family intervention operating for more than a year or two are showing measurable reductions in numbers in care," he said.
He added that it could be the case that intensive support schemes identify families that are struggling, with children who may have ended up in care had the family not been identified.
Intervening with troubled families is currently high on the political agenda for the government.
Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families.
However, the infrastructure for doing so has suffered in recent months due to funding cuts with charity Action for Children revealing earlier this month that five of its family intervention projects services had closed in the past 12 months and two more were under threat of closure.
Earlier this week, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles told council leaders they must come up with a plan on tackling the issue by Christmas and identify the problem families, know how much they cost, what interventions are used and what is working.
Speaking at the NCAS conference Kim Bromley Derry, a member of the National Family Intervention Strategy Group, said work is ongoing to "pull together" all the information available relating to family intervention and links with numbers of children going into care.
"We are keen to give people information that helps them with their own care services in their own areas," he said.
"The second step is what interventions made that happen or were there unique circumstances in that area that made it happen.
"We are working on it and hopefully in the next couple of months we can pass it on to colleagues."
