|
Memorandum submitted by Home-Start UK
Call for written evidence
Executive Summary:
o Home-Start
has a wide experience of working with Children's Centres across
o The services provided vary and are often dependent on the strength of leadership in both the Children's Centres and the local community.
o Partnership working needs to be facilitated particularly in areas where Children's Centres are just developing. Home-Start regional consultants play an active part in this facilitation work.
o Suitable indicators for agreed realistic outcomes to assess the effectiveness of universal outreach services need to be developed. These should be used across agencies and proportionate to the service funded.
o Children's Centres are becoming commissioning hubs. This has implications for the funding of local services. Full cost recovery for delivery of a population based service rather than spot purchasing of individual family support is required to ensure sustainability of local voluntary sector providers who are often best positioned to provide out reach work to families.
o The training and developmental opportunities provided by the voluntary sector for their family support volunteers creates a highly skilled and experienced workforce upon which Children's Centres draw.
1. Introduction:
1.1 Home-Start believes that children need a
happy and secure childhood and that parents play the key role in giving their
children a good start in life and helping them achieve their full potential. We
offer support, friendship and practical help to parents with young children, in
local communities throughout the
1.2 The Home-Start network consists of Home-Start Schemes are rooted in the communities they serve - managed locally but supported by the national organization, Home-Start UK, which offers direction, training, information and guidance to schemes to ensure consistent and quality support for parents and children wherever they are. 2. How models of Children's Centres have developed as the programme spreads from the most deprived neighbourhoods 2.1 It is
Home-Start's experience from having over 350 funding relationships with
Children's Centres across England that Children's Centres have developed in
various ways across the country and within each locality the Children's Centres
will also vary in the services offered, the funding of these services and in
their approach to partnership working. It is therefore difficult to generalize
across 3. The range and effectiveness of services provided by Children's Centres 3.1 We would reiterate the point that the range
and effectiveness of services provided by Children's Centres varies across 4. Funding, sustainability and value for money 4.1 Home-Start notes that the funding local
Home-Start schemes receive from Children's Centres across 4.2 These considerations about proportionate commissioning and subsequent monitoring will in turn have implications for sustainability of the Children's Centres and their funded partners. It is vital that both Children's Centre commissioning and Local Authority direct commissioning must risk assess the impact on families of decommissioning a service. Families' needs, not commissioning processes, should direct service provision. Without this focus on the continuity of service support to vulnerable families safeguarding issues may arise.
4.3 Home-Start
also has operational relationships with Children's Centres which are not based
on funding arrangements. In 2008/09 Home-Start schemes across
4.4 The value gained from working with volunteers to provide family support is beginning to be calculated in terms of social return on investment. This approach captures the unique value that often small local voluntary organizations can bring to centre based family support services. 5. Staffing, governance, management and strategic planning 5.1 Local voluntary organizations contribute to the workforce development for trained family support workers by providing the training and opportunities for supervised family home support. Children Centers' family support workforce are being recruited from Home-Start volunteers. This developmental route for volunteers is to be welcomed as it contributes to building local social capital and addressing work linked deprivation. However, as part of strategic planning for the workforce for Children's Centres, Home-Start would call for the recognition of the valuable part that the voluntary sector and volunteerism plays locally in developing a skilled family support workforce and the recognition of the associated resources required to do so.
6. How well Children's Centres work with other partners and services, especially schools and health services 6.1 Home-Start
schemes prioritize the development of their relationships with local Children's
Centres and work with them in a variety of ways across o Running Home-Start family groups within centres [the reputation of these groups attracts families into the centres] o Having office space in a centre either permanently or as a type of 'hot desk' arrangement o Using the facilities o Running specific projects o In formal trustee relationships between Children's Centres and Home-Start schemes
6.2 The
management and leadership of both Children Centres' and local agencies
influence how partnerships develop. Facilitation can be required to build these
relationships particularly in areas where Sure Start was not established and
Children's Centres are now being developed. The pro-active role of
6.3 Two thousand three hundred and thirty three referrals [8.6% of all Home-Start referrals] came from Children's Centres in 2008/09 and we note that this figure is increasing. The majority of these referrals are around outreach work. These Children's Centres recognize the expertise and track record that Home-Start has in developing relationships with families who are reluctant to engage with Centre based services.
6.4 It is
documented that Sure Start programmes are most effective when health visitors
are engaged in reaching out to families [1].
Home-Start across 7. Whether services are being accessed by those most in need and how effective they are for the most vulnerable. 7.1 In order to ensure that services offered within Children's Centres are being used by the most vulnerable requires effective outreach and active signposting work by agencies who have developed the trust of 'hard to reach' families. Last year, of the 9,600 families for whom Home-Start support ceased, 4000 primarily asked for support to use other local services - 90% of these families said Home-Start had help this improve. Active signposting means not just giving a family information about a service in a Children's Centre but working with that family to enable them to have the motivation, confidence and transport to make crossing the threshold a reality. In rural areas Home-Start schemes have to work with families to ensure that lack of transport does not preclude them from accessing services centralised within Children's Centres.
7.2 Needs are concentrated in areas of high deprivation and specific groups but we also recognize that families with needs are also spread throughout whole populations. The analysis of families' postcodes identifies families in need of support in areas with low deprivation scores. It is the experience of Home-Start that in order to reach the most vulnerable with preventative support an open universal service which is perceived as non judgemental enables those with needs, whether from an area of high deprivation, or not, to access support. The following is a quote from a mother supported in her local community by several services. It illustrates the importance of the relationship developed with a vulnerable family and the approach taken to engage and maintain that relationship with families who are sometimes reluctant to use services. This mother, through very changed circumstances, developed very pressing needs: "I never expected to need the support of Home-Start. I was educated, well off and an active member of my community. Within a year I lost everything and plunged into a nightmare. My alcoholic husband lost his job and became abusive to me and our small children...............We live near one of the best Sure Start children's centres in the country and have received invaluable help from the staff there, but for Polly, Maisy and myself the Home-Start Drop Ins were of greater support. Have you ever been outside on a cold, grey night and wished you could be warm inside one of the cosy-looking houses? Our Home-Start Drop In is like entering that golden space and finding unconditional welcome and non-judgemental friendship. After our first visit, Polly refused to go back to any of the other groups we had tried (even though many of them, with more funding, had better facilities and newer toys)".
7.3 Gaining and maintaining engagement with 'hard to reach or out of reach' families takes time, resources and the expertise of staff and volunteers gained from years of experience. Volunteers have a particular role in building relationships with reluctant users because they are volunteers. An independent evaluation of a Home-Start scheme referred to the added value of having a volunteer providing the family support: "developing and maintaining a trusting relationship with someone who has not simply been allocated to them; who has no professional title or uniform; and who has no agenda to pursue other than that which has been agreed with the family, is what works for them. It is this voluntary relationship in which they [the family] will invest to help them make significant changes in their lives". It is now being recognized more broadly that volunteers can play and do play a very valuable role in supporting families with complex needs.
8. Recommendations for Action:
8.1 All Children's Centres have funded relationships with Home-Start schemes which take into account full cost recovery for delivery of a population wide universal home based service rather than spot purchasing individual family support.
8.2 The strategic aims, management and commissioning plans of Children's Centres incorporate the expertise of medium/small voluntary organizations and volunteers in providing local family support.
8.3 The workforce development undertaken by the voluntary sector which contributes to the provision of highly skilled and experienced family support workers required for Children's Centre is recognized and funded.
8.4 The outreach work undertaken for Children's Centres by other agencies is identified within the Children's Centres' performance measures as an indicator of the partnership work being undertaken.
October 2009
[1] Belsky,J. et al (2006) Effects of Sure Start local programmes on children and families from a quasi-experimental, cross sectional study BMJ 332-1476-1478. |