Agenda item

10:30

To inform the Board of the work being undertaken for discussion (HWB7).

Hannah Farcombe, Deputy Director Children’s Social Care, gave a presentation, (a copy of which is attached to the signed copy of the minutes), which informed the Board on the ambitions of the Family Safeguarding Plus model, which was based on best practice and would increase engagement with families by working with multi-agency teams to increase the help families receive (specifically around parental domestic abuse, parental mental health & parental substance/alcohol abuse). Comments were then sought from Board Members.

In response to comments from Councillor Hudspeth, Hannah Farncombe confirmed that having secure tenure and good quality stable affordable housing for everyone, was essential to reduce the cycle and for any family to thrive and was a very important aspiration for the future.

Ansaf Azhar welcomed the project and in particular the focus on prevention and working across organisational boundaries.  In relation to drug and alcohol abuse, public health currently had around 1,000 to 2,000 people in treatment currently, which meant there were 10,000 to 20,000 out there who were drinking heavily not being picked up.  The project would help pick those up and presented a fantastic opportunity to tap into that population group.  He stressed the importance of having a strong evaluation thread on the project.

Councillor Andrew McHugh spoke in support of the project.  He expressed the importance of tapping into schemes such as the scheme by Thames Valley Police had just received money to reduce knife crime and were going to use the money to look into tactical problem solving to divert the children who were likely to offend or be the victim of knife crime and the importance of tapping into such projects.

Councillor Ian Hudspeth pointed out that the Fire Service also presented an excellent opportunity for reporting back to the Council through their community work.

Stuart Bell welcomed the initiative and drew attention to the kingfisher Team who worked with a sub-sect of children, showing how working between agencies and across disciplines could be very powerful and effective.  There was a need to map out the whole range of things that were happening that speak to the space, such as the police, agencies such as the Family Nurse Partnership that did work with teenage families and general adult metal health services.  He cautioned that there would be a need to align our investment decisions with it.

Yvonne Rees, speaking as the district council’s representative welcomed the pilot as a fantastic opportunity to join up services and supported the points made by Councillor Hudspeth on the issues around housing.  She expressed the importance of proving the concept through the pilot to be able to make it a County-wide offer.  She indicated that she would be changing her services to reflect what needed to be delivered in the future.

Councillor Stratford endorsed the scheme and in particular that it supported the prevention programme but felt that the impact on educational opportunities for young people was not covered in the document and the role the school nurses could play in being the first contact to pick up that something is not right in the family.  He supported the points on housing but cautioned that the term ‘home’ should be used when talking to families.

Ben Riley welcomed the scheme, noting the similarities in the model with the work they were carrying out with end of Life and frailty, with similar themes focusing around prevention, multi-disciplinary, the importance around home and  local teams developing a core skills set to build up flexibility and resilience, focusing on building up the resilience of the family to reduce the need for statutory services to take over.  He questioned whether there was an opportunity share learning between the projects.

Stuart Bell requested that officers take the presentation out more widely and that it was considered in any long-term planning.

The Board thanked Ms Farncombe for the presentation and AGREED the recommendations as follows:

·           The Health and Wellbeing Board to endorse and support the Family Safeguarding Plus project

·           The Health and Wellbeing Board to note the governance structure and accept regular update reports on the progress toward implementation and go-live.

·           Support the creation of the system-wide (adult-focused) posts; secure agreements with suitable employing organisations and identify the long-term funding of the posts. 

·           Support the creation of a partnership performance framework to measure and monitor the impact of the new services across a range of outcomes (that cut across traditional service boundaries).