A bit of background
In early 2019, the Capacity Team sat down with Wirral Council’s Early Help team to kick-off a new project to determine the best way to design and implement a new Early Help service to fully meet the needs of children and families living in the Wirral.
This project, called ‘Community Matters’ was set up with an awareness that a knock on the door from a Social Worker was the last thing a parent wants (or needs) when family life is getting difficult. A group of community, voluntary, faith and education organisations were commissioned to test a more community-based model of support, where families could be referred to a local organisation to develop a family plan that could address their needs. The vision was simple – to put the power into the hands of families, shifting the focus away from doing things ‘to them’.
Alongside this, the team at Wirral wanted our help to understand the needs of local people, putting this at the heart of a redesign of their approach. We were tasked with getting to grips with what children and families in Wirral really wanted and needed from Early Help, before designing and implementing a new service later that year.
Reviewing the data
Like any good project, we started by finding out more about the problem at hand by reviewing existing data to build a picture of the challenges families were facing on the Wirral. We found that the number of referrals for Children’s Services across the borough was growing year on year. The data told us that the main reasons for Early Help referrals were managing children’s behaviour, child mental health and issues with parenting skills.
Listening to residents
We set about delivering an intensive community engagement project. We know that the only way to really understand a problem, is to see it through the eyes of local people. So, we spent the first year of our partnership with Wirral MBC engaging with over 450 Wirral residents including parents, professionals and young people to gather insights to co-design an innovative and sustainable model of Early Help.
Through this engagement, we heard time and time again that Wirral families didn’t want traditional services. Children and families shared hundreds of examples of wonderful support that they’d received; when they spoke, they rarely described programmes and pathways, they described people. It was loud and clear that human beings were creating life saving networks across the borough and families wanted more of this.
By talking to local people, we were able to identify some key barriers that prevented families from accessing support during difficult times:
- Fear and shame – families described the embarrassment that came with ‘needing early help’.
- Services at breaking point – despite the best intentions of many services, residents told us that professionals are often pulled towards need and reacting to crisis, rather than preventing problems before they escalate.
- Wrong time, wrong place – families wanted Early Help support closer to home, preventing the need for costly travel and transport.
- Poor communication – families wanted well connected services so they didn’t need to keep repeating their story to different organisations or finding support when it was already too late.
Working with the third sector
Community Matters also saw Capacity begin supporting six Wirral VCSE organisations to obtain funding, develop their organisations and build their capacity. Over 18 months, we offered a minimum of 60 hours each to these organisations to focus on their own development needs. We identified gaps and opportunities, supplementing this through Lottery funding to increase the time and resource available.
During this time, we worked with Wirral MBC’s Procurement and Commissioning teams to bring about internal changes that would maximise the number of third sector organisations who secure Local Authority contracts.
Distilling the insight
In June 2020, we launched our ‘Why Community Matters Report’, distilling the insights from our engagement at a locality level, exploring the differences and similarities across Wirral’s various neighbourhoods. Across each locality, we identified key challenges, community assets, gaps in the local support offer and the aspirations for a new model of early help to help the MBC understand what more local place-based Early Help support would need to deliver.
Based on this, we were able to identify four key areas where families wanted more informal support, things that would make a difference earlier and prevent problems from getting worse:
- Mental health advice, guidance and support for the whole family – both children and adults.
- Addressing social isolation and connecting families together to support one another.
- Support skills and development around managing change and key life transitions for parents and their children.
- More opportunities and more variety in how they can support their children where they experience additional needs.
So, what happened next?
Based on our understanding of what families did and didn’t want a new model of Early Help in Wirral to be, we worked with communities, funders and the Local Authority to co-design a new model of Early Help, led by Capacity. Over the following two years (and in the midst of a global pandemic), we made some big leaps in designing a new approach to Early Help that worked for local families.
We worked with families to explore different ways for them to find support and different opportunities for them to engage with Early Help that put them in the driving seat. We continued to work with local, Early Help organisations to build their Capacity, securing additional funding for pilots to be delivered by our third sector partners. Alongside all this, we challenged Council ways of working to fund approaches that gave third sector partners more trust and flexibility through an Alliance contracting model. During this time, we kept asking ‘is this right?’, ‘might this help?’ and ‘what else should we be thinking about?’.
What was the impact?
The result of all this work was the April 2022 launch of a new approach called the ‘Family Toolbox Alliance’ made up of a group of 7 local, third sector organisations who wanted to promote a better approach to delivering Early Help in Wirral. We worked with the Local Authority to make sure this model was commissioned as 5-9 year contract, giving everyone the chance to truly test the approach.
Alongside the core Alliance, the Capacity team worked with families to design, develop and launch a unique support tool – The Family Toolbox Website. A single point of access platform, the purpose of this website was to empower and enable families to find tips and tools quickly and, if necessary, access appropriate local support afterwards. All this was wrapped up with a new awareness building campaign.
This was a complex project, taking place over a number of years. Our team worked intensively to develop the new approach to Early Help, launch the Alliance and get the Family Toolbox website up and running. Once all this work was complete, it was time for us to take a step back and hand the day to day running of the approach and website over to the Alliance.
During its first year:
- 26,650 accessed the Family Toolbox website.
- 123 events and briefings were attended by the team to share information on Family Toolbox.
- 7,854 parents and children worked with the Family Toolbox Alliance.
- £97,750 was awarded in grants by the Alliance to support organisations to deliver services and fill service gaps.
From day one colleagues in Capacity have been amazing – full of ideas, support, energy, drive, and have made this one of the most enjoyable pieces of work I’ve ever been involved in. The trust, collaboration, energy, and belief we shared, really made it something special…. The Family Toolbox has exceeded my expectations and I fully believe it will transform the system, empower families and change cultures.
– Elizabeth Hartley, Director for Children, Families and Education, Wirral MBC
What’s next?
We’re pleased to say that our relationship with Wirral MBC didn’t end here. In fact, we’re currently working with the Council to transform their approach to supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of local children and young people.
