NCFH visit to Plymouth Family Hubs

Integration of Family Hubs related services for the benefit of families in Plymouth, including three charitable providers, perinatal mental health, midwifery, youth services, DWP, Health, Voluntary sector services, CA, and schools amongst others connected as a ‘Family Hub Family’, building locality-based responses together for communities. Building community asset is fundamental to the City’s commitment to a supportive, engaged highly trained practitioner and volunteer workforce.

“We weren’t working in silos, but we weren’t working in collaboration either.” In the last eighteen months, whether teams are co-located or operate from different buildings, there is stronger connectivity, communication and coordination across the communities of Plymouth, and within areas of greatest need.

“We don’t move away when things get more complicated, we just build a bigger team!”

“Our strongest commodity is introductions.” Connecting families, workers, services, settings and providers and the links continue to grow, a relational approach that builds trust and belief.

Integrated working

• Barnardo’s, Action for Children and LARK are the three providers of Family Hubs Services, that emerged from children’s centres across 10 sites reaching those areas of higher need, all provide services at different family hubs in the City, but work in conjunction with each other, collaborating and sharing skills and knowledge, working as one service that adapts to the local needs of the communities they serve.
• A multi-disciplinary network of services is collaborating to collectively support families locally. This is a growing network with some services already co-located such as Health Visitors and Midwives with Early Years settings and Family Hubs staff. The network includes co-working and shared bases between organisations across Plymouth. Two of the Family Hubs are co-located within Wellbeing Hubs and more are planned to connect up. Two further Hubs are to be co-located within Youth Hubs and another with a Sports Hub. There are plans to extend the age range of services to meet wider local need.

The Professional workforce have been upskilled through training and university links, they are building a new culture of multi-disciplinary working, ambitious for innovative working that learns and grows, supporting change for families in ways that improve children’s lives

Successful recruitment of leaders and staff who have complementary skills and experience, e.g. prior experience of working with those affected by gang violence, SEND specialist teacher, Social Workers, IDVA’S, IAPT trained staff etc

Flexibility of workforce and provision

• A single father was unable to make weekdays, due to essential work commitments, so keyworker changed her hours to meet on Saturdays for the duration of the course.
• Support for a parent whose child is experiencing emotionally based school avoidance – the child is able to join the parent in the group. Liaison with the school to legitimise this contact, whilst working together on a time-based plan to reintegrate the child
• Offering additional small groups for those who have high social anxiety

Working with befriending and home reach volunteers (Safer Families) and home visiting where families need this

Trauma informed practice approach adopted across the city, embraced by the network of Family Hubs

Connecting with creative offers for families beyond the brief, e.g. domestic abuse worker, youth club, Andy’s Dads’ Club, PAUSE project (for mothers who have previously had a child taken into care). This means the team can stay with families to meet needs and mediate risks which may arise when a family is working with service providers in the partnership who are new to the family

Sustainability of training beyond a programme, e.g. linking parents in groups through WhatsApp so they can continue to support each other

Links to schools, the Primary Family Hub Pilot is a local offer, to connect services around schools through a scaffolding approach – School’s Breakfast Meeting on 22nd July to increase the network, link and build further opportunities

Bespoke support available where needed, including support for families with children and adults with SEND

Effective support from ‘Quick Win Julia’, the finance, welfare and benefits worker, employed by family hubs, in addition to support from DWP worker through Early Help

Recognition and measures of all kinds adopted including small and simple wins, e.g. ‘Have you had a better day today than you did yesterday’

A strong culture of training and an effective model of supervision allows teams to work to people’s strengths and highlight opportunities for development

71 people currently trained in PEEP (Peers Early Education Partnership) this is the model being adopted across the multi-agency network to support Home Learning and place sessions in multiple points across the city in schools, nurseries, and other public accessed spaces.

Workers, new to this type of government funded opportunity, express surprise at the unwieldy data systems and the requirement for small data. “I can’t get my head around the time spent counting not doing” How can their experience help to challenge the normalisation of unrealistic data drops that do not give insight to impact/outcomes? Plymouth have adopted the Outcomes Star to address this to have a more outcomes-based approach. How to make the case more widely, to recognise that high numbers of participants in groups is not always the best measure of success? For some groups, such as Freedom (for those impacted by domestic abuse), small is more welcomed and effective. How to create more opportunities and provision for older children and young people, as requested by families as the network grows but not the staff teams?

How to continue to offer and build on resources that reflect diversity and enable families to feel a sense of belonging and representation in the teams and services.