Plymouth family hubs
Summary of a visit by the National Centre for Family Hubs, 5 July 2024
Summary of provision: a ‘family hub family’
Plymouth are integrating family hub related services for the benefit of local families. Three charitable providers, perinatal mental health, midwifery, youth services, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), health services, voluntary sector services, CA and schools are connected as a ‘family hub family’. Together, these services offer locality-based responses for communities. Building community assets is fundamental to the city’s commitment to a supportive, engaged and highly trained practitioner and volunteer workforce.
Key messages
“We weren’t working in silos, but we weren’t working in collaboration either.”
Over the last 18 months, whether teams are co-located or operate from different buildings, there has been stronger connectivity, communication and coordination across the communities of Plymouth and within areas of greatest need.
“Our strongest commodity is introductions.”
Connections between families, workers, services, settings and providers continue to grow, with their foundations in a relational approach that builds trust.
“We don’t move away when things get more complicated, we just build a bigger team!”
Strengths
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 areas of higher need. They all provide services at different family hubs in the city but work in conjunction with each other. They collaborate and share skills and knowledge, working as one service that adapts to the needs of the communities they serve.
A multidisciplinary network of services is collaborating to support local families. This is a growing network – some of the services are already co-located, such as health visiting and midwifery with early years settings and family hubs.
The network includes co-working and sharing spaces with several other organisations across Plymouth. Two family hubs are co-located with wellbeing hubs and more are planning to connect up. Two further family hubs are to be co-located with youth hubs and another with a sports hub. These services are extending the range of ages they work with, to meet wider local need.
Family hubs in Plymouth have also developed links with a wider range of family support offers, for example, domestic abuse workers, youth clubs, Andy’s Dads Club and the PAUSE project (for women who have previously had a child taken into care). This enables the family hub team to stay with families where need and risk increases, working in partnership with other providers.
Plymouth family hubs have also improved links to schools. The Primary Family Hub Pilot is a local offer that aims to connect services around schools through a scaffolding approach.
A trauma-informed practice approach has been adopted across the city and embraced by the family hubs network.
Workforce development
A strong culture of training and effective models of supervision allow teams to work to people’s strengths and highlight opportunities for development.
The professional workforce has been upskilled through training and university links. They are building a new culture of innovative, multidisciplinary working, ambitious to learn and grow and support positive change for children and families.
Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) has been delivered to 71 people in Plymouth. This model is being adopted across the multi-agency network to support home learning and deliver sessions in schools, nurseries and other public spaces.
Recruiting experienced staff
Plymouth have successfully recruited leaders and staff who have complementary skills and experience. For example, staff experienced in:
– working with people affected by gang activity
– working with people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
– delivering talking therapies.
Other professionals recruited include specialist teachers, social workers and independent domestic violence advocates.
Family hubs in Plymouth also received effective support from ‘Quick Win Julia’, a finance, welfare and benefits worker, in addition to support from a member of DWP staff accessed through early help.
Flexibility
Plymouth’s workforce has been able to offer flexible service provision by:
– making bespoke support available where needed, including support for families with children and adults who have SEND
– offering a single father who was unable to attend on weekdays due to work commitments the opportunity to meet on Saturdays
– supporting a parent whose child was experiencing emotionally based school absence – the child was able to join the parent in the group and staff liaised with the school to legitimise this contact while working together on a reintegration plan
– offering small groups for people experiencing high social anxiety
– working with befriending and home reach volunteers (Safer Families)
– offering home visits where needed.
Sustaining the impact of support
Plymouth have considered the sustainability of training and support offered to families. For example, they have connected parents and carers in WhatsApp groups so they can continue to support each other after their programme finishes.
Embracing wins of all sizes
Plymouth have taken steps to recognise and measure of all kinds of progress, including small and simple wins, asking, for example, “have you had a better day than you did yesterday?”
Areas for development
Getting to grips with data collection
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.”
Their experience could help challenge the normalisation of unrealistic data drops that do not give insight to impact or outcomes. Plymouth have adopted the outcomes star to address this issue and to work towards a more outcomes-based approach.
It will be important to identify how to make the case for considered data collection more widely, to recognise that high participant numbers in groups is not always the best measure of success. For some groups such as Freedom (for those impacted by domestic abuse), small groups are more welcoming and effective.
Provision that’s available and welcoming to all
Based on feedback from families, Plymouth is exploring how to create more opportunities and increase provision for older children and young people. Though the challenge they face is that as the network grows, staff numbers do not.
They are also considering how to continue to offer and build on resources that reflect the diversity of local communities and enable families to feel a sense of belonging and representation in teams and services.
