Children’s Transformation and Demand Management project

The problem

Due to complex reasons, Shropshire has seen a large increase in the number of children and families who require children’s social care, help and provision. Indeed, the number of children we look after as corporate parents is much higher than the national average.  When children and families are referred to us, it’s often at the moment of crisis, with missed opportunities to prevent such crises escalating. In short, children’s services are under immense strain, with the problems exacerbated by challenges in recruiting and retaining excellent staff.

What is the Children’s Transformation and Demand Management programme?

The overall aim of the Children’s Services Transformation and Demand Management programme is to enhance our offer to children and families so that potential crises are avoided through identifying and intervening as early as possible, and so that we can work with children and families to prevent their situations worsening. We want to support families at the earliest possible opportunities, and make sure they receive the right services at the right time. In so doing, we aim to improve outcomes for our children and families, reduce demand on social care, and reduce short-to-long-term dependency. This will reduce spend and improve outcomes for children and families who need our help.

Why does the project matter?

This project is essential for three main reasons:

  1. It means that we can provide better and earlier support to the people who really need our help, which will help to meet our Healthy People objectives and deliver positive outcomes for our children
  2. It enables us to reduce spend by reducing demand on expensive services
  3. It ensures that families are able to live their best lives, utilising available and appropriate community resources, to reduce need for statutory intervention 

So that means reducing inequalities; assessing our resources to ensure that we’re reaching as many people who need our help, as early as we can; and giving residents the support they need to live healthier and more independent lives. That means using data insights to identify patterns of risk and inequality, as well as working with individuals and communities to improve their life opportunities. In short, this is a long-term project aimed at breaking the generational cycles that hold people back, keep them in poverty, and keep them dependent upon our services and those of our partners. But perhaps above all, it’s about working closely with the families themselves, as early as possible. Ultimately, it’s about helping children and families to live their best lives, now and in the future.

How will the project be implemented?   

In effect, the Children’s Services Transformation and Demand Management Programme brings together a number of different projects, including: the early help offer; ensuring we use our resources more efficiently by collaborating closely internally and with external partners; taking a strength-based approach on prevention and early intervention; and using data, so that our decisions are robust. But underpinning all we do is the understanding that families are at the heart of the whole project.

Who is involved?   

The success of the Children’s Services Transformation and Demand Management project is absolutely essential to our shared goal of reducing spend by £51 million, whilst delivering the Healthy People pillar of the Shropshire Plan. To this end, many teams are working in close collaboration, including: Early Help; Public Health; Children’s Social Care; Education; Human Resources; Finance; Office of the Chief Executive; Communications; Performance; the Customer Service Centre; Strengthening Families; and Housing. We’re also closely involving the very families who require our support.

The programme will only succeed if we work collaboratively, so that all partners are able to prioritise projects, and our work is properly joined up. By reducing cost across the partnership, we will see better engagement, reduction in demand for partners at a more acute services level – and better lives for the families and individuals that we work with, which is our ultimate goal, of course. The benefits to the council are extensive: we will see a decrease in our need to support services that are struggling outside the council, such as maternity services, mental health services, GPs and the like, resulting in less demand.

When is it happening?   

Right now. Future Demand will be managed through projects including:

  1. Early Help Transformation is progressing with plans for a new children’s front door by September 2023, and a revised early help offer by April 2024. A new early help strategy and strengthened partnership working will be among the key deliverables. The new front door will be known as EHAST (early Help and Support Team).

  2. The Best Start in Life (BSIL) project will focus on ensuring that our youngest residents, especially those from conception through the first 1001 critical days of their lives will be supported to develop well, with work planned with a range of partner agencies to support parenting, healthy lives and healthy development.  

  3. Building on a test and learn approach in Oswestry, the Integration programme combines multi-disciplinary practitioner teams with partners from local communities and the voluntary sector, and is currently being rolled out across Shropshire. Site two in North Shrewsbury is already live, and we have plans to increase to six sites by June 2024. These will be aligned to the early help transformation project and the development of Family Hubs across Shropshire.

Current demand is being transformed through:

  1. Stepping Stones, supporting children to remain living with their families or with foster families, and reducing the need to place children in high cost residential placements, so stepping children out of care or preventing them needing to come into care in the first instance through individualised, therapeutically informed work.