Gwenda Thomas AM, Deputy Minister for Social Services, Welsh Assembly Government

STRENGTHENING FAMILIES THROUGH INTEGRATED FAMILY SUPPORT TEAMS

Integrated Family Support Teams will improve the lives of those children who are most disadvantaged. Gwenda Thomas, Deputy Minister for Social Services in the Welsh Assembly Government, elaborates on the strategy for this multi-agency approach.

The Welsh Assembly Government is using its new devolved legislative powers to strengthen support to vulnerable children and families with complex needs.

The development of new Integrated Family Support Teams is unique to Wales. The teams are part of the Assembly Government’s proposals outlined in the proposed Children and Families (Wales) Measure, which aims to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged children and families in Wales.

This sets out a range of actions to support families and to help tackle poverty. While poverty itself is not always responsible for difficulties in people’s lives, it can sometimes exacerbate difficult situations. We must, therefore, tackle this on all fronts — whether that is education, health, social services or employment opportunities.

The new multi-agency teams will bring together social workers, family workers, substance misuse professionals, nurses and health visitors to work directly with families to protect and support vulnerable children.

The teams will help identify families with problems earlier and work intensively with families to make the necessary lifestyle changes in order to keep a child or children at home.

The specialist teams will also identify earlier those parents who are unable to carry out their parenting roles so that alternative care arrangements can be made.

The new teams will also be able to work with children and families where children have already been taken into care and, with support, look to enabling the child to move back home where it is safe to do so and will better connect children and adult services with a focus on the family.

As well as supporting children and families, the new teams will provide supervised training and development for other staff working within the NHS in Wales and local authorities.

The training will include a range of techniques in engaging families with complex needs and delivering interventions based on the needs of individual children and families to improve the outcome for all involved.

The teams aim to develop closer working and integration of NHS and council services and overcome silos that can currently exist between some children’s and adult services.

The aim is that the new teams will be rolled out throughout Wales, but I am initially seeking three pioneer areas to take forward this ground-breaking initiative. I am pleased that there has been significant interest from councils across Wales wishing to be involved in this exciting initiative from the start. I know from talking to frontline staff that they welcome this and are looking forward to the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead.

Staff within the new teams will be able to learn new skills from other professionals, and the pioneering areas will test new social care workforce roles, including the role of a consultant social worker.

The teams will continue to work with other services to support children and parents. This will also complement our wider efforts to improve opportunities for people through education and training to improve the long-term prospects of young people.

The development of the teams will place greater accountability and shared responsibility within and across children’s and adults’ services, and break down boundaries between local government and the NHS.

Under the new arrangements, health professionals will be required to have regard to the needs of the whole family when assessing or treating adults where the welfare needs of a child or children may be affected by the behaviour or condition of adults and to consider whether to refer a child or children to social services.

The development of the Integrated Family Support Teams is a key part of the Assembly Government’s vision for social services outlined in ‘Fulfilled Lives, Supportive Communities’.

We must remember that each and every day social services’ staff across Wales, and indeed the UK, care for and support some of the most vulnerable people in our society — both young and old. And, all too often, this work goes unnoticed or is undervalued. But as someone with a background in the public sector, and being politically responsible for social services in local government before taking on responsibility for these services across Wales, I know and recognise the contribution of social services.

Our strategy aims to support individuals and families to stay together or, as people get older, for them to have the support to remain in their own homes for as long as it is safe to do so.

Therefore, the strategy will:

• Strengthen links between children and adult services
• Promote professional excellence to develop specialist skills of social workers and other practitioners in direct work with children and families
• Develop early support and targeted interventions that meet the needs of all the family members and reduce risks to the child
• Improve the quality of assessments and care management
• Place innovation at the centre of improving service delivery through cost-effective evidenced-based interventions.

In line with our Older People’s Strategy, social services for older people will be designed to better meet the needs of older people.

The new teams will respond to concerns that existing services are not sufficiently meeting the needs of some children whose families have complex problems such as substance misuse, mental health problems or mental illness, learning disabilities and domestic abuse. For these families, there is an increased likelihood that the child’s physical, social and emotional development will be impaired, and for some children there will be repeated or long-term episodes of being looked after by the local authority. In addition, of course, if support isn’t provided these children will fall into the same cycle where they may become dependent on alcohol and drugs, experience mental health problems or domestic abuse. By working together, and providing support earlier, we aim to reduce that cycle that blights so many people’s lives and communities unnecessarily.

The development of Integrated Family Support Teams will require services to be re-modelled, and we will be learning from the pioneering areas to make real and lasting improvements.

I will be working with councillors with responsibility for social services along with my officials and council officers on the development of the new teams in preparation for their implementation next year to ensure that they are introduced smoothly in the three areas.

Initially, the teams will focus on supporting families where one or more parent has a substance misuse problem. They will be rolled out across Wales over the next five years. This will support a range of work that is underway to improve mental health and reduce substance misuse. Often mental health and substance misuse are interlinked, and it is therefore important we tackle both issues together.

The three pioneer areas will each receive up to £600,000 each financial year over the next three years to support the establishment of the new teams.

Evidence suggests that by bringing together a range of skilled staff, a family can get better support and help to overcome the difficult situation they may be in.

It is important also that we harness and develop the skills of experienced practitioners working with families with complex needs and provide career progression opportunities for them to remain working directly with families. The teams will also test the new career framework, including the necessary skills and qualification pathways for the post of a consultant social worker.

It is important that a child is cared for by their parents and that parents are given the support to make that happen. That may include support to come off addiction to a substance, whether that is drugs or alcohol, to protect children and to stabilise the home for the benefit of the parents and child. What will be critical is that parents learn to put their child’s needs before their own In some cases, that may not be possible, and the best option will be to place the child in another setting, for example in a care home or in foster care or with extended family members.

Where authorities have concerns, a range of professionals will come together to decide on what action needs to be taken to ensure the safety of the child. A decision to place a child on the child protection register or to remove them from the parents is not taken lightly and is done by professionals after a thorough evaluation of the evidence.

Currently in Wales, 4,633 children are looked after and of these 2,456 children are in foster care; figures that prove foster carers are key to improving the lives of children in care. About 60 per cent of children in care are there because of neglect or abuse, either due to parental drug abuse, alcohol addiction or mental illness, and this can be exacerbated further by substance misuse. That is why it is so important to tackle these issues first.

The Integrated Family Support Teams will improve access to services and outcomes for children and their families. They will break the cycle of disadvantage that can hurt these families and can persist for many generations.

I know that we are living in difficult economic times with the impact of the recession felt in almost every home and community. The Assembly Government and UK Government are working together to reduce the impact of the recession and ensure that when the upturn happens, we are better placed to grasp the opportunities.

That is why this new Children and Families Measure looks at the wider issues affecting the health and quality of life of children and families.

As well as investing in retraining and skills, Wales was first to introduce free prescriptions — improving access to medication and helping to remove barriers to better health. Having the appropriate medication to manage a condition can dramatically improve the quality of life of an individual and families.

Along with our other measures to tackle the wider issues around poverty and deprivation, which can have a significant impact on children and families, Integrated Family Support Teams will help to make a real difference to the lives of many people across Wales.

For more information on the Children and Families Measure, Integrated Family Support Teams and the Assembly Government’s actions to fight poverty, visit www.wales.gov.uk.

Biography of Gwenda Thomas, Deputy Minister for Social Services in the Welsh Assembly Government

Gwenda was previously a Civil Servant and Chair of Social Services Committees of West Glamorgan CC and Neath Port Talbot CBC, a former Community Councillor and Chair of the Governing Body of Gwaun Cae Gurwen Primary School. She was also Chair of West Glam Campaign for a Welsh Assembly and Vice-Chair ‘Yes for Wales’, Neath. Her interests include health, social services and the rights of carers; childcare and the voluntary sector. She is a fluent Welsh speaker.