Groundbreaking project charts way forward to help families and avert children from care

Key findings:

• A focused reimagining pre-proceedings workstream in a local family justice area can create better conditions for families to get help earlier.

Early indicators in Dorset, which has also been part of the DfE’s families first pathfinder, point to a reduction in care proceedings being issued, an increase in the number of family and friends considered for kinship care arrangements, and stronger services for families.

• Effective change requires a local vision for pre-proceedings that families, children’s services, the family judiciary, local family justice board and other agencies and organisations have all collectively developed and bought into.

This kind of system wide partnership working is critical to making any meaningful progress.

• Children and families’ insights and expertise open the door to designing and delivering better services, and this requires a clear strategy and robust engagement mechanisms.

The project has generated learning on how to effectively work with children and families to co-produce better services. This includes tools and methods to understand the journey that children and families make through systems and processes, and to identify points of strength and points of difficulty where change is needed.

Other areas of learning from the project include the benefits of:

• Local areas co-producing template communications to families, like the pre-proceedings letter, to support better understanding and partnership working between families and professionals.
• Strengthening local family group conferences services and ensuring families understand the different types of meeting they may be involved in the child welfare system.
• Developing a better understanding of the local kinship care population and how this can then inform the co-production of a strong kinship local offer.
• Improvements to data collection and analysis to combine quantitative information with the deep insights of children, families and practitioners.

The project has also highlighted effective approaches and created new resources, to support decision makers, practitioners and families in designing and delivering better systems and services. This includes:

• Using journey mapping as a structured, visual method to explore how family members and practitioners experience child welfare processes and services. A guide to using two complementary journey mapping approaches to explore and understand the experiences of families and practitioners involved with the child welfare and family justice system.
• A film, produced in partnership with Speakup Rotherham, designed to help parents with learning difficulties or disabilities, and those that are supporting them or working with them.

Caroline Lynch, Legal Director at Family Rights Group and project co-lead, said:

“There is a huge body of evidence to show that early, effective partnership working with children and families is crucial. It can prevent difficulties from escalating, help to keep children safely within their family and avert the need for care proceedings.

“Family Rights Group’s Reimagining pre-proceedings workstream set out to turn that evidence into a co-produced actionable approach that could be applied in local family justice areas and make significant change for children and families. Our work also revealed the conditions critical to that approach being effective, including the need for a strong co-produced local vision for early and pre-proceedings work that everyone is bought into, and a clear focus on working with, rather than doing to, families.’

“At a time when there remain high numbers of children entering the care system, and a series of reforms being driven by national government, Reimagining pre-proceedings provides important learning for local areas and national decision-makers about how to build a system that supports more children to remain safely in their family.”

Pam Ledward, Director for Social Care Practice and project co-lead said:

“The evaluation of Dorset’s Reimagining pre-proceedings pilot makes plain that a clear strategy and robust mechanisms for family engagement are vital foundations for co-producing a new approach to pre-proceedings.

“Journey mapping is highlighted as a valuable method for exploring and understanding the experiences of families and practitioners involved with the child welfare system. We are publishing a new step-by-step guide to using journey mapping sessions, which has been developed with Claire Mason, and made possible by the generous participation of parents, kinship carers and practitioners.

“The evaluation also provides important messages about ethics and good practice in co-productive work.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, former President of the Family Division and Patron of Family Rights Group said:

“This evaluation report of Dorset’s reimagining pre-proceedings pilot is important. It is right to spend time and thought to get things right before proceedings start. This report improves understanding of the ways in which all those in a local family justice area can work together to strengthen and improve the local system.”

Caroline Thomas, independent research consultant who carried out the academic evaluation said:

“This evaluation report provides a unique insight into how a local family justice area approached and created the conditions in which pre-proceedings were reimagined. The evaluation’s ‘10 learning points’ offer policy makers and practitioners ideas and suggestions about how they might contribute to wider efforts to reimagine pre-proceedings for the benefit of children and families.”