Troubled Families Support - Waltham Forest

Interface provided independent project work to support a business case for commissioning further family practice and modifying current delivery of family practice in Waltham Forest.

This consisted of:

• comprehensive Mapping of existing family practice in Waltham Forest that is being directly delivered and commissioned by the local authority
• a report of the areas where there are gaps in provision
• recommendations for Troubled Families investment
• recommendations of where services could be streamlined

Government estimates suggested that Waltham Forest had approximately 760 families identified with multiple problems.

We considered the benefits for Waltham Forest in driving forwards a family-based approach, including reduced duplication across public services, preventing the escalation of families into more resource intensive support services or interventions (avoidance), and improved outcomes by effective multi-agency activity. 

It was recognised that agencies tended to work with an individual family member, following their own assessment processes, delivering services in accordance with their own organisational culture.  The result was usually for all of this separate activity to generate a series of single agency perspectives, rather than looking at the wider family dynamics as a whole. 

We further supported Waltham Forest through our training offer to transform the skill set of front line staff and of the managers supporting these staff, to enable a “whole family” approach to be delivered through existing staff teams. Staff needed to take on a broader range of responsibilities for a family.