Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF): year 1 - process evaluation - interim report

2. Experiences of designing and planning WFWF support

Introduction

This section explores CSPPs' overarching WFWF priorities and their approaches to deciding on these priorities and the activities that would help them deliver on their vision.

The initial plan template provided guidance on the criteria for spending the funding and outlined an overarching emphasis on shifting investment towards early intervention and prevention activities, to ensure families can access the support they need before they reach a crisis point. More specifically, the template outlined that funding could be spent on:

• Scaling up existing transformational activity, with the funding only to be used to fund the scaled element (rather than to support business as usual activity).
• Providing additional resource and capacity to support transformation in the system, in line with key national policy initiatives. For example, The Promise.^[13]
• Testing new approaches to delivering holistic whole family support.

The intended groups for WFWF activity to support include families determined to be most in need of support. For example children, young people, and families where there is a risk of a child or young person being taken into care and the six priority groups identified in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan^[14]: lone-parent families, housing where someone is disabled, families with three or more children, minority ethnic families, families with a child under one year old, families where the mother is under 25 years old.

The Scottish Government advised CSPPs that their WFWF activity should ensure that:

• Planning and decision-making are collaborative across all CSPP partners;
• Decisions are based on an assessment of local need (including data in the CSPPs Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA);
• Decisions are taking with appropriate consultation with children, young people and families;
• Whole Family Wellbeing funding is not used to replace or substitute funding for existing services, but supports investment in transformational activity; and
• Commissioning and procurement of services supports the outcomes sought from the funding, by building in plans for sustainability and ensuring that the appropriate range of third sector and community partners are involved.

CSPPs' Whole Family Wellbeing Funding priorities

These WFWF priority aims and criteria for spending align well with how the strategic leads and managers described their CSPPs' overall direction of travel and view of their priorities locally. All CSPPs' visions for the WFWF mirrored the focus of the funding on improving provision of early intervention and prevention support.

CSPP initial plans for Element 1 also highlighted a focus on increasing integration and ease of access, with the need to make the system easier for families to access in the community. Making support more joined-up, holistic and integrated and avoiding the duplication of support from organisations working in silos was a particular priority.

Most CSPP initial plans either do not specify their target beneficiaries (13 plans) or do not express plans to support any groups in particular (8 plans). Three CSPPs state in their plans that they will focus WFWF activity on the six priority groups identified in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan^[15] and another three plan to support children at the edge of care, in kinship care, who are adopted or requiring safe accommodation. Table 2, overleaf, summarises the anticipated groups that will be supported.

Approaches to deciding on WFWF priorities and activity

The overall prioritisation and planning of WFWF activity was typically led by senior leaders working in children's services. For example, chief social work officers or heads of children's and justice services. Managers worked with these senior leaders from across CSPP partners and provided operational support and capacity for the planning and design of the WFWF activity.

In most CSPPs, working groups with representation across CSPP partners were established to help them develop their initial plan. The draft initial plan was then signed off by representatives from across the CSPP partners, before being submitted to the Scottish Government. Strategic leads and managers felt this approach had generally worked well. It was especially important to ensure CSPP partners felt able to input into the design process, and staff from across partner organisations took ownership and responsibility for designing and developing different activities.

The following sections detail the specific approaches CSPPs took to decide on WFWF priorities and activities and highlights any best practice and challenges.

Pre-WFWF reflection and development work

Prior to the announcement of the WFWF, some CSPPs were already having internal discussions about improving CSPP structure and governance, with aims to improve alignment across CSPP partners. CSPPs used the learning from these discussions to support them to determine their WFWF priorities. For example, before the WFWF began, a CSPP had agreed to hold more frequent board meetings and set-up more structured working groups around specific priorities to help build greater accountability and ownership across CSPP partners. This meant that they could quickly establish a working group focussed on WFWF with representation from across the CSPP partners, which helped them to make decisions regarding WFWF at pace.

Many CSPPs had recently undertaken work to establish their priorities for children and family services in the aftermath of the pandemic including participation and engagement with children, young people, families and carers together with focused discussions with third sector organisations and undertaking a self-assessment of Whole Family Support using the Scottish Government's Supporting Families: A National Self-Assessment Toolkit for Change.

An example of this is East Ayrshire, whose experience is summarised in the Spotlight box overleaf. This had involved engaging children, young people, and families, collecting and analysing data on local need, and working with the third sector to map existing services. This meant that in initial conversations about WFWF, CSPP leads already had a good understanding of the priorities and needs of local people, as well as gaps and areas for improvement in existing provision. This meant they could move quickly to developing their initial plan and had a strong evidence base for using WFWF resources.

Spotlight on…

East Ayrshire was encouraged to rethink its approach to holistic family support after reading The Promise and the Independent Review of Adult Social Care^[16] (the Feeley report). The CSPP needed an approach that works for its geographically dispersed communities and allows earlier intervention. East Ayrshire developed the HEART model, an approach to community involvement in planning and commissioning services. It is a place-based community hub model, based around six hubs, to respond to local need. There are six community-based hubs, each with a lead and staff in place to develop capacity for more self-directed support to families. The model existed and plans were underway before WFWF, but the funding allowed the CSPP to 'be bolder' and 'work more quickly.'

Some CSPPs had discussed the WFWF with the Scottish Government before the formal creation of the funding. For example, one CSPP had an informal conversation with existing contacts at SG prior to the announcement of the funding. This helped them to understand about WFWF priorities, parameters of the funding and potential timescales, which supported their development of the initial plan. It was also felt that these pre-WFWF national-level discussions showed that the Scottish Government was interested in the work CSPPs were doing, and in continuing to support CSPPs.

Consulting children, young people and families

Engaging diverse children, young people, and families in the design of support is an activity required of CSPPs. All case study CSPPs consulted with children, young people, and families on their initial plans to some extent; the scale and extent of this varied.

CSPPs engaged children, young people, and families in a range of ways, reflecting the diversity of their service users and their knowledge of how best to consult them. For example:

• issuing an open request to families who had experience of social work intervention to explore what was missing before and during their support from social workers;
• inviting existing groups of service users to share their views on the proposed plans, such as children in care and family councils or working groups; and
• through a working group of partners auditing case files approaching those families to ask about what could have been more helpful at different times.

To engage disabled children, CSPPs involved parents and colleagues from education who have a different role in those children's lives.

Often CSPPs used existing channels of communication with children, young people, and families, including service feedback forms, and regular experience surveys. An example is Glasgow City, whose experience is summarised in the Spotlight box below. This was a relatively easy and quick way to gather insight from families, particularly around areas for improvement with existing support. Some CSPPs took this further and undertook specific activities to gather the views of children, young people, and families around their planned WFWF activity. For example, in-person engagement events and workshops with families. This more tailored activity typically had a broader focus than when using existing channels and meant CSPPs could gather more detailed insight into specific aspects of their WFWF design and planning (e.g., plans for new services).

Spotlight on…

Glasgow City consulted children, young people, and families through in-person engagement sessions throughout the city about their proposed development of Support Hubs. These locality hubs intended to provide a wide range of holistic whole-family support through a consortium of providers, including support with parenting skills, home skills (e.g., energy advice and managing bills), attending appointments and understanding children's development and neurodiversity needs.

Through the engagement sessions, facilitators learned that they had begun developing the Hubs with a pre-conceived idea of what children, young people, and families would benefit most from. As a result of the engagement, they learned families wanted more relational support and that the name of the proposed service did not convey this. This led to a change in the service name from Support Hubs to Support Networks, along with more of a focus on relational support.

Although the consultation activity was undertaken outside of WFWF, this helped them to act on the evidence gathered. Strategic leads felt that WFWF support enabled them to better use this evidence and focus more on relations with children, young people and families, as Support Networks are now a key WFWF priority.

While some CSPPs did carry out ad hoc engagement and consultation with children, young people, and families as part of the WFWF, this was not always the case. One CSPP noted that in hindsight, they would have undertaken more engagement with children, young people, and families, but were constrained by the timescales for drafting the initial plan.

"The one thing I wish we had done in hindsight is more co-production with children, young people, and families to get their thoughts on the proposed interventions."

Strategic lead

Using data to understand local needs

CSPPs collected and analysed quantitative data to understand the needs of local families, impact of current interventions, and gaps in their current provision. Examples of data used included data from the JSNA, school attendance rates and post-school destinations, and local children's health data. Strategic leads and managers described using this data to confirm the focus of their activity (either geographically or for certain target groups) and to design which interventions would be funded by WFWF. This was felt to give strategic leads and managers confidence that they were using the funding in a way that would have the most impact. An example from Fife is summarised in the Spotlight box below.

Spotlight on…

A gap analysis of children's services performance in the previous two years informed Fife's decisions about what activities to use WFWF on to improve support to children, young people, and families.

To inform the development of a new service with the aim of preventing children and young people being taken into emergency care, managers interrogated data around emergency admissions into care, outcomes for children in care, such as school performance and employment, and use of other out-of-hours services such as services delivered in collaboration with the police. The analysis helped the managers to identify a weakness in current service provision: the absence of qualified staff working out-of-hours. This was contributing to children and young people being taken into emergency care.

After identifying this need, managers worked with stakeholders from the police, children's social care, education and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)^[17] to design a new residential service for families with children over 12. This involves outreach workers being on call 24/7 to deal with emergencies as they arise. WFWF monies are being used to establish this new service.

Involvement of third sector partners

Involvement of all partners is a requirement of WFWF, including third sector partners. All six case study CSPPs reported involving third sector partners in discussions around planned WFWF activity. It is important to note at this interim stage that the views of staff working in the third sector have not been gathered. Within the remaining evaluation activity, the views of third sector partners involved with ongoing WFWF activity will be gathered.

"Partners recognise their important role in supporting the delivery of this [WFWF] work…We had support from the third sector...We had discussions about interpretations of what we heard. We then shared drafts [of the initial funding plan]; we then put the drafts out for waves of circulation beyond the core team."

Strategic lead

Like in the case of engagement with children, young people, and families, CSPPs took a range of approaches to engage third sector partners in their initial plans. For example, hosting development days with multi-agency representation to discuss WFWF activity ideas; establishing working groups to develop plans for agreed priority areas; and tapping into existing networks of partners to canvass a wider range of community views (for example, a schools-based WFWF activity utilised the schools' networks to consult other partners schools often work with). An example from Aberdeen City is summarised in the Spotlight box below.

Spotlight on…

Aberdeen City identified that children's needs in the area broadly fell into four categories: children who were at risk of experiencing trauma, children with a disability, children in contact with the law, and children on the edge of care. Aberdeen City then set up four multi-agency groups, including third sector parties, to carry out a series of in-depth reviews of the current support being offered within those four areas, and to begin to identify gaps in holistic provision and what could be development to make the existing support offer more effective. The findings from the reviews have continued to drive WFWF activity in Aberdeen City and supported the improvement of multi-agency working.

CSPP leads reported that some third sector partner organisations were initially confused about the funding and how it would be administered, thinking that third sector organisations would receive a significant part of the funds, separate from the CSPP. In response, strategic leads delivered workshops with third sector partners to explain what the WFWF is, the criteria, its aims, what the CSPP are doing and could be doing better for families, to invite their input.

It is important to note that in WFWF allocation letters, CSPPs were invited by the Scottish Government to request for a portion of their funding to be directly awarded through grant funding to third sector partners, for example through Third Sector Interfaces^[18]. This arrangement was not requested by any CSPPs.

One CSPP found it difficult to gain consensus about WFWF plans amongst third sector partners during the design stage. The reason for this was where potential WFWF plans were felt to be similar, or in some cases duplicating, work felt by partners to already be delivered by third sector partners.

"Some of the feedback is they [Third Sector partners] feel as though they're doing some of this work already…"

Strategic Lead

This was addressed with ongoing discussion between all parties, facilitated by the strategic lead.

Some CSPPs also found it time-consuming to align partner activities and priorities with the overall CSPP strategy and aims. For example, across policy areas, such as alcohol and drugs, mental health alignment, children with care experience or at the 'edges' of the care system. This was seen to be an ongoing area of focus, to ensure that alignment continues throughout WFWF activity delivery:

"…we had to get a list of all of those agencies…so that we knew what each of us was offering and supporting at each of the tiered levels because there's not one place where you can see all of it together…And some of us use the same partner providers but in different ways, so it's making sure that we know who's using what for what purpose and how that all links together."

Manager