Families that have one or more parents with vulnerabilities or problems such as alcohol misuse, drug misuse, mental health problems, domestic abuse or criminal involvement are shown to have poor outcomes for the children as well as the adults. These problems are often overlapping creating complex families that present a challenge for services to deal with effectively. These complex families can cost public services between £250,000 and £350,000 a year to deal with.
Government policy and evidence of effective programmes support a move towards giving greater priority to vulnerable families, and adopting an approach to build their resilience through whole family assessments, whole family care plans and intensive whole family interventions.
If we can see these families coming (by identifying them through services or data) and know that they are not likely to do well in our normal service responses (by acknowledging the evidence of poor outcomes, difficulties in intervening effectively and the resultant high costs to public services), then we have a duty to do something different with them in future. We can intervene early rather than wait for a crisis to happen.
Adults who are parents and have more than one vulnerability is the norm for adult and children’s social care rather than the exception. The prevalence estimates we have generated show that these issues should not be considered to be a “hidden harm” or a specialist issue – these families form the bulk of those who regularly attend key agencies and should be considered a core issue and be afforded greater priority.
A more tailored response is needed from adult services for parents with multiple vulnerabilities as evidence shows that these parents are likely to drop out of standard support services or be hard to engage.
Strategically we should concentrate our resources where it will have the biggest impact, especially during a time of public sector spending cuts.
This means identifying and targeting high cost families with programmes that have been shown to work and save money.
The current set up of services encourages the fragmentation of families into individual members (adults and children) with numbers of individual problems dealt with separately, in spite of research demonstrating how linked these problems are and that parent’s affect the whole family’s outcomes not just those of the individual.
Intergenerational transmission, where many of these parental vulnerabilities mean that their children are significantly more likely to experience similar problems, typified by local case studies we were told about showing 2nd and 3rd generation drug misuser's and children in care, demonstrates the need to adopt a “never too late to intervene” principle to ensure that services do not give up on families or pre-judge their ability to improve.
The evidence shows that you can have success and change the lives of vulnerable families by pro-actively engaging them, building their resilience, reducing their risk factors and strengthening the family to cope by themselves in the long term.
There appears to be an opportunity for a “Win-Win” situation. By developing and building capacity for whole family interventions with families with complex needs, the evidence suggests that it can be better for the outcomes of the children and the adults in that family, whilst also serving to reduce the cost burden on social and health care, and even improving staff recruitment and retention.
In short, now is the right time to look again at families with complex needs and use the evidence and policy direction to change our approach for the better.
The above information was produced by our partner organisation Tonic as part of their work with local authorities and other providers to better support families with complex needs.
Alongside The Training Effect they offer a range of services that can help local authorities and other providers to better support these families, saving money, improving efficiency and improving outcomes for children and families.
For further information please take a look at our websites.
Mark Bowles
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