Children, families and social exclusion

New approaches to prevention

Morris, Kate, Barnes, Marian

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781447315377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Studien über Kinder in der Soziologie

Many policy and practice initiatives that aim to prevent social exclusion focus on children and young people.This book seeks to consider new approaches to understanding the complexities of prevention, and how these new understandings can inform policy and practice. The authors use evidence from the National Evaluation of the Children's Fund to illustrate and explore the experiences of children and families who are most marginalised. They consider the historical context of approaches to child welfare, and present a new framework for understanding and developing preventative polices and practice within the context of social exclusion. Preventative initiatives such as the Children's Fund have supported large-scale complex evaluations that have generated rich and important data about strategies for addressing social exclusion and what they can achieve. The findings of this book have direct relevance for all those engaged in developing preventative policy and practice and will therefore be of interest to policy makers, practitioners and students of child welfare and social policy more broadly, in providing a timely discussion of key debates in designing, delivering and commissioning preventative services.

SIX

The Children’s Fund: activities and impacts of the partnership strategies

Introduction

In Chapter Five we saw how partnerships targeted different groups for preventative services and action. Target groups may have had the same labels, but how they were defined and the needs that were identified were varied. The lack of centralised prescription as to how preventative strategies might be designed created a situation in which each Children’s Fund partnership could invent its own approach. Local targeting required locally appropriate strategies and thus local context was key to the way in which strengths, needs and opportunities were identified and activities and services were commissioned. Potentially, this enabled innovation and experimentation both in creating new services capable of realising the preventative aspirations of the Children’s Fund and in ‘bending the mainstream’ – working with and through statutory service providers to overcome the barriers to refocusing on prevention that was evident following the implementation of the 1989 Children Act.

In this chapter we discuss the activities that were funded, supported and developed by the partnerships that focused on the target groups discussed in Chapter Five. By exploring them more fully, we are able to highlight and discuss the similarities and differences between partnerships in working with the target groups and the impacts that were achieved. We review the way the strategies were implemented and the impacts they had in the short to medium term, and assess the robustness of the approaches adopted in the context of the aims of the Children’s Fund. The theories-of-change approach adopted by the evaluation enabled us to explore how local interpretation of national guidance was enacted in practice and thus how preventative policy was implemented.

Disabled children

For our analysis, we looked at a Children’s Fund partnership targeting disabled children in a large county authority and one targeting disabled children in a metropolitan authority of three towns. In Chapter Five we saw how different language was used by stakeholders to define this target group and how this interrelated with their strategies. In both partnerships the term ‘special needs’ was used more frequently than the term ‘disabled’, and both partnerships adopted a rather loose categorisation of the precise groups that the strategies were targeting.

The large county authority partnership included both geographical target areas and cross-county target groups within its overall strategy. Within its ‘Children with Special Needs’ programme of activities, it defined the long-term outcome objectives for children and their families as:

• improving emotional health and well-being;

• developing children’s life and independence skills;

• maximising children’s potential;

• improving family relationships; and (related to this)

• preventing family breakdowns.

It also aimed to achieve a range of changes in existing services for ‘children with special needs’ and in the related structures and systems. The intended outcomes for services were:

• increased awareness, capacity and skills within mainstream agencies in working with disabled children and children with special needs;

• an appropriate balance of responsibilities and more effective communication between statutory and voluntary agencies; and

• sustainable services that would prevent the need for more intensive interventions and increased access in terms of numbers and geographical equity.

Once ‘children with special needs’ (termed ‘disabled children’ from here after) had been identified as a theme for cross-county targeting, existing multi-agency locality groups were involved in agreeing appropriate local and county-wide provision. Parents and carers played an important role in these groups, and a network of parent and carer forums linked to the multi-agency groups provided direct input into these decisions. There were tensions in this approach, with not all groups as well developed as others and differences in the links between the groups and the forums. Some parents and carers were unsure of the impact that their involvement had achieved, while some service providers felt that parent and carer voices had been too powerful. Although there was an uneven focus across the county, a range of services and activities was commissioned and established to achieve the outcome objectives identified. The services supported by the partnership included:

Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children: Support and Advocacy Project. This voluntary sector project was developed from existing provision. A parent-led organisation had provided holiday activities for deaf children. The new project aimed to support and advocate for deaf and hearing impaired children, their families and carers, and promote communication and understanding within mainstream services. Parents and carers were involved in the management of the project and in the delivery of activities. The project delivered a range of services including play and leisure opportunities through holiday activities and after-school clubs. It also encouraged and provided support for parent and carer involvement; provided specialist advice and support, for example within educational provision and structures; and offered sign-language training for all the family. Alongside these child- and family-focused services there were also attempts to target awareness training at mainstream agencies and the project aimed to develop and support multi-agency working through links with mainstream and other voluntary and community sector services.

Special Needs Enabling Services. There were two ‘enabling services’ commissioned by the partnership. The first was hosted by a Primary Care Trust. The project aimed to provide enabling support for children with special needs to access mainstream play and leisure services independently from their family. The rationale behind this was that these opportunities would enable children to interact positively with their (non-disabled) peers. There was an expectation that, over time, confidence and skills in working with children with special needs would increase among those working in mainstream services, and that this would facilitate the development of enabling provision. The activities that were put in place to achieve this were one-to-one support for six to 12 weeks for disabled children, enabling them to access mainstream play and leisure services, extended enabling support for children with the most complex needs and trips, and, in recognition of the fact that the impact of disability is experienced by other family members, activities for siblings.

The second ‘enabling service’ was developed in a different locale and was hosted by a private sector organisation with a long history of providing services for disabled people in the area. The service had the same aim as the first, in supporting disabled children and those with a special need to access mainstream services and provision and interact with peers. Although the rationale behind the service was the same as in the first scheme, the activities were more limited, focusing on a six- to 12-week enabling support programme.

City Saturday Club. This club aimed to provide activities for children with special needs and respite for their families and carers. The project was hosted by the city’s well-established multi-agency team, who provided a range of other services and built on existing weekday provision.

Mid-County Saturday Club. This club also aimed to provide activities for children with special needs and respite for their families and carers. It had a large catchment area from across the mid-county area and was hosted by a well-established charitable trust that provided a similar scheme at a school for children with special needs. The project held monthly sessions for different age groups and had a structured programme of activities, ensuring a variety of experience for participants. It also provided day trips.

The second partnership area focusing on disabled children was a metropolitan authority of three towns. This partnership targeted a range of groups across the three towns, based on evidenced need within them. There were a number of general themes across the Children’s Fund programme, for example ‘Taking Part’, and services for disabled children and children with special needs were proposed within a number of these interrelating themes. Thus, a programme of services for ‘children with special needs and disabled children’ was developed as the need for services within each of the towns emerged. Services were commissioned locally and separately, and were then identified as linked through their common target group. The anticipated long-term outcomes focused on children rather than families and included increased participation in services, increased confidence through participation (but also through improved familial understanding and relationships) and enabling children to gain nationally accredited qualifications that would improve their employment opportunities. Another long-term aspiration was that children who had been users of services would subsequently become involved in running services.

This second partnership also identified objectives relating to changes in mainstream service provision. The partnership aimed to improve both accessibility and sustainability of services through the creation of a comprehensive and integrated range of services, and enabling both parents and children to have a strong voice. Its rationale was that the resultant inclusive services would support disabled children. To achieve this, the projects that were commissioned were intended to fill gaps in mainstream provision and included:

Integrated Sports Project. This was hosted by a voluntary sector organisation working with disabled people. It provided after-school clubs in (four, then three) special schools across the authority and one at the organisation’s own centre. A range of sports was provided, but football dominated due to the children’s preferences. The aim was for children to participate and enjoy themselves. Some basic qualifications were available for participants.

Family Activity Project. This was developed by parents who applied for Children’s Fund support to consolidate and expand their activities. The project provided activities for families as a unit so that they spent positive time together and with other families with a disabled child. The project provided a range of activities for families each Saturday afternoon, focused on healthy eating and lifestyles, organised trips during school holidays and provided short breaks for families.

Impacts for children and their families

In both partnerships, children, their parents or carers and workers reported benefits from services designed exclusively for disabled children and those that were designed to enable them to take part in mixed settings, where children felt safe and secure and were away from home. Being with others ‘like them’ enabled children to recognise that others shared similar experiences, as well as widening their circle of friends. There were also reports of children increasing skills and confidence as a result of specialist input. Learning and demonstrating new skills (including to their parents) was important for children whose lack of ability was often the focus of attention. In addition, parents and workers identified the positive impact of more integrationist aspects of the strategies on non-disabled children, suggesting that barriers to inclusion were being reduced. Workers seeking to enable children to take part in mainstream activities such as Brownies also reported adaptations to practices to support such inclusion, although there were also instances where children had negative experiences in attempting to access mainstream services, for example being unable to access local swimming facilities due to a lack of suitably qualified lifeguards.

Parents and carers identified positive impacts of both respite and involvement in services. Respite enabled them to spend more time with other family members as well as ‘just to recharge your batteries’ (Barnes et al, 2006a, p 27). Involvement was an opportunity to learn from other families, to experience the support of others with similar experiences and for the whole family to increase their understanding and improve family relationships as a result. For example, one mother of a deaf daughter described the impact on her non-disabled son: ‘My son’s definitely gained from mixing with other brothers and sisters who are in a similar situation to him. So that’s good because … he was very resentful of his sister for a long time’ (Barnes et al, 2006a, p 27).

The evidence relating to the significance of children and young people as decision makers was more limited. They were asked and consulted about what activities they would like to do, but there was no evidence of involvement in strategic or management structures. There was limited evidence of significant participation of children in services – other than simply asking them what they would like to do. There was also little evidence to suggest that children valued activities they had chosen more than those suggested by staff. For parents, benefits were more likely to be the result of respite or from being service recipients than through being co-producers of services. One exception was a parent-led service in the metropolitan authority, which was a ‘club’ for families that provided play and organised outings. Here the level of children’s involvement was higher and there was evidence that children enjoyed the process of participation in its own right and the recognition it offered them (Barnes et al, 2006a).

Impacts for services

The evaluation failed to identify any major impacts on mainstream service delivery. In the county authority the Children’s Fund services were seen to have filled a gap in statutory provision for disabled children, but there were concerns about their sustainability beyond the funding associated with the Children’s Fund. For example, as well as insecurity for particular services, there was very limited evidence of specific training for play workers in mainstream agencies. The changes achieved were insufficient to drive the long-term aim of greater inclusion within mainstream services, despite this being recognised as necessary to the achievement of objectives in both partnerships’ strategies.

Evidence did suggest that some progress was achieved towards outcome objectives relating to more integrated working between agencies in relation to individual children. Children’s Fund funding enabled some providers to increase the number of children and families using their services, but demand for places outstripped supply. Another aspect of accessibility related to the criteria for access. There was a view that the Children’s Fund had helped lower the thresholds of need at which mainstream agencies would consider providing services, although this had caused tensions over the issue of self-referral.

The metropolitan authority’s strategy had aimed to create a comprehensive range of services, involving more effective partnerships. Yet, the four Children’s Fund services focusing on disabled children had little to do with each other. It was unclear whether the commissioning group had conceived what an integrated programme might look like and whether the four projects would have a role within this. The parent-led group was seen within the local authority as having paved the way in terms of consulting with parents and had contributed to the development of a borough-wide network set up by the social services department and open to any family with a child with special needs. Supporting the development of a genuinely community-led project took time and resources that were seen as beyond mainstream resources or capacity. The objective of increasing service access remained largely unrealised, in spite of efforts within individual services to improve particular aspects of accessibility. A major factor was the location of services and the availability of transport. Children studied in the evaluation came from a limited geographical area, despite the partnership covering three towns. Children using the services also had a limited range of impairments and it is doubtful that these services were reaching the most marginalised disabled children. Staff working in these four services saw their future in the Children’s Trust arrangements and there was limited evidence of action to secure funding from elsewhere.

Black and minority ethnic children

In this chapter we continue to use the term ‘black and minority ethnic’ children as a term of convenience for a broad range of groups. The term was used within our two case study areas...