Wirral Council's Family Toolbox wins MJ Award in the Transforming Lives category

“The Toolbox prioritises people over systems and makes sure that all families can access something that can help them straight away. This open-door policy removes any potential barriers or complications to accessing our services, which encourages engagement from families, and maximises our chances to engage with our harder-to-reach communities. Furthermore, the Family Toolbox streamlines the offer that is available for families on Wirral, acting as one easy-to-access front door to any type of support they may need.”

Wirral Council and the Early Help Alliance were also Highly Commended in the Delivering Better Outcomes category.

In December 2018, nearly one in five of our young people were living in poverty, around one in six had special educational needs, and we saw referrals for support across the borough growing year on year. The main reasons for referrals to our Early Help service were behaviour issues, child mental health, and parenting skills, and our parents told us that these challenges were often the symptom of other underlying issues at home. They told us that they’d struggled to access informal support earlier on, such as support with their mental health, social isolation, and supporting children with additional needs. Our families felt that if they’d have found the support that they needed earlier on, it could have prevented these problems escalating or developing into other issues, requiring a referral to our Early Help Service.

Given that support with these earlier challenges could lead to a reduction in our Early Help referrals, we identified this as a priority for Wirral Council. We assessed the needs of our residents through a huge engagement exercise with over 450 families, gathering insights into key areas that needed strengthening and adapting. Families told us they want to be empowered to make their own choices and to be trusted to know what they need to make things better. Therefore, the Family Toolbox’s ethos has always been about helping others to help themselves. We believe that everyone has skills and strengths, and so the Family Toolbox looks at what is already strong and then coaches families to build up knowledge, skills, and confidence, while linking in the best support services for their needs.

We commissioned a community interest company (Capacity) to work with all key stakeholders across Wirral to develop an innovative, creative and asset-based early help model. Over a number of years Capacity worked with families and professionals across Wirral to ultimately produce the ‘Why Community Matters’ Report, released in 2020, summarises insight given by more than 450 Wirral families into key areas that need strengthening and adapting.

In response to the insight given in the report, we tried and tested new ways of working to understand how they can help families to live happy and healthy lives. The successes of these pilots have helped to develop ways of working which were prioritised in the Family Toolbox. we also explored options for commissioning that put relationships at the heart of this approach, as such, we utilised an alliance approach.

Alliancing is different to traditional contracting models; it enables providers to work as one team, without needing a new organisational form, and create, in effect, a virtual organisation. It allows individual services to maintain their identities, while contributing their unique expertise and skill alongside others towards one set of outcomes. The synergy of Alliancing creates much more than the sum of its parts. All parties work towards the same goal, take collective ownership of opportunities, responsibilities, and risk, and make decisions together to reach it.

The relationship with the commissioner is quite different to more traditional contracting models, as the procuring organisation (Wirral MBC in this case) is also a participant in the Alliance. There is no need for a lead contractor/sub-contractor hierarchy – all members are equal. The providers at the heart of Family Toolbox spearhead the new way of working that families and professionals have asked for, to help Wirral’s children and families be the best they can be.

We are proud to say we have heard so many stories from families accessing the Family Toolbox about how the service has completely transformed their quality-of-life outcomes. For example, we heard from a mum who was under social care due to concerns of alcohol misuse and neglect of her children. Mum initially appeared lost in all the jargon used and the process of child protection, and she didn’t understand what it meant for her and her children. The Toolbox linked her in with many different services, including parenting training, counselling, alcohol misuse support and legal advice and representation for pre-proceedings.

Since the Family Toolbox’s involvement with Mum, she has grown in confidence and there have been no concerns regarding home conditions during visits, or of alcohol misuse during any communication. Mum said she felt at a loss before our support was in place and wishes she had accessed us sooner, as this could have prevented her involvement with social care. She said she felt heard by her support worker and, through attending the parenting group at the hub, she was able to meet other parents going through similar experiences. She is finally being provided with the peer support she never had, especially as a parent of children with additional needs. Mum appreciates that all of this help and support is under one roof rather than with many different agencies – something she has found too overwhelming in the past.

We’ve also heard from a family that had been affected by domestic violence and did not speak English as a first language. Through use of an interpreter to ensure the family’s needs were thoroughly understood, the Family Toolbox introduced Mum and her children to a range of different support services and helped the family move into temporary accommodation while working with the housing association and social care to find her own property. With all the support services working together to support the family, Mum has been able to continue accessing college and the children haven’t missed any school during what was an incredibly unsettling period.

We have heard countless more positive stories such as these from families who experience difficulties in accessing the universal offer due to the significant barriers they face and who need more support in order to change their worlds. In this way, the open-door policy and accessibility of the Toolbox means it is extremely effective at supporting some of our most vulnerable and marginalised residents into getting the help they need.

As the first council-supported Alliance for Children’s Service in the country, it’s clear that the Family Toolbox is having a huge impact on our families’ outcomes, and even having a significant knock-on effect on the rest of Children’s Services. Not only have we seen parents reporting improved parenting skills, increased resilience, and reduced isolation, but we have also seen referrals to our Early Help team drop by more than a quarter. In this way, this joined-up approach works well both for our families and for our staff and could surely be replicated in other parts of the country with similar success.

The Centre for Social Justice visited the Family Toolbox Alliance in early 2023 and reported it to be “A shining example of partnership working.

We are now utilising the alliance model for other commissions. We're using the approach when commissioning, to set broad objectives and ask the party submitting the bid to tell us what the service will look like, rather than being prescriptive about how a service should be structured.

Just Do it! Harness the power that’s already in situ supporting families in their communities and delivering hard and soft outcomes for Early Help.

Following a visit from delegates from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLHUC), together with colleagues from the Department for Education, Wirral Council and the Family Toolbox Alliance were asked to host a webinar on ‘Improving connectivity with the voluntary and community sector’, with an audience of local authority representatives from across the country.

As a consequence, Lindsey Davidson from Durham local authority was commissioned by DLUHC to write a blog on national developments in Early Help and met with the Alliance Leadership Team to explore the impact of the Alliance and Family Toolbox for families.

A number of local authorities have been in touch to find out more about how Wirral has made the relationship between the local authority and voluntary, community and faith sector, work so well.

We didn’t set KPIs for the provider in the service specification. Instead, we determined objectives and stated what success would look like. Now, we have - retrospectively - set KPIs.

In hindsight, if we had set KPIs at the outset, they would have been far exceeded but KPIs are a useful tool in order to track the progress and achievements of the alliance.

The Toolbox Alliance has exceeded initial expectations. The Toolbox website is now embedded and a trusted tool for families across the borough. Alliance staff are providing direct front line services to families and mitigating the demand placed on LA Early Help Services.

The Alliance are key partners in the roll out of the Family First for Children Pathfinder programme on Wirral – and will lead on Parental Advocacy, Befriending and Community Networks.