Plymouth acclaimed as national ‘pioneering city’ for early intervention work

Plymouth is one of the first cities in the country to be hailed a ‘Pioneering Early Intervention Place’ for its life-changing work with local families.

Just 20 cities in England have been chosen to work with the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) to help lead the way for organisations around the country working with children in driving forward early intervention and prevention work.

The principle is simple – services work with those in the community to spot and tackle issues early before they escalate into more serious problems. The benefits to this approach include better long-term prospects for children’s health and wellbeing, educational attainment, and that is not to mention the huge savings to public services.

Relatively low-level services can quickly tackle habits and lifestyles, which if left unchecked, can spiral into bigger problems that cost a huge amount to deal with and affect the wider community, such as anti-social behaviour and crime.

For example, offering parenting classes and training to new parents with social problems and ensuring their child receives good early years education ensures key stages of development are achieved. This dramatically affects that child’s life chances and avoids the need for more costly ‘catch-up’ work later in the child’s life.

Plymouth was chosen as a pioneering city following a successful bid by Plymouth City Council, which highlighted the positive work already taking place and the desire to do even more through joint working with the EIF.

Carey Oppenheim, Chief Executive of the EIF, said: “The EIF believes that addressing the root causes of social problems, rather than trying to fix their after-effects, is better not only for individual children but for our society as a whole.

"Underpinned by robust evidence our mission is to change to a predominant culture from costly late reaction to effective early intervention, ensuring children at risk of poor outcomes are given the extra help needed to develop social and emotional skills to progress in life and in turn to save money.

"This first wave of 20 pioneering places will ground that mission in real life, giving us invaluable working examples of success.”

A sign of Plymouth’s success is shown in the total commitment of all partners in the city to make the best use of resources together – this goes to the very heart of Plymouth’s co-operative agenda. The city has also joined up the offer with the ‘Families with a Future’ programme to ensure they reach families most in need.

Councillor Nicky Williams, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “We are thrilled to have been chosen as a ‘Pioneering Early Intervention Place’ and would like to thank the EIF for recognising the fantastic work already happening in Plymouth.

"Services are working together more effectively now than ever before and we want to accelerate this, particularly at a time when we need to make the best use of every penny in the city. Our work is based on a true partnership approach and the recently developed Early Intervention and Prevention Strategy is testament to this. It was put together with contributions from the Council, the police, health and our valued partners in the voluntary and community sector working with children in the city.

“We are seeing some early, yet promising results, in response to this approach. Our teenage conception rates, which are higher than the national average, are reducing and we have one of the lowest rates for young people not in education, employment or training in the country at around 10 per cent.”

A good example of the power of early intervention can be seen in Plymouth’s work around domestic abuse. It is led by a partnership between the police, involving schools and the Council, to ensure teachers are informed of any reported domestic abuse incidents out of hours that could affect a child’s performance or behaviour during school. The work is known as ‘Encompass’ and has received national recognition.

The Council’s Youth Services also work closely with Derriford Hospital’s accident and emergency department to carry out follow-up visits to family homes with young people admitted for drug and alcohol related injuries. This connection between health and youth workers helps to spot young people often unknown to services in the city, who are taking risks that need to be better understood.

Donna Molloy, Director of Implementation at EIF, said: “Whilst most of us would agree early intervention is worth doing, practical advice and evidence about how to make this a reality is in short supply. The twenty places announced today are already early intervention pioneers in many ways, but want to go much further. The EIF team are really looking forward to working with them to develop understanding about how to put early intervention into practice and which programmes, services and systems work best to support this.”

Plymouth has also held what is understood to be the first Headteacher and GP forum in the country in a bid to strengthen relationships between schools and health. The two groups shared their commitment to improving outcomes for children and families and talked about ways to work better together, including information sharing. As a result, NHS.net email accounts have been set up for schools in Plymouth so they can share information with health professionals securely. This is particularly useful for GP’s diagnosing more subtle conditions, as schools can share their knowledge and understanding of a child’s daily behaviour and capabilities, giving GPs crucial insight into a child’s life. The next meeting is set to take place this autumn.

To find out more about Plymouth’s Early Intervention and Prevention work, please call the Council’s Joint Commissioning Team 01752 307327.