Workstream Summaries

June 2024

Raise York Website (www.raiseyork.co.uk)

What has changed? What was piloted?

A new website called Raise York was launched in November 2023 following consultation. This replaced a number of older and costly websites (including Yor-OK).

· We consulted with families and practitioners to understand what we needed going forward

· We involved families and practitioners in the look and feel of the website as well as the branding including the logo.

· We determined what areas needed to be prioritised on which was 0-5 year olds to align with our strategic priorities

· Through consultation a decision was made for the SEND information to be on a stand alone website.

· We created a test site for the new website and again involved families and practitioners to inform any amendments

· We carried out a soft launch to provide feedback from a smaller audience before promoting widely as a Full Launch

· Analytics In the first 6 weeks of launch 2.7K users accessed the website. In the first quarter (Jan – March 2024) 8k users had accessed the website of which 7.7K were recorded as new users.

· We then looked at where additional information is required for children over 5 years old. For example we have expanded the speech and language section to also cover sections that affect all age of children like English as a second language and other conditions.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
Engaging with families and professionals from the beginning. The design, look and feel of the website. The review of hundreds of information pages as well as new content. The technical design of the functions within the website. Communications to all stakeholders including families and practitioners.	We are working to ensure that the directories of services and activities incorporate the new branding and are visually appealing. We need to ensure there is a collective approach and buy in from partners to continue to maintain the website content to ensure we deliver up to date and good quality information for children, young people and families.	We will be carrying out a survey with families and professionals to see if the website meets their needs and whether there are further changes required. This will not just be the website but the whole information offer.

Parent Champions

What has changed? What was piloted?

We recognise the importance of peer support and have taken the opportunity through Raise York to set up a Parent Champions volunteer scheme. Parent Champions are parent volunteers who give a few hours a week to talk to other parents about the local services available to families.

We have joined the Parent Champion network with Coram providing the first training package for six Parent Champions. This training package is designed so that it can be provided by the council going forward and will be led by our Volunteer Service.

We piloted the Service before we trained with two volunteers who supported the Clifton and Hob Moor group with the Family Navigators. The Parent Champions are supporting ad-hoc groups where required and promoting local services for early years, Family Information Service (FIS) and signposting at various locations.

We have set up a Padlet for Parent Champions to use to share services in York and for them to have ownership of sharing ideas and the Family Navigators have adapted Coram’s recording processes.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
The Volunteer Service and Family Navigators worked together to ensure a good quality package of training and support was available	In the first round of training, it has been difficult to recruit volunteers. Ten parents initially came forward and six went on to complete the training.	The Parent Champions scheme has added real value and we want to explore options for how best to support parent volunteers going forward.

Family Navigators

What has changed? What was piloted?

The Family Navigators were pilot posts introduced in November 2023 as part of the Raise York offer to test out new ways of working.

The posts were created to provide a warm welcome to families through informal settings where they can play with their children and a hot drink, chat to other parents and access information and services.

We started with an offer at three children centres based on data we had on where family needs were greatest. This was Hob Moor, Clifton and Tang Hall. We set up open-access Family Hub sessions in three Children Centres in these areas and offered a free opportunity to access children play activities with our Family Navigators. This included an Information Officer being available for a one-to-one conversation.

We then widened our offer by working in partnership with Explore Libraries. This meant that Families could approach library staff and be helped access the support they needed. These were set up in the targeted areas with a Family Navigator present at specific times during the week. These were deliberately set up to be at a time families were coming in for an activity, such as story time.

We have then widened our offer further and outside the targeted areas based on emerging needs. 

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
The informal free activities were welcomed by families and the take up has increased. Particularly in specific venues.	We found sessions at certain times of day were less helpful and less well-attended by families.	We will continue to offer  information in venues where a group or organisation are offering an activity to draw in families. This will be on top of our wider information offer. This will include an offer to attend the Look Say, Sing, Play Stay and Play sessions at each venue twice a year. We are evaluating what worked well with Family Navigators ahead of the pilot finishing. Learning will be used to inform our future information strategy.

Supporting your parenting journey (Start to Life)

What has changed? What was piloted?

We have worked with families to  co-produce a ‘Supporting your parenting journey; Expecting a baby; babies and young children’ booklet (www.raiseyork.co.uk/downloads/file/82/raise-york-parenting-booklet). The booklet is shared with families at their first appointment with their midwife and offered again when they register the birth of their child in York. During 2024 only Health Visitors will also routinely give out these booklets to families to ensure more rapid coverage of families who have already had their baby.

The content of the booklet is based around simple introductions to some key, evidence-based areas of children’s development that it is helpful for everyone to be aware of.  These link directly to the relevant Raise York priority areas. 

The title and content of the booklet have been developed through our co-production processes. The booklet has been written to be as accessible as possible to all parents/carers in York. This includes using short sentences and basic language to make it accessible to people with a younger reading age.  The aim is to provide everyone with basic information, signposting to further, more detailed information on the Raise York site where appropriate.

The booklet will be reviewed through the ongoing evaluation processes and it is possible to update the content in due course, dependent on the findings of the evaluation.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
Having an opportunity and platform to articulate some key basic messages about the importance children’s early development has been a long-held ambition of the early years partnership so it is good that this is now realised. It will be good to revisit families experience of using the guide and update as appropriate over time.	Finding the balance between a concise guide and including everything that all partners would have wanted to see in this booklet was challenging.	We need to continue to raise awareness of the booklet and its contents across the city.  The finding of the evaluation should help us get a sense of how this is being received so far and there may be aspects we need to respond to.  However, we expect that we need to continue to ensure the profile of this is raised and revisit the evaluation in 12 – 18 months time.

Parenting

What has changed? What was piloted?

A parenting task and finish group was established, and a mapping of parenting courses took place. Simultaneously, an activity to look at how parenting needs were identified across the city got underway.

Information gathered showed that whilst a range of good quality parenting courses were available across the city, courses were commissioned by multiple different services and partners with limited understanding of the range of other courses on offer. Whilst needs relating to each service were clearly identified, parenting needs were not considered or discussed across the system. In some instances, this led to overlap and duplication of parenting courses, gaps in provision, and confusion from professionals about which courses to signpost to. Three areas of action were subsequently identified:

1) Address gaps in provision including the implementation of an online universal parenting programme (Solihull)

2) Improve understanding and promotion of parenting courses across the system

3) Improve assessment of parenting needs and monitor impact of provision at system level.

Work on these three areas is currently underway.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
Bringing professionals together meant that the parenting offer is now more joined up. Acknowledging that taking time to work together brings benefits to everyone involved. The process of mapping courses and sharing findings helped commissioners and providers better understand the parenting course landscape. This will lead to more efficient use of resource moving forward. Families will have access to a wider range of courses moving forward.	That ‘parenting support’ means different things to different partners. Time had to be invested in clarifying what was meant by ‘parenting support’ and what the Raise York offer should include. Parenting course providers found learning about other provider’s offers useful rather than seeing themselves in competition.	The online Solihull offer will be launched.  The parenting course offer, including the new Solihull programme will be promoted to professionals and families across the system shortly. The task and finish group will continue to develop work in this area. Mechanisms will be developed to help assess need and evaluate the impact of parenting courses.

Early Years data analysis

What has changed? What was piloted?

Working with City of York Council Business Intelligence and data analysts at Nesta we combined data from a variety of pre-existing data sets held by the council in relation to the first five years of children’s lives.  This has been completed for all children in York aged between 0 – 8 in July 2023.

There were two main outcomes from this work:

1. We learnt a number of things we didn’t know previously about children’s lives at this stage. We may have made educated guesses about some of the learning but we did not have quantitative data to support these.

2. We have developed ward level data infographics that align with the familiar ward profile approach in York but that focus exclusively on early years data and present it in an accessible and attractive way.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
Despite the challenges of pulling data from multiple different systems and sources we demonstrated that it is possible to combine different data sets to generate new insights. The development of the early years focused ward profile infographics have been particularly well received.	There were some data sets that would have been good to include but couldn’t be because of data quality issues. Data quality became more of an issue the more historic the records.	CYC and Nesta are working together to find ways in which this work can be sustained on an ongoing basis.  We are also working with colleagues in health to understand how similar work can interact well with this to make an even more complete picture. The developing locality models need to start to use this data to inform their work according to local needs.

Supporting Families Advisors

What has changed? What was piloted?

In September 2023 the Supporting Families Team expanded their role in supporting partners undertaking early help with families.

With the increased support from partners across the city in delivering early help to families it was identified that there was a need to support settings, so the decision was made to actively increase our support offer through the Supporting Families Advisors. The support offer includes:

• Support for partners in terms of early help practice & process, use of assessment tools, availability of services and case specific advice.

• Advising early help partners who else may already be actively involved with a family to develop an effective Team Around the Child & Family.

• Supporting partners to bring early help work on to The Supporting Families Programme to access additional help inclusion our Dept. of Work & Pensions Employment Advisor.

• Attendance at team or training meetings to provide advice and support around early help practice and the tools & support available.

• Supporting partners in discussing those cases where progress has become “stuck”, and we need to review the options for the family.

A key theme of our work with partners is to not only support those partners who already actively deliver early help support to families but to also ensure wider agencies and teams are supported to take on the role of Lead Practitioner with families known to their service and build on trusted relationships.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
A steady but measurable increase in the number and range of partners leading on early help in the city. Where we have booked calls to discuss specific cases with a setting that are complex or stuck, we have been able to find solutions or ways forward as a group. Consistently capturing early help work on The Supporting Families programme and generating additional funding to reflect the work done.	It is clear that settings are already supporting a lot of families at early help level, and it is hoped that a well-publicised offer will enhance the support available to them. There is more work to be done to support partners being comfortable/able to lead early help with families and also some further work needed about some partnership early help processes.	We are producing more materials for settings such as posters of frequently used services and the accessibility of support though our team, Family Information Service and the MASH. Partners are being included in the development of the Brighter Futures Practice Model and how elements can be incorporated into early help work with children and families Further development of internal systems to ensure all partner work is identified and supported.

Team Around the School

What has changed? What was piloted?

The school was asked to share their main areas of pressure and challenge when supporting families. A Team Around the School was formed involving the right partners who could help in these main areas, together with representatives from the Raise York board, SEND services and Inclusion teams.

This started with the school and partners meeting followed by 1:1 meetings with partners to discuss how their local offer could support. These proposals were then brought back to a full meeting to check they aligned and made sense and to galvanise group actions, before a review meeting to consider the impact and next steps.

This pilot showed the importance of relationships. This was not a case of ‘creating a team’ but ‘finding’ a team and once this had been done the work will run itself.

The school are now significantly better connected to key services that can help meet the needs of local families.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
The school had their needs heard at the start of the process. The school felt supported. Vulnerable families and have been better supported by the increased access to the Local Offer. No new resources were required and the success was in better access to existing services where connections hadn’t been made before.	No new resources were needed to achieve this result. The work has lead to the Local Area Coordinators and Supporting Families Team joining the Fair Access meeting cycles and the Supporting Families Team also attending the Attendance Action group and Attendance Leads groups leading to better links to all schools.	The school have taken over the running of the Team Around them – this was not a case of ‘creating a team’ but ‘finding’ a team and once this had been done the work will run itself . The Raise York integrated leadership team has developed plans to scale this approach in a way that is sustainable.

Systems development

What has changed? What was piloted?

We invested in developing our database and IT systems to improve how we work and ultimately improve how we work with children and families. We invested in the following technical data projects which were designed to support work with families:

• Early Years data integration (NESTA project)

• Contribution to SEND case management system.

• SingleView (Familyview)

• SingleView (Right Early Help Lists)

• Early Help Mosaic System Development

Of these projects, four have been completed, one (Early Help) is currently in progress and is due to be completed by end of Summer 2024.

All of the projects have created new “products” or expanded functionality to existing products and are used by a wide range of practitioners in their daily business.

What have we learnt?

What went well?	What wasn’t as we expected?	What happens next?
All projects that were started were delivered. Feedback from users of all projects has been positive. NESTA project is likely to lead to further collaborative projects leading to further research “investment” into York. All projects have been “mainstreamed” for support within existing budgets. Positive decisions were made on not taking projects forward that would not be able to be supported long-term.	Costs on the SEND portal were sadly prohibitive and therefore project wasn’t taken forward. Creating a realistic “To be” design for the method of recording Early Help within the wider authority has taken longer than anticipated.	Early Help project needs to be drawn to conclusion with elements such as build, business acceptance, training, and launch still to be completed.