Making a difference to children, young people and families

What now happens differently for children, young people and their families as a result of your actions?
What were the outcomes? This might refer to national indicators for example

Dreamwall’s approach to delivering activities as part of the Time Out programme is to ensure that, wherever possible, they are challenging, developmental and appropriate to young people’s interests and needs.
Since the introduction of Time Out, Southampton City Council has experienced a 95 per cent reduction in the number of foster carers leaving its service as a result of discontent or burnout.

Within the same period, placement stability within foster care services in Southampton has improved by 29 per cent, and SCC has moved from the bottom eight per cent of local authorities in England in terms of foster care placement stability to the top 20 per cent.

Based on comparative analysis of GCSE results, Time Out participants have consistently out-performed other Children Looked After in England in terms of educational performance over the past three years.

Through the style of delivery developed by Dreamwall, Time Out is interpreted positively by participants as a non-stigmatising programme that affords them opportunities more usually reserved for young people outside the care system.

Dreamwall has been able to develop a culture of consistency in its delivery of Time Out. This has been achieved by working repeatedly with the same young people and enabling participants to develop a sense of ownership and progression through their attendance.

Dreamwall is committed to developing, empowering and enabling relationships with Time Out participants which, whilst supporting their development, challenge young people to become autonomous.

What now happens differently for the services involved?

As part of the drive for public bodies to commission the best services for their population, Southampton City Council took the decision to invite tenders from organisations wishing to provide residential respite breaks for foster carers.

This model illustrates how the relationship between statutory and voluntary organisations can find greater financial efficiencies. It evidences how commissioners’ needs can be met whilst providing developmental opportunities for the service user. This service provides a multifaceted solution to a commissioner’s needs, without increasing the level of financial resourcing.

‘The level of financial resourcing has not increased significantly and the per capita budget for both children and families, and for youth services, is below that of the comparator group.’
(CSCI & Ofsted 2006)

This initiative has ensured greater financial sustainability for the services we provide; it has provided longevity of service for the young people (assured four years) and extended service provision from 16 to 18.

The longevity that the commission affords ensures that Dreamwall is able to work more closely with other providers, sexual health and relationships, colleges, employers, substance misuse, Health, Crime Prevention and the Children's Trust.

It enables Dreamwall to contribute more fully to the corporate parent agenda and ensure that the disparate components align more closely, to ensure children looked after achieve economic well-being and are able to make a positive contribution.

The greatest difference is that Dreamwall is now recognised and valued as a contributor to the circle of care for children looked after. We are no longer a service that exists in isolation.

The desire of both Dreamwall and commissioners is for this service offering to be extended to other young people from Southampton as part of the targeted service for vulnerable young people. With the help of SCC, Dreamwall will continue to build its capacity and respond to the needs of the community.

Which of the changes will you maintain to sustain your achievements and how will you do this?

All of them. Our relationship with SCC is a testament to how outcomes can be improved for vulnerable groups. We are a consortia rather than a partnership. Skills are respected and there is now equality between the two bodies. This embedded approach allows organisations to play to their strengths and really work together to ensure better life outcomes are achieved.

Key to the success of this initiative have been the relationships between front line staff, management and commissioners. This whole-system approach ensures that the young person remains at the centre of what we all do.

The focus and defining reason for success is that although we are a contributor to a whole- system approach, Dreamwall only links directly with one statutory team: the foster care services. Any issue pertaining to a child is channelled through this one central statutory team.

This means team meetings are kept to a minimum, and those meetings we are required to attend are only requested or directed by the Fostering Team. This ensures that time at meetings is not duplicated and that resources are put where they should be, directly with the young person.

Care Plans, Personal Educational Plans and preparation for independent living are all tools used to manage a young person whilst in care. These mechanisms are live documents that a young person should contribute to. Due to the fact that relationships are built over time with a child, Dreamwall can advocate on the individual’s behalf, using its relationship with the child to leverage engagement in a process that the children can affect.

The core assurance of four residential events a year, with the opportunity to progress to a junior leader (under-18 volunteer) and remain assured of service until age 18, provides continuity and security to those in care, who are usually excluded from such certainties. The residential programmes provide generic one-to-one support, home visits, support at school, after-school clubs, extravaganzas, care reviews and statutory involvement. All of this is specific and bespoke to each individual, based on his or her need.

If you are not yet sure what difference has been made, what new measures could be introduced, or what could be improved, to allow you to determine the difference made?

We have a sound and robust evidential base but, to identify future benefits, agreement on data sharing must be developed to include:

• Conception rates
• Offending rates
• Housing
• Homelessness
• Education, employment or training annual before age 19
• School attendance and behaviour
• Health – chlamydia, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), dentist, General Practitioner (GP)
• Other, to be agreed with commissioners.

The new tender specification sets out numerous Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and National Indicators (NIs) relating to impact of service. This complements the Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP) and Local Area Agreement (LAA). In order to achieve this, there needs to be greater centralising of data management, shared and financed by the commissioning team. If each provider has to evidence its own impact, costs of service will need to reflect this, as small and medium size providers will not have the capacity to monitor and evaluate impact to this extent at current funded levels.

Using a social research company, funded by the commissioner or part-funded by the organisations that secured their respective lots under targeted services for vulnerable young people, would ensure greater financial efficiencies, provide evidence of impact and recognise areas for development.

Evaluation

How have you evaluated progress against outcome measures?
How have you evaluated the improvement in outcomes for children, young people and/or families?
Do you have any information on the cost of your programme? This would be really useful information for other areas who might wish to implement a similar programme.

Please provide evidence of the learning that has occurred, of how systems have changed as a result of the practice being implemented, and of how outcomes have improved.
We are interested to hear about how you have evaluated the practice and how you have encouraged feedback from children, young people and their families. The results of this feedback and evaluation can include external evaluation reports, internal reviews, children, youth or parent feedback surveys, other surveys/data, anecdotal evidence, budgetary and/or statistical information, and plans/timelines.

What ‘hot tips’ do you have from your experience for others?

We are particularly interested in any barriers you encountered and how you overcame these and in your views regarding the potential for replicability of your practice example.

A report has been prepared by Substance, a social research company that specialises in the areas of youth inclusion, sport and culture and community regeneration. The report evaluates Dreamwall’s Time Out programme between 2004 and 2008.

This is the first externally produced monitoring and evaluation report commissioned by Dreamwall on Time Out, the primary aim of which is to provide an assessment of the programme’s progress to Dreamwall’s management and trustees, SCC and other stakeholders. The report is organised in the following sections:

• An assessment of the key statistical outcomes achieved by Time Out.
• A presentation of qualitative evidence of the programme’s delivery style and impact.
• A consideration of the programme’s potential to contribute to a range of local and national government agendas.

SCC commented on how positive Dreamwall had been for Southampton, being described as ‘outstanding’ in their recent inspection (Joint Area Review). They referred to commissioning Dreamwall as one of the best decisions they had made in recent times.

To date, Dreamwall has operated a series of ‘light touch’ monitoring and evaluation arrangements relating to Time Out, ranging from basic record and evidence collection to periodic qualitative reports (compiled by SCC). In order to guarantee quality of provision and – equally as important – to ensure it can report persuasively and consistently on its achievements, Dreamwall needs to institute a comprehensive and ongoing monitoring and evaluating system to gather consistent evidence of participants’ progress.

Dreamwall is embarking on the process of establishing data collection, storage and aggregation processes, which will enable it to report statistically in ‘real time’ on:

• Participant engagement and retention.
• The progression of participants in terms of engagement.
• Formal and informal outcomes, accreditations and qualifications.

It is also recommended that procedures be put into place to enable Dreamwall to record and report qualitatively on:

• The progress of participants (for instance, through documentary and visual evidence of their work).
• The experiences and ‘distance travelled’ of participants (for instance, through reflective diary project extracts).
• The potential of Time Out to deliver across multiple policy agendas (through themed evidence collection and case studies).
• The unique engagement and delivery style employed within Time Out (again, through multi-layered case studies).

Dreamwall is well placed to assist local authorities and Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) with a range of service delivery. Its contribution to engaging and retaining ‘hard to reach’ young people is especially noteworthy.

Through its delivery of the Time Out programme, Dreamwall is in a strong position to make contributions across the five sub-areas of the Every Child Matters (ECM) outcomes framework.

The aims, delivery strategy and operational techniques used by Dreamwall in the Time Out programme fit comfortably with the vision for successful youth provision set out in the Government’s ten-year youth strategy.