The Newport Strategic Partnership between Newport City Council and Barnardo’s was initially developed in 2011 with five primary aims:
- To safely reduce the number of children in care, in proceedings or on the child protection register
- Bridging the gap between universal and specialist service provision to prevent the need for the more intensive interventions
- Reducing specific risk factors for individual families (and increasing child and family resilience)
- Support children and young families to get involved in decision making within Family Support Services
- Ensure a whole family approach is taken working with parents, carers and family members as well as the child and/or young person
The report draws on learning and feedback taken from children, young people and parents/carers, as well as from frontline staff and senior leaders from both Strategic Partners. A deeper exploration of two elements of the Newport Strategic Partnership, namely the Rapid Response service and the Therapy Team; considering their development and their impact.
The report finds that progress of the strategic partnership towards its five key aims has been very positive. The evidence strongly suggests that the work of the partnership has helped families to improve their lives and reduced escalations in social care status. The partnership has provided a strong foundation for professionals in social care and family services to work effectively together to support this goal.
Therefore, our primary recommendation is the continuation of the factors that have sustained the partnership and been key to the design and delivery of services. Research In Practice recommend a small number of other actions:
- Ensure that new data collection systems enable robust analysis of child level outcomes and can improve recording of ethnicity and other characteristics to support monitoring of equality in access and outcomes from the partnership services.
- Children and families are included in decision-making about their own support. However, there may be additional scope to include them in service design and development.
- Update the partnership Theory of Change and use it to guide decision-making and service development.
- Continue to share learning from the strategic partnership within, and beyond, Newport City Council and Barnardo’s.