ILLY recently attended 4Children’s Troubled Families conference ‘Better futures for troubled families – helping to turn lives around’.
With inspirational talks from the likes of Louise Casey and Carey Oppenheim, CEO of the Early Intervention Foundation, the day left a lasting impression. The key message was clear: there is a real need for coordinated, systematic change. This was reinforced by numerous real-life stories, demonstrating the life-changing impact this programme is already having.
For the closing address, Sarah Thomas, Havering Council’s Troubled Families and Early Help Lead, gave an insightful talk on the local authority’s approach, learning’s and outcomes and how ILLY have helped support their new model through the roll-out of LINKS Families.
With the programme being seen locally as a public sector initiative, Havering have embedded delivery within existing public, council and VCS services. They are measuring a variety of outcomes, ranging from the national criteria to local priorities, such as active and historical domestic violence, impact of welfare reform and debt management.
Key within this approach, Sarah highlighted multi-agency communication being a vulnerability for many officers with complex cases and emphasised the impact informed decision making can have.
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