Our Supporting Families Solution has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of the Supporting Families Programme Phase 3 and help identify and support vulnerable families.
We create a new, unified and profiled dataset of all individuals and families across each client’s region.
Our innovative software quickly and easily transforms the quality and breadth of data at your disposal, without the need for a costly and intrusive transformational project. It also enables individual teams to set and automatically apply discretionary criteria so they can identify families that require support.
Identifying those families who need help and support to turn their lives around is challenging for local authorities and their partner agencies.
The most immediate problem is inaccurate, fragmented data, with incomplete or inconsistent information failing to present a clear picture. Targets could be missed and stretched resources misdirected. Critically, those families who need help the most, may not receive it.
Sentinel’s Supporting Family Data Platform is successfully enabling local authorities to overcome these issues, transforming their programmes and driving earlier, appropriate intervention.
Our software matches and integrates data from all available sources to provide up-to-date, holistic and user-friendly records of individuals and family units. The data sharing features of the platform also facilitate collaborative and proactive working.
Fully configurable, it puts you in control of setting profiling criteria and the scenarios that trigger automatic alerts – so you can deliver the interventions that families need and can benefit from.
Developed to meet the evolving requirements of the Supporting Families Programme (previously Troubled Families), our agile solution helps our clients conform to the Data Maturity Model while enabling them to look ahead and respond to future Government initiatives.
A safe and robust, cross-partner Case Collaboration and Data Sharing platform. Enabling real-time joint working without the risk of unauthorised data access
The Supporting Families Programme is administered by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (or DLUHC, formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)).
Click here to view the latest updates from DLUHC about the Supporting Families Programme 2022-2025.
The original Troubled Families Programme was the first national, systematic approach to driving real change in outcomes for families with multiple problems and to change the services that worked with them. Under this programme, each local authority was assigned a target number of families to identify, work with and support.
The challenge for local authorities was to identify eligible families. By its very nature, the programme’s aim to improve outcomes for families with multiple problems means that working and support provision needs encompass multiple teams and partner agencies, with data being collected and managed in a huge number of different systems and databases.
Information needs to be collected multiple data sources, matched together to form a complete view of every family member, and then rolled up into family compositions. These family compositions then need to be profiled to assess their levels of need and confirm if these needs match the requirements defined by the National Outcomes Framework of the programme. For families that do qualify for the programme, continual monitoring of their needs and progress is required to measure progress and outcomes.
Local authorities must evidence the turn-around of families they identify and support and need the ability to track their journey and show the progress they make. This evidencing needed to incorporate information from all supporting services and partners, such as social care, schools, NHS and Police records. Without this evidencing a local authority cannot receive their funding by proving their progress for Outcomes claims.
In April 2022 the next phase of the Supporting Families Programme was released, coming into effect from October 2022. In the 2021 Budget and Spending Round an additional £200 million investment was announced to expand the programme. This represents around a 40% real-terms uplift in funding for the programme by 2024-25, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million.
Here at Sentinel, we have a track-record of providing effective, targeted, solutions and assisting local authorities and partner agencies succeed in delivering support services under the Supporting Families Programme. From the early Trouble Families Programme through to the current 2022-2025 Support Families Programme, we have partnered with local authorities, providing the technology and tools they need to identify and deliver support to the families that need it most.
Our Supporting Families Solution was developed specifically to meet the requirements of the Supporting Families Programme and continues to underpin the success of our clients such as Liverpool, Birmingham City Council, Devon, St Helens, London Borough Tower Hamlets and more.
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Recognising the importance of data in identifying and responding to local needs, MHCLG (now DLUHC) has developed its own Data Maturity Model to guide local authorities.
Highlighting six key elements, it helps local authorities to understand where they are now and where they need to get to.
The Sentinel Platform underpins all six elements, helping local authorities make faster progress to data maturity and optimise their approach to delivering Early Help for families.
August 2022 | News
Delivering more: how local authorities can enjoy multiple benefits from a single Data Integration platform.
July 2022 | News
Sentinel director, Graham McCusker, looks at the data management challenges posed by Phase 3 of the Supporting Families programme.
May 2018 | News
Sentinel client, Liverpool City Council, has been recognised by the Government for its bold response to the Troubled Families programme.
Step 1
Our Supporting Families Solution is delivered via our Sentinel Data Platform, an intelligent data software application that talks to any front-line systems and databases without affecting them or the processes they support.
Once you have chosen which information you need, data feeds are configured within the Platform to collect exactly what is required. Data can also be fed in from any external partners and agencies, such as academies, DWP, NHS and housing associations.
Collected data is subject to configurable rules that you own. These rules govern the data validation and data cleansing processes, as well as profiling testing to check quality. You can also match new records with people already on the system, using as many different fields and comparison types as you want.
Matching can also be proposed when dealing with mistyped, mispronounced, and misspelt names and our sophisticated matching techniques are able to cater for any scenario ranging from poor data quality to deliberate attempts to deceive.
Additionally, because everything in the Platform is set up using configurable rules there is no bespoke software to write. This means that testing and implementation is quick and agile – teams will be looking at the results of their first full trial data run within just two or three weeks.
Step 2
Identifying families in need
With our system in place, you will have instant access to a Supporting Families (formerly Troubled Families) solution that not only monitors your families, but also measures them against threshold criteria that you define.
You have complete freedom to determine the scenarios and events that cause a family to cross your own Supporting Families threshold, including crime, school, children, employment, domestic violence and health.
As events like a school exclusion, domestic violence conviction or health concern are collected, the Platform will notify you that the family needs to be assessed. It will also show you the full chronology of events relating to each individual family member that led to the family crossing the threshold.
Data is combined into holistic views of each person and each person is linked into family units. Other links can also be added and managed such as extended families (adults with children linked to different partners and properties) or gang membership (provided by youth offending system).
Step 3
As well as notifying you about families in need of assessment, our Supporting Family solution also provides the key information you require to assess issues relating to individual families.
From a screen offering a holistic view of each family and all its members, with one click you can drill down to see the chronology of events for the family, the agencies already engaged in supporting it and the key worker contact details.
A second click enables users to drill down further so they can view details of any family member and the current and historical information that is known about them. It is also possible to see if the issues are new or re-occurring and whether the family has already been a part of your Supporting Families / Troubled Families programme before.
Once you decide to accept or reject a family onto your Supporting Families programme, the solution will keep an audit trail of the decision and allow you to enter additional information to support the decision.
Step 4
Collecting regular data feeds from your front-line teams and partner agencies, the Supporting Family Solution can provide a cross-agency dashboard view of each family being supported.
This enables you to:
In addition to showing results for each family, the system supports wider management by enabling users to monitor results by team and the type of activities and events being offered.
Step 5
Evidence you need to support your Outcome claims is automatically recorded by our Supporting Family solution, including all family support events and activities and the resulting family outcomes.
Our solution ensures that DLUHC's evidence requirements are met without creating additional work for your teams.
With less time spent gathering data, more time can be spent analysing what the information is telling you, enabling you to assess the performance of your programme and determine what’s working and what needs improving.
In May 2022 the Moj announced £300 million to cut youth crime over the next three years and make streets safer, the biggest funding package in a generation to tackle youth offending and cut crime.
Part of this initiative is the new £60 million “Turnaround” early intervention programme which will support up to 20,000 more children in England and Wales.
It is estimated that the Turnaround programme will reach up to 20,000 more children over three years who would not otherwise have received support to turn away from offending.
Our Solution
Our secure, controlled, data-sharing technology is perfectly suited to supporting the Turnaround Early Intervention Programme.
Our software is flexible and easy to implement. Views can be tailored to meet the data requirements of specific teams and partner agencies.
Features and benefits include:
November 2022 | Blog
Supporting families is a programme administered by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC, formerly the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)).
Book your free data assessment today and find out how much of an impact Sentinel's Master Data Management tools can have on your business.
Take the hassle out of data management. Call us on +44(0)800 612 2116 or email us [email protected].