Intensive family support through prevention and family empowerment in Coventry

Objectives

The Children’s Services department within Coventry City Council (a city of 317,000 inhabitants in the West Midlands, UK) has continually worked to improve the lives of children and young people across Coventry, including tackling child poverty, reducing the number of young people not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs) and keeping children safe from harm.

However, this work is particularly challenging when these issues are coupled with family troubles such as domestic violence, relationship breakdown, physical and mental health problems, substance misuse, inter-generational neglect and worklessness.

The main aims of the Intensive Family Support initiative are to improve services to children in need and their families and to promote social inclusion through effective joint working between Care, Education and Health. 

In particular, the initiative has the objectives:

• to reduce the likelihood of children and young people needing to be taken into care;
• to support care placement stability, education progress and better health outcomes;
• to support effective rehabilitation at home after a period of care;
• to ensure that the full range of services is available to children and young people and are used most effectively for those most in need;
• to identify and address service gaps and to address unmet needs.