02 May, 2023
The Trust’s partnership work, including our joint report with Kindred Squared sits at the core of the Children’s Commissioner’s report on establishing a common outcomes set, as part of her recommendations in the Family Review, published in December 2022 – ‘Outcomes Framework: Annex to a positive approach to parenting: Part 2 of the Independent Family Review‘ HERE.
The CCo strengthened the work by bringing in the voice of children, young people and families gathered through The Big Ask in 2021 and the family review consultation in summer 2022, leading to the addition of a fifth high-level outcome (‘All children feel engaged in a community’). Thanks to support from Kindred Squared, we’ve recently created a new circular graphic and updated the original high-level illustration of what a national outcomes framework might look like by including the fifth outcome (both attached). We’re now working to create a graphic to help map out existing and planned projects and programmes, at national and more local levels, towards the common outcomes approach, alongside more technical processes and tools that would enable the work.
We’re continuing to work with the CCo team and lots of others to support implementation of the recommendations made in the outcomes annex, making the case for coordination and collaboration at national, strategic level including through the consultations on Stable Homes, Built on Love and Children’s Social Care National Framework and across wider (and linked) policy developments for children, families and communities.
At a more local level, we’re working with Essex County Council and their partners (as a Family Hubs exemplar) to explore how the common outcome approach could work at strategic policy and commissioning level, making links between the Integrated Care System, Supporting Families, Family Hubs, Start for Life, Levelling Up etc. and, at locality level, focusing on how the voice of children and families can be embedded at all levels and working to articulate the difference that a more consistent approach can make to their lives. Plans and progress in Essex are being shared with the National Centre for Family Hubs and other local authorities, some of whom are using the common outcomes as a framework as they explore and agree the focus of their family hubs offer and how success will be defined and judged.
Thanks to support from The KPMG Foundation and Kindred Squared, we’re working with the Data for Children Collaborative to plan a one-day workshop session in September 2023 to be held in-person in London. We’re aiming to bring together original and new partners and stakeholders in this work to help us define next steps and challenges in the further development of the common outcomes approach. The primary outcome of the workshop will be a clear and agreed understanding of what success would look like and a delivery roadmap with identified challenge owners and defined next steps. This will feed into one or more specific plans and business cases for the financial and other support we need to take the work forward.
Please do get in touch by emailing elainefulton@forbabyssake.org.uk if you’re interested in being involved in our continuing collaborative work to drive system change for children and families through the establishment of common outcomes.
