Case studies

In the 2017/18 financial year, North East Lincolnshire Council followed the national trend of low fostering recruitment. In this year, our council approved just four foster carers. Using insights gathered with the public we were able to identify barriers and misconceptions that may be stopping individuals from pursuing fostering as a career and then tailor our messages around these findings.

Buckinghamshire County Council’s Business Intelligence, Insight and Improvement team have worked collaboratively with the council’s SEND service to develop a complex predictive model to forecast demand and cost

Maldon District Council worked on a prototype project to understand the support requirements for school children transitioning from year 6 to year 7. The aim of the project was to identify children who may be going under the radar with unaddressed mental health concerns and would require support in transitioning from primary to secondary school.

Housing is one of the routes to increase fostering capacity, predominantly by working with existing in-house carers who could offer homes to more children but are restricted by the size / type of home they live in.

Middlesbrough Council and NHS England Cumbria and the North East have launched a joint programme “Starting Well” to develop closer links between dental team members and the wider health and social care workforce to increase uptake of both school and dental practice prevention programmes to prevent dental decay in our youngest children.

Kirklees is a local authority with a large number of children who we support who live with connected carers under a Special Guardian Order (SGO) and our numbers are increasing.

In 2017, Kirklees Council and the National Citizen Service (NCS) Trust entered into an initial 12-month partnership. They developed a partnership agreement, working to an action plan which would pilot joint ways of working, building on the work that NCS was already doing in Kirklees.

Kirklees have taken a ‘right worker, right support, right time’ approach to engaging young people involved in the criminal justice system and affected by criminal exploitation. Their Youth Engagement Service brings together colleagues from various youth services and through their consistent engagement approach, has allowed Kirklees to provide support to previously unreached children who are at risk of offending or are already involved in the criminal justice system.

Lambeth Council has been implementing a healthy weight programme to address child obesity – and as part of that a specialist healthy weight school nurse post has been created. This case study forms part of our resource on the National Child Measurement Programme.

The school nurse team in Sefton helped children spot the signs of worry, and how to build resilience.