Lewisham is one of sixteen areas around the country currently piloting the Community Budgets initiative. Community Budgets allow partner organisations to pool or align resources across an area to tackle the problems associated with families with complex needs. Lewisham’s Community Budget seeks to build on and develop existing support for families with complex needs, whilst deploying collective resources differently. In doing so, we will aim to:   

• deploy new delivery models, to inject innovation into the current system of family support;
• design approaches from the perspective of families, to enable them to find the solutions to unlock their own potential; and
• deliver cost reductions within the system, which can either be reinvested or cashed as savings. 

Lewisham’s Community Budget focuses on supporting three main groups of families:

 

High needs families

These families would be known to multiple services, with a complex range of issues. The main focus is on diversion from care – preventing escalation of need and cost, while improving outcomes for the family (e.g. around domestic violence, substance misuse, poor school attendance, mental health problems, and poor parent/child attachments).

• Life programme: A two year pilot which will provide intensive, family-led support to 10 of the most complex families in Lewisham. The programme aims to free up workers to spend the vast majority of their time working directly with the families.
• Existing family support programmes: The Family Intervention Programme (FIP) and Targeted Family Support (TFS) will continue to provide intensive, key-worker led support to over 250 high needs families in the borough.

Families with offenders

Those families including either an adult/young offender within the family, and where the offending is the primary issue within the family. The main focus is on reducing offending among adults/children, and reducing the costs to the custody and court systems.

• Reducing Reoffending pilot: We have commissioned a new provider to reduce reoffending in Lewisham, on a payment-by-results basis. The pilot will work with over 500 offenders and their families each year.
• Trilogy Plus: A multi-agency project supporting over 100 young gang members and their families to withdraw from involvement in gangs.

Workless/high cost benefit families

The main focus for this group is on reducing welfare dependency through supporting workless families into employment. Although these families may have a range of needs – such as mental or physical health needs, low skills, or substance misuse – the majority are not known to multiple services, and yet are high cost in terms of benefits.

• Family Budgets: we have commissioned a new enterprise to work with over 100 workless families to help them to find employment. The families will receive intensive support from a family broker, as well as have access to a family budget, which they can spend on tackling their barriers to employment.
• Homeless Families: We are also in the early stages of developing a new project offering intensive support to homeless families staying in Lewisham hostels.

The Community Budget programme builds on the work that Lewisham undertook as part of the Total Place programme. Please click on the link on the top right for more information on Total Place.