Action for Children

Action for Children

Sector: Children in Care

Action for Children supports and speaks out for the most vulnerable and neglected children and young people in the UK.

We tailor our work to local circumstances, in partnership with children and young people, families, communities and local organisations. Through our community based services we support children and young people to break through injustice, deprivation and inequality, so they can achieve their full potential. Action for Children currently helps nearly 156,000 children, young people and their families through nearly 420 projects across the UK.

Action for Children is committed to providing evidence based solutions and to understanding what works. The common strands we have identified as having the greatest impact are:

• Use of an effective professional relationship over time, including outreach, to work successfully with the most vulnerable and excluded
• Commitment to both intensive and long-term support where necessary
• Flexibility to provide services to meet need through intensive contacts
• Sound basis in safeguarding principles and procedures
• Commitment to ensuring the achievement of qualitative outcomes over and above success in meeting timescales and other process measures
• Stable staffing within services

Description of interests

This year, 700 ,000 children will be born. Each one will be full of potential, but right from the start some will struggle. Around 50,000 children born this year will already have begun the journey their parents took to the margins of society. Today there are around one million children who are at risk of intergenerational deprivation and neglect. We must focus services that get involved with families as soon as they can – before problems get out of hand. Intensive, targeted early intervention is not only the best form of child protection – it offers children a chance to thrive.

Action for Children and the New Economics Foundation undertook a project that demonstrated how getting involved early could save £486 billion over 20 years. This work, called ‘Backing the Future’, looked at three Action for Children projects, and showed that for every £1 spent on them, society gets between £4 and £9 back – mostly by saving money on things like sorting out crime or helping people who aren’t working.

The report makes clear the need for a comprehensive investment programme in early intervention services that would both save spending on dealing with the impact of problems later, and deliver wider benefits to society.

Service provider information

Target population: Children in care

Services provided: Direct service delivery, project management

Outcomes achieved:

Action for Children has commissioned independent Social Return on Investment evaluations of four of our services.

Action for Children’s East Dunbartonshire Family Service
This service provides short-term, focused and flexible support for children, young people and families in crisis, referred by Social Services where there is a risk of a child being taken in to care. For every £1 invested in the East Dunbartonshire Family Service between £9.20 worth of social value is generated. Approximately 93% of the benefits to the state come through reduction in foster care costs. A further 4% are saved in other children’s costs. 3% of savings are gained by Justice.

Action for Children’s Family Intervention Team/5+ Project, Caerphilly
This is an early intervention service for children, young people and families with recently emerging emotional or behavioural problems. We provide targeted interventions designed to catch problems early and prevent reoccurrence.
For every £1 invested in the Caerphilly project £7.60 worth of social value is generated. Approximately 69% of the benefits to the state are gained through the reduced costs of crime and antisocial behaviour. Approximately 25% of the benefits are gained by children’s services and 6% by health services.

Action for Children’s Wheatley Children’s Centre, Doncaster
The centre provides preventative universal services, specialised services for referred children and parenting courses. Predictions for the centre show that it is expected to generate £4.60 for every £1 invested. 27% of the total benefit was for high-need children. The principal benefit to the state is estimated to come from savings from not needing to take children into care or provide alternative school arrangements.

Northamptonshire Family Intervention Project
The draft SROI evaluation of our Northamptonshire Family Intervention project estimates that for every £1 invested in Northamptonshire FIP activities, the likely social value created is approximately £4.28 but in the range of £3 to £6. The main changes identified were:

• Family life becomes more stable and relationships improve
• Child protection issues are reduced
• Less children are taken into care
• Anti social behaviour is reduced, impacting positively on housing problems
• Improved school attendance and attainment

In addition, we have published a report summarising our evidence base: “The Impact of Action for Children Services on the Life chances of Children and Young People 2009-10” http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/uploads/media/36/11796.pdf