'Early help’ for families in Dacorum and Herts under spotlight as part of a council bid to make £2m in cuts

SERVICES offering ‘early help’ to families across the county are to go under the public spotlight – as part of a council bid to cut spending by £2million.

Although the county council does plan to inject an additional £19m into some areas of children’s services in 2023/24, the department has also been told to make savings of £5.47m from existing budgets.

As a result, council officers are now looking to ‘redesign’ early help services – including the family centre service, family help and services for young people.

Executive member for children, families and young people Cllr Fiona Thomson suggested to a meeting of the cabinet on Monday (July 10) that the ‘redesign’ would target services and could save £2m over two years.

And on Monday (July 10) the council’s cabinet agreed to a three-month public consultation on the future of each of the three existing or planned services.

Leader of the county council Cllr Richard Roberts acknowledged the “challenging savings” that were to be made by the council.

But he said this was about how to deliver the best possible service to those most in need

According to cabinet reports, as part of the ‘redesign’ plans existing family centre services would become one part of a new family hub.

And these new hubs would ultimately bring together social care, services for young people, education, health and district council;s, as well as the voluntary sector

‘Family help’ would be a remodelling of existing services that provide early help to families ‘at risk of their needs escalating into statutory services.

And it would bring together a wider pool of ‘practitioners’ to work alongside social workers.

Meanwhile ‘services for young people’ would be redesigned so that it is ‘more targetted’ at those young people not in education, training or work.

Under the proposed new model the service would work increasingly with schools to support the most vulnerable, at risk of being neither in education, employment or training.

And as well as providing traded services to schools, its work would prioritise groups such as care leavers, young people known to a social worker, LGBT+ young people and those with SEND.

But there would be reductions in after-school and evening youth work projects and holiday provision, as well as closures of some young peoples centres that may be ‘less well used’ or ‘of poorer quality’.

And this has already prompted some concerns.

At the meeting Cllr Thomson highlighted the financial challenges – pointing to rates of inflation and high demand for services – and she said that ‘some difficult decisions’ were required.

But she stressed that no decisions would be taken until after consultation.

“Although these have been identified as savings no decision has yet been made,” she said.

“And it’s important that we go out to consultation – and for a full three months over the summer holiday and beyond – to give everybody the opportunity to feed-back.”

The results of the consultation will be reported to cabinet panels in November – before any decisions are taken by the cabinet .

At the meeting executive member for resources and performance Cllr Bob Deering was among those to highlight the injection of £19m into other areas of children’s services.

Just over £5m of that will be used to support children in care and £10m for school transport for children with SEND.

In addition – a the same meting – the committed to an additional £5m a year for children with special needs, addressing the backlog of EHCP applications.

“One of the reasons we are able to do this is because we are constantly looking at every ingredient of our financial picture,” said Cllr Deering.

“If we are able to provide other services in a more economical manner then we do – and the benefit of that gets recycled into other services.

“Essentially that is exactly what we are doing here.”

• At the same cabinet meeting councillors agreed to commit an additional £5m a year to improve the delivery of statutory SEND duties.

That will allow for the recruitment of 80 additional front-line staff, reduce existing case-loads by 30 per cent and improve the quality of the Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) process.