CouncilEarly intervention for children at risk
This award recognises the strength of partnership working and community engagement in the borough, which enables all those working with children and young people to identify the need for interventions at the earliest possible opportunity.
Local partners, including social services; education and youth services; schools; police; health services, and the voluntary sector, work closely and effectively together to meet the needs of vulnerable children through a wide range of services, which range from universal approaches to specialised programmes for young people with specific needs.
Further information
Tower Hamlets is a borough of contrasts. It ranks as one of the most deprived areas in the country, with high unemployment, poverty and poor health, but this disadvantage sits alongside the economic growth arising through the continued expansion of Canary Wharf and the development of the Thames Gateway.
Almost 100 languages are spoken locally, with 48% of residents coming from black and minority ethnic communities (33% Bangladeshi): this rises to 76% in the case of school age children (56% Bangladeshi). Tower Hamlets has one of the youngest populations in the country, with just over half our residents aged under 30 and nearly a quarter under 16. Tower Hamlets Council and its partners in the Tower Hamlets Partnership (our LSP) are, through our community planning process and inclusive vision, firmly committed to ensuring the well-being of all our children, and particularly those who are vulnerable.
This commitment is reflected in our approach to early intervention and identification to ensure improved outcomes for all children and young people and reduced numbers of those at risk. Key to this approach is our focus on outcomes, partnership, inclusion and innovation.
Our successes in this area are based on effective partnership working across the council and other agencies through the Tower Hamlets Partnership and the Children’s Trust Pathfinder. The shared involvement and commitment of schools, Social Services, the Primary Care Trust, parents, the voluntary and community sector and children and young people themselves have all enabled effective preventative work and earlier identification of children at risk.
Our inclusive approach enables support and intervention to be offered through mainstream services to large numbers of young people at risk of social exclusion. This supports our preventative work and enables more intensive support to be effectively targeted where it is most needed. In addition, our strong information sharing systems and partnership working have provided a base for innovation in service delivery – in tackling the mental health needs of young Bangladeshi boys, for instance, or the THIS Child information sharing system.
Deprivation and diversity are never used as an excuse for less than excellent services. All service commissioning for children and young people in Tower Hamlets is outcome
focused: commissioners and providers from both the statutory and third sector worked together to establish our commissioning principles and framework, which monitors both qualitative and quantitative outcomes against the 5 ECM themes. Outcomes for children and young people have improved considerably in recent years, and continue to do so.
We achieved four stars in all four categories in our recent APA assessment. We are delighted to have received this recognition of the effectiveness of our approach, however, we are firmly committed to continuous improvement and welcome the opportunity the beacon scheme will provide to share ideas and good practice with other authorities and practitioners.
Some examples of our approach are highlighted in the case studies below.
- Safer schools (pdf 100kb)
- New Start (pdf 99kb)
- Transition workers (pdf 92kb)
- Healthy eating in schools (pdf 94kb)
- Strengthening families (pdf 98kb)
- Tower Hamlets Social Inclusion Panel (pdf 101kb)