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MN&S Tips
From the RIP
London Seminar, MAY 1998
1.
ACHIEVING A MULTI-AGENCY APPROACH
2.
GETTING AND KEEPING USERS INVOLVED
3.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING NEW SERVICES
4.
HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP A CULTURE OF MANAGEMENT THAT CAN MAKE GOOD USE OF
MN&S INFORMATION?
5.
LINKING MN&S AND OTHER PLANNING MECHANISMS
6.
MN&S AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION WORK
1.
ACHIEVING A MULTI-AGENCY APPROACH
It’s worth the effort involved in going beyond
social services for the first audit. It avoids problems of ownership of
the audit findings. Otherwise, involve others later by running county-wide
dissemination seminars, and planning services through multi-agency groups
co-ordinated by a steering group.
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INCLUDE ALL RELEVANT AGENCIES
SSD, health and education are key. But others,
including voluntaries, might be too. Housing is important in working out
a joint strategy for prevention and support around domestic violence, including
help for women and children to stay in their community. A user perspective
can add impetus to joint-agency work by highlighting the value of a flexible
response to needs by more than one agency.
A shared concern can be a good stimulus to
joint work. This might be a positive thing (we’ve worked well together
on a pilot project, how can we extend the success to benefit a wider group
of children?). Or it might be a negative (we spend a fortune on out-of-county
placements and fail the children we place, how do we solve the problem
that worries us all?). Take chances when the time is ripe, and use guidance
on priorities, for, say, joint funding, to provide a basis for joint work.
A dedicated joint budget can be helpful because
joint responsibility for managing the budget means there’s no argument
about who’s paying for what. On the other hand, being responsible for a
corporate budget can add impetus to joint work.
The audit is the easiest stage, but complex
in terms of staff costs. But it gives simplicity of perspective on something
that is at first difficult to grasp (thinking about needs, not solutions
to problems). It’s worth doing because it has positive spin-offs - it enthuses
staff and gets them more in touch with what the job’s about when the pressure
of work has distorted that. MN&S is a useful training tool as well
as an audit method.
It helps to have creative people who can work
on the edge of their agency boundaries and aren’t defensive about them.
And who are committed to start by identifying and describing need rather
than being too hampered by agency definitions.
There’s a balance between taking on too much
and being closed to new ideas. Guard against being too rigid, and so ossifying,
or expanding beyond what’s manageable.
MN&S can show that different agencies speak
the same language around need, and want the same outcomes although approaching
things in different ways. Agencies can see the value of skills beyond their
own. These insights help build confidence.
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2.
GETTING AND KEEPING USERS INVOLVED
Think about including young people and adults,
reflecting the ethnic composition and geographical spread of the locality,
the variety of reasons for being in touch with social services, the involvement
of current and past users and those who got no service. Users have been
involved in SSD audits - how about health and education trying it too?
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IT’S WORK, NOT CONSULTATION
Payment of fees, at sessional worker rates,
will underline the seriousness of your intent and of the work to be done.
It will also help maintain full attendance. As second best, provide high-quality
refreshments and gifts of thanks. Plus, for all, transport and child care
costs, interpreters as necessary, and working hours within the school day.
Allocate a staff member to be the users’ link
person. A two-page summary of MN&S for users is available from DSRU.
The involvement of an external person or agency to run the audit work (or
a staff member not directly involved in the professional audit) might convey
the message that users can and should speak freely about their views.
Users have said they have gained new admiration
for the complex job of social workers. For themselves, they’ve gained confidence
from the work experience, getting out of the home, traveling on their
own, meeting and befriending others, and hearing their views valued. They’ve
benefited from both giving and receiving tips about their children.
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THE VALUE TO PROFESSIONALS
User involvement challenges professionals to
think differently about some of their need groups, and to think beyond
a single-agency response. Users have highlighted the importance of the
advocacy role of social workers, and of early, low-key support. The audit
work can be a successful first attempt to involve users in planning.
-
THE AUDIT AND PLANNING WORK
Users have been successfully involved in all
stages of MN&S work, doing a shadow audit of cases (form filling and
deciding need groups), comparing their results with the professional audit
group, and planning outcomes and services for need groups. It pays to involve
users from the start, so they understand and can own the process and findings.
The shadow audit group might become a longer-standing
user group willing to be consulted on future child and family matters.
The detailed work on planning outcomes and services for need groups is
best done with users with direct experience of the needs. They could be
a mixture of shadow group users plus others newly recruited for the task.
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OTHER WAYS OF INVOLVING USERS
An alternative to shadow audit work is to do
home visits/interviews with a sample of family members newly referred for
services, and feed the results into the dissemination seminars about the
MN&S audit. Whatever the method, be clear with users what is expected
of them, that there are no wrong answers, that their views will be taken
seriously, and they will get feedback. Make sure they do!
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3.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING NEW SERVICES
It helps to have people who will approach
the task constructively, who can focus on the agenda for the work, and
who can think beyond the boundaries of their agency’s core services. Good
chairing will help maintain direction and pace. And have a good note-taker,
so you don’t go over old ground, but keep building on where you get to
at the end of each meeting.
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THE JOB’S BOTH EASY AND HARD
The task is to work from the need groups
identified and build up a picture of outcomes, services and thresholds
for each. Some aspects are easier than others. If people are clear about
the range of families in a need group, they will be able to identify desirable
outcomes for the group as a whole. The difficulty may be in making the
objectives specific (this involves thinking about what you will be looking
for to know objectives have been achieved). Ideal services should be those
that research and robust evaluation have proved helpful to meet desired
objectives. For some need groups there is not a lot to draw on, and it
can be difficult to track down what is available.
Be inclusive from the start. Have a
good mix of people from both strategic and practitioner levels. A multi-agency
conference to report on the MN&S audit might be a good source for recruiting
enthusiasts for a particular need group or set of need groups. Include
the voluntary sector. And don’t forget users. If you have separate work
groups looking at different need groups, get them together from time to
time to share ideas and bring a fresh angle to something a group may be
stuck on.
Consider both services to create change
in families and those that will provide longer-term support over years.
The services you come up with are more likely to be enriching or topping
up of existing services rather than radically new services. There is likely
to be a clearer focus about who should be offering the service, from what
base in the community, for how long, in what way (contract or open-door
policy), and with what specific aim in mind.
Be creative about how a new service
might be provided, especially as you are likely to be bound by current
resources. Think about joint budgets, contributions in staff and volunteer
time, and possibilities for attracting seed or pilot funding.
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4.
HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP A CULTURE OF MANAGEMENT THAT CAN MAKE GOOD USE OF MN&S
INFORMATION?
Managers may know how to link new information
to practice. Or there may be problems to overcome, which might be about
adjusting to the newness of having information available, being under pressure
to respond to short-term financial pressures and local politics rather
than having time for reflection, or coming from a social work background
which lacks a sound evidence base.
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MAKE MORE USE OF RESEARCH
Research needs to be used more in reaching
and justifying day-to-day operational decisions. Practitioners need to
draw on research with greater confidence and be ready to answer questions
about it. Much emphasis has been put on risk factors recently; we now need
to increase knowledge about probabilities, realistic outcomes and protective
factors for children.
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CREATE TIME FOR REFLECTION
The need groups emerging locally from MN&S
audits may well come as no surprise. Their value is in pulling together
what is felt to be the case, giving substance to anecdotal information.
The audit work gives time for reflection. Practitioners need time to reflect,
as well as react, in their daily work.
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DEVELOP BASELINE KNOWLEDGE
The first audit provides baseline information
about patterns of need. But managers need to build on this information,
doing subsequent audits to check the first exercise, to check outputs and
outcomes, and to adjust for new needs.
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CULTIVATE THE LANGUAGE OF NEED
The challenge is to incorporate the common
language of need into an agency’s everyday work, and to work to see it
incorporated into other agencies too. Using the language of needs, outcomes,
services and thresholds in training within agencies can help develop its
value and use.
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ENCOURAGE AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH
In the NHS, the evidence base for funding applications
and for work methods is becoming a routine requirement. This is the result
of pressure from managers, but it stems too from the increased knowledge
and expectations of patients. In social care we cannot rely on centralised
cash or co-ordination to help in this, but have to find our own solutions.
We need to develop expectations for how staff will operate. One way could
be to ensure that every policy document includes the evidence base for
its content.
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IMPROVE INFORMATION COLLECTION AND USE
We need to develop better models for extracting
information from records. The plethora of IT systems makes comparisons
difficult. Practitioners will remain reluctant to record information for
planning purposes unless they can see the value of doing so, and this leaves
managers with incomplete information with which to plan. The MN&S analysis
of information about children and family circumstances, and the aggregation
of cases into need groups, help to highlight the use that can be made of
information recorded on files.
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5.
LINKING MN&S AND OTHER PLANNING MECHANISMS
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INFORMING THE CHILDREN’S SERVICES PLAN
CSPs have tended, so far, to list the
services provided for children in need, as if this defines the needs of
those children. MN&S audit findings enable agencies to focus first
on need groups identified by local managers and practitioners, providing
a baseline from which to develop services and against which to judge needs
arising from future audits. Additionally, an account of user involvement
in the development of need groups will help satisfy the requirement under
the Children’s Services Planning Order to consult with users and the wider
community.
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DEVELOPING THE CHILDREN’S SERVICES PLAN
MN&S work can help with the detailed
planning and development of ideas presented in CSPs. Consider auditing
the needs of referrals for services in a locality of, say, 50-100,000 residents.
Adopt a multi-agency approach and involve service managers as well as planners
and commissioners. Assume a timescale of about two years to audit needs
and plan for revised services. And use the next CSP to report progress
and flag up proposals for future developments.
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LINKS WITH SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC DATA
The recording of family postcode, as
part of the case identifier for the audit sample, will enable agencies
to analyse need according to neighbourhood areas and to plan for the location
of services where they are most needed.
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THE VALUE OF MAKING LINKS BETWEEN PLANNING
MECHANISMS
Close links between MN&S and other
planning initiatives can help develop a common language of need and a common
approach to work with particular user groups. In providing solid information
to support - or challenge - anecdotal information, it aids the desired
shift to evidence-based culture and practice. Elected members have found
it helpful in identifying patterns of need and the importance of a corporate
response. The process itself generates an enthusiasm amongst participating
agencies, including social services, health, education, police and probation.
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6.
MN&S AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION WORK
Practitioners and managers who have used
MN&S for audits of either looked after children or new referrals, or
both, are suggesting other useful applications of the audit model.
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MN&S provides a typology approach to evaluation.
Its starting point of needs and family circumstances lends itself to considering
questions about “who we are working with” and “what works with whom”. It
also raises the needs of parents (mental health, substance misuse, domestic
violence) which impinge upon family difficulties and breakdown.
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In residential work, MN&S provides additional
material to the Looking After Children material on individual children,
by providing aggregated data for strategic planning.
-
It can help agencies determine the range, size
and mix of residential units needed, and holds potential for shaping the
purpose and functions of residential care. For information on the links
between MN&S and DSRU’s research into Structure and Culture in Children’s
Homes, see Newsletter Winter 1996/7 (available from the Dartington Social
Research Unit, phone 01803 862213).
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In family support work for children living
at home, it raises questions about how responsive services are to child
and family needs as opposed to agency needs. For instance, the division
of adolescent support work into short-term and long-term teams might look
rather different if they were structured instead around the need groups
of potential service users.
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The MN&S audit form offers a framework
for an initial assessment for child and family services. A pilot project
to test the value of duty team social workers completing such a form would
be useful. The audit form could also be used for self-assessment by families.
This approach is being tested by women’s refuges across one county authority.
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