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Policy

Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC)

From
Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
Directorate
Children and Families Directorate, +1 more … Early Learning and Childcare Directorate
Part of
Children and families, Education, Equality and rights, +1 more … Health and social care
Policy actions  8 of 9

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding

Holistic whole family support

In Scotland, family support is a range of services to help families meet their individual needs, to thrive and to stay together.

The vision is for family support to be readily available to families that need it. We want to make sure that families are able to access the help they need, where and when they need it. This will enable us to create a Scotland where more children will only know care, compassion and love, and not a ‘care system’.

Holistic support should address the needs of children and adults in a family at the time of need rather than at crisis point. This will help families to flourish and reduce the chances of family breakdown, and of children entering the care system. The same preventive interventions should also support parents’ ability to engage with the labour market. These interventions could help parents/carers to pursue qualifications or progress in employment, thereby enabling them to improve their financial situation.

Family support services should take account of thepromise.scot. It clearly highlights the importance of unstigmatised access to effective universal and intensive family support with early intervention and prevention at its core.

A Coronavirus (Covid-19) Children and Families Collective Leadership Group was set up in May 2020 to respond to concerns during the pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19): Children and Families Collective Leadership Group. It developed a Holistic Family Support Vision and Blueprint for Change. Subsequently, a sub-group, the Family Support Development Group, was established which developed a Routemap and National Principles of Holistic Whole Family Support group to deliver the vision .

A toolkit has been developed for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to use to support consistent and structured planning discussions about the local design and delivery of holistic whole family support as part of each area's Children's Services Plan.

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF)

The Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) is a £500 million investment over the life of this Parliament (2022 to 2026) to:

  • support the whole system transformational change required to reduce the need for crisis intervention

  • shift investment towards prevention and early intervention

Our ambition is that by 2030 at least 5% of all community-based health and social care spend will be on preventative whole family support measures.

WFWF is not a fund to which individuals can apply. The aim of the funding is to help family support services to make transformational system changes to reduce the need for crisis intervention and to shift investment towards prevention and early intervention. 

We have committed £50 million in 2022 to 2023. The funding will be repurposed from across SG portfolios, not drawn from a reduction or cut to existing grants or funding streams.

Funding in the financial year 2022 to 2023 is focused on:

WFWF is being disseminated through three elements:

  • £32 million to support Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs) to scale up and drive the delivery of whole family support services in their areas, and build capacity for transformational change

  • £6 million to enable direct support to CSPPs from a national improvement (SG led) team to drive transformational change. This includes establishing a national learning into action network and inviting CSPPs to apply for intensive support to drive whole system change. Three CSPPs have been selected for this support in East Ayrshire, East Lothian and Glasgow City. Details will be published in due course

  • details of the third element and of funding will be published in due course

A WFWF Interim Evaluation Report has now been published. This report presents the interim findings from a process evaluation of Elements 1 and 2 of the programme in its first year of operation. A full Evaluation Report of Year 1 will be available early 2024.

WFWF will cease at the end of 2025 to 2026, as it is expected that local investment will have realigned to support the new systems and services enabled by the funding.

Related documents

Related groups

Contact

Email: wholefamilywellbeing@gov.scot

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