Whole Family Wellbeing Funding Programme templates: year 3 analysis - 2024-2025

4. Whole systems approach

Introduction

This chapter describes the activities funded by WFWF which seek to progress outcomes under the core component of ‘Whole Systems Approach.’

Reporting templates included details of a range of funded activities which local areas have described as having helped to embed a whole systems approach to family support. These activities included new or improved measures for early intervention and prevention, increased multi-agency and joined up working, and alignment with national priorities. It should be noted, however, that whole systems outcomes are more challenging to evidence, as recognised in the evaluation of Year 2 of the programme.

Prevention and early intervention

Prevention and early intervention rely on the whole family support system working collectively to identify and respond to needs at an early stage and reduce escalation to crisis. This requires system‑wide collaboration, including integrated teams, shared referral pathways, and joint planning across local authorities, health, education and the third sector. These structural and cultural shifts enable preventative work to function effectively and consistently.

CSPPs have shown evidence of prioritising measures for early intervention and prevention, utilising both universal and targeted services. The use of Family Hubs to coordinate early intervention and prevention measures was a recurring theme across templates. These hubs act as a centralised place for families, offering advice, signposting and direct support. The Scottish Borders’ template described how their Whole Family Support Team delivers holistic whole family support to children, young people and families including parenting support, housing support, support for education, income maximisation and employment.

“2024-25 saw the development of the Whole Family Support Service which is the largest recipient of Whole Family Wellbeing funding. It is a team of 11 staff which operates across the whole of the Scottish Borders and became operational in December 2024. It delivers early intervention services to families and children in need of support. Types of support include parenting support, housing support, support for education, income maximisation and employment. Development of the service has increased the capacity of early intervention services significantly and, although still relatively recently operational, showing positive outcomes.”

Scottish Borders Year 3 WFWF Template

The inclusion of housing support as part of holistic early intervention and prevention support for families was detailed in a few templates. As part of Stirling’s strategic shift towards prevention and early intervention in service delivery, the Housing First for Families Support Service has provided a range of direct support to families who are struggling to maintain their tenancies or temporary accommodation, to prevent homelessness. Fife’s template discussed their initiative of providing skills development and training to Fife Council Housing Service, in order to develop understanding of family wellbeing.

Multi-agency and joined-up working

Strengthened partnerships and multi-agency working were reported on across the WFWF templates. Building multi-agency teams and networks has allowed collaboration, sharing good practice, identifying needs, and mapping of gaps in local support, resulting in the development of more responsive services for children, young people and families. For example, East Dunbartonshire’s Whole Family Wellbeing Hub has targeted six activities towards priority family groups, implemented in response to identifying gaps in provision from third sector partnership grant bids. Responding to feedback from parents in the initial planning process of one activity has resulted in further multi-agency collaboration.

“Inclusion of parent views in initial planning of the school-based social worker pilot highlighted the need to extend the Whole Family Wellbeing focus to include Local Area Co-ordinators and a Youth Development Worker within the team alongside school-based Social Workers.”

East Dunbartonshire Year 3 WFWF Template

Community-based support and identification of gaps in provision have been particularly enabled by stronger relationships with the third sector and schools. In West Dunbartonshire, more targeted support has been delivered to pupils with additional support needs and neurodivergent profiles through a collaboration between education staff and the NHS Neurodivergence Team. A new model of assessment and diagnosis has been piloted, and training and support provided to teaching staff. Feedback across professionals has been very positive, although cuts to the budget of the Neurodiversity Team have prevented the pilot from being extended to other schools.

Across several templates, health visitors were reported as playing a key role in holistic working and connecting children, young people and families with other services. For example, East Renfrewshire has introduced an intensive family support health visitor to provide bespoke intensive support to vulnerable pregnant women, and those who are at risk of their baby, toddler, or pre-school child being taken into formal care.

“The health visitor is delivering a number of services that vulnerable families do not have the confidence to access on their own such as Bookbug, library activities, baby/toddler groups, Parent and Child Wellbeing Walks. In addition, families are helped to access community services delivered by third sector and local partners and take up eligible nursery places at the earliest stage possible.”

East Renfrewshire Year 3 WFWF Template

Training has played an important role across partnership and multi-agency working, with CSPPs coordinating multi-agency professional learning programmes and enabling a wider range of staff to recognise families’ needs and link them with appropriate services. For example:

• West Dunbartonshire has delivered professional learning across the multi-agency workforce, including neurodivergent, trauma-informed and health improvement continued professional development sessions.
• East Dunbartonshire has commissioned Sleep Action, a charity that promotes healthy sleep for children and young people, to deliver multi-agency training to professionals on sleep awareness, sleep counselling and education.

Whole system ‘buy-in’ across councils and other CSPP partners has been a significant enabler of enhanced partnership working, allowing strategic alignment across children’s services and the third sector. Stirling’s template described embedding WFWF work within Stirling’s Children’s Services Plan, ensuring that the delivery was part of a wider system change.

Aligning referral processes across agencies has also been an important part of WFWF delivery. As noted in Chapter 3 on ‘Access and availability’, the FORT case management system has been introduced in a number of areas. For example, both Renfrewshire and Perth & Kinross described the implementation of the FORT case management system and rolling it out to a wide range of organisations and settings across the public and third sectors. The FORT system provides a range of partners including local authority, NHS and third sector services a shared, secure digital platform for making and tracking referrals. Templates noted how introducing this system has improved referrals and also supported strong multi-agency working and communication.

“The launch of the FORT system across Perth & Kinross partners is streamlining referrals between organisations. Whilst this has been particularly of use to third sector partners (especially smaller organisations who may not have the resources to develop such referral pathways), we are also seeing increasing engagement from statutory partners (health and education).”

Perth & Kinross Year 3 WFWF Template

This increased partnership working and communication has provided more timely and holistic care for families, with CSPPs reporting more positive outcomes.

“The standout success of the Parenting Coordinator activity to date has been the significant improvement in coordinated, timely access to holistic family support, particularly for families facing complex, multi-agency needs. This has resulted in more joined-up planning, reduced duplication of services, and a clearer pathway for parents and carers navigating support systems, ultimately enhancing the wellbeing and resilience of families.”

Dumfries & Galloway Year 3 WFWF Template

Alignment with national priorities

Many templates included discussion of the alignment of WFWF activity with national priorities, including The Promise, UNCRC, GIRFEC, and trauma-informed practice.

Several templates highlighted employing specific team members with responsibility for delivering on national priorities such as The Promise. These additional funded roles have helped to strengthen the delivery of holistic whole family support by increasing participation of care experienced children and families in service design, improving cross‑agency coordination, and ensuring that support is trauma informed, rights‑based and responsive to individual family needs. For example:

• Falkirk’s Promise Implementation Team is responsible for WFWF, Promise Implementation and Corporate Parenting across the partnership. The Team has sustained partnerships with groups including Falkirk Champs and Get to Focus and has involved children, young people and families in co-design of services and presenting at local and national Promise events.
• Funded by WFWF, the Scottish Borders Promise Team has expanded to include a full-time Promise Participation and Engagement Officer, a full-time Promise Quality and Improvement Officer, and a part-time administrative post.
• Through WFWF, Stirling has employed a 0.5 FTE Lead Officer for strategic planning around The Promise. The officer led the evaluation of Stirling’s Promise Plan 21-24 and synthesised and analysed data from engagement with over 100 multi-agency practitioners and discussion sessions with young people; this has formed the basis of their Corporate Parenting Strategy and Promise Plan 24-27.

Service and activity design have also been aligned with national priorities. For example, South Ayrshire has implemented a new activity ‘RISE’, which explores creative alternatives to traditional learning pathways, including stronger focus on trusting relationships, vocational learning and life skills. Designed in complete alignment with The Promise – returning pupils to education within their local community, promoting wellbeing, and an individual, bespoke offer of educational support.

Investment in efforts to strengthen and embed trauma-informed practice was reported widely across templates; such efforts have helped influence service access, design and delivery. For example, to align service access with trauma-informed principles, Aberdeen has rolled out the Scottish Child Interview Model (SCIM) to ensure that every child who has experienced abuse or neglect has access to a Bairn’s Hoose model of support, including a trauma recovery service.

Some templates also detailed how national priorities have underpinned multi-agency working, aligning organisations in approach and language. For example, in the Scottish Borders, the CSPP has implemented the Transforming Psychological Trauma Knowledge and Skills Framework across agencies. West Dunbartonshire has delivered training on trauma-informed practice and wellbeing in collaboration with organisations including the NHS and CAMHS.

“In recognition that our workforce are our greatest assets and will have the biggest impact on change and improvement, we have delivered multi-agency professional learning to a variety of staff across a range of topics. This has helped develop a shared language and approach to family help.”

West Dunbartonshire Year 3 WFWF Template

Focusing a whole activity around a national priority, East Lothian’s template reported on their project based on the UNCRC. This has involved the delivery of an animation project with 60 children and young people, encouraging them to explore their rights creatively. This project has now fed into the new service design of an outdoor play area. This is an example of an activity that contributes to multiple core components, furthering the aim of placing children and young people at the heart of service design as well as establishing a well-aligned, whole systems approach.

Positive practice example: Perth & Kinross

This section shares part of a case study on WFWF activity in Perth & Kinross, based on information from the area’s Year 3 WFWF template and a follow-up interview with staff involved in the local work.

Working in partnership with council and third sector colleagues, WFWF in Perth & Kinross has been used to fund a range of initiatives that aim to provide holistic support for families, increasing wellbeing and reducing crises and emergencies.

A challenge was identified in linking services together and enabling the workforce to link families with the most appropriate service for their situation. In response to this, Perth Citizens Advice Bureau was commissioned to develop and deliver ‘Support and Connect’ training, which has involved the development of a social needs screening tool and training activities, both of which support professionals to have conversations about unmet needs and to connect families to the support they need.

Training has been attended by a diverse and wide range of participants, including third sector, public sector, housing officers, tenancy support workers, employability workers, and Citizens Advice Bureau staff. Training has also been targeted at professionals outwith traditional statutory or third sector support services. This has provided a safe space and support to discuss challenges in working with clients, as well as peer support networks not necessarily provided through their employment.

The ‘Connect’ aspect of the programme is supported by the Fast Online Referral Tracking (FORT) system; a secure, web‑based referral management platform. WFWF has supported the development and expansion of FORT, including its integrated service directory that spans third sector, local authority, and NHS partners.

FORT allows referrals to be made quickly and securely between organisations, and allows staff to track progress, which helps avoid referrals being lost or delayed. The system encourages practitioners to directly connect families to sources of support instead of signposting or passing on contact details, which helps build relationships between agencies and provides a more holistic and joined up approach to family support.

“You can start to see these beautiful pathways of referrals starting to come between organisations. We know obviously that there's good partnerships already out there and routes that are being used quite regularly. This builds on that, but then it also helps other partners to see what's out there and to refer in between… There's now over 77 organisations or services on the system which is fantastic. We have NHS, we've got local authority partners and third sector partners and that allows everybody to refer and try and break down those silos a wee bit.” – Practitioner involved in WFWF activity

Annex 1 contains a full case study about how Perth & Kinross’ investment in multi-agency workforce development is enhancing whole family wellbeing.