Family Wellbeing Partnership in Clackmannanshire: evaluation

Annex A: Workstream Theories of Change

STRIVE (Safeguarding Through Rapid Intervention)

Launched in 2020, STRIVE began with staff relocated into a new team from existing posts and supported by a transformation budget. STRIVE represents a transformative approach to community services in Clackmannanshire, emphasising proactive, prevention-focused, and coordinated interventions. Its core objective is to ensure that every interaction between public services and individuals seeking help is an opportunity for early support, thereby preventing crises before they escalate.

STRIVE aims to create a community where proactive and coordinated services are the standard, ensuring early intervention and support at the first point of contact with public services. The initial pilot phase involved testing the model and conducting external evaluations to ensure its effectiveness.

Collaborative engagement between staff is key and the dedicated team comprising teachers, social workers, police officers, healthcare providers, and third sector agencies work together daily. The team engages with families and individuals in various settings, such as schools, homes, and health centres, to identify and address issues before they become significant challenges. The daily meetings are a chance for the team to discuss referrals, share information, assess risk, and allocate tasks. Although challenging to set up and work through the ‘assess risk’ basis for sharing information, these briefings ensure that information flows freely and securely among agencies, enabling timely interventions based on comprehensive risk assessments.

Regular questionnaires and interviews are conducted to gather feedback from those directly impacted by STRIVE’s interventions. This feedback is crucial for continuous improvement and helps tailor services to meet the evolving needs of the community.

Robust information-sharing agreements are in place to ensure that interventions are based on thorough risk assessments. Information is shared freely among agencies to ensure safety and timely responses.

In the short term, the proactive efforts of STRIVE have resulted in fewer crises and a notable decrease in the need for acute social services. The elimination of dedicated STRIVE-only posts are testament to the fact that services are increasingly working in this kind of way, without the need for dedicated coordination posts.

Families receive timely and relevant support, leading to early improvements in their situations. This support helps to stabilise families and prevent crises.

Over time, the prevention-focused ethos becomes embedded within community services. This cultural shift starts to prioritise early intervention and proactive support, leading to better overall outcomes for families. More than that, enhanced community resilience and wellbeing are achieved through reduced dependency on crisis interventions.

STRIVE continues to integrate additional agencies, promoting a multi-agency, whole-system approach to assessment and intervention. This ongoing collaboration ensures more comprehensive support for the wider community.

STRIVE is also well placed to support other cross system boundary work, including ethical commissioning, effective monitoring and evaluation and collaboration with third sector agencies. By fostering this proactive, prevention-focused, and coordinated approach, STRIVE aims to create a lasting positive impact on the community, ensuring that support is available when and where it is needed most.

Child Wellbeing Partnership (CWP)

The Child Wellbeing Partnership is helping to create family and community stability by creating an inclusive, and flexible childcare system that supports the holistic development of children and empowers families. It aims to help reduce poverty and enhance community wellbeing.

In Alloa South and East, communities face significant challenges, particularly in employment, health, and education. Long-term and multigenerational unemployment has created a cycle of deprivation that needs a coordinated and sustained response. The Clackmannanshire Child Wellbeing Partnership (CWP) aims to work with families to break this cycle and improve the lives of families in Clackmannanshire

The Child Wellbeing Partnership sits within the wider Family Wellbeing Partnership (FWP) which, at a system level, is not just testing the approaches but embedding them within various service settings in Clackmannanshire. This integration aims to stimulate reform, achieving policy goals like tackling child poverty, Covid recovery, and fulfilling the Promise. The approach is designed to iteratively capture learning, ensuring that Clackmannanshire services can continually evolve over time to improve the wellbeing and capabilities of families. On an ongoing basis, this ensures that families have voice, agency, and a seat at the decision-making table. Over time, this will lead to more integrated services and a shift in spending towards prevention.

Through practice development, to do this, the CWP is pioneering wellbeing and capabilities approaches, designed to transform services by putting the voice of the community at the heart of how they are designed and delivered. The Partnership continually assesses wellbeing and potential through addressing the FWPs four critical questions (i) what are people actually able to do and to be? (Internal Capabilities) (ii) what opportunities are available to them? (External Conditions) (iii) what matters to them and what do they have reason to value? (Voice and Agency) (iv) what adjustments need to be made to create equal opportunities for all? (Public Policy Challenge).

Since 2022, Scottish Government funding for the CWP has enabled the recruitment of a Senior Project Officer, and subsequently, in 2024, a support worker (the first additional childcare staff member within the CWP). Prior to this, efforts focused on building a place-based system of School-Age Childcare with third sector and private-sector providers. Investment also supports schools and third sector partners to repurpose community assets as venues for childcare services, creating safe and familiar environments for the children. From 2020, strong partnerships have been forged through Summer programmes and then through CWP and are constantly developing with new organisations regularly getting involved, such as Clacks Sport and Leisure, The Gate, Connect Alloa, and Play Alloa Hawkhill Centre, Community House and Kidz World.

Since 2020, there has been a wide range of activities undertaken building on these inputs as the partnerships mature over time. These well thought out partnerships created practical expressions of the ‘spaces’, ‘time’ and ‘connection’ which are all required for local children, young people and families to be… and to thrive. These are things that had been absent in the community previously. Common to all the activities and partners is the practitioners’ commitment and energy and their drive to spend purposeful time with the children, young people and families. This is seen as one of the most important ingredients of the success of the Child Wellbeing Partnership. In addition, all staff were equipped with trauma-informed practices.

The Child Wellbeing Partnership, building on learning from the previous FWP Summer of Wellbeing Programmes and other FWP work provided specific activities to support families. This evolution to the CWP started with the establishment of breakfast clubs in three primary schools. These clubs offered nutritious breakfasts and morning activities for up to 60 children, helping them start their day on a positive note. This initiative ensured that children were well-fed and engaged before their school day began. It also meant that other services could offer support, informally catching people over that breakfast period.

After-school childcare was another significant aspect of the approach, providing care for up to 137 children daily. This service included a variety of engaging activities and snacks, ensuring that children had a safe and enriching place to go after school hours. The after-school programme aimed to support working parents and parents aiming to seek work or increase hours and provide children with a structured environment for their after-school hours.

1. During school holidays, the project offered full-day childcare for up to 217 children. This holiday provision gave parents peace of mind knowing their children were in a safe, structured environment, while the children continued to learn and play. The holiday programmes were designed to be both educational and entertaining, ensuring children remained engaged even outside the school term.

2. Food services were a critical component of the approach, integrating substantial offerings including breakfast, lunch, and evening meals. These services ensure that children receive nutritious meals throughout the day addressing food insecurity and promoting healthy eating habits among the children.

3. Transportation services were also arranged to ensure that children could easily attend the childcare facilities. By removing transportation barriers, and placing services in the heart of communities, it became easier for families to access the childcare services provided, thus increasing participation, enabling fluid access to broader family supports, and supporting parents in their daily routines.

4. Community engagement was a cornerstone of the project, with parents, carers, and children actively involved in co-designing these “services”. This approach ensured that the community’s needs and preferences were met, fostering a sense of ownership and satisfaction among the participants.

5. Additionally, the Clacks Parents and Carers Group was established to provide a platform for parent peer support. This group facilitated the sharing of experiences and advice among parents and carers, creating a supportive community network that enhanced the overall impact of the project. Through all these activities, the community have been engaged through regular feedback sessions and co-design workshops, ensuring the services were continuously improved based on real needs.

And in the short term, the project saw children experience improved social, emotional, and mental wellbeing, alongside increased school attendance and punctuality. Parents benefited from greater opportunities to pursue employment or education, reduced stress and anxiety, and improved family relationships. Providers enhanced their skills and knowledge in delivering trauma-informed care, creating a more supportive and effective childcare environment.

Looking to the future, the approach aims to narrow the poverty-related outcomes gap, ensuring sustained wellbeing and positive destinations for children. Families are expected to achieve improved financial security and increased employability, leading to an enhanced quality of life. The broader community will benefit from stronger social networks, reduced stigma around accessing support, and increased participation in community activities.

Community Around The School (CATS)

Community Around The School (CATS) models a different way of working and is a key and integral part of Clackmannanshire’s Family Wellbeing Partnership approach. It seeks to transform the relationship between schools and their surrounding communities, fostering a more nurturing, inclusive environment that extends beyond conventional educational boundaries to address broader personal and community wellbeing. The approach gives agency and voice to young people and their families in the wider community.

The foundation of Community Around The School is a strong strategic understanding of community needs, values, and the barriers to flourishing. This includes, for example, sustained stakeholder engagement with young people, the wider community, school staff and parents/carers - who all help to shape programmes and initiatives based on what matters to them. Skills, capacity and resources, including small grants, are allocated toward developing time and space within schools that serve community functions fostering an environment that welcomes community participation.

To date, the various activities, developed with some 30 partners in one school alone, cover (i) experiential learning, family-focused events, (ii) attainment and employment support, and (iii) addressing systemic barriers. These include a range of activities such as work experience “tasters”, spending a day on a university campus supported by NHS Scotland Academy, Columba 1400 Values Based Leadership experiences, Duke of Edinburgh programmes, adult learning and literacy programmes and family cooking sessions. Activities also focus on promoting community integration, such as bingo nights, concerts and art exhibitions. In addition, other activities include a focus on creating supportive learning environments such as school mentoring programmes, breakfast clubs and a welfare and engagement programme.

Activities and programmes are supported by school staff, primarily in Alloa Academy (pilot site) but increasingly extending into the other two secondary schools in Clackmannanshire. There is a growing sense of staff recognising the value of this way of working with young people and families and the impact it has. By working in this way, staff are developing new skills which, in turn, enhances their interaction with young people.

As a result of these activities there has been increased engagement from the wider community who increasingly see schools as vital community hubs rather than just educational institutions. There is also an increased sense of belonging and community among young people and their families, supported by the visibility of practical benefits such as being able to see positive options for the future, literacy improvement and fun activities.

There is a strong assumption that specific, tailored activities for individual and family needs, are enhancing participant wellbeing and capabilities. There is evidence that a stronger sense of community and belonging is being fostered, reducing social isolation through regular, inclusive events. It is also reported that the activities empower community members with skills, knowledge and experiences that improve their life opportunities and enhance their capabilities, such as pre-employment skills and health literacy.

Through time, the long-term impacts will show that school becomes seen and used as a community resource where young people and their families feel a strong sense of belonging and purpose, not only a place of traditional academic learning. This is leading to better attendance and educational outcomes and to the breaking down of barriers and promoting inclusion across diverse communities, including new Scots, cultivating stronger and more supportive community networks. With increased opportunities and support, individuals are becoming more confident and capable of making informed decisions about their futures, contributing to a generative cycle of community improvement.

The vision of the Community Around The School approach is a reimagined role for schools as central to a thriving community where education facilities are community hubs that extend their reach beyond academic learning to act as catalysts for social change and personal development. In this sense, schools are not isolated entities but integral parts of their communities, reflecting and responding to the community’s needs and aspirations, thereby promoting shared growth.

Ultimately, the theory of change for the Community Around The School way of working is centred upon the idea that by redefining the interaction between schools and their communities and providing strategic, well-resourced interventions, schools can transcend their traditional roles and become engines of community development and personal empowerment. This model relies on a cyclical process of feedback and adaptation to ensure that the activities and outputs remain aligned with the evolving needs of the community.

Enhancing Employability

The Enhancing Employability workstream aims to improve employability support within Clackmannanshire for local families and align it more closely with the needs of local employers. It aims to increase employability while also addressing wider social and wellbeing-related outcomes.

The service is working towards a future where individuals in Clackmannanshire can effortlessly access employment support, where no one is turned away and everyone knows they can return whenever they need further help. Multi-annual year funding will ensure stability and sustained assistance over time.

The foundation of this change begins with a dedicated employability team who drive collaboration with partners. The team is composed of key workers, job brokers, business advisors, and a post that links directly with the FWP. The core role of the team is to remove barriers for people to move towards employment. This includes community-based support through funding to third sector organisations. The employability team is actively involved in the FWP with representatives on the FWP Strategic Team, FWP Operational Team and FWP Collaborative.

Clackmannanshire Works is the council’s in house employability team, which provides person-centred support to Clackmannanshire residents aged 16 - 67 years facing barriers to employment, as well as in work parents and carers who are looking to increase their income. Employability support is funded by both Scottish Government’s Fair Start Scotland funding, No one Left Behind and Tackling Child Poverty funding, and through UK Shared Prosperity funding for People and Skills. All participants on employability programmes have access to a dedicated key worker to support them towards their employability goals. They have access to money advice, IT support, vocational training, work experience, employability skills, job matching and a barrier removal fund. As part of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund programme, Positive Moves, has funded support for economically inactive participants through Clackmannanshire’s Economic Regeneration Trust (CERT). CERT delivers a range of training courses to start engaging participants and has a streamlined referral process to move clients on to support through Clackmannanshire Works, once they are ready to start their employability journey.

The Clackmannanshire Works team also works with employers to generate ring fenced opportunities for employability participants and encourage flexible working arrangements for parents and those with health barriers. FWP has funded Flexibility Works to support employers to identify flexible working opportunities and have also met with employability participants to help them identify how flexible arrangements can help them return to work and how to approach this with a potential employer.

Clackmannanshire Works will also support parents to access affordable childcare to allow them to take up training or employment opportunities. They work closely with the Child Wellbeing Partnership (CWP) and are actively involved in the Childcare and Childminding Pathways working group. This group is focused on creating flexible childcare opportunities for parents entering the labour market or looking to increase their working hours, and also to create employment opportunities within the childcare sector. A pathway to employment within childcare has been created, combining training with both paid and unpaid work experience to ensure participants are able to compete in the current labour market. Support is available for eligible ELC Learning Assistants to upskill with SVQs, allowing participants to apply for higher positions and creating more entry level positions for those coming through the childcare pathway. A childminding recruitment campaign was also delivered, creating flexible working opportunities for people and creating additional childcare places for working parents.

This work has also been linked with wider FWP work, providing practical support to parents to access social security such as free school meals, best start grants and disability payments. One Stop Support Shop sessions have been set up to provide clear, efficient guidance and community support.

The key is that the system offers a ‘no wrong door’ approach and services get alongside people wherever they are in their journey towards employment. This is continually refined and implemented, ensuring that individuals receive consistent and seamless support. Understanding and cooperation between statutory and third sector organisations are strengthened, reducing siloed working and fostering a more collaborative environment.

As these short-term outcomes materialise, they catalyse significant changes in practice. The employability referral process is streamlined, with increased referral numbers, minimising the number of people and steps involved, thereby reducing the burden on those seeking help. A key worker system is adopted, which alleviates the need for individuals to repeat their stories to multiple service providers, enhancing the efficiency and empathy of service delivery.

The changes in practice pave the way for profound long-term outcomes. Employment rates among parents rise, improving economic stability and quality of life for families. Community engagement with support services increases as these services become more tailored and timely. Individuals feel empowered and confident about accessing support when needed and have a clear understanding of their eligibility for ongoing or return support.

The cumulative effect of these transformations fosters a shared ambition across all stakeholders to maximise impact without duplicating efforts In this coordinated approach, each step builds upon the previous, creating a dynamic and responsive ecosystem that not only meets immediate needs but also fosters long-term resilience and empowerment within the community.