Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme - year 2: process and impact evaluation - full report

5 Outcomes and contributing factors: leadership, workforce and culture

This section explores the extent of achievement of the outcomes intended by the leadership, workforce and culture component of WFWF. This component emphasises the importance of effective leadership; working collaboratively among staff and other partners, including third sector, adult services and the Scottish Government; increased holistic family support service capacity and staff wellbeing within CSPPs; and clear and shared understanding of families’ needs across the system.

Key findings

• Visible and embedded strategic leadership was a key enabling factor for workforce and culture outcomes captured by this WFWF core component. It helped promote multi-agency collaboration and innovation.
• All CSPPs showed evidence of working collaboratively together in planning and delivery, including third sector partners. Key drivers included design and implementation of new strategic initiatives; multi-agency operational meetings; and active and regular involvement of third sector partners.
• New and improved ways of working in CSPPs encouraged more transparency and information sharing between partners. In some CSPPs this contributed to improved understanding of families’ needs and how services were experienced across the whole system.
• There was some evidence of improved family support capacity, particularly by using WFWF to recruit new or specialist roles and less duplication of work due to greater partner collaboration. However, CSPPs continued to experience recruitment and retention challenges, related to the need to rely on short-term staff contracts (due to the time-limited nature of WFWF) and limited numbers of qualified candidates for roles.
• In Year 2, most CSPPs did not provide evidence of having undertaken WFWF activities related to the outcomes in the logic model around improving workforce wellbeing or implementing innovative family services solutions; instead focussing on other WFWF outcomes (which they saw as a priority to address first). Evidence was limited of the impact of wellbeing and innovation initiatives in the few CSPPs that had implemented them.

Outcome: Strategic leads, family services managers and frontline practitioners (including third sector partners) are working more collaboratively and with adult services

This outcome was assessed as being partly achieved, based on strong and consistent evidence from strategic leads, family services managers and frontline practitioners, and WFWF annual reports.

All CSPPs showed evidence of working collaboratively in planning and delivery, including with third sector partners and adult services. This was primarily through the establishment of new strategic groups to enhance collaboration and communication across CSPP leaders. Strategic leads and service managers cited seeing the benefits of this, including reduced duplication of work (as CSPP partners were aware of the activity of others) and closer working relationships (for example, to share learning and knowledge).

"It feels really different... there's much more of a 'we can do things better together', and I think there's much more recognition of 'we're much richer doing things in partnership with other services’ and that there's different places and different organisations or projects that are experts kind of in their field, and how can we maximise working together, rather than that we can do it all."

Service Manager

The level of collaboration varied within CSPPs, with organisations that have a less flexible or agile approach to working (for example, due to legislation or regulatory requirements such as social work or health services) encountering greater challenges to collaboration.

Factors enabling the outcome

There were three key enabling factors. The first was the design and implementation of new strategic initiatives to enable more collaborative working within CSPPs. For example, in Fife, the implementation of CSPP-wide practice development sessions created a designated forum for collaboration and innovation amongst staff who would not otherwise meet. The sessions involved staff from across the CSPP sharing learning, good practice, and mitigations for ongoing challenges.

“We have new initiatives to collaborate...it brings people together that wouldn’t normally sit down together to share how we can work together better, what we are doing and where to go next with our planning.”

Strategic Lead

The second key enabler was the active involvement of third sector partners, who were felt to bring new ideas and solutions to challenges that could enhance service delivery. All case study CSPPs reported collaborating with the third sector to some extent, including those supporting adults, in the planning and delivery of WFWF activity. CSPPs engaged third sector partners through steering groups, multi-partner workshops and panel consultations. Strategic leads and managers across most case study CSPPs felt Year 2 of WFWF had seen significant progress in their relationships with the third sector, compared with Year 1.

“[When WFWF started], we had very limited engagement with our third sector partners. Our most recent [third sector] forum had over 30 providers there. So that time we’ve been able to afford to develop those relationships has really increased the buy-in from the third sector.”

Strategic Lead

Third sector staff who took part in the evaluation also cited closer working and collaboration in Year 2 of the evaluation; with fewer reports of third sector engagement being ‘selective’ or ‘superficial’, than were reported in Year 1.

“I would say we feel part of it [WFWF activity] now...we’re integrated and feel valued at the table.”

Strategic Lead (third sector)

The third enabler was reported by case study CSPP strategic leads and service managers who highlighted that having multi-agency meetings to discuss individual families’ needs enabled more effective information sharing across the CSPP and the identification of service gaps, as well as avoiding duplication of work. In Aberdeen City, frontline staff held multi-agency meetings with all professionals involved in a family’s case, to work collaboratively together in planning and delivering to ensure families receive coordinated and joined up support.

Factors limiting the outcome

Five factors limited further collaboration.

Firstly, while collaboration with the third sector had improved since Year 1, challenges remained, leading to ongoing siloed working. Some strategic leads and managers reported ongoing siloed working within CSPPs, partly due to bureaucracy aligning hiring practices and IT systems across partners, including third sector organisations, which limited collaboration. Despite staffing improvements, CSPPs still faced recruitment and retention challenges, leading to high staff turnover and hindering the development of close working relationships. Recruitment and retention are discussed further under the outcome ‘increased holistic whole family support service capacity among CSPP partners – plans available for integrating scaled and new services’.

Secondly, strategic leads and managers highlighted that third sector organisations often provided fixed support packages, which could be difficult to adapt to families' changing needs.

A third barrier was that smaller third sector organisations also had limited knowledge of the other family support available making it harder for them to integrate with other services. Case study strategic leads and managers suggested that CSPPs needed to help these organisations better understand the system to enhance collaboration.

“There are lots of small organisations...we want to work in partnership with them and that is our mantra...but they can be suspicious of our plans...we just want smart thinking like how we bring it together, how we utilise all the resources we have to benefit each other.”

Strategic Lead

A fourth barrier involved the need for better communication of WFWF aims and decision-making processes to frontline staff in some CSPPs. Strategic leads and managers emphasised that some work was underway to improve transparency and feedback mechanisms, though this had only recently begun and frontline practitioners reported little knowledge of this. Strategic leads and managers provided examples of using surveys and open forums to ensure staff feel heard and valued, and to foster collaboration.

"If something's not working or we could do it better then let's have a discussion. We've got steering groups that they [frontline practitioners] have a voice there at that group and we've got a couple of staff also within an additional support needs school who have been encouraged to be vocal about what's working well and what could we do better."

Manager

Finally, in one case study CSPP, cultural resistance hindered collaboration. Strategic leads noted that their ambitious systems change programme overwhelmed some staff, leading to turnover. To address this, the CSPP focused on hiring staff aligned with its values and held regular meetings to reinforce messages and reassure staff. An anonymous honesty box was also introduced for open feedback. The impact of these initiatives was yet to be seen.

Outcome: Increased holistic whole family support service capacity among CSPP partners – plans available for integrating scaled and new services

This outcome was assessed as being partly achieved, based on strong and consistent evidence from strategic leads, family services managers, frontline practitioners and WFWF annual reports.

Although there was some evidence of improved family support capacity, particularly around the recruitment of new or specialist roles and less duplication of work due to greater partner collaboration, CSPPs continue to experience recruitment and retention challenges.

Factors enabling the outcome

Three main factors enabled this outcome, which were recruiting new or specialist roles, streamlining processes and working more closely with the third sector.

A first enabling factor – recruiting new or specialist roles – was reported in Fife, where a new Homemaker role was introduced as a pilot to test the provision of practical in-home support, helping families identify their needs, improve wellbeing, and develop everyday skills like setting routines and boundaries for children. Frontline practitioners described the role as providing "invaluable additional capacity." The learning from the project has been considered in terms of future service design in the Children & Families Social Work Service focusing on early support and help.

“Without [the Homemaker], I [as a social worker] would have gone in and done what I could with the family, but wouldn’t have resolved those issues like morning routines or getting the cupboards organised so it is easy to get the kids ready for school... I wouldn’t have had time, so this really helped give all round support that this family needed.”

Frontline practitioner

Another example from East Renfrewshire is provided in the Spotlight box below.

Figure 8 CSPP Spotlight: East Renfrewshire

Improving capacity to better meet family needs, based on evidence-based decision making.

East Renfrewshire reviewed their parenting programmes, incorporating evidence and feedback to address the needs of families with children with additional support needs (e.g. disabilities and/or neurodiversity) to support families and carers to give their children the best start in life in a nurturing, safe and stable environment. As a result of this review, the CSPP invested in the Family First Service, creating an additional specialist post specifically to support families caring for children with additional support needs. This role focuses on areas such as mental wellbeing, sleep, family functioning, parenting and money advice.

Although the evidence of impact of the post for this service was still limited, since the start of the role in September 2023, the specialist practitioner had supported more than 60 families.

A second enabling factor was reported in East Lothian, where strategic leads and managers mentioned a different approach to using WFWF to enhance capacity by introducing a pre-triage system to streamline their processes. This system returned incomplete referrals to the person making the referral asking for additional information. Although this was still in early days of implementation, it was reported to have already improved the efficiency of triage and reduced staff time chasing missing information.

Fife also reported streamlining their services to reduce duplication of work by holding weekly team meetings to share information, identify gaps in support and provide joined up support.

Finally, some CSPPs had commissioned the third sector to undertake more service delivery, in order to expand capacity. For example, Clackmannanshire commissioned Aberlour Children’s Charity and Barnardo’s to increase capacity to support children, young people and families with care experience or on the edges of care. This work was still in the early stages, and there were limited results regarding the impact of this increased staffing capacity so far.

Factors limiting the outcome

While most CSPPs reported pockets of improved service capacity, the pace of progress envisioned by the Scottish Government was limited by challenges in recruiting and retaining staff with specific capabilities to deliver WFWF activity. Key barriers included retention issues due to short term contracts and funding uncertainty and recruiting from ‘a small pool’ of qualified candidates.

Firstly, as in Year 1, some strategic leads and managers reported that uncertainty around the duration of WFWF remained a barrier to recruitment and retention. Staff were reluctant to accept positions on short-term contracts or moved on quickly for more permanent opportunities. For some CSPPs, this meant new posts remained unfilled, whilst others experienced disruptions to service delivery due to high staff turnover.

"Just because we were given extra money, you know, and think of the old days, you could just throw money at things you just employ more people...And you just work your way through it. But it's been really difficult to recruit [due to] the nature of the short-term funding."

Strategic Lead

Secondly, CSPPs also encountered challenges recruiting from ‘a small pool’ of qualified candidates. Strategic leads and managers linked this to an ageing workforce, the post-pandemic impact on workers’ physical and mental health, and a national shortage of qualified staff (including social workers and family support workers).

Outcome: CSPPs have clear and shared understanding of families' needs and how services are experienced across the whole system

There was insufficient evidence to draw a confident conclusion about the achievement of this outcome, based on interviews with strategic leads, service managers and frontline practitioners, and WFWF annual reports.

Some CSPPs had implemented new ways of working, including setting up new governance groups to encourage joined up ways of working and information sharing. For example, one CSPP established a ‘Family Support Collaborative’, which involved representatives of the local council, third sector, and people with lived experience meeting to share feedback on how services are experienced across the system. This feedback was then shared with all CSPP strategic leads and managers.

“Because whole family wellbeing fund[ing] is across health and education, it's about making sure that all of our partners have an opportunity to express their own opinion.”

Service Manager

Factors enabling the outcome

Some CSPPs had commissioned scoping activities to map the local support landscape, against the needs of families in their area. This included using WFWF funds to commission their local Third Sector Interface (TSI), a body of charities that support third sector organisations across Scotland, to undertake this mapping activity (see Glossary in Annex 3). These activities were in the early stages (in some cases the TSI was yet to be commissioned), though the aim was that the TSI would identify available local services and make recommendations for which new services (if any) should be delivered to meet the needs of children, young people and families in their area. This would take into consideration wider contextual challenges, for example, the needs of and services for rural communities.

Factors limiting the outcome

There were three key factors limiting this outcome.

Firstly, membership of new governance groups primarily included strategic leads and service managers. This meant that often frontline practitioners were not part of discussions about how services were experienced across the system and only had information relating to services they delivered.

“I'm not sure what is happening across the system...I know what is happening in my area but [I’m] not clear beyond that.”

Frontline Practitioner

Secondly, strategic leads and managers also felt that the lack of coordination between governance groups and other work related to family support limited progress towards a clear and shared understanding of families’ needs and their experiences with services across the whole system. To overcome this, governance groups would need to better integrate with related initiatives, to ensure WFWF activity does not operate in a silo and to promote the sharing of developments across the system. An example of this was reported in South Lanarkshire, where they streamlined governance structures to be more effective. For this, they reduced the number of governance groups from 12 to three cross-cutting groups and aligned them to the CSPP’s priorities (including WFWF).

A third limiting factor was the use of different case recording systems across CSPPs which did not always align and were not accessible to all partners. This meant data was not easily available about family experiences across the system. In some cases, the use of new case referral mechanisms, such as the Fast Online Referral Tracking (FORT) system, helped CSPPs to overcome this challenge (see Figure 9 below).

“But still that connectedness is really not there. People, organisations, sectors are still setting things up unbeknown to other sectors. When it comes to recording mechanisms, …everybody's recording families and the work that they're doing using different systems and there's not one way everyone can have access to [the data]. So, we're just still not as connected. We [are] on a journey with it.”

Strategic Lead

Figure 9 CSPP Spotlight: Renfrewshire

Using new case referral mechanisms to improve data information sharing and access across the partnership.

Renfrewshire have established the ‘Request for Assistance’ (RfA), a single point of access for children, young people and families to self-refer to support online. Once the RfA was received, a member of the WFWF service followed up with the referrer to discuss their support needs and identify the most appropriate organisation to deliver that support, whether that be the local third sector or WFWF partners.

To support this process, the CSPP has connected the RfA with the Fast Online Referral Tracking (FORT) system. This allowed WFWF frontline practitioners and other agencies to refer children, young people and families to each other through a cloud-based portal, to improve data information sharing and access to information when it was needed. It was hoped that this contributes to a shared and clear understanding of families’ needs and how services are experienced across the whole system, helping frontline practitioners make the best decisions about the support for children, young people and families.

Outcome: Strategic leads, family services managers and practitioners’ wellbeing is improved and integral to delivery of family services

There was insufficient evidence to draw a confident conclusion about the achievement of this outcome, based on interviews with strategic leads, family services managers and frontline practitioners, and WFWF annual reports.

Most CSPPs did not prioritise activities related to workforce wellbeing using WFWF in Year 2 and focussed first on other WFWF outcomes. Evidence of the impact of wellbeing initiatives in the few CSPPs that implemented these types of initiatives for their workforce also was limited.

An example of an initiative designed to improve wellbeing was in East Ayrshire, where they introduced a compassionate, relationship-based leadership model, prioritised building trust, open communication and strong connections between leaders and staff, as well as encouraging collaboration. As a result, managers encouraged staff to be more open and honest about their wellbeing. This shift in leadership approach celebrated new perspectives, while setting higher standards on professional behaviour such as clear communication, adherence to best practices and positive interactions.

Factors enabling the outcome

Data on factors enabling this outcome was minimal, mainly because CSPPs did not prioritise this outcome. Strategic leads and managers emphasised that having visible and supportive leadership committed to advancing wellbeing initiatives was crucial, but no further details were provided.

Factors limiting the outcome

Data on factors limiting this outcome was also minimal; case study participants primarily mentioned general issues affecting workforce morale and motivation:

• High workloads and the strain this can place on staff mental capacity;
• Limited capacity for staff to engage with learning and development opportunities; and
• The risk of increased stress and burnout associated with culture change.

Outcome: Strategic leads, family services managers and frontline practitioners implement initiatives to develop a culture in CSPPs that encourages and empowers them to develop innovative family services solutions

There was insufficient evidence to draw a confident conclusion about the achievement of this outcome, based on interviews with strategic leads, family services managers and frontline practitioners, and WFWF annual reports.

Some case study CSPPs were able to provide examples of innovative approaches they had introduced to achieve this outcome, though many had yet to see the results of these. It is worth noting that while these indicate innovative approaches are being implemented, they do not, on their own, provide clear evidence of the presence of the cultural change described in the outcome.

The Spotlight below discusses how East Ayrshire used mobile, dedicated support to connect rural families to support.

Figure 10 CSPP Spotlight: East Ayrshire

Early intervention through a mobile barber service who works in rural communities, providing a hairdressing service while providing counselling and advice for children, young people and families. The rural nature of East Ayrshire means that some families are unable to access family support when and where they need it. East Ayrshire used WFWF allocation to take services to families; a counsellor joins a mobile barber and a teen’s coffee van, to provide support to communities around mental health, substance use and financial wellbeing. “We've got a mobile barber that goes to our most rural communities, but there's also a counsellor as part of that and there is the teen coffee van. People are coming out to have their free haircuts, but then having a chance to speak to somebody around the mental health, addictions or financial inclusion. So, we absolutely must be innovative about how we deliver services because you know, if we don't bring them to people, people will not come to us because they don't have the resource to maybe do that.” Manager

Another example was reported in South Lanarkshire; where additional support (e.g. programmes where groups engaged in gardening activities) was offered to those who no longer required statutory support but who benefitted from longer-term, lighter-touch support. This ongoing connection enabled participants to continue their development without needing statutory support, fostering a more tailored approach from the CSPP to meet their needs.

Factors enabling the outcome

There was limited evidence about the factors enabling this outcome, largely because initiatives were in the early stages of development. Having visible and supportive strategic leadership committed to innovation and which listened to staff ideas were important factors in fostering positive cultures that encourage continuous improvement and innovative family services solutions. No further detail was provided on these enablers.

Factors limiting the outcome

The main factor limiting greater innovation was staff capacity and high workloads, reducing the time and mental capacity to engage in innovative approaches. Additionally, practitioners felt unsure how it was intended that they would innovate and feel empowered to make changes.