Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) - year 1 process evaluation: final report

5 Implementation and delivery of WFWF to date

This section explores the early implementation of WFWF by CSPPs, recognising their varying stages of progress. It assesses the maturity of their journey toward delivering transformative support and how WFWF activities have been implemented. It also discusses the enablers and barriers to WFWF activity implementation. The findings are from qualitative interviews with strategic leads, local WFWF leads, frontline practitioners, and children, young people and families, and the CSP annual reports analysis.

Key findings

• There was positive evidence that across most CSPPs delivery of WFWF activity had progressed between developing their initial plan and submitting their CSP annual report to the Scottish Government.
• WFWF activity delivered to date included CSPPs delivering new or redesigned services to children, young people, and families. Progress was stronger for CSPPs who were undertaking scaling up activities, including offering support to a wider range of families through an existing service. Both new/redesigned and scaled up activities were usually frontline, practitioner-led and one-to-one to enable tailored support to be provided to children, young people, and families.
• Five key enablers were identified as being key to helping CSPPs progress with WFWF implementation and delivery. These included CSPPs having a dedicated lead for WFWF locally, who led on coordination across CSPP partners, and upskilling of staff to look at the ‘bigger picture’ for families. Those CSPPs where they had existing relationships with third sector partners, were expanding existing successful activities, and had dedicated strategic and operational oversight for the WFWF, typically found implementation more straightforward.
• Key factors limiting implementation included WFWF timescales and the short-term nature of the funding meaning CSPPs could only recruit staff on less appealing fixed-term contracts. Lack of collaboration amongst local third sector partners were also raised as a key limitation for some CSPPs.

Maturity of CSPPs’ journey to delivering transformative support

A ‘maturity model’ was developed in March 2023 and updated in October 2023 to group CSPPs into categories based on the stage of their journey to delivering transformative whole family support, and to help illustrate findings from the analysis. The maturity model is presented in Figure 7 below, showing where CSPPs are in terms of their maturity (see Annex 7 for detailed explanation of the model). The three categories of maturity are:

• Early, have either not begun their transformational journey, with no delivery or scoping work conducted to date, or have engaged only in preliminary scoping or research.
• Moderate, have a good understanding of existing need or delivery from scoping work already completed, or have begun some early delivery, in a few instances in the form of small pilot programmes.
• Advanced, are well into their journey, already delivering a substantial amount of holistic whole family support. This may be because they have good local evidence on which their WFWF plans are based on.

The activity type CSPPs planned in their initial plan and had implemented (as evidenced by their CSP annual report) fell into the three categories below. It is worth noting that many CSPPs outlined some combination of the three different kinds of activity, and so this categorisation looks at their primary focus for the WFWF.

• Exploratory, focusing efforts on research and scoping work, to understand the extent of existing delivery and need across the area.
• Transforming delivery, primarily focussed on delivering new support to families in a way that differs from existing support in the area.
• Scaling up existing delivery, CSPPs were already delivering, to varying extents, some aspects of the activity outlined in their initial WFWF plan. They intend to use the funding to develop and grow this existing activity.

Compared to where CSPPs were within the baseline version of the model, a greater number of CSPPs have demonstrated they are at a moderate (13 CSPPs compared to 10 CSPPs) or advanced stage of maturity (nine CSPPs compared to seven CSPPs). The progression of maturity was evenly split across CSPPs delivering exploratory or transforming activities, whereas there was no change in maturity among CSPPs undertaking activities related to scaling up. This is not surprising given they were already more progressed in terms of their transformational journey. Specifically, three CSPPs moved from an early stage of maturity to moderate stage and two CSPPs moved from early to advanced maturity.

There was no evidence to suggest that CSPPs also involved in Element 2 had progressed differently in terms of scaling up existing provision or undertaking transformative delivery of family support services.

WFWF delivery to date

Exploratory activities

Most CSPPs who had planned to undertake exploratory work (as per their initial funding plan) had progressed to delivering the services they were exploring (see Figure 8). The CSP annual report analysis showed that a minority of CSPPs had not progressed with specific activities based on the exploratory work undertaken. This was mainly because, based on their assessment and mapping of existing provision, developing this service was not believed to be a priority.

Figure 8 CSPP Spotlight: Falkirk

Establishing new WFWF governance group to oversee exploratory activities.

In Falkirk, the focus was on aligning current activity with WFWF priorities and exploring new internal processes that would support this. Specifically, Falkirk intend to set up a WFWF governance group that will oversee work associated with the Fund and report back to the wider CSPP; update the CSPP terms of reference; create clearer decision-making pathways for whole family support through a small forum of senior leaders; and outline, and ultimately recruit, a WFWF strategic team that could drive forward the family support strategy.

Falkirk’s CSP annual report showed that this activity had changed following the recruitment of the new dedicated WFWF lead. The new Funding Panel replaces the initial Whole Family Wellbeing Governance Group (in October 2022) and is now comprised of wider partnership representation, including children, young people and families. The new Funding Panel is responsible for identifying pilot programmes and testing the benefits of these.

Transforming delivery

Some CSPPs stated progress around delivering new or redesigned services to children, young people, and families. However, there was limited evidence of progress from the case study CSPPs.

CSP annual reports analysis provided examples of new services delivered as part of WFWF, including redesigning mental health support (see Figure 9); a Compassionate Distress Response Service (CDRS) pilot; procurement of an educational resource app to support children; and interventions aimed at changing how children, young people, and families access support through schools by building on family strengths and making connections within local networks.

Figure 9 CSPP Spotlight: West Lothian

Redesigning of mental health support to include non-clinical settings, and a wider age range of children.

In West Lothian, there had been an expansion of mental health support and coverage across the area. Previously, this support was only available for mental health referrals and has now been expanded to support all families in West Lothian who are feeling isolated or overwhelmed.

As part of WFWF, the CSPP has provided a place-based approach of bringing families together in a non-clinical environment, specifically families with a child or young person aged between 0-18 years old. Mental health support is provided by trained volunteers who are supported by a family support manager. Families involved self-score on mental health factors and undergo a review with the family support manager every three months, while children and young people have interviews or discussions instead.

Scaling up existing delivery

Analysis of case study and CSP annual report data showed that all CSPPs who planned to undertake scaling up activities had progressed to delivering a scaled-up version of support for children, young people and families. Examples included a CSPP offering support to a wider range of families through an existing service.

Where CSPPs reported expanding an existing service, it was unclear whether they had assessed their approach for delivering support against the Scottish Government’s Supporting Families: A National Self-Assessment Toolkit.

Type of activity

Many WFWF activities were frontline practitioner-led and can be categorised as either one-to-one support or group activities. Case study CSPPs mostly reported that new, or expanded, support was one-to-one and involved providing tailored support to children, young people, and families, including:

• Regular meetings between children, young people and families and a frontline practitioner, either at home or in a public location like a café.
• Practical support such as with housing, employment, communications with schools/medical professionals, or legal services.
• Emotional support or advice.
• ‘Caseworker’ role held by the frontline practitioner.

Group activities included regular support activities for children, young people, and families to address specific needs or receive more holistic support. Examples included learning sessions held in schools or other community buildings, and holiday activities such as beach trips.

“They [holiday activities] were about us bonding as a family – getting to know each other and learning to dealing [sic] with each other when things didn’t go to plan. It was fun too. We all loved it.”

Parent

Enablers of WFWF implementation

CSPPs reported that WFWF implementation was easier where they were focussing on expanding existing successful activities. Where an activity was deemed successful pre-WFWF, WFWF was helpful in providing CSPPs with the funding needed to scale up. CSPPs assessed activities as successful based on feedback from children, young people, and families, and tangible measures of improvement such as increases in children and young people’s school attendance. There was no evidence to suggest that CSPPs sought to expand, or build upon, services that were unsuccessful pre-WFWF.

CSPPs having dedicated strategic and operational oversight of WFWF activity was another key enabler. This included children’s services boards providing steer and sign off on how all family support funding is used. Cross-partner representation on the boards also helped to ensure alignment with priorities across the CSPP.

Strategic leads and WFWF local leads also reported that the ability to develop new, and strengthen existing, cross-partner links had also allowed for increased collaboration, contributing to better implementation of WFWF. One CSPP’s example of multi-agency collaboration at a strategic level was that steering groups and boards were now sharing data across agencies to ensure that various organisations delivering WFWF support could be more joined up. CSPPs used this data to inform how they collaborate, and it had helped them to understand the interdependencies of the different services to ensure that these fit together into a coherent family support approach.

Other types of cross-agency collaboration included education leads and frontline practitioners from third sector organisations co-creating a pilot project, and input from educational psychologists to coordinate links between various partner organisations and staff (such as secondary school staff and social workers).

Most CSPPs had a dedicated local lead for WFWF who led on coordination across CSPP partners. This was reported to be important to ensure collaboration and alignment with priorities. This allowed CSPPs to have someone that was dedicated to driving the WFWF vision forward, leading to a more efficient pace of implementation.

“We wouldn’t have progressed so far without [WFWF lead]. Such a big programme needs dedicated time and leadership to make it a success. You can’t underestimate the time needed to get multi-agency input and agreement.”

Strategic lead

The pace of WFWF implementation was faster where strong partnerships with third sector partners already existed. This included where third sector partners’ views were already aligned with WFWF priorities, and decisions and direction of WFWF aims were made collaboratively. This avoided repeated alignment discussions (present in CSPPs where third sector partners were not as aligned) and meant that all parties involved in WFWF delivery could focus on achieving their joint vision for family support.

The increased ability of frontline practitioners to look at the ‘bigger picture’ for families (i.e. seeking to support them as a family unit, rather than individual support for family members) had also contributed to the effective implementation of WFWF. For many CSPPs, this was an impact of the recent move away from siloed working, improved collaboration, and better working relationships across CSPPs partners. These improvements were driven largely by the creation of new WFWF posts that aimed to specifically strengthen the interface with the third sector, and better understanding of roles due to closer working. Across partners, frontline practitioners had demonstrated an improved knowledge of what support was available for families which meant that support pathways for families were more aligned and connected.

“Before, with multi-agency working, something wasn’t quite clicking. Everyone was focused on just their own responsibilities. Everybody was so overwhelmed, and resources were so stretched for such a long period of time that it was so difficult to see beyond your own role. I think there has been a massive and much needed culture change positively and just a mutual respect for everybody else’s roles. WFWF has helped with this and been the added boost we needed to focus and get there.”

Service manager

To upskill existing staff, CSP annual reports data highlighted that a few CSPPs had also delivered training to a multi-agency audience, whilst others had created a new workforce development lead role (see Figure 10). The main purpose of this was to improve frontline practitioner confidence, awareness and understanding of the whole family approach. During these training sessions, frontline practitioners were able to learn about different services that existed across the CSPP, and how they worked together to deliver WFWF services which enhanced multi-agency working.

Figure 10 CSPP Spotlight: Fife

A workforce development lead to identify and resolve workforce gaps that limit achievement of WFWF aims.

Fife have involved a workforce development lead as part of a sub-group to understand issues and gaps in workforce development across partner agencies and how workforce development could be expanded to meet WFWF aims. At the time of interview, 500 frontline practitioners across a range of CSPP partners (including health, education, social work, third sector) had engaged.

Activity included holding practice development sessions (planned collaboratively and held four times over the course of a year) that were based on the aims and principles of WFWF, the logic model and findings from their internal training needs analysis. This subgroup was responsible for designing session content, how it would be delivered and how monitoring and evaluation would look. The aim of the practice development sessions was to improve confidence, and knowledge, of the workforce. Following success of these sessions, they are now being rolled out across all seven localities.

Factors limiting implementation

There was some evidence of WFWF timescales and sustainability concerns impacting recruitment of staff to deliver WFWF activities, thereby limiting the pace of WFWF implementation for some CSPPs. CSPP strategic leads and local WFWF leads reported the main difficulties to be the temporary nature of the funding limiting applications, as CSPPs could only recruit staff on less appealing fixed-term contracts. One CSPP observed that the short contract length of the posts advertised may have negatively affected the quality of applicants.

"There is no doubt at all that the sort of the public sector recruitment space within the [region] has and remains a real challenge for large parts of it, particularly health visitors, school nurses, children, social work, social care... and I think given in some respects the time limited nature of the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund[ing], which is you're only offering short term contracts or contracts with that limit to them, that also makes them perhaps less attractive."

Strategic Lead

All case study CSPPs reported that at least one post was yet to be filled. To overcome this, a few CSPPs decided to fill WFWF-related vacancies with existing staff rather than by advertising new roles (see Figure 11).

Not all CSPPs were able to overcome the effect of time limited funding on recruitment though. In these instances, delaying other activities to account for slower recruitment was an important measure taken by CSPPs. In one example, after the departure of the local WFWF lead, the new lead reported that the CSPP had stalled in working towards implementing WFWF activity because a great deal of the service design work had to be repeated.

Figure 11 CSPP Spotlight: Fife

Mitigating recruitment issues by recruiting staff on a permanent basis.

To overcome difficulties recruiting employees for short-term contracts, Fife decided to recruit children and family social workers on a permanent basis, guaranteeing new recruits a job after the end of the WFWF. Fife also found it useful to recruit from existing staff and then backfilling those positions. This approach enabled Fife to recruit to fill roles in the two new services they had established: residential outreach and foster care support programmes.

However, this approach did come with risks relating to finding roles for these frontline practitioners if the new WFWF activities did not continue beyond the end of the funding period. Although strategic leads and local WFWF leads did not have a definitive plan for this and it is subject to review, they described aiming to embed all new WFWF activity within support delivery and make it business as usual if there was evidence of positive outcomes.

The process chosen by some CSPPs to engage with third sector partners had also limited the pace of WFWF activity implementation. There were five key reasons noted for this:

• Strategic leads and local WFWF leads noted that third sector organisations tended to offer more consistent packages, which may not fully consider the continuously evolving and changing needs of families.
• Smaller third sector organisations, at times, had more limited knowledge of how the wider family support system worked. Case study strategic leads and local WFWF leads suggested that, as a result, these smaller third sector organisations may face difficulty when trying to integrate with other services, and that there was more work required from CSPPs to ensure that third sector organisations had the knowledge to engage.
• Working more collaboratively within CSPPs had also meant that CSPP partners, including third sector organisations, had more bureaucratic processes (for instance aligning with CSPP hiring practices and IT systems) to work through. This was perceived as a burden and therefore a contributing factor to limited WFWF implementation.
• Another difficulty was that third sector organisations tended to work on a commissioning cycle, so were in a position of having less control over financial resources (in a competitive third sector space), which had caused internal challenges and impacted their engagement with the WFWF.
• There was also evidence from a couple of case study CSPPs that suggested there were some difficulties with alignment from third sector organisations which meant that the affected CSPPs had been caught in a cycle of inconclusive discussions around how to proceed in a collaborative manner (see Figure 12). As shown by the quote below, one significant reason for this difficulty was that third sector organisations felt that they were already delivering the type of support that addresses WFWF aims.

“One of the things that the third sector are slightly struggling with is the idea that we have to do something completely different to actually shift the culture of service delivery. I think some of the feedback is they feel as though they're doing some of this work already and we're actually saying to them, 'That's not what we need you to do now. We need you to do something fundamentally different with families at a much earlier stage.’”

Strategic Lead

Figure 12 CSPP Spotlight: Glasgow City

Repeated discussions with third sector organisations about aligning with WFWF priorities.

In Glasgow, strategic leads shared that there was a persistent challenge of third sector organisations not fully aligning with WFWF priorities. It was reported that this was mainly because third sector organisations struggled with the idea of doing something different to achieve transformative family support aims.

As such, strategic leads reported being caught up in repeated discussions with third sector colleagues about how best to align. Where progress towards alignment was believed to have been achieved, this was short-term, and the same discussions would continue when discussing a new point.