Turning the Tide: Why driving effective prevention in children’s services requires a system re-think

iMPOWER exists to work alongside the public sector to help ‘shift the needle’ on complex problems. Our underlying belief over the last 10 years has been that,
to do so sustainably, requires local authorities and health services to focus on demand for services, driving prevention, early intervention, and the independence and resilience of citizens at every level.
Our experience of working with numerous local authorities has given us a unique insight into the best ways of doing so, and the pitfalls that can be faced when key steps are missed in building the evidence and commitment to ‘shift the needle’. Equally, often we have found that if problems are addressed either too narrowly or too broadly, the system can easily become ‘locked’.
In 2015, we published our innovative white paper ‘Breaking the Lock’, setting out our view on what an effective model for children’s services needed to look like in the context of rising demand for statutory services.
Our view was then, and remains so today, that the emphasis must be on prevention and early intervention to ‘turn the tide', from high cost, and often poor impact
statutory provision, to earlier impactful intervention that builds sustainable resilience in families. Illustrated on the following page, this means effectively tackling
problems early on before needs escalate and crises occur, leading to the need for costly social care and other specialist interventions.
Delivering this sustainably not only improves outcomes for children, but helps achieve sustainable provision through reducing demand.