Positive Families Partnership
Supporting families with young people at risk of being taken into care across multiple London boroughs, providing them with access to family therapy interventions.
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Location
London
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Launch
Feb 2018
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Area
Systemic Support for Families
Collaborators & funding partners
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Merton Borough Council
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Sutton Borough Council
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Tower Hamlets Borough Council
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Haringey Borough Council
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Kingston upon Thames Borough Council
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Barking & Dagenham Borough Council
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Hounslow Borough Council
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Life Chances Fund
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Bexley Borough Council
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Newham London Borough Council
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Richmond upon Thames Borough Council
Delivery Partners
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South West London & St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust
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Family Action
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Multisystemic Therapy
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Functional Family Therapy
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Family Psychology Mutual
Collaborators & funding partners
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Merton Borough Council
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Sutton Borough Council
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Tower Hamlets Borough Council
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Haringey Borough Council
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Kingston upon Thames Borough Council
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Barking & Dagenham Borough Council
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Hounslow Borough Council
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Life Chances Fund
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Bexley Borough Council
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Newham London Borough Council
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Richmond upon Thames Borough Council
Delivery Partners
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South West London & St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust
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Family Action
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Multisystemic Therapy
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Functional Family Therapy
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Family Psychology Mutual
Overview
Positive Families Partnership launched in February 2018, initially operating across five London Boroughs: Bexley, Merton, Newham, Sutton, and Tower Hamlets.
The London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Richmond, Kingston, Hounslow, and Haringey later joined the programme between August 2018 and September 2019.
The programme supports families with young people at risk of being taken into care, providing these young people (and their families) with access to family therapy interventions designed to help the family address behavioural and emotional issues. These therapy courses – either Multisystemic Therapy (MST) or Functional Family Therapy (FFT) – are delivered by specialist delivery organisations.
Delivery innovations
An outcomes partnership has enabled a much more collaborative, flexible approach to problem-solving. This has facilitated a number of significant delivery innovations, including:
- Better collaboration across Government: the programme’s structure allowed more local authorities to join the initial five; by the end of the programme it was providing services to ten London boroughs.
- Flexibility to re-design: Covid led to a full re-design of our services to enable the shift to an online model, resulting in seamless service delivery that boroughs could rely on.
- Accountable for learning: PFP evolved the delivery of FFT by adding in extra supervisory capacity when it was clear that it would be needed to ensure model fidelity. PFP has shared the adaptations it has made to modify MST and FFT delivery, both with the licensors and more broadly.
Outcomes
Young people spent 89.4% of time with their family, compared to an expected 35% without any intervention, at a 60% lower cost per family than other non-outcomes programmes.
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410
Starts to the programme
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30533
Weeks out of care
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£6.5m
Outcomes achieved
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£19.7m
Value to Government
Further materials
Our teams regularly analyse, evaluate and iterate on projects to ensure delivery is achieving as much impact as efficiently as possible – and share their learnings. See below for evidential, evaluative and additional learning documents related to the delivery of Positive Families Partnership.