Supporting Families Programme

The Supporting Families Programme (previous known as Priority Families Programme) is a way of targeting help and support to those families who need it most.

Supporting Families focuses on the whole family and unites the skills and expertise of all our frontline partners, rather than support one family member in isolation and tackle one problem at a time.

Who are Supporting Families?

The Supporting Families Programme is a way of targeting help and support to those families who need it most.

We focus on the whole family and unites the skills and expertise of all our frontline partners. This works better than supporting family members individually and tackling one problem at a time.

Families have complex needs and will require a bespoke family plan to support them. For a family to be included in the programme, the support plan must include at least three of the following support areas:

• Improving children’s engagement with education.
• Insuring children have good early years development.
• Helping children and adults improve their mental and physical health.
• Support to reduce substance misuse.
• Improving family relationships.
• Making sure children are safe from abuse, neglect, or exploitation.
• Diverting adults and children from crime.
• Making sure the family is safe from domestic abuse.
• Reducing the risk of the family or young person from becoming homeless or being in unsuitable accommodation.
• Supporting the family to be more financially stable.

Tackling one problem at a time is not going to help in the long term. We must support and engage with every member of the family. The only way we can do this is to work smarter with our partners such as:

• other Council departments
• schools and education providers
• housing
• police
• health
• voluntary sector
• other local authorities.

Learn more on our Supporting Families criteria page.

How do I nominate Supporting Families?

If you are working with a family that meet the criteria you can access additional support and resources to help your family achieve positive change. Find out what resources are available on our Additional support for Supporting Families page. You need to nominate the family to the Priority Families team to access extra resources.

To nominate a family you can contact your locality supporting families casework support officer. Details of what happens when a family is nominated can be found by downloading the Nomination Process. If you are unsure who to contact or need further information, please email supportingfamilies@derby.gov.uk.

Data sharing

To ensure that our work is effective we need to share data with partner agencies. Our Supporting Families Programme is part of a national initiative run by the Department for Education (DfE). We are routinely required to submit information to the department on the families worked with and identified as eligible for the programme.

Derby City Council has created a data warehouse to help identify and better understand families experiencing multiple vulnerabilities, for example by comparing and collating data from different public sector sources into one place. This facilitates multi-agency working by displaying a joined up, single view of an individual or household. This will allow professionals to connect quickly and reduce the need for the family to explain issues multiple times.

We are the sole owner and custodian of the data set. Information will be held securely and will only be used and shared on a strict need to know basis with authorised partners in Derby for the purpose of identifying, supporting, and evaluating the work with families who have the most need through the Supporting Families programme.

The information is used to make informed decisions about families and to assure they get the help they need to address any potential disadvantages. We will share information internally and between our partner agencies in a secure and robust way to deliver a whole-family approach and where possible help resolve these problems at the earliest stage, preventing them from escalating. The sharing has three primary aims:

• to identify families facing multiple disadvantages
• the improvement of the physical, mental, emotional, social, or economic well-being of individuals and families
• to gain a better understanding of the impact of Children’s Services intervention and therefore an improvement or targeting of appropriate support to individuals or households.

You can find out more about what we do with personal data by visiting our Children and Young People and Adult Social Care privacy notice.