Connecting families to support
The Department for Education Family Hubs - Growing Up Well project aims to develop data and digital products that will solve practical problems local areas face, particularly in delivering services effectively across health, education and social care.
Redbridge has been selected as one of six local authorities to be part of the pilot for the information sharing workstream. This workstream is a platform called ‘Connecting families to support’ which aims to improve how professionals can make referrals into the voluntary and community sector.
The platform is used internally by Redbridge Council professionals and by the voluntary and community sector.
Redbridge professionals working with families and young people will be able to search the service directory for activities, groups and services run by voluntary and community organisations. They will be able make a request for an organisation to engage with an individual or family to offer support.
Voluntary and community organisation will be able sign in to the platform to view and respond to requests sent to their organisation. The online referral will have information on what support the family needs and how the voluntary organisation can get in touch. The family will then be able to receive the support from the voluntary organisation directly.
Currently once a referral has been made, it is unknown from Redbridge's perspective that the voluntary and community sector organisation has accepted it. This puts an increase on officer time and effort and can cause delays if there is a lack in officer capacity.
The platform will have a dashboard that shows if a case is opened, accepted, declined (with reason) or close. This will make cases easier to manage for both the Redbridge professional and the voluntary and community organisation. There will also be filtering capabilities for opening times, cost, age, translation services and distance, allowing for a more refined search functionality. If the organisation is at full capacity and cannot take on any referrals, they can remove the ‘connect’ function so referrals cannot be made. The new platform will also remove the need for officers to create their own lists of organisations they can refer families to and have all the information in one centralised system.
If you are a Redbridge professional
Redbridge staff Connecting Families to Support onboarding
If you are a voluntary or community organisation
Department for Education Connecting Families to Services Onboarding