Managing anti social behaviour and YHN’s Family Intervention Project

July 2011

Introductions

• Rachel Green, FIP Manager• Nick Dodgeon, Tenancy Services Manager• Your Homes Newcastle (YHN)• ALMO• 30,000 Council properties• Core business is housing management, but also

provides diverse range of added value services for customers (eg Furniture Service, Freight storage, Sheltered Housing, Young People)

YHN’s ASB escalation process

• Specialist ASB team • Renewed focus on the victim • Complaints assessed by specialist team• ‘Personal’, ‘Community’, ‘Environment’• Risk assessment with victim – repeat/vulnerability • Appoint key worker – minimum case standards, focus on

face to face contact, develop mutually agreed action plan, being realistic, feedback

• Victim support secondment

Incident of Anti-Social Behaviour reported

Dedicated 24 hour Phone Line

Refer to lead agency

YHN’s ASB TeamHASBET

Assess complaintComplete victim’s risk

assessment‘Personal’

‘Community’ ‘Environment’

Council’s Public Health

HASBET deal with case in line with Minimum case work

standards24 hour response Interview victim

Hand deliver ‘victim’s pack’, incident diary

Develop mutual agreed action plan

Appoint key workerAll ‘Personal’ ASB

remains with HASBET specialist ASB Officer

Police

Refer to dedicated Victim Support

Perpetrators

• Challenge & support• Co-ordinated ASB escalation process with partners• 2 stages of early warnings / intervention leading to an

Acceptable Behaviour Agreement (ABA)• All tenures! • Used by Police Officers, CSOs, Housing Officers, Public

Health, Street Wardens since 2005• Proven success - 95% change behaviour without legal

enforcement year after year• Is this good enough….? Are we doing all we can?

2nd warning

Acceptable Behaviour Agreement

Parenting Contract

NOSPASBO

Injunction

Eviction / loss of home

1st warning Signposting/information

Youth Inclusion

Drug & Alcohol WorkerIIP, YOT

CAF

?

So……what about the 5%?

• Do we evict? • Or try to break the cycle?

• Family Intervention Project is part of YHN and our escalation process

• So why would a social landlord want to manage a FIP?

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Trans-theoretical Model: Cycle of Change:

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True Engagement Needs:

Clear and Collaborative Goal Setting

Hopefulness Parental Acknowledgement

of their situation

Motivation Respect for Cultural Differences

Honest and Straightforward Communication

Persistent and Timely Efforts

Signs of Safety• Based around what works on the front line for workers and service users.

• Describes:• What we are doing• What we are struggling with• What is working

• Language is key.

• Working relationships & shared focus.

• Workers who use SOS approach:

Don’t just do things… they understand why they are doing them.

The YHN FIP Process:

• Request for Intervention

• Initial Visit

• Planning Meeting

• Family Profile

• Support Plan

• Review

• Close & Follow-Up

Request for Intervention

FIPOutcomesAchieved

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Request for Intervention:

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Hopefulness

Faced with:

Action

Ring Ring

Request for Intervention - In Practice:

What Are We Worried About? What’s Going Well? Proposed Role for FIP

Current Concerns Sunday (24th Oct)-Police were

called for high levels of noise/concern for the girls wellbeing

“The House is a Mess” Mum has no boundaries

Complicating Factors

Mum has schizophrenia

• The family say they are willing to engage• Mum recognises there are some major problems for the family at the present time• The family have worked with FIP before and there was some improvement.• The girls are registered at school and things are a bit better for Jade with regards school

FIP to work with the family to address the current risk of Eviction through continued/increasing anti social behaviour

FIP to work with Sarah to find appropriate support in dealing with her issues, in the hope she will not spiral any further downwards

FIP to help address the emotional impact on Robert, of what is happening in the family home

Safety Scale: Rate the situation on a scale of 0 – 10, where 0 means things are so bad the family can no longer care for the children and 10 means that everything that needs to happen for the children to be safe in the family is

happening. 3

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Initial Visit:

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Parental Acknowledgement

of their situation

Hopefulness

Faced with:

The Family

Complex Issues

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Initial Visit – In Practice:What’s NOT Going Well? What’s Going Well? What Needs to Happen?

Worrying Themes for the Family Who is feeling left out? Who needs

attention from Mam? The tenancy is a tough one,

Katherine says the house is ‘overwhelming’ and ‘not compact enough,’ which means it’s a nightmare to clean and keep tidy.

Being in Byker is having a knock on effect for the family in that Katherine thinks the kids are slowly being ‘roped in’ and might get involved in dodgy things. Katherine is a ‘west end girl’ and feels that the people who live here are not the kind of people she wants around her kids.

The kids are vulnerable; due to the way they experience the world in a different way. (Autism)

Family members (Rachel and Katherine) are ‘sick to death’ of the bad behaviour

Rachel - has been and can be a little rock for Mam. She has some real strengths. When she gets on with Katherine, they really get on, like mates as well as mother and daughter.

Katherine - is astute & meticulous

Is good at coping with change and wants it to happen. She can plan things and has been doing this successfully with Jean’s help, around meals and things like that

Jordan - is a funny affectionate kid.

Family View (and JEAN)

Worker/David’s View

Weekend respite for Katherine, with Sarah also going into foster care

The realistic prospect of a move back to Cruddas Park, where all of Katherine’s support network is based

Things to calm down in the house

Jordan to stop throwing things out of the window and Sarah to stop encouraging this

More structure on a regular basis and more support

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Planning Meeting:

Planning

Meeting

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Clear and Collaborative Goal Setting

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Faced with:

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Family

Profile

Family Profile:

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Respect for Cultural Differences

Honest and Straightforward Communication

Solution Focused

C.B.T.

Motivational

Interviewing

Signs of Safety

Family Profile – In Practice:

Signs of Safety

Danger Statement

Parents, Child B, the FIP worker, SW, and police are worried that because Child A is only 13 years old and keeps running away and spending time with older men, she may end up with people who are going to hurt her and there will be no one there to help. If that happens she could end up being either raped or in a ditch.

Outcome Statement

Child A will be going out but not running away and when she is out, her mam will know where she is at and who she is with.

Family Profile - In Practice

Signs of Safety

Danger Statement

Michelle is still too up and down and this makes it really hard to get consistency in her day to life and that of the boys. For things to change, Michelle needs to really try and sort out her own mental health needs and none of this, ‘everything’s cush’

when it isn’t! It’s hard to look after other people when we’re not looking after ourselves.

Outcome Statement

Michelle is giving the CMHT (community mental health team) a proper chance and is feeling better about things. She has support on bad days and understands that the depression doesn’t have to take over all of the time. The good days are

more frequent and Michelle can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The best bit is that Michelle can handle the boys and do what needs to be done to help them

feel good about stuff.

Family Profile - In Practice

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Support Plan

Support Plan:

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Persistent and Timely Efforts

Clear and Collaborative Goal Setting

Faced with:Action

Task No: 1 How am I/we going to achieve this?

How will I/we know when I/we have achieved this?

Who else will be involved? What will they do?

Sanctions

What is the Task?

Find someone to talk to when things make me feel a bit bad

We all try to get used to talking about good and bad things, even with Mam if we feel ok with thatWe can chose who we talk to and when we doIt it’s too hard to talk, or we sometimes feel uncomfortable, we can try to write it down or draw it

We’re all talking a bit more and not feeling like we can’t

Mam-Will make time to talk with us, even if that feels ‘funny’ at firstDavid will help with talking skills if that is something we need to look at!

If we don’t talk about things that bother us, we end up unhappy and that can make us do things we really don’t want to do.These same things can cause trouble for Mam too

FIP- SUPPORT PLAN (Mitchell Boys)

Task No: 2 How am I/we going to achieve this?

How will I/we know when I/we have achieved this?

Who else will be involved? What will they do?

Sanctions

What is the Task?

Help Mam to make sure our house is clean and tidy, because that’s how we really want it to be. Make our bedrooms nice for ourselves too

•Really help when things are in need of a clean or tidy•Keep the house clean and tidy from the start, so we don’t have to tidy up all the time•Take turns to do jobs and don’t be frightened to get in and get our hands dirty, you’ll prefer a tidy house anyway!!

Everyone to help and encourage each other!!

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Review

Review

Review:

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Honest and Straightforward Communication

Motivation

Maintenance

Faced with:

Action

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Close & Follow Up:FIP

OutcomesAchieved

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Parental Acknowledgement

of their situation

Motivation

Close and Follow Up- Faced with:

MaintenanceRelapse

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Plan

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Severity of assessed need

3. Children on the edge

of care

4. Children in care

2. Contacts and Referral

1. Universal Services

YHN FIP Model: True Engagement & Change

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Prochaska, DiClemente & Norcross (1992)Prochaska, DiClemente & Norcross (1992)

FIPOutcomesAchieved

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Review

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Altman (2008)Altman (2008) Your Homes Newcastle: FIPYour Homes Newcastle: FIP

Feedback for Our Approach:

• “our main focus [in this locality] is a hard core of 14 to 15 year olds … our main concern here is the younger kids, following the family tradition … I’ve been working for 19 years and you can see it happen … FIP breaks the mould”.

(Neighbourhood Sergeant)

Feedback: (continued)• “We know that the crucial things are being dealt with, like the house

is being kept clean, the children are eating meals, they have bedding, the kid has somewhere to live … that all means you don’t have to worry about them, you can do your job with the child”. (School Health Adviser).

• “A lot of the issues around housing relate to schooling, like two families living in one house … school absence relates to home problems … the knowledge [provided by the FIP at the TAF meetings] about what happens in the home has massive impacts [on improving our work]”. (Education Welfare Officer).

• “My relationship with the mother has really improved [because of the FIP worker] which has helped me working with the child … I couldn’t put the time in”. (Education Welfare Officer).

Feedback

• “you see them [the family] in a different light, instead of naturally assuming that they’re bad, you see that they’ve had bad experiences … normally, you wouldn’t know about other things, like the problems they have at school … it’s a bit of an eye opener … it’s helped with our appreciation of the family’s issues”. (Housing Officer)

Feedback from Families:

• “X would definitely been in prison if it wasn’t for the FIP … he’s in Rathbone’s which would’ve been unheard of. In fact, that’s what we went on the parenting course for, so that the two youngest children didn’t end up like X”.

• “it’s a novelty seeing a Police car and knowing that they’re not coming here”.

Questions?