In November 2010 there were 1630 children in care in Essex, today this figure stands at 1535 – a reduction of 95 cases. By introducing Social Impact Bonds Essex hopes to continue, and accelerate, this downward trend.
Leader of Essex County Council Peter Martin said: “I am delighted to be able to announce another first for Essex County Council. Social Impact Bonds will strengthen families’ own capacity to cope and avoid young people having to enter care or custody in the first place. We want young people in Essex to have the best start in life, intervention with families before they reach breaking point can help us ensure more children in Essex get the chance to live their life with the same hopes, fears and opportunities we want for our own children. Family intervention demonstrates that with support lives can be turned around, in Essex we want to be able to provide that support and commitment for our most vulnerable families.”
Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society, said: “It’s great news that Essex County Council have decided to use Social Impact Bonds to finance the way they support vulnerable young people. This is a great example of how County Councils can do things differently to improve people’s lives, because as well as helping some of the most vulnerable young people in Essex to get a better start in life and have more opportunities to do well at school it will also raise additional money to be directed at helping more families.
“The Cabinet Office will continue to work with other councils who have begun work in this area and we hope this will act as a model for even more authorities to consider social impact bonds as a way of raising finance to unlock better service delivery for their residents.”
Social Impact Bonds will be used in Essex to fund high level programmes that support vulnerable children and help keep families together, particularly when there is a risk that a child may come into local authority care. The approach is an innovative way of attracting investment to the public sector by deploying socially motivated private investment to pay towards tackling public service issues where a dual return of social benefit and savings to the public purse can be achieved. Investors receive a payment only if a programme hits its target, thereby reducing the risk to the public sector.
Having completed a feasibility stage, Essex County Council has concluded that social impact bonds could be an appropriate funding mechanism to commission a number of Multi-Systemic Therapy Teams to work across the county. Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) is an intensive treatment programme that focuses on families with complex needs; the programme works intensively with the whole family and all that surrounds them, homes, schools, neighbourhoods and friends aiming to keep the family together and provide a range of support where needed.