Bracknell Forest Youth Justice Plan 2024 to 2027 - 4.10 National priority areas

4.10.1 Children from groups which are over-represented

The Youth Justice Team produced a Disproportionality Action Plan in January 2023 which incorporates 3 themes:

1. Rejuvenation and continuous development of the Youth Justice Management Board
2. Data and beyond 
3. Continuous enhancement of the Youth Justice Team delivery in places and spaces that are appropriate to the needs of children

Fourteen actions were identified in the action plan, 11 of which have been completed. The remaining 3 have been carried forward in the Youth Justice Plan 2024 to 2027 at 4.7.

In July 2023, a peer-led Disproportionality Audit was undertaken as part of the Youth Justice Team’s ongoing commitment to creating inclusive services which are culturally and religiously sensitive so that assessments, plans, interventions and reviews of work take into consideration children’s bespoke needs and experiences. 

Eight cases were ‘dip-sampled’ drawing on the His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation’s (HMIP’s) thematic report into the experiences of Black and mixed heritage boys in the youth justice system which recognises that Black children are over-represented and that their needs are less well understood. This can then result in bias and disadvantage to them.

The audit results were positive in the following areas:

• key decision making
• exploring ethnicity and culture in assessments
• managing risk and planning

The following areas for development were identified:

• discussing ethnicity culture and religion in supervision
• recording on the front screen of Childview
• exploring underlying causes and the impact of discriminatory experiences

The findings of this audit and the improvement plan were presented to the Youth Justice Management Board in September 2023 and all actions were completed by January 2024.

In terms of data for the 3 statutory Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the ethnic breakdown of children is shown below:

No children were sentenced to custody in 2023 to 2024.

4.10.2 Policing

Thames Valley Police are committed to supporting all 9 youth justice teams within the force area. 

They collaborate closely with partners and embrace ‘child first principles’. As part of the partnership, they work with the Youth Justice Team in delivering outcomes and interventions to the children and communities we serve. 

Outcomes are centred around the Joint Decision-Making Panel (JDMP) processes whereby all partners have an equal opportunity to share information on any child under review. The JDMP process is centred around understanding the circumstances of each child and hearing each child’s voice whilst making sure that outcomes are balanced, proportionate and centred around the National Police Chief’s Council’s Child Gravity Matrix 2023. 

Thames Valley Police makes sure that it provides the requirements of this matrix as well as the Youth Justice Board’s ‘The Role of the Youth Justice Police Officer.’ We have embedded a police officer as part of the Youth Justice Team in Bracknell Forest who works closely with all youth justice partners.

In 2024, Outcome 22 will be introduced and used. It is a non-statutory outcome requirement that Thames Valley Police believes will be a useful addition to other statutory outcomes available to the force and youth justice services. It will enable delivery of diversionary, educational intervention activity for offences that may not be in the public interest to deal with in a more formal outcome.

4.10.3 Prevention

Bracknell Forest’s Early Help Strategy provides the partnership with the strategic vision that:

‘Bracknell Forest is a place where children, young people and their families feel safe, have access to high quality education and well-being services, giving them the opportunity to live healthy and empowered lives in their community.’ 

The strategy is clear that everyone has a responsibility to provide services and support to families as early as possible and sets out what children, families, and partners can expect from services. The Early Help Partnership is committed to supporting children and families as early as possible, through a co-ordinated early help assessment and “outcome star” approach - this includes children who may be a risk of offending. 

Referrals are received from the Youth Justice Team, Adolescent Triage Panel and the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and can be made directly by families themselves. As part of service delivery to reduce parental conflict, Early Help have appointed a co-ordinator to lead this work, including supporting children and families who are in conflict which if not positively resolved could escalate and increase the risk of offending. The Early Help Partnership also works in conjunction with the Youth Justice Team to deliver ‘Who’s in Charge’ - a program to help tackle child to parent violence.

Following a consultation period, a review of existing services and resources and data analysis, Bracknell Forest have published a 3-year Youth Strategy that understands the needs, requirements and aspirations of children across Bracknell Forest. Children with lived experience of youth justice and youth justice professionals were included in the consultation to make sure that the needs of the Youth Justice cohort were reflected in the strategy.

Work between the Community Safety Partnership, local policing, BFC Youth Services and the Youth Justice Team identified emerging anti-social behaviour concerns within specific locations in the area through mapping work undertaken in 2021. This culminated in a successful bid to the government’s Safer Streets 4 fund which incorporated 3 strands of work with children over a period of 10 months ending in September 2023. These 3 strands of work took place in the spaces and places that children frequented, in community contexts and in their peer group settings, in keeping with a contextual safeguarding approach. Safer Streets aimed to tackle anti-social behaviour in the town centre and had 3 work streams comprised of the following:

• Intervention 1: Detached youth work and community engagement (11 hours per week: November 2022 to September 2023)
• Intervention 2: Mentoring and diversion activity for children identified as vulnerable and involved in anti-social behaviour or other forms of criminality (14 children with sessions twice a week from 3 January 2023 to 31 July 2023
• Intervention 3: Participatory budgeting to inform the creation of safe and inclusive spaces for children (4 hours per week of youth work between 3 January 2023 and 30 September 2023)

The project received a positive evaluation with identified learning too. The number of interventions with children and members of the community equated to 950, 50 and 217 for each strand with a reduction in anti-social behaviour of 3%.

The Youth Justice Team is delivering the Ministry of Justice’s Turnaround program and using the funding available to work with 14 additional children per year in a family-focused prevention model. This government program includes assessment and a strengths-based approach with a local focus on ensuring children have access to meaningful activities that support their pro-social development. Fourteen families benefitted from the project in 2023 to 2024. Following the announcement that Turnaround funding will cease at the end of 2024 to 2025, Bracknell Forest Youth Justice Team will make preparations for this in the latter part of the financial year.

Through the Youth Justice Team’s Prevention Service, it delivers time limited and bespoke voluntary assessments and interventions with children who have received community resolutions or who are at risk of entering the criminal justice system. Following a similar model of tracking re-offending by the statutory cohort over a 12-month period, 2023 data highlights that:

• 90 referrals were received into the Prevention Service
• 39 (43%) engaged with the service
• 33 (36%) of referrals were signposted to an alternative service through the triage system
• 18 refused the service

Until 2023 to 2024, Children Looked After had not been disproportionately represented within the youth justice system. Both the Bracknell Forest Youth Justice Team and the Youth Justice Management Board are determined to reverse this trend to reduce the chances of children offending when they leave care. In Bracknell Forest, this is a key consideration in all the work undertaken for Children Looked After. The Head of Service for Life Chances, who is the lead for Children Looked After and Care Leavers, sits on the Youth Justice Management Board.

Children’s Social Care’s primary decision-making process for children entering, leaving or moving placements while in care is through an Entry to Care Panel chaired by the Head of Life Chances. Where the Panel identifies a child who is at risk of offending, a representative from the Youth Justice Team also attends alongside core members such as the Virtual School.

As part of placement decisions for children, the local authority undertakes due diligence activity around carers or providers which includes a location risk assessment to understand what the risk factors are around crime and what protective factors may need to be put in place. In addition, if the child is at risk of being placed out of area, the Youth Justice Team consults with the relevant local Youth Justice Team understand more about local context, what potential needs or risks may emerge and what interventions can be accessed in the event that the placement is used.

Using Department for Education and Public Health funding, the Life Chances Team has developed a ‘permanency hub’ to especially support Children Looked After and has further developed this model over the last 12 months. The hub now includes a play therapist, drama therapist, behaviour specialists and specialist youth workers to engage with Children Looked After on a range of holistic areas to help resilience and recovery from trauma, support placement stability and make sure that children get the help they need to thrive. The number of Bracknell Forest Children Looked After offending in Bracknell Forest increased significantly in 2023. This will be monitored and discussed at the Youth Justice Management Board.

4.10.4 Diversion

The Youth Justice Team use a 3-tiered approach to respond to children who have been issued with Community Resolutions by the police. The nature of the approach is dependent on an initial triage screening by the Youth Justice Team’s Operational Manager and Prevention Case Worker which includes:

• whether the child is previously known to the Youth Justice Team and the nature of interventions previously provided
• checks on electronic databases in Children’s Social Care and schools to identify other services already in place and any wider concern
• gravity and context of the offence for which the Community Resolution has been issued
• the timeline between the offence and the issuing of the Community Resolution and any periods of desistence from offending

In response to an increase in Community Resolutions, triages have taken place weekly in 2023 to 2024 and have become embedded in day-to-day use of the Out of Court Disposals Policy.

The 3-tiered approach is set out as follows:

• send an opt-in letter to families to make them aware of youth justice services and other appropriate sources of support for children in receipt of their first Community Resolution with no other identifiable concerns, or where services are already being offered to meet needs
• pro-active contact with families by the Youth Justice Team in the context of second Community Resolutions or subsequent Community Resolutions after a previous substantiative outcome to offer an assessment for support
• diversion to the Adolescent Triage Panel where targeted services may be most suitable to make initial contact

The Youth Justice Team offered services to 87 Community Resolutions in 2023. Further data development is needed to report in more detail about the next steps for these children and the responses they received/services they were offered.

Drug Diversion Scheme

Bracknell Forest’s Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) ‘New Hope’ is a substance misuse service funded by the local authority to provide drug and alcohol harm reduction and recovery support services to adults and children in the area. The average caseload across the service is approximately 260 people.

The Drug Diversion Scheme (DDS) has been introduced to support children at the earliest opportunity and to avoid them entering the criminal justice system, which may lead to further offending. The scheme is voluntary and offered by police to children who are stopped and caught in the possession of low amounts of Class C drugs for personal use.

Other forms of drug and alcohol support is offered to children by New Hope from the age of 12. These children may be referred from educational settings, social services, medical professionals and police. Interventions are offered in the form of 1:1 or group work, informing people of the risks and dangers of using drugs or alcohol.

The 2 most frequent substance issues that both adults and children are referred to New Hope for are alcohol and cannabis. Numbers of referrals are low with referrals being received from the Drug Diversion Scheme, Youth Justice Team, Targeted Youth Service and police.

4.10.5 Education

Bracknell Forest Council is making progress in adopting the Department for Education’s ‘Working Together to Improve School Attendance’ which will become statutory from August 2024.

The guidance focuses on treating the root causes of absence and removing barriers to attendance, be they at home, in school or more broadly. The guidance requires schools and local partners to work collaboratively with, not against, families in the prevention, early intervention and targeted offer of support. 

To meet the requirements of the new guidance, Bracknell Forest Council are committed to using a centralised attendance platform in partnership with Bracknell Forest schools to ensure that attendance data is rigorously tracked and monitored accurately across multiple schools in a timely and secure manner.

The attendance platform will support Bracknell Forest to fulfil several of its statutory duties more efficiently and will support the work of the Youth Justice Team in tracking children who have suspensions, exclusions, attendance worries or are at risk of not achieving. A new addition to this guidance is the expectation that in order to facilitate effective working across the local authority area, schools are expected to inform a pupil’s youth justice team if there are unexplained absences from school. This will provide a better understanding of patterns and barriers that can be supported at an early intervention point. In response, more robust data systems have been implemented to provide a more comprehensive overview on an individual basis.

All pupils that are electively home-educated are flagged within the children social care system and the Elective Home Education Officer will collaborate with the Youth Justice Team where needed. The Youth Justice Team education representative attends the Attendance Panel and also the Children Missing Education and Elective Home Education Panel where individuals are discussed and action agreed with a wide number of professionals. These panels are solution-focussed to finding a way forward to ensure that pupils are engaged with education.

In response to the increasing complexity of children’s needs and noted difficulties with school attendance, the Youth Justice Team launched the Youth Justice Education Forum in September 2022 as a pilot to complement the monthly Risk Focus Meeting. This has resulted in any children open to the Youth Justice Team, who are experiencing difficulties in relation to education, have clear multi-agency plans created with and for them, regardless of the levels of risk identified in the AssetPlus assessment. Professionals in attendance include:

• Education Welfare
• Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
• Specialist Support Services
• Education, Training and Employment
• Speech and Language
• Child and Adolescent Mental Health
• Youth Justice Case Manager
• Special Education Needs Co-ordinator or Head of Year from the young person’s school

Evaluation of the arrangements took place in September 2023 and the details below summarises the impact and outcomes of the meeting. This has been wholly positive, and the arrangements will continue in 2024 to 2027.

The Virtual School, which works in partnership with a child looked after to help make their educational success a top priority in their care planning, collaborates with the Youth Justice Team by attending the Youth Justice Education Forum to provide additional oversight in relation to children who are looked after, children in need and those on a child protection plan. The Virtual School can offer suspension and mentoring support in these cases as well as to Children Looked After from out of area that are placed in Bracknell Forest.

Elevate have been supporting children who are open to the Youth Justice Team to make sure that they hold a Career Information, Advice and Guidance (CIAG) meeting with those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) or at risk of NEET. Referrals are also made into the NEET Project which comprises supported provided by the Story Group (open to year 11s and post-16 children). Story Group are currently providing mentoring and taster sessions in trades as well as digitisation and creation to support NEET and at risk of NEET children in Bracknell Forest.

Bracknell Forest Council Education and Learning have also been working with the Youth Justice Team on a speech and language project for children in need as well as those on a child protection plan, building on the support already provided through the Youth Justice Team.

A summary of education hours for children subject to out of court disposals and statutory court orders in 2023 is reflected below:

4.10.6 Restorative approaches and victims

The Youth Justice Team has a full-time Restorative Justice Co-ordinator who is responsible for:

• victim liaison and restorative justice
• recruitment, training and management of volunteers
• co-ordinating reparation activities by children
• co-ordinating referral orders
• co-ordinating mentoring

This role works to fulfil statutory requirements of the Youth Justice Team and makes sure that functions of the team operate within national Youth Justice Board policy and guidance, including:

• duty to provide persons to function as appropriate adults to safeguard the interests of children detained or questioned by the police (Crime & Disorder Act 1998)
• requirement to comply with the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (also known as the ‘Victim’s Code’), a Ministry of Justice paper that sets out the minimum standards that organisations must provide to victims of crime
• requirement to comply with the Youth Justice Board’s ‘Case Management Guidance’ on work with victims
• requirement to deliver or co-ordinate specific interventions with children in line with the Youth Justice Board’s ‘National Standards for Youth Justice Services’ including ensuring that all work with children builds on strengths and helps develop pro-social identities
• requirement to deliver statutory functions to specific standards including how Referral Order Panels are managed and run
• making sure volunteer recruitment targets the development of diversity within the Youth Justice Team, that volunteer activity is safely managed and run, and that children and volunteers are safeguarded

A summary of delivery for 2023 to 2024 is outlined below:

4.10.7 Serious violence, exploitation and contextual safeguarding

The government’s serious violence duty was introduced in December 2022 which required specified authorities to work together and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence, including:

• identifying the kinds of serious violence that occur in the areas
• the causes of that violence 
• to prepare and implement a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence in the area

Bracknell Forest’s serious violence strategy was published in January 2024. The strategy links with a number of related programmes of work and partnerships in Bracknell Forest including youth justice, domestic abuse, combatting drugs, all age safeguarding and suicide prevention.

An ambitious serious violence action plan has been compiled which is being progressed by the Bracknell Forest Community Safety Partnership’s Serious Violence and Exploitation Strategic Sub-Group. That group oversees 2 operational groups which are in place to respond to child and adult victims of serious violence and exploitation:

• SAVE (Serious Adult Violence and Exploitation): a multi-agency group to respond to risk identified in adults of being a victim or perpetrator of serious violence
• MACE/Makesafe: a multi-agency group to respond to risk identified in children of being a victim or perpetrator of serious violence

Levels of police recorded serious violence are low in Bracknell Forest compared to our similar family group.

However, the strategic needs assessment conducted in 2023 highlights times, days, age groups and genders which feature most prominently in the data and additional analysis is being undertaken to ensure that detail is understood to ensure appropriate responses.

As the levels of serious violence are low in Bracknell Forest, prevention at an early age forms a key part of the action plan including domestic abuse trauma counselling for children that witness domestic abuse, development of safe spaces with trusted adults and a comprehensive youth offer. The latter is being rolled out as part of council's new Youth Strategy in 2024.

Children who are released under investigation for serious violence are offered preventative interventions including Turnaround.

The Youth Justice Board's operational definition of serious violence is any drug, robbery or violence against the person offence that has a gravity score of 5 or more. Robbery offences all carry a gravity score of 6. Gravity scores range from 1 (least serious) to 8 (most serious).

Using data from the Youth Justice Board Toolkit, Bracknell Forest has a low rate of serious youth violence in comparison to other areas within our statistical youth justice family. In the year ending December 2023, there were 6 serious violence offences committed by under 18s in Bracknell Forest, which is an increase of 5 compared to the previous year where there was 1 offence. There were 19 serious violence offences over the same period for our youth justice family and 321 in the south-east. A trend graph over time is as below:

In respect of children released under investigation and on police bail, data in this regard is being collected and will be presented to the Youth Justice Management Board for governance and scrutiny, including any data held regarding disproportionality. Any child who is released on these bases will be considered by all appropriate partners as part of a multi-agency meeting, for example, safeguarding or exploitation prevention.

Exploitation

While Bracknell Forest’s response to child exploitation is well-established, its recognition that risk of being exploited extends beyond 18, it is developing an all-age exploitation prevention strategy in 2024 which will be co-produced with those with lived experience.

A contextual safeguarding awareness campaign for children at risk of exploitation is currently being undertaken across 7 business sectors:

• banking 
• hotels and accommodation 
• public transport
• fast food 
• retail 
• taxis and private vehicles
• delivery services

146 individual children were discussed at Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) meetings and Makesafe Adolescent Panel (MAP) meetings. This is a small decrease from 150 children the year before. The Youth Justice Team work closely with the Exploitation Prevention service and are trained in the use of screening tools and their duties under the National Referral Mechanism. 

Practice guidance relating to the assessment of children involved in elements of youth violence has been jointly developed between Exploitation Prevention and Youth Justice to share practice and approaches. It also uses material from across the sector including the Youth Justice Board, the Contextual Safeguarding Network as well as internal expertise of the different teams.

The MAP meets 3 times a month to triage adolescents that have been referred from Children’s Social Care, Youth Justice, Early Help or directly from schools. The meeting comprises operational managers from the Youth Justice Team, Makesafe, Targeted Youth Support Service, the Permanency Team and the Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). The purpose of the meeting is to decide which service is best to lead on work with the young person in order to prevent work overlapping and make best use of resources.

Prevent

Prevention of radicalisation and extremist activity (known as Prevent) is also well-established in Bracknell Forest with a multi-agency Prevent Steering Group and Channel Panels. A new 3-year Prevent Strategy and Action Plan for 2024-27 was launched this year.

With reference to the Thames Valley Counter Terrorism Local Profile for 2023, key findings were:

• self-initiated terrorism remains the most likely form of terrorist attack in the UK - such an attack could relate to either Islamist terrorism or extreme right-wing terrorism and would likely involve low sophistication methods
• the proportion of under 18s being referred to Prevent in the Thames Valley continues to increase, rising to 59% in 2023 from 51% in 2022 - this trend has been seen regionally and across the UK and is expected to continue in 2024
• safeguarding initiatives across the board should be focused on online behaviour - resilience to grievance narratives continue to be necessary to help mitigate the risks associated with unsupervised online activity and the often ‘passive’ exposure to extremist content (such as exposure to material that has not been actively sought out)
• the most common cases were ‘vulnerability present but no ideology or counter terrorism risk’ (46%), ‘mixed/unclear/unstable/conflicted’ (26%) and ‘extreme right-wing terrorism’ (18% - an increase from 2022) - all 3 types accounted for 90% of cases (an increase from 58% in 2022) and each of these 3 categories featured in every local authority area within the Thames Valley

Bracknell Forest is a low demand and low risk area regarding the threat of active terrorism and continues to be designated as a Tier 3, non-priority area in the latest Counter-Terrorism Local Profile (2023).

2023 saw Bracknell Forest make 18 Prevent referrals to Counter Terrorism Police South-East. The referral sources were:

• education: 10
• police: 5
• prisons and probation: 1
• local authority: 2

The ideological concerns comprised:

• vulnerability present but no ideology or counter terrorism risk: 47%
• school massacre ideology: 6%
• mixed, unclear, unstable or conflicted ideology: 29%
• extreme right-wing terrorism: 16%

Of these 18 referrals, 4 were referred to Channel Panel for case management. 

Referral sources were:

• education: 2 
• local authority: 2

Ages were 13,15,16 and 18 years old.

Three of the 4 cases were closed to Channel after management and onward referral while 1 withdrew consent to receive support. This case was reviewed by the Police-Led Pannel but not adopted. All closed cases will have a 6 and 12-month review.

As per the graph below, Bracknell Forest has seen an increase in cases adopted by the Channel Panel over the last 5 years which is in line with Thames Valley and national trends. This is likely due to adopting more cases that don't quite reach Channel Panel thresholds initially so that partner consultation and local knowledge is incorporated into decision-making at that early stage to avoid missed opportunities.

Most referrals in Bracknell Forest comprise male children who are referred by the education sector.

4.10.8 Detention in police custody

Bracknell Forest and Thames Valley Police are both signatories of the 2020 Concordant on Children in Police Custody which is designed to bring about a decrease in numbers of children held by police where bail is refused for children. In 2023 to 2024, no requests were received by the local authority for secure or non-secure accommodation for children who were denied bail.

In 2021 to 2022, a revised process was implemented within the Berkshire-wide Emergency Duty Service in relation to out-of-hours requests for secure accommodation. This process is in keeping with the Concordant and applies to children in custody from another local authority area within Berkshire.

The Head of Service for Youth Justice meets quarterly with the Emergency Duty Service Management Team to quality assure joint working arrangements.

The Youth Justice Team manages a group of trained volunteer appropriate adults for children in Bracknell Forest which is shared with the councils Emergency Duty Service. Within the Youth Justice Team core working hours, if no appropriate adult volunteer is available, the Youth Justice Duty Worker will attend. Outside of core hours, if no volunteer appropriate adult is available, the Emergency Duty Service will attend, or police will bail children to return for a voluntary interview. This prevents children from being unnecessarily detained.

4.10.9 Remands

The ‘Exercise of Joint Responsibilities for Children and Young People who are Remanded into Youth Detention Accommodation or Local Authority Accommodation’ protocol was updated and agreed with children’s social care managers in 2023. Bail and remand guidance was updated and provided to staff.

The reviewed protocol is yet to be evaluated as there have been no remands to the care of the local authority or to youth detention accommodation in the last 4 years.

A young person from another area has been remanded to the care of the local authority and placed in Bracknell Forest in recent months. The Youth Justice Team has collaborated closely with the designated local authority in a caretaking capacity to ensure that the young person was supervised and supported during the remand period.

4.10.10 Use of custody and constructive resettlement

No children have been sentenced to custody in Bracknell Forest over the past 4 years.

The Youth Justice Team Constructive Resettlement Policy was updated in 2023 using His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation’s Resettlement Effective Practice Guide (February 2023) which sets out the role of youth justice teams and wider services in supporting constructive resettlement for children.

The His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation 2023 Inspection recommended that the Youth Justice Team’s resettlement policy needed to be more explicit on how the diversity needs of minority ethnic children and girls will be met in the event of a custodial sentence. This will be included in the Youth Justice Plan 2024 to 2027.

4.10.11 Working with families

Bracknell Youth Justice Team’s collaborative approach to working with families was recognised in His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) 2023 inspection. Case workers build strong relationships with parents and carers by consulting with them, giving the feedback from assessments and considering their views during the time that their child is open to the Service .Safeguarding Group Supervision with social workers and allied professionals (for cases that are jointly held) is regularly attended by Youth Justice Case Workers so that information about families is shared and understood.

The Youth Justice Parenting Worker has taken the lead on co-ordinating and facilitating the ‘Who’s in Charge’ child to parent violence parenting programme with co-facilitators from BFC Early Help. The programme is open to parents across Bracknell Forest. In 2023 to 2024, 7 group work programmes were successfully completed reaching 51 parents and 113 children. 
The Youth Justice Parenting Worker also offers 1-1 parenting sessions to parents using the ‘Stop’ or ‘Take 3’ parenting programmes.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHs) Specialist Worker also collaborates with parents to support them with their children’s mental and emotional health needs.

The Turnaround Project has given the Youth Justice Team the opportunity to work more intensively with families as a whole rather than focussing on the individual child.