Positive Families Partnership

Challenge​

Many young people across the UK face the real possibility of being separated from their families, due to abuse, neglect or family breakdown. On any given day, almost 63,000 children are living with foster families. About half of all foster placements for teenagers break down. If a child’s first placement breaks down, they’re more likely to enter a cycle of further breakdowns, reducing their opportunities to develop secure attachment, and potentially exacerbating existing behavioural problems. In some cases, a child’s behaviour becomes so challenging or detrimental that they end up in a secure children’s home, which can cost over £200,000 per year per place. The behaviours then also become much harder to reverse. ​

​Approach​

Positive Families Partnership is a pioneering initiative to help vulnerable young people access therapeutic programmes that can help them stay out of care, and deliver better outcomes for them and their families. It works across five London boroughs, with over 350 young people at risk of entering care due to serious antisocial behaviour and/or substance misuse. These vulnerable young people and their families access therapeutic programmes designed to help address the young person’s behavioural issues and improve how the family functions. The programmes are intensive, holistic interventions, based on rigorous evidence.​

​Positive Families Partnership is an outcomes-based contract, so the commissioner only pays for measurable results – in this case children being averted from care, and the increased time they spend out of care. This initiative, the first of its type in London, has been jointly commissioned by the five London Borough Councils, supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. It will be delivered by three specialist partners who collectively bring decades of experience in implementing evidence-based programmes across the UK. ​Bridges Fund Management supported the initiative through its £25 million Social Impact Bond Fund, into which Big Society Capital invested £10 million.

​Impact​

The programme will work with more than 350 young people over the investment period. Its goal is to empower caregivers, so they can break the cycle of anti-social behaviour by keeping young people safely at home, in school and out of trouble. It will work hard to avert children from care, and increase the time they spend out of care.