Developing a Neglect Needs Assessment to tackle intergenerational family challenges
Southend-on-Sea City Council commissioned 31ten to conduct a Neglect Needs Assessment on behalf of the Neglect Sub-Group of the Southend Safeguarding Partnership. The partnership was seeking four objectives from this work:
- System-level insight into the causes and trends of neglect and generational neglect in Southend
- A strategy for responding to, commissioning of services and monitoring neglect into the future
- A review of current interventions, their impact and emerging evidence based on approaches
- To look at innovation and opportunities in Southend to improve the outcomes for residents
The Role
Our needs assessment was conducted across 4 overlapping phases:
Discover – This phase allowed us to introduce ourselves to key stakeholders in Southend and start to gather data.
Define – This phase focused on meetings and workshops with a wide range of partners across Southend and an analysis of available data.
Develop – This phase focused on reviewing the data gathered and presenting findings back to stakeholders.
Deliver – This phase started to plan Southend and Partner’s response to the findings of the analysis.
Our work involved a mixture of stakeholder interviews, case journey mapping, data analysis, desktop research and collaborative feedback sessions with stakeholders.
Key Outcomes
We produced a comprehensive report for the Southend Safeguarding Partnership summarising the as-is position and highlighted 18 areas of opportunity. We worked with the team to develop a clear delivery plan with named individuals responsible for taking this work forward in Southend.
The team at 31ten took time to get to know the key stakeholders in Southend and worked collaboratively across the Local Safeguarding Partnership to really understand the root causes of Neglect in Southend. They fostered a culture of collaboration and collective problem-solving that really helped set up our improvement journey.
Mike Bennett
Head of Operational Performance & Intelligence – Southend-on-Sea City Council
