Tackling Poverty Action Plan

increase the reach and impact of mainstream education and healthfunding in our most deprived communities. Following consultation in2011, Communities First has been relaunched (from April 2012) as aCommunity Focused Tackling Poverty Programme which will continueto support and encourage local action to address the long-term causesand effects of poverty in the most deprived areas in Wales. There willbe fewer, larger Communities First areas (known as Clusters) so thateffective partnership working with key service providers and otherstrategic stakeholders will be simplified. A new monitoring framework,based on Results Based Accountability, will demonstrate thecontribution made by the programme to three key outcomes:Prosperous Communities, Learning Communities and HealthierCommunities.Team around the familyWe are already committed to delivering multi-agency support for familieswho need it, tailored to the particular issues they face and putting families,and not the services involved, at the very centre of Teams Around theFamily. We will do this through our Families First and Integrated FamilySupport Teams, ensuring the support of the social services, healthservices, education, justice and the Third Sector. The indications are that awhole family approach, with a strong emphasis on preventative and earlysupport, will be both more effective and more cost effective in achievingbetter outcomes; but it involves a step change in the approach of theWelsh Government and other service providers. A cross-Governmentgroup supporting the Deputy Minister for Social Services and Children willtake this forward. Actions will include:A three-year evaluation contract of Families First will be awardedthis summer. The independent evaluation team will report annuallyon the progress of Team Around the Family approaches beingdeveloped and implemented at local level as a key component ofthe Families First programme. (The approaches to Team aroundthe Family are underpinned by the five-year Families First planssubmitted this year by Local Authorities.) The Families First team isalso establishing national ‘Learning Sets’, including one for Teamaround the Family approaches, with Local Authorities and partnersin July this year. Learning Sets will provide structured opportunitiesto share learning around the development and implementation ofkey elements of Families First. These will be supplemented by casestudies and reports on the Families First website.We will work with the Public Service Leadership Group to provideleadership at local and regional level for the development ofapproaches which join up services around the needs of theindividual and the family. We will also support more organisations tomake the financial case for adopting integrated “team around thefamily” approaches. We will establish by mid-2013 outlinecharacteristics for the various Families First Team around the10