Monitoring and evaluation of family intevention services and projects

Information about families supported until end of March 2010

Oct 2011 |

Researcher |

About the study

A network of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) was set up in January 2006 to work with challenging and anti-social families. The initial focus of these projects was to address families anti-social behaviour (ASB) so as to prevent them becoming homeless and their children being taken into care.

Subsequently the model was rolled out to target families who were living in poverty and affected by inter-generational unemployment and families with children at risk of offending.

As of March 2011 there were 117 ASB family interventions, 149 Youth Crime family interventions, 43 Child Poverty family interventions, 60 projects focusing on Housing Challenge and 16 Women Offender family interventions across England.

Building on the initial evaluation of the FIPs design, set-up and early outcomes, the Department for Education (DfE) commissioned us to provide further monitoring and other evidence as to how effectively family interventions are working.

Our methods

A secure web-based Information System, known as the Family Intervention Information System (FIIS) was used to collect comprehensive data about all families referred to a family intervention service. Family intervention staff ollect and input data about families to provide quantitative evidence about:

the profile of families referred to a family intervention,
their circumstances and risk factors when a Support Plan is put in place
how they are progressing at regular formal reviews,
their outcomes at the point a family exits from a family intervention
and whether these outcomes are sustained nine to 14 months after they leave the intervention.

Data is collected about families at five different stages:

When the family is first referred to the family intervention ('Referral stage').
At the beginning of an intervention, after the assessment has been completed and when a Support Plan for the family is first put in place ('Support Plan stage').
Each time the family has a formal progress review (a 'Review stage').
When the family stops working with the family intervention and exits the intervention ('Exit stage').
Nine to 14 months after the family has stopped working with the family intervention ('Post-intervention stage').

Monitoring and evaluation of family intevention services and projects

Information about families supported until end of March 2010

Researchers