• Family Intervention Projects
FIPS
  • About this series

Summary

Family Intervention Projects were first introduced by the Government as part of their Respect Action Plan. Launched in 2006, this plan aimed to “reclaim communities for the law-abiding majority” by focusing on anti social behaviour and its underlying causes.

The Family Intervention Project model takes a fresh approach to helping families who have complex social needs. Key workers adopt an assertive and persistent style, focus on the whole family and co-ordinate any agencies already involved with families. Initially set up to tackle anti social behaviour, Family Intervention Projects are now working with families to alleviate child poverty and prevent youth crime.

NatCen has been commissioned to monitor the outcomes for families working with all three types of Family Intervention Projects:

About FIPs

The Department for Children, Schools and Families is the Government department responsible for the Family Intervention Project programme.

Locally projects are set up and run by Local Authorities or organisations such as Action for Children or Barnardos.

Methodology

Data is collected about families at several different stages:

  • When a family is referred to a project,
  • when the project assesses the family and puts together a support plan for them,
  • every time the family's progress is reviewed by the project,
  • and once the family completes the project intervention.


Until 2009 our evaluation only monitored families during the time they worked with a project. We have recently added a new stage to the Information System, which asks key workers to go back to families several months after they've completed the intervention.

This means that we can measure the medium term outcomes for participating families and find out if the projects have had any lasting impact.

The Respect Task Force and Communities and Local Government commissioned our initial research into the Anti-Social Behaviour Family Intervention Projects. Ongoing research into Youth Crime and Child Poverty Family Intervention Projects is commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Researcher