Decision details
PCC DN - VRU’s Parent and Carer Support offer
Decision Maker: Director for Police, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire, GM Deputy Mayor, Treasurer GMCA
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: No
Is subject to call in?: No
Purpose:
The Greater Manchester Strategy recognises
that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted our people and
places, and acknowledges that recovery will be tough. In Greater
Manchester, we will make every effort to ensure that all our people
are supported to live a good life, through all ages and stages in
their lives. This includes a commitment to supporting our children
and young people to be good learners, with any necessary family
help, education recovery, wrap-around provision and health and
wellbeing needs being met.
As outlined within the GM VRU’s Serious Violence Action Plan
our ambition to ‘ensure that families and communities that
are affected by serious violence are effectively supported through
our place-based offer’ (priority 3) recognising the
significant impact that violence of any kind can have on the lives
of families. In recognition that families can be both an important
protective factor and a deterrent. The VRU are committed to
promoting the importance of intervening earlier in Greater
Manchester so that families can get help when they need it and not
just when they hit crisis point. Working in partnership with
national and local research institutes and families themselves to
get a better understanding of what families that experience
violence need so that we can be smarter and more creative about the
services we offer to them.
In June 2021, the VRU in partnership with the Innovation Hub held a
Primary School Summit, to address growing anecdotal concerns from
primary schools in GM that issues of intergenerational violence and
knife carrying appeared to be increasingly prevalent and were
affecting children at a younger age than had previously been the
case. Of those attendees working in schools 83% indicated that
behaviour, particularly in respect to violence or threats of
violence, had become worse. There was a notable call for parental
education in the context of digital education and positive role
modelling in their use of technology and digital interactions. It
was agreed that interventions that seek to break the
inter-generational concerns should include holistic family
approaches for strong, consistent parenting.
The development of the VRU’s Community Led Programmes has
found that in many areas of Greater Manchester many families
struggle to engage with statutory services and will only engage
when they hit a crisis point e.g., when certain behaviours have
escalated and are now posing a risk. Parents and carers have
welcomed the family support offers available in their areas with
one parent who was struggling to get support in place at school
with the support of a family worker they would never have known who
to go to.
A full competitive tender process will be undertaken, supported and
moderated by procurement and Information Governance. A further
decision notice will be submitted once the successful bidder has
been identified.
The service will be contract managed by the Children and Young
People’s Principal (Frank Hamill) and will be subject to
ongoing evaluation by the GMCA evaluation partner.
Decision:
The Deputy Mayor agrees to the funding
allocation of £750,000 of VRU core funding to develop and
deliver a programme strength based, trauma informed, support for
parents and carers
This funding will be delivered across periods 2022/2023, 2023/2024,
2024/2025. The contract will commence from contract award until 31
March 2025.
This amount has been agreed by the Serious Violence Governance
Board as well as key stakeholders, including GMCA senior leadership
and the relevant Home Office departments.
Publication date: 13/01/2023
Date of decision: 08/12/2022