Birmingham City Council, supported by EY as a strategic partner, have pioneered an Early Intervention & Prevention (EI&P) approach in light of a council-wide corporate priority to shift focus
and investment from crisis to prevention. The model seeks to enable staff to support citizens more upstream, to help them build resilience and independence, with a focus on those at risk of domestic abuse, homelessness and poverty. It follows the theory that through intervening early, people are less likely to escalate to a crisis stage, leading to better outcomes for the person or family and the council are able to avoid more costly statutory intervention. In Birmingham, this whole council shift was preceded by previous work in adult’s services to move towards greater investment in prevention within communities and the development of a strengths-based, locality-based model of social work.
Birmingham’s EI&P model, which was co-produced with a range of local stakeholders, moves away from considering the issues individuals or families face in isolation, for example as simply children’s services related or simply housing-related, and instead looks at the whole picture of what an individual or family is facing over their life course. It focuses on identifying both the risk factors and the protective factors that can stop a family or individual escalating to requiring a higher level of statutory intervention, with prevention focused around providing activities, signposting and support that can prevent the issue from arising in the first place.
Birmingham’s citizen-centric model focuses on enabling independence and supporting citizens to be economically and socially active across their lives. Through developing a coherent prevention pathway, the model leverages and encourages collaboration between a range of council, community and voluntary sector, and wider public sector partner services to allow people to be directed to the right place in the system at the right time for them. It also utilises the capacity in the community to offer support in more accessible and familiar settings.
Crucial to the model is a strong focus on data and insight and pooling data from multiple council sources to develop an integrated view of the citizen, so that resources can be directed to ensure the most appropriate support or signposting can be delivered. Birmingham is at the start of its data journey but there is an ambition to embed a predictive element of analytics to identify families requiring support in an automated way.
To date a key focus of the model in the context of the cost of living has been to look at supporting citizens who may be financially vulnerable to develop financial resilience and enable them to remain in secure housing, via a ‘Homes and Money Advice’ offer. This includes a more human-centric approach to supporting individuals in arrears, for example sending a Whatsapp message and offering a call to explore support options, rather than the traditional approach of sending a letter.
As part of this work, in 2023 the Council undertook a 6-week pilot, supported by the West Midlands Combined Authority, using a data-driven ‘nudge’ tool to support 39 individuals and families who were at risk of requiring statutory intervention. The pilot focused on supporting access to the council’s wider Homes & Money Hub offer, using customer contact data to identify where customers had applied for some elements of cost of living support but not others despite being eligible. Through proactive engagement, Birmingham’s advisors were able to help the cohort claim an additional £94,000 in benefits and welfare. Modelling also suggested that 17 out of the 39 individuals were registered as disabled but not known to adult social care and through supporting this cohort to maintain financial resilience and remain outside of adult social care, there was an associated cost avoidance of £1.32m per annum.
With initial promising results, the model is showing the value to citizens and council services of a supportive and dedicated approach to working with citizens early on and in a proactive manner.
You can find out more about Birmingham’s EI&P model by watching our CII webinar, Early Intervention and Prevention here: https://coram-i.org.uk/coram-innovation-incubator/coram-innovation-incubator-webinars