Croydon Total Place
The Croydon Total Place initiative has similarities with the above Highland Region approach, including team-working across agencies, single points of contact for difficult families, early identification etc, plus a number of additional ideas such as involvement of the community, proactively engaging parents and an Early Years Academy to train staff. An approach combining the best of both the Highland Region and Croydon models could deliver much improved outcomes for children as well as significant cost savings.
Similarities between this (proposed) system and the Highland Region approach include team-working across agencies, single points of contact for difficult families, early identification of problems and a determination to ensure things are right at the beginning of a child’s life rather than allowing problems to develop and then addressing them expensively (and ineffectively) at a later age.
Croydon has a number of additional ideas such as involvement of the community, proactively engaging parents and an Early Years Academy to train staff.
In theory the Croydon approach should produce better results because it intervenes before harm is done to children rather than (only) reacting rapidly afterwards. McLeod and Nelson (2000) identified that this was a more effective form of intervention. The Croydon model projects net savings of £25m in 6 years from an upfront investment of £2.5m.
An approach combining the best of both the Highland Region and Croydon models could deliver much improved outcomes for children plus significant cost savings.
