Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Corporate Director of Children and Young People’s Services that provided Members with an update on Pause Durham (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

The Strategic Manager, Children and Families First was in attendance to deliver a presentation that provided the Strategic Priority; Durham Pause Journey; Previous and current cohort; One Woman’s Story and Pause Graduation – July 2022 (for copy of presentation, see file of minutes).

Councillor P Jopling referred to the Pause Graduation video and indicated that there were irresponsible fathers who do not know how to treat women or their children. She asked if the authority look at fathers and stated that the women who have joined the programme were amazing and what the programme had achieved was amazing and congratulated the service. She then referred to alcohol and drug abuse and asked if they worked with the police about the availability of drugs in local communities.

The Strategic Manager indicated that they did carry out a lot of joint working with the police and agencies in relation to substance misuse and there were a number of forums. In terms of fathers, they did work with fathers during the assessment and intervention, including care proceedings and offered them the same intervention as they would do mothers. The Pause programme worked with mothers’ pro proceedings to try and give them a break to look after their needs and address those needs, she would love to offer this service to fathers, but their current focus was on mothers.

Councillor O Gunn indicated that she was a huge supporter of the Pause programme and praised the project. She indicated that the service was putting women’s lives back together saving their lives and asked the Officer to pass on her comments.

Councillor C Martin referred to the criteria changing from one child to two children and asked who would not qualify for the programme.

The Strategic Manager indicated that the criteria were any women that had lost a child through care proceedings on a permanent basis, but the women had to agree to contraception for 18 months to give them a break but not all women were in the right place in terms of addressing some of their issues. Loosing one child is too much, therefore we have changed the criteria to loosing one child rather than two children or more. This means we can hopefully support change to prevent removals. They were looking at a referral route to make it easier so that they could start conversations prior to concluding care proceedings to get the intervention early. They were working with Barnardo’s who are delivering the Start Well programme and the criteria for that programme was working with women who had lost one child and were on a second set of proceedings. Start Well worked with women during the early stages of the pregnancy and support them to make those changes or move to the Pause programme following that. She advised Members that they had three Practitioners, a Pause Manger and the maximum they could work with was around 22 women, but they were looking at this as not all women required the 18 months and they had supported women who had moved to the other side of the country to get away from the perpetrator. They were also looking at having a more rolling programme so that they could target more women, but they were currently limited in the numbers they could work with.

The Chair referred to drugs in communities and indicated that she had read the government’s policy ‘from harm to hope’ that was a 10-year programme to drop crime that was worth a read.

Councillor C Hunt congratulated the team, and the work of Pause could not be underestimated, and she personally knew someone who had used the service and it had turned her life around which had also saved the authority money. She commented that she would like to see the programme rolled out to more people.

The Strategic Manager referred to the cost savings but was about women themselves.

Mrs L Vollans asked about the referral process and those people who had left care and the trauma this caused which was in their DNA and asked if there was anything in place to stop this trauma.

The Strategic Manager indicated that anyone could make a referral for the Pause programme, and they were looking into more specifics as the majority of referrals would come through a social worker, permanent team or care leavers team but they were looking at how they could ensure they were working with the right women. She then indicated that they have the care leavers service who work with young people up to the age of 25 who have left care, the Pause Team work closely with this service in relation to the pathways such as sexual health and were looking at a route into mental health. They were always looking at how they can improve the services for children who have left care.

The Chair thanked the Officer and indicated that the programme was very successful, and they had not just helped the women but also the children and asked the Officer to pass on her congratulations to the team.

Resolved: That the contents of the report and presentation be noted.