Cost benefit modelling for working with troubled families Mark Tuckett:Sheffield City Council Lovedeep Vaid:Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion

Aims for today’s session Explain what are we trying to do in Sheffield and why: build upon existing models and explain how ours will be different Demonstrate where the work has got to so far

What are we doing and why We have agreed a Successful Families plan, for improving how we work with those families in need of extra help and support. We are writing a business case for improving how we work with these families We therefore need a set of Sheffield-specific costs and benefits, which we can all recognise and sign up to, to generate a business case for sustainable funding in the future

We want to understand the profile of costs and benefits over time

How are we proposing to do this We are not starting from scratch – we are building on existing models, including those developed by DFE and Greater Manchester We are incorporating other relevant examples, e.g., Loughborough University’s cost work about Looked After Children, CAADA’s work about domestic abuse

How will our model be different Incorporate Sheffield-specific costs and benefits wherever possible Use a robust, consistent, transparent approach to calculating costs (e.g., treatment of ‘on-costs’) Clearly separate cashable and non-cashable benefits – for example, the costs of taking a child into care Include the family as a potential beneficiary (e.g., ability to save money) Increase the emphasis on the cost of intervention/provision of services, including cost of Multi-Agency approaches Calculate costs and benefits over more than one year Provide the functionality to compare the impact of different (or no) intervention(s)

Which agencies are we already involving in this discussion Police Probation Early Intervention and Prevention CYPF – Business Strategy Communities – Business Strategy and Commissioning Adult Safeguarding Children’s Safeguarding YOS Drugs and Alcohol Abuse Partnership Domestic Abuse Partnership Health and Social Care Trust PCT Housing Solutions Employment Services DWP Safer Neighbourhoods Policy, Partnership and Research VCF sector (via 3 rd Sector Assembly and themed groups) CAMHS Prison service For each agency, we are identifying people with a working knowledge of the finances and outcomes for each area

DfE Family Savings Calculator: help local authorities to quantify the cost saved by services and agencies from a family at risk undergoing and completing an intervention Manchester evaluation framework: help demonstrate which ways of working are most effective Both based on research that helps identify associated costs and benefits Help agencies to identify the financial value of positive outcomes Identify those programmes which do not deliver value for money for the taxpayer and reallocate resources accordingly Help to ensure that future programmes are designed with a clear understanding of the costs and benefits they will deliver to the taxpayer Save money in the short term Longer-term: drive economic growth, by focusing resources on those programmes which are proven to deliver social and economic opportunity An evidence based model

Meaningful evaluation requires accurate cost calculations Need to calculate two cost figures: cost of delivering services without any intervention (the reference case) cost of the intervention Initial intervention cost figures will be an estimate Some cannot be accurately forecast The model sums three different types of costs: Capital costs Revenue costs In-kind costs

The reference case (risk costs) = existing business as usual approach to dealing with issues Manchester developed a framework to enable a break down, calculate and report the costs that the public purse has been incurring: Contact and engagement Assessment Interventions Reviewing For each of these stages: List the agencies who currently incur costs; Against each agency, list the types of costs they incur and split total costs into revenue, capital and in-kind costs Build a bottom-up model of intervention case costs to be measured against the reference cost = net cost of an intervention

Examples of outcomes …….. Found employment FT/PT, sustained employment, benefits Increased skills and education level Step up in educational level Helped parents and children Increased parental work readiness Improved school readiness Reduced parental mental health Reduced numbers of children in care Reduced crime

Types of benefits Model seeks to place a value on three different types of benefits Fiscal benefits Economic benefits Social benefits There are two outputs from the model: Benefit cost ratios Net present efficiencies

Deadweight The change in outcomes that would have happened anyway is known as the deadweight. Calculated in two ways: assessing the change in outcome measures of comparator areas measuring changes in outcomes of individuals engaged in the pilot through a robust monitoring and evaluation plan Optimism bias (OB) Practitioners are overly optimistic about the outcomes To account for this the model needs to apply correction factors Different interventions require different cost, risk, outcome headings …. Can one model fit all ??? Challenges