Project Description

The aim of B Positive Pathways (BPP) is to provide consistency in available support and strengthen relationships between workers and young people. The intention is to improve outcomes in relation to wellbeing, safety and reducing risk taking behaviours - all facilitating placement stability.

BPP offers wrap around multi-agency professionals working together across three specialist residential homes (15 beds in total), an emergency short stay residential home (4 beds), aligned to an edge of care outreach service working with up to 100 young people at any one time. There are two Mockingbird Hub homes each with a constellation of 6-10 satellite homes (6-18 young people).

The Hub team comprises a speech and language therapist, a psychologist, a police analyst, an occupational therapist and a specialist teacher. BPP integrates a common model of care (Signs of Safety and P.A.C.E) with the aim to embed therapeutically-informed practice across the service through a comprehensive training plan for the workforce. Additionally, a specialist teacher role, with particular experience as a SENCO, was created to work specifically with the edge of care young people to address their barriers to education and maximise their educational potential. The role was created as there was no resource for the edge of care cohort, while the looked after children had the support of the Virtual School.

Bradford is working closely with North Yorkshire County Council and The Fostering Network to adapt, adopt and combine two tried-and-tested approaches to social care. North Yorkshire’s ‘No Wrong Door’ is being implemented on a larger scale with eight residential hubs being set up to provide a range of residential options as well as range of services that young people can utilise.

This is combined with the Mockingbird Family Model of fostering, which provides wrap-around peer support in a community setting for foster carers and young people. The integrated model will include Signs of Safety and the attachment-based PACE approach to ensure a consistent therapeutic approach across all care settings. The partnership working involved in setting up the model has resulted in a drop in adolescents being placed out of area, as the ethos and ambition of the programme spreads across agencies.

Evaluation

DfE funded independent evaluation will be published in 2020.