Debate contribution: Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 26 May 2026.

MLA: Mr Mike Nesbitt
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 26 May 2026
Type: Debate contribution (made as a minister)
Business: Adjournment
Heading: Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5583501

Text

OK. Thank you, Deputy Speaker, and thank you to everybody who contributed to the debate. Thanks also to the Members who recognised that family support is not down to any single Department and is a multi-departmental challenge. For the Health Department, it is not an optional offering but a statutory requirement set out in the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Article 18 of the Order places a duty on the trusts to provide a range of social care services to children in need and their families. The aim is to safeguard and promote the welfare of those children and support them to be raised in a family home. On that basis, today's announcement of Together for Families is very welcome. A child in need is any child in Northern Ireland who is:
"unlikely to ... have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development",
or whose:
"health or development is likely to be significantly impaired without the provision"
of support services. The concept of need is deliberately wide in order to reinforce the emphasis on preventative support and services for families. Given the range of challenges that children, young people and their families face today, it is more important than ever that we respond effectively. We must ensure that all children and young people are given the opportunity to develop their full potential. In assessing individual need in families, trusts assess the existing strengths and skills of family members and put in place a plan to help them overcome identified difficulties and enhance those strengths. Sometimes the needs will be found to be intrinsic to the child; at other times, it may be that the parenting skills and resources are depleted or underdeveloped and thus threaten the child's well-being. Supported services provided under the Children Order include practical support and advice; befriending schemes; childcare provision; play facilities; specialist services; counselling; parenting programmes; respite care; provision of accommodation for longer periods; and financial support. In putting those packages together, trusts should take account of the excellent range of services provided by our colleagues across the community and voluntary sector as well as by the other Departments or their agencies. We recognise that effective family support often requires that collaborative multi-agency approach. I will give Members a sense of the range of interventions that are currently supporting children, young people and families in North Antrim. In the Northern Trust specifically, a number of teams are providing services that are aimed at addressing the identified needs of children and young people when it comes to support and, where required, safeguarding, protection and corporate parenting. The Gateway social work service has already been discussed. The trust maintains statutory family support and a looked-after children's team. It works alongside our justice system to support children and young people who come before the courts. The aim is to ensure that their welfare needs are represented and that appropriate social care interventions are put in place alongside any legal proceedings. The intensive family support team works with children aged 10 to 18 in the Northern Trust area. A key part of its role involves supporting children who are at high risk of offending, working with parents to help to prevent their children from becoming involved in crime, and helping them to address emerging patterns of challenging or problematic behaviour. The Links team offers services to children who engage in harmful sexual behaviour, helping them to make positive changes within an overarching trauma-informed approach. The project covers the whole of the trust area. It is based at Antrim Family Centre. It works with children, young people and their parents or carers where there are concerns that the child or young person has engaged in sexually harmful behaviour. The Children's Early Intervention Service provides support to young people experiencing mild to moderate emotional and behavioural difficulties. This is done through group interventions, addressing problems such as anxiety, low mood and emotional regulation, as well as individual work, including behavioural therapy and family support. It is all aimed at reducing the impact of problems and preventing their escalation. The regional integrated support for education (RISE) service provides support to children in the Northern Trust area. RISE takes a holistic approach to social, emotional and behavioural needs in the school setting, with a team that includes behavioural therapists, clinical psychologists and other professionals. The service helps to address the behavioural difficulties at school that can be precursors to disengagement and offending. The trust, of course, works in partnership with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Youth Justice Agency, schools, voluntary and community organisations, and other statutory agencies to ensure that there is a coordinated response to children who are displaying offending behaviours. Children who come to the attention of statutory services in that context are treated as children in need, in line with the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. We have five family support hubs covering the Northern Trust area, each one made up of community and voluntary sector and statutory agencies. They all deliver early intervention services to those under 18 and their families. Action for Children's Choices family support service works across the Northern Trust area. It provides one-to-one outreach support to young people aged 10 to 17 and their parents or caregivers. The service seeks to provide support around a range of issues, including mental health and emotional well-being, and managing behaviours presenting at home, in school and in the community. Barnardo's early intervention family support service works across the Northern Trust, providing one-to-one outreach support to children between eight and 13 years of age and their parents. The service seeks to provide support in respect of a range of issues that present at home, in school and in the community. The northern early intervention support service, which is led by the Public Health Agency, covers Ballymena. It works with families with a child aged up to 17 on an outreach basis, providing practical support with a wide range of presenting challenges. Home-Start Causeway provides practical and emotional support to families across the Causeway Coast and Glens area. Trained volunteers and staff provide weekly home-visiting support and group support to families with at least one child under five. A range of other organisations with more specific referral criteria provide support in the area, including the drug and alcohol intervention service for youth (DAISY), the young carers' service, Autism NI, Triangle Housing Association, Sure Start, the child bereavement service, Women's Aid and Safe Families. If, across Departments and sectors, we can continue to improve our multi-agency response, there is strong evidence to demonstrate that supporting families early leads to substantial economic savings as well as improved outcomes.
Of the work that is being taken forward by my Department to improve collaborative support, I want to mention two particular areas of focus. First, there is the neighbourhood model of health and well-being. That will see community pharmacies, GPs, GP Federations, voluntary and community organisations, the trusts, independent providers, other statutory bodies and local government working together in formal partnership to provide integrated care. It places local communities at the heart of how services are planned and delivered, and it focuses on designing care pathways that meet more needs earlier, before people reach a crisis point or need care in hospital. It is about shift left, prevention and early intervention, getting health and social care as close to your front door as possible. The model is built around 17 integrated neighbourhood teams acting as provider alliances. The second is moving child social care services away from the skew towards child-protection activities and towards greater support, including very practical support for families at an earlier stage. That was, of course, a key message coming from Professor Ray Jones during his independent review of children's social care services in Northern Ireland. Finally, I want to mention the Together for Families model announced today. It is a new transformational model of supporting children and families. Developed under the reform programme, it marks a decisive shift towards earlier intervention, stronger family support and more joined-up working. I welcome the confirmation today of the funding. It has been successful in securing £30 million from the transformation fund, and that has been matched by £30 million from the National Lottery community fund, which is an unprecedented intervention in Northern Ireland from that fund. On inconsistencies or postcode lotteries, Members will know that I am looking right across the board for consistent regional services. Work is already under way on Together for Families, with new practices being identified. I want best practices to be rolled out and for them to become common practice right across Northern Ireland. Work is already under way, and, now that the funds have been confirmed, we will firm up the structures to support it. Finally, with the single key worker or a lead practitioner under Together for Families, we will see more consistency and a lead operator coordinating across a range of Departments and agencies to deliver better outcomes.

1,502 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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