We are delighted that CHAI’s work as part of the Maximise! Project has been recognised by the Scottish Government in a new report ‘Learning from 25 Years of Preventative Interventions in Scotland’. This report also sits alongside the new Public Service Reform Strategy.
The report demonstrates how CHAI’s work has influenced Scottish social policy and been replicated in other services across the country. Maximise! is a partnership between CHAI and Children First, providing holistic, person centred support to families through an integrated model of advice, employability and family wellbeing support.
The report described the service as was ‘an upstream preventative intervention with an emphasis on early intervention through innovative partnership working, to prevent a range of social issues from escalating to crisis point.’
The report describes the way in the Maximise project was able to connect and engage with parents who were unlikely to have accessed support otherwise, ’empowering and increasing the confidence’ of those who were supported and providing ‘a cost-effective way of addressing social, economic and health inequalities through improving a range of outcomes amongst parents, carers and children and young people.’
Maximise was seen as ‘a new way of working’ offering ‘a whole family, trauma-informed and person-centred approach via one single gateway to address the complex issues that often impact families who are affected by poverty.’
Funders described it as ‘a ‘preventative spend’ to the public sector and said the ‘The nature of the outcomes experienced by families will result in earlier intervention and reduced inequalities which research shows in the long term reduces health costs and lowers demand for welfare benefits.’
As a direct result of our innovative work at CHAI and Children First, there are better targeted interventions and improved guidance for working with ‘seldom heard families’ and the work is being used to evaluate and inform other projects in Scotland, including Dundee, Glasgow and Stirling.
We would like to thank all the many wonderful families, staff and partners who have worked closely with us on our Maximise journey and helped contribute to the project’s impact and the great learning that has come from this work. We continue to use this learning at CHAI today and will do so into the future.
Read the section on Maximise! in the Government’s report here.
Read the full Government’s report
