EIF worked with Essex between September 2013 and March 2015. Essex have endorsed an agreed set of principles across to ensure that Early Intervention is at the heart of their strategic planning, commissioning and delivery whilst being flexible enough to innovate new approaches that will help achieve their shared ambitions for every person to Start Well, Develop Well, Live Well; Work Well; and age Well. The Council works through seven commissioning strategies, one for each of the outcomes it seeks to achieve, including the children get the best start in life. These strategies set out a consistent way that ECC will take actions to achieve desired outcomes, including setting out the role of existing services.

Essex’s EI work is based around identifying risks and vulnerabilities early, and investing in evidence based interventions that can be provided at the right time to support better long term outcomes for people, as well as and social and economic return. Commissioning approaches have ensured that providers have been sought to fill gaps in early help that were previously under-resourced, such as developing relationships and supporting community strengths and solutions.

EIF support & advice

• EIF were a named partner in Essex’s Transformation Challenge Award bid around developing a tool to help effectively target help to children and families and will continue to offer input as work on prediction of risk progresses.
• EIF’s evidence base was used to inform Essex’s specification of evaluation programmes for newly commissioned Early Help services, and offering advice on future changes to commissioning strategies.
• EIF’s work on social investment has included promoting the innovation and learning from the Essex MST SIB, and participation in knowledge-sharing events for other local commissioners to ensure the knowledge about SIBs in this space is shared.