Early Help: Payment for historic Family Outcomes

Update as of 14 March 2025 - Submissions for the Incentive are now closed. The Trust Think Family Data team will contact schools that submitted Family Interventions during the week beginning March 17, 2025, to provide the number of interventions submitted and the number of successful claims processed by the TF Data team. We will include, according to the information that we have access too, the amount that has been paid to the school already and the outstanding balance.  

For updates on your payments, please contact Daniel Taylor (Daniel.Taylor@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk) or the Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team (SSI@birmingham.gov.uk).

Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to provide feedback on the reasons for the success or failure of individual submissions.

Information below is for historical reference only.

Whilst we know that you are busy, we encourage you to please spend a couple of minutes to read the following important information from the Think Family Data team at Birmingham Children’s Trust regarding the Think Family Outcomes incentive.

The last day that the Think Family Data team will be accepting submissions for this incentive will be Friday 28 February 2025 and it is only for Family Interventions closed before the end of September 2024.

Payment Delays

So far, there have been 347 successful claims from 38 schools for the Family Outcomes Incentive, totalling £86,250. From this incentive there are 1253 claims still available within this incentive, worth over £288,000, claimable by schools.

The Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team, who have been working to arrange payment since early October 2024, has paid £16,250 to 10 schools. Unfortunately, well-publicised issues with the Birmingham City Council (BCC) Oracle Finance system have been affecting these payments. The funds are available, but the issue lies in processing the payments.

For those schools that are council-funded by BCC, the amount will be transferred to the school with a description of 'Family Outcome Payments' in the description field of the transfer.

For those schools that are not council-funded by BCC, such as academies, the process is as follows:

1. Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team raises a purchase order which is emailed to their contact within the school, typically with the Schools Finance team.
2. The school then raises an invoice referencing the purchase order number and sends it to the Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team (SSI@birmingham.gov.uk).
3. Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team forwards the invoice to BCC Payments to process.
4. Invoice payment is usually 28 days turnover from the date the Payments team receive the invoice.

For updates on your payments, please contact Daniel Taylor (Daniel.Taylor@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk) or the Birmingham City Council Education Safeguarding team (SSI@birmingham.gov.uk).

We understand that this delay can be disheartening and may have deterred some of you from completing and submitting forms. However, we can assure you that these payments will be made as soon as possible. We encourage you to submit your forms and take full advantage of this incentive. Due to policy changes with the new government, we cannot guarantee that this incentive will be available again.

Last Date for Accepting Submissions

The last day that the TF Data team will be accepting submissions for this incentive will be Friday 28 February 2025. This is to allow processing of all schools submissions by the end of the financial year. As you can see from the following table only Family Interventions closed before the end of September 2024 will be eligible to be claimed within this incentive.

All interventions closed on, or after, the 1st October 2024 are not eligible to be claimed under this incentive. This incentive is for historic Family Interventions, the more recent Family Interventions should be recorded via the ECINS system, if you would like information and training on the ECINS system please contact your Early Help Coordinator.

Update to Process for Prepopulated Forms

To aid with completing submissions for the Think Families Incentive, when requested, we have been sending out submission forms that list the pupils that have attended the requesting school that have passed the attendance needs.

Note: you may not have worked with these families, and these prepopulated forms will not list those Family Interventions where attendance was not an issue according to our records.

Unfortunately, we have been informed that many schools were having issues downloading and opening the prepopulated form(s).

This was mainly due to either:

1. Encryption of the data or
2. The interactions between the encrypted Excel workbook, the macros that the workbook needs to function and the systems in place within the schools.

As a way round these issues the updated blank submission form can be downloaded via the link directly below.

Blank submission form

Separate to this, an updated pre-populated form will be sent out to schools (for those that have passed the attendance criteria and may have previously received the form, but which has not been subsequently submitted to the TF Data team).

This prepopulated form will be password protected with the password sent in a separate email.

If you complete the form, complete the declarations and submit the form to TFData@birminghamchildrenstrust.co.uk, we will process the form as usual.

Update to the Submission Form

This form has been updated so all the appropriate recording can be performed in the Individual Family Outcomes worksheet. Please remember that the submission form requires the declarations to be signed and has to be locked to be before the TF Data team can start to process it. This is a requirement of our auditing process.

We have created a new button “Click Here to complete the Declarations and Lock the Form” on the Individual Family Outcomes worksheet.

Pressing this button will lead you through a series of steps that highlights whether the form has any needs without work performed, and vice versa, and asks whether these should be deleted and for the values for the declaration.

This will not take any longer than the previous process.

Additional Forms

There are two new forms of guidance available:

1. Examples of outcomes for schools 

This supplies the category and appropriate need for work typically carried out by schools.

2. Frequently asked questions

This will help answer any queries you have about the incentive and submissions process. 

Everything you need is found on the page linked below, simply click the button. 

Early Help Family Outcome submission forms and guidance