Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership

Every Child Matters

Big changes are underway to the organisation of services that support children, young people and their families. This follows the launch in September 2003 of the Government Green Paper Every Child Matters, setting out a new direction for children's services to ensure that agencies work more closely together in the best interest of the child or young person. It aims to improve outcomes for all children and young people, and reduce the gap between the disadvantaged and the advantaged.

The Children Act, passed in November 2004, provides the legal framework for these reforms to go ahead and requires all bodies involved with children and young people to cooperate, with local authorities to take the lead. Partnership working is key to the act - in Tameside the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership leads the various agencies working together in the commissioning, delivery and integration of services required by the Act. It insists children and young people have a strong voice in discussions on where our local priorities should lie - the partnership will ensure this.

By 2008 all local authority children's services must have integrated working at all levels, from planning through to delivery, with new governance ensuring everyone shares the same vision for children and young people, giving agencies the confidence to share day-to-day control of decisions and resources. These may be known as 'Children's Trusts'.

The key areas of the Children Act are:

• A duty on local authorities to promote co-operation between agencies and other appropriate bodies
• A duty on key agencies to safeguard and promote the welfare of children
• Local Safeguarding Children Boards to ensure local agencies cooperate to safeguard children
• Local Authorities to draw up a single Children and Young People's Plan
• Local Authorities to appoint a director of children's services and designate a lead member for children
• Integration inspection framework of children's services
• Provisions relating to foster care, private fostering and the education of children in care

Outcomes framework

The government has produced an outcomes framework for the new inspections, following the five themes identified in Every Child Matters: be healthy; stay safe; enjoy and achieve; make a positive contribution and achieve economic wellbeing.

In Tameside, we identify how the five outcomes can be translated into key priorities. These provide the basis of the CYPSP's partnership agreement with the Tameside Strategic Partnership.

To view the Outcome framework please see http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/_files/F25F66D29D852A2D443C22771084BDE4.pdf

National Service Framework

Progress of services for children and young people will be assessed against the National Services Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services released in October 2004. This programme aims to ensure long term and sustained improvements in the health of young people and children, and is aimed at everyone who delivers services to, or comes into contact with, children and young people.

For up to date information on Every Child Matters and the 'Change for Children' programme arising from the Children Act, please see www.everychildmatters.gov.uk

Progress in Tameside

In Tameside, work towards integrating children's services is already well underway. Tameside Council has a Director of Children's Services overseeing a new Services for Children and Young People. This is a merger of Children's Social Care and Lifelong Learning (Education). Two new Assistant Executive Director posts are in post to support the Director of Children's Services - one has overall responsibility to lead on the development of integrated services.

Service Areas

The Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership has agreed a broad framework for bringing services together. The majority of services to children and their families are now clustered together within four areas, but that some more specialist services will need to be borough wide.

Whilst there is an emphasis on service refocus at the point of delivery, there are no immediate plans to change workforce conditions. The CYPSP agreed that children's services staff would remain working for their existing employers, where they will keep their current pay and conditions.

Secondment arrangements could be used where necessary to ensure that teams were managed together providing the best services possible. The CYPSP also agreed that they needed to pull together the planning and commissioning of some services. This would start with small examples of jointly commissioned services and pooled budgets, which could be gradually extended. There is a lot to do during the next months and years to make integrated services a reality across the borough and the pulling together the pieces of the jigsaw. Things will evolve during this time and social care and schools staff, and young people will be regularly involved and updated as things progress, to get a sense of how we can make it all work most effectively.

The Four Service Areas:

Needs Assessment

An extensive local Needs Assessment of children and young people in Tameside. This includes data and research into their health, education, and care and leisure needs, among other things, which will put Tameside in a position to identify local priorities in relation to children and young people. The Needs Assessment ensures that we have a picture of local services and concerns, taking into account the views of children and young people. We aim to share this information across a wide range of stakeholders in order to develop services in the future.

Implementing Every Child Matters in Tameside

Tameside's approach to improving outcomes for children and young people is through working to joint priorities through strong partnership working. To help this several new groups have been established to lead and support the Partnership:

Children Programme Board:

A Children's Programme Board consisting of cabinet members for Children's Social Care, Education and Community, together with the chief executive and other senior managers is overseeing the development of services for children and young people within Tameside Council.

Partnership Executive Group

An executive group of the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership, includes senior officers from key agencies (including health and voluntary/community organisations). A key role of the executive is to ensure issues affecting organisations with a wider remit than children and young people or cover more than one local authority area (such as the Police, Mental Health Trust, and Acute Trust) are considered by the partnership. These will be considered alongside those issues that affect services with a single focus on this age group, or are specifically for the Tameside area.

The primary purpose of the CYPSP Executive and Joint Commissioning Group is to facilitate the effective functioning if the Partnership in relation to its principal role in implementing children's trust arrangements in Tameside.

Multi Agency Project Team

A multi agency project team sits with a Strategy and Commissioning unit to look at the work that needs to be done on integrating services for children and young people. It is working on some of the big issues that affect key partners in the CYPSP. Those to be looked at in the next few months include:

The premises services are provided from (both those currently used and those to be built in the future

• Parenting programmes
• Governance and partnership arrangements
• Costing services and measuring their outcomes
• Information Sharing

Support is provided from existing planning and monitoring groups. Such as the Information Sharing and Assessment Steering Group, who lead on implementing the Common Assessment Framework. The Children with Disabilities Strategy Group who bring together service arrangements for Children with Disabilities.

Joint Commissioning

A common definition of commissioning and a draft framework have been developed Examples of work that have been jointly commissioned include road safety initiatives to reduce child casualties and work with children and young people in priority neighbourhoods.

Developing Services in Tameside and building on work already underway:

Duty to co-operate framework compiled for Tameside

A Duty to Cooperate Framework has been drawn up which sets out the commitment of all organisations working in Tameside to work together to improve outcomes for children and young people, their families and communities. The compact reflects those of neighboring local authorities, which will facilitate working across larger areas.

Below is a pictue of the inter-agency compact in the Mayor's Parlour at Ashton Town Hall on 30th March 2006. The signing of the compact underlines the commitment from the council and our partners to work together to provide better outcomes for children and young people in Tameside.

Tameside's joint priorities for children, young people and their families

All agencies in Tameside representing the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership have agreed the following priorities as ones which all agencies can work together on to improve outcomes for children and young people. These priorities are based on the needs assessment completed earlier this year. Work has also been done through various forums including a seminar for chief executives with leading members and chairs of boards of key agencies in Tameside, to consult on these priorities. The priorities will form a key part of the single Children and Young Peoples Plan and will be integrated into all agency business plans next year.

These are:

1. Promote healthy lifestyles with particular focus on Obesity and Oral health.
2. Improve Emotional Health and Wellbeing for all young people.
3. Increase the proportion of young people moving into education, employment and training.
4. Continue to raise attainment at all phases of learning with strategic focus on under-achieving groups and schools.
5. Reduce the rates of Teenage Pregnancy.
6. Continue to reduce the gap in the outcomes of Looked After Children and other vulnerable groups.

Local Safeguarding Children Board

The following Tameside Local Safeguarding Children Board policies are now available on the LSCB website:

• Policy for Working with Young People Facing Forced Marriage
• Policy for Working with Children and Young People Missing from Home
• Policy for Working with Sexually Active Young People under the age of 18.

'Working with Young People Facing Forced Marriage' and 'Working with Children and Young People Missing from Home' were recently approved by the LSCB. 'Working with Sexually Active Young People under the age of 18' was approved and circulated towards the end of last year and this same version is now available on the website. These policies should be used in conjunction with the ACPC Child Protection Procedures Handbook. The procedures are currently being updated and will be available later this year so please continue to use them until you receive new ones from the Local Safeguarding Children Board. The procedures are also available on the LSCB website but if you would like a hard copy of the handbook please Send LSCB a Message

Common Assessment Framework For Children And Young People

The Common Assessment Framework is a new, standardised approach to assessing children's needs for services. We need the framework because some children and parents are being asked for the same information time and time again; others are having important needs overlooked because they fall outside the remit of the assessing agency; and inter-agency referrals do not operate as well as they could. We need a more consistent approach to assessment. It is a key component in the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Programme, playing an important role in providing early intervention.

The Common Assessment Framework should reduce bureaucracy. Subject to consent from the child, young person or parent, the reduction will come from practitioners using information that has already been gathered, rather than collecting it again themselves. It has been designed for practitioners in all agencies to help them to communicate and work together more effectively. It is particularly suitable for use in universal services (health and education), to identify and tackle problems before they become serious.

The Common Assessment Framework has been implemented in Tameside since 2006 with training for practitioners and awareness-raising sessions aimed at managers.

Lead professional good practice guidance

The introduction of a lead professional role is seen as central to effective frontline delivery of integrated children's services as it ensures that professional involvement is optimised; coordinated and communicated effectively; providing a better experience for children, young people and their families involved with a range of agencies.

The Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme has published the Lead Professional Good Practice Guidance for children with additional needs, aimed at operational managers and senior officers.

Locally, the development of the lead professional role is being considered alongside the implementation of the Common Assessment Framework in order to bring together the processes of assessment of need, and the coordination of a service response to the identified need.

Tameside Service Directory

Tameside's Service Directory for children and young people is a comprehensive online web-based database of all types of children's and young people's services available in the borough. Children, young people and families and professionals can use it to find information about services that they may wish to benefit from. This directory is a key tool, helping ensure that children, young people and families receive appropriate services when they need them.

It is easily searchable and includes a broad range of preventative services from providers in both voluntary and statutory agencies. The Service Directory also has a needs based search facility using frequently asked questions relating to each of the categories and also a key word search facility. In Tameside we have teamed up with the Children's Information Service to develop and maintain our service directory and avoid duplication of effort. To visit the Service Information Directory please see: http://www.tameside-sid.org.uk/

Multi-agency audit for NSF for children, young people and maternity services in Tameside

The Tameside audit of the multi-agency position against the 11 standards of the National Service Framework (NSF) for Children, Young People and Maternity Services will provide a robust framework of actions across organisations over the next few years. The decision to undertake a joint audit made sense as the NSF had set the requirements for many agencies and partners, but none of the organisations had the complete picture.

The audit gave a clear picture of where things are up to and the resulting report is to be presented to the children and young people's strategic partnership in November 2006. The audit results are to be used strategically, to evidence good practice and inform the development of the local change for children programme.

Common Care of Skills and Knowledge

You may have heard of the term-Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for the Children's Workforce. This sets out the basic skills and knowledge needed by people (including volunteers) whose work brings them into regular contact with children, young people and families and will enable multi-disciplinary teams to work together more effectively in the interests of the child.

The skills and knowledge are described under six main headings:

• Effective communication and engagement with children, young people and families
• Child and young person development
• Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the child
• Supporting transitions
• Multi-agency working
• Sharing information

Over time it is expected that everyone working with children, young people and families will be able to demonstrate a basic level of competence in the six areas of the Common Core. In the future, the Common Core will form part of qualifications for working with children, young people and families and it will act as a foundation for training and development programmes run by employers and training organisations.

As part of the Workforce Development Strategy Action Plan, a new staff post has been created to take this work forward and will be based in the Social Care Training Unit at Festival hall in Denton. The Children's Workforce Strategy sets out action to be taken locally to ensure that there are the skills, ways of working and capacity in the Tameside's children's workforce to deliver change for children.

Every Parent Matters

In Tameside, a multi-agency parenting support strategy is being developed that covers the range of support to be provided based on the needs of the child and family. A Reference Group for the strategy is being set up consisting of agencies such as the Primary Care Trust, Hospital Trust, CAMHS service, Children's Social Care, Youth Support Services, School improvement, Access and Inclusion, voluntary sector and Regeneration. Parents and children and young people themselves will also have an input. The work will build on the wide range of activity that exists at present in a number of service areas, and coordinate future targeted consultation activities using the NCH Participation Project team. Links will also be made to the developing area coordination arrangements, to maximize opportunities for local neighborhood consultation. The Reference group will be involved through making direct contributions to work undertaken and through ongoing consultation as the strategy develops. A smaller steering group is to be established to lead the work on the strategy.

Children's Centres

Phase 1 of the Children's Centre programme is nearing completion 12 months behind schedule. Staff teams are in place and services are operational in the communities despite the lack of building. Haughton Green was renamed as Denton South Children's Centre to reflect the different sites and communities which form part of the network. As we move to smaller scale builds/ remodelling of existing school space, and demountable options at Millbrook and Hollingworth we are hoping for a smoother programme for Phase 2.

15 children's centres must be operational by March 2008, along with 55 Schools designated as Extended Schools. Tameside is on track for designations within timescales. The first round of schools will be designated in September 07

In readiness for the duty to provide sufficient childcare, Tameside must complete annual sufficiency assessments across the borough (a measure of the need for, and supply of, registered, unregistered or approved childcare within Tameside, including maintained sector early years provision.

The sufficiency assessment is now underway across all private, voluntary, independent and maintained provision in the borough. This is a significant project that will be required on an annual basis. First assessment is to be complete around this time.

Key PI s to be linked into C and YP Plan:

• % Of children who achieve a total of at least 78 points across the Foundation Stage Profile with at least 6 points scored in each of the personal, social and emotional development and communication, language and literacy scales.
• % Of children in reception year who are obese.
• % Of mothers initiating breastfeeding.
• % Of children aged 0-4 living in households dependent on workless benefits.
• % Of teenage mothers aged 16-19 in education, training or employment.
• % Of members of vulnerable groups in contact with children's centres.
• % Of parents in children's centres areas satisfied with services.

Priorities for the next few months include further reconfiguration of some posts as the service moves away from a delivery model; as more schools become extended there will be a need to rethink this part of the service.

The outcome of the Comprehensive spending review will inform the service budget for 08 onwards and actions necessary. Some planning is already taking place , that is ,we propose to have a co-ordinator and staff team working across multiple children's centres

Establishing the Area arrangements for Children's Centres and Extended Schools will be a key element of the integrated agenda. We expect a Phase 3 of children's centres but at this stage do not know the detail.

Children's Fund

Tameside's Children Fund provides preventative services for 5-13 year olds in Tameside. In the last year, there has been a 12% increase in children and young people accessing projects and Children Fund has supported the Neighbourhood Road Safety Initiative, which the CYPSP is leading on, with activities promoting road safety. Programme manager Julie Lord has worked with each project to develop a mainstreaming strategy to ensure the work continues and improves after 2008, when preventative work will be integrated into Services for Children and Young People (TMBC).