Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership

Minutes - 3rd September 2009

Commenced: 10.00 am
Terminated: 11.55am

Present:
Councillor Gwynne - Tameside MBC (In the Chair)
Steven Pleasant - Tameside MBC
Claire Bibby - Tameside MBC
Christine Troughton - LSC
Sabrina Fuller - NHS Tameside & Glossop
Veronica Hyde - Tameside Third Sector Coalition
Pat McKelvey - NHS Tameside and Glossop
Judith Grigg - NHS Tameside & Glossop
Sheila Piazza - Connexions Tameside
Jim Taylor - Tameside MBC
Stephen McLoughlin - Tameside Hospital
Catherine Moseley - Tameside MBC
Tony Okotie - Tameside Third Sector Coalition
Adam Allen - Tameside MBC
Graham Ashford - Tameside MBC
Annie Dodd - Tameside MBC
David Berry - Tameside MBC
Cheryl Eastwood - Tameside MBC
John Rogers - Tameside Primary Heads
David Hobbs - Better Choices
Catherine McKay - Greater Manchester Police
Susan Marsh - Governor’s Forum
Apologies for Absence:
Councillor Cooney, Ameena Ahmed, Adam Allen, Moira Thompson, Christine Troughton, Judith Grigg.

15. Minutes

The Minutes of the meeting of the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership held on 18th June 2009 were approved as a correct record.

16. Making a Positive Contribution Theme Sub-Group Report

Consideration was given to a report of Claire Bibby, Chair of the Making a Positive Contribution Outcome Theme Group, which detailed the main activities undertaken by the Making a Positive Contribution Theme Group during the past year.

The main activities included the following areas:-

• The group had received a presentation from the Participation Project around their work with schools developing schools council;
• The Participation Project specification had been taken to the group for their comments and there was a presentation on the white paper ‘Communities in Control: Real Power, Real People and how this impacted on children, young people and their families;
• The group had received a presentation form the Young Advisors charity about their work with young people 15-21 years of age;
• A group of young people from St Damian’s had designed some screen savers with the key positive messages from the Youth on-line survey, which would be used by schools. A broader use of the screen savers was anticipated.

Reference was also made to the action plan appended to the report which detailed the improvement actions identified in each report card.

Resolved
That the report be noted.

17. Strengthening Children's Trust Arrangements

Consideration was given to a joint report of Cheryl Eastwood, Deputy Director, Services for Children and Young People and Pat McKelvey, Head of Children’s Strategy and Partnerships NHS Tameside and Glossop, which outlined the proposals to take the next steps in the development of a Children’s Trust in Tameside.

The proposals were to:

• Re-establish the Children and Young People Strategic Partnership as a Children’s Trust Board;
• Develop the Children and Young People Plan as a full partnership plan and commissioning document;
• Establish a Children’s Commissioning Executive to ensure good governance and to strengthen joint commissioning. Commissioning organisations would be requested to mandate this group to deliver the plan;
• Develop integrated commissioning and establish clear lines of accountability between the organisations in order to take this forward and
• Establish direct links between the Provider Division of NHS Tameside and Glossop and the Tameside Metropolitan Borough Services for Children and Young People management structure at senior manager, Assistant Director, middle manager (Local Services Co-ordinator) and frontline staff levels.

The Deputy Director stated that the report had been agreed by the PCT Board and would shortly be submitted to Tameside Board.

Reference was made to the background to Children’s Trust Arrangements in Tameside.

The proposals for consideration was divided into two parts – those around governance and strategy, and those around service provision and integrated processes.

Governance and Strategy

Strengthen the Children’s and Young People’s Strategic Partnership by:

• Re-establishing the CYPSP as a Children’s Trust Board with a strong commissioning function. The terms of reference and membership of the Board and its sub-groups would be reviewed to ensure it is fit for purpose.
• Establishing a Children’s Trust Commissioning Executive. This Executive would be responsible for developing in consultation and implementing the partnership commissioning strategy, which would be embedded within the Children and Young Peoples Plan (CYPP).
• Developing the Children and Young Peoples Plan (CYPP) as the partnership plan encompassing the agreed joint priorities of all stakeholders, including GP’s and schools. The plan would be the public commitment of all to commit to the delivery of better outcomes by aligning effort and resources. The Children and families aspects of the PCT Community Services Commissioning Strategy would be embedded within the CYPP.
• Requesting that commissioning partners, the PCT, TMBC, Police, Fire Service, Practice Based Commissioners etc, endorse the CYPP and through this mandate the Children’s Trust Commissioning Executive to deliver the plan.
• Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the Health Partnership, the Crime and Disorder Partnership, the Safeguarding Board, and he Children and Young People Strategic Partnership.

To achieve this, the Trust would:

• Understand the needs of the population through the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and other indicators;
• Develop and implement the CYPP through consultation;
• Know the resources across all services for children and their families;
• Maintain communication and stakeholder involvement;
• Develop and monitor standards;
• Plan the pace and management of change – identifying priorities for change and the stages in the journey;
• Lead change (directly or indirectly through others); and
• Understand and manage the market.

Following the discussion of the report and the Gant chart which was appended, members of the Partnership volunteered to take on various aspects of the work required to be undertaken during the next few months.

18. Updated Participation Strategy

Members were asked to give consideration to the Updated Participation Strategy presented by Justin Wiggins, Participation Strategy Manager. The Strategy outlined how organisations within Tameside would engage children and young people to enable them to have a voice in key decision making linked to services that directly affected their lives.

The document demonstrated the need for a review of the previous 2006 Participation Strategy and showed how Tameside organisations would work together towards a shared goal.

Reference was made to the vision, the six key aims and objectives, the local situation, what children and young people had to say, the key drivers for change, where the Tameside Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership was currently, and key delivery issues and challenges.

Monitoring of the Participation Strategy would be carried out through a number of methods.

Resolved
That the Strategy be noted and the recommendations for key actions contained in the strategy be taken.

19. Option Paper Children and Young Peoples Engagement (Discussion Paper)

Consideration was given to a report of Justin Wiggins, Participation Strategy Manager, which aimed to review a variety of options for children and young people’s involvement in Participation, in particular, decision making in local government.

The reports outlined three options as potential approaches to increase children and young people’s participation. Each option was a viable approach developing participation using different timescales and levels of children and young people’s engagement. The Participation Strategy Manager provided details of the three options and the benefits and risks associated with each option, which were:

• Option A: Tameside Youth Council. A single borough wide youth council which fed into and was supported but the Regional Youth Parliament and UK Youth Parliament;
• Option B: Junior: District Assemblies. A Tameside Youth Forum which would link into Regional and National Youth Forums such as the Regional Youth Parliament and UKYP. The borough wide Youth Forum would be supported by the development of 8 Junior District Assemblies which would run in parallel with current District Assemblies.
• Option C: Young People’s Voice (Sustainable Model). This option reflected true participation of children and young people. By supporting young people to understand the democratic process and with the support of professionals and elected members children and young people were empowered to design and deliver a participation model which reflected their needs.

Reference was made to the key factors to be considered to encourage the development of children and young people’s interest in local democracy.. The report further recommended that Option C – Young People’s Voice (Sustainable Model) would be the most appropriate method to develop a proactive and sustainable model of Participation.

Partners discussed the various options and expressed the importance of seeking the opinions of young people so that they could identify which option would be the ideal model for them.

Resolved
That Option C be adopted.

20. Proposal for Developing the Children and Young People's Plan 2010-13

Consideration was given to a report of Ameena Ahmed, Partnership Development Manager, which provided the background for preparing, publishing and monitoring the implementation of the Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP). It was stated that as the plan was such a key document that it was important that all partners were part of its development and took ownership of it. To develop the plan it was planned to engage stakeholders differently in the process so that they were involved in two stages:

• In discussing the current position and gathering their thoughts and ideas about what should be included in the plan; and
• In asking for their views about drafts as the plan developed.

The multi-agency groups it was proposed to gather views from were listed at Appendix 1.

Resolved
That the report be noted.

21. Total Place

Steven Pleasant, Chief Executive TMBC, reported on the Total Place Greater Manchester Pilot which was a Government initiative aimed at understanding how public money comes together in a local area and whether better outcomes could be achieved through joining up and collaboration. The report which was a position paper set out the work in greater detail Reference was made to the initiative which had three strands:

i) Counting – Mapping all public spending in an area;
ii) Culture – Develop proposals for significant service transformation; and
iii) Customer – Develop an evidence base from our customer data and insight.

The Manchester City Region had been identified as one of the 13 Total Place Initiative Pilots. The Manchester City Region had identified 0 to 5 years as its theme.

Reference was made to the local context, the city region focus for Total Place and project governance. It was stated that there was a significant opportunity for this partnership to work with other partnerships in the borough. A discussion ensued by Partners about the position paper and the impact of the work. The partners were of the opinion that the timetable for the initiative was unachievable.

Resolved
That the report be noted.

22. Tameside Strategic Partnership Engagement Strategy

David Berry, TSP Co-ordinator circulated the Tameside Strategic Partnership Engagement Strategy for Partners comments and stated that the consultation period was open until the end of September 2009. He stated that it was more of visual and less technical Strategy in order to engage the public. Furthermore although there were a number of engagement strategies there was a need to adopt a more formal strategy, which would set out the main principles and key aims and objectives. The Strategy included a detailed audit of what was happening in Tameside and was a live document. It was hoped that efficiencies would be created through the Strategy and it was anticipated that a website would be developed so that there would be better consultation of the public.

The Partners enquired about the audience for the Strategy and were informed that it was a partnership strategy and would be put into public libraries to involve and engage the public. There was discussion about the difference between engagement and consultation and the gap between the two. Partners suggested that engagement needed to be defined in the document preferably with examples.

Resolved
That the report be noted.

23. Reports for Information

a) ContactPoint Implementation

Consideration was given to a report of David Hoyle, Information Sharing and Assessment Project Manager, detailing the implementation of ContactPoint in Tameside.
Resolved
That the report be noted

b) Teenage Pregnancy Update

It was reported that there had been a further increase in the local teenage pregnancy figures despite strategies being in place. These were not yet making the impact we hoped for on teenage pregnancy figures in the borough.

Resolved
That the report be noted.

c) Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership Executive Minutes - 6th August 2009

The Minutes from Children and Young People Strategic Partnership Executive Meeting held on 6th October 2009 were attached for information.

d) Dates of Future Meetings

The Partnership was advised of future dates of meetings as follows, all meetings commencing at 10.00am:

Date and Venue
Thursday 15th October 2009 - Committee Room 3, Council Offices
Thursday 17th December 2009 - Committee Room 3, Council Offices

Chair