Area Coordination Management Meeting

Denton, Droylsden & Audenshaw

Time: 10.00am
Date: Friday 19th September 2008
Venue: Greenside Children’s Centre

Present:

Bob Shaw Area Co-ordinator & Chair
Chris Harris Connexions
Diane King Youth Service
Lynn Barber Area Children’s Centre Manager
Phil Massey St. Stephens
Harvey Hudson (sub for Tracy Rowe) Social Care (Assessment & Care Management)
David Scott (sub for Debbie Duddridge) Social Care (Family Support)
Malcolm Knight TMBC
Emma Lewis (sub for John Rogers) Greenside Primary School & Children’s Centre
Maureen Wallis Senior EWO
Mark McLoughlin Littlemoss High School
Jane-Ann Birkitt CAF Adviser

Note taker: Bob Shaw

Item 1: Welcome

Bob welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked them for their attendance.

Item 2: Apologies

Lindsay Patchett, Business Support
Debbie Duddridge, Social Care, Family Support Team Leader
Lorna Grennan, PCT Locality Services Coordinator
Sue Lennie, St Thomas Moore
Tracy Rowe, Social Care, Assessment and Care Management team leader
John Rogers, Head, Greenside Primary and Children’s Centre

Item 3: Notes of Last Meeting and Matter Arising

Minutes of last minute agreed as accurate – no matters arising not on agenda

Item 4: School Health Service Modernisation: Presentation

This item was postponed to the next meeting

Item 5: Children’s Centres Developments in DDA

Lynn brought the meeting up to date with Phase 2 and Phase 3 Children’s Centres. Specifically;

• The service is recruiting to a vacant Children’s Centre Coordinator at Denton to manage both the Denton South and the Linden Rd. Centres.
• Capital funds for Phase 3 centres are much smaller than previous rounds and the notion of services networked together with schools and extended schools services is receiving a higher profile 
• Discussions, pending a Council key decision in November, are taking place to locate a further phase 3 centre in the Audenshaw area 
• Discussions are in progress with Dane Bank Primary School, who have received extended school capital funds, as to how to offer Children Centre services but this will not be a designated Children’s Centre
  

Item 6: Common Process

CAF Adviser role-introduction
The meeting was introduced to Jane-Ann Birkitt who was recently appointed as CAF adviser. Jane-Ann spoke about her role to assist the further embedding of common processes particularly around both the volume and the quality of common assessments undertaken. In this regard the next items were also pertinent.

Locally recorded common assessments: update and proposal
Following a recent Children’s Leadership Team meeting, a Partnership instruction will be issued requiring practitioners to send completed common assessments to the CAF Adviser. This has occurred in response to the issues raised at the last meeting regarding common assessments not recorded on JASPER. This is estimated to be about 50%. Not only will this allow the Partnership to monitor the actual volume of common assessments but will enable it also to work on and improve practioner standards.

Malcolm also spoke about recent instructions from DSCF that require a CAF to be undertaken on a child before admission to a PRU and to be completed within 5 days. There then followed some interesting discussion about the merits and challenges this presented. Bob requested sight of the instruction; it was apparent that this will need to be considered further locally.

Management Information
The meeting looked at the most recent management information as recorded on JASPER. This now provides us with our first 12 month pattern of usage. The meeting noted the fall in recorded activity over August and strongly suspected this was the result of school holiday closures.

FAQs and Common Processes Practitioner Workshops
Bob reminded colleagues of the practitioner workshops to be held in the areas and requested managers to encourage practitioners to sign up to a workshop in their area with other local practitioners/partners.

Bob also mentioned the Services Information Directory (SID), its Practioner Forum and the common processes FAQ sections within the forum. There is a monthly update of 10 FAQs and space for practitioners to submit and have answered their pressing FAQs.

Draft Common Processes information handbook
Also available to the meeting was the Common Processes handbook soon to be printed and made available to all practitioners. The handbook was well received by members.

Item 7: Staff Directory & Area Profile 2009 Update

Mention was made of

• The staff directory which is currently being updated
• The revised area profile - a request was made by the chair for members to look at the key indicators that have been chosen and determine if these are useful and whether other indicators should be included. Comments to Bob by email. Publication of the area profile has been delayed until February 2009. This is to allow for the development of a local web-site that will hold all of the data that is currently collected by partners and facilitate easy access to disaggregated data.
  

Item 8: Local Prevention Opportunities Fund - Round 2

Mention was made of the Prevention Opportunities Fund second round. The closing data was noted (October 3rd) and the meeting learnt from Diane that the Youth Service were making an application for a young persons boxing project. Bob also presented the meeting with a flavour of successful applications from the previous round.

Item 9: Reporting Back on Local Networks

Droylsden Network
Lynn reported to the meeting the recent network of practitioners held at Greenside Children’s Centre on the theme of Be Healthy. This followed the earlier one on Stay Safe at Fairfield. Lynn also noted that production of a summer ‘what’s on’ for children and young people for the Droylsden area - this had arisen directly from the Stay Safe network meeting.

The next meeting will be held at Fairfield Children’s Centre on 11th November over lunchtime 12.30pm till 2.00pm. This theme will look at the Achieve Economic Wellbeing theme. Chris Harris and Maureen Wallis are introducing the theme before a practitioner discussion. Lunch is provided.

Denton South Young People’s Task Group
Diane brought the meeting up to date with the recent Denton South Children and Young People’s Plan and the opportunities that practitioners have created for better sharing of information about services. A ‘what’s on guide’ for winter is under preparation. The guide will be available to practitioners, managers, parents, school.

Item 10: Any other business

None

Item 11: Date of Next Meeting

21st November 2008, 10:00am-12.00pm: Greenside Children’s Centre