Area Coordination Management Meeting

Stalybridge, Dukinfield and Mossley

Time: 2.00pm
Date: Tuesday 29th January 2008
Venue: Mossley Youth Base

Present:

• Julie Lord - Area Co-ordinator & Chair
• Gabrielle Bold - Stalybridge Family Support Team
• Lisa Cook - Stalybridge Assessment Team
• Linda Sidebottom - New Charter Housing Trust
• Janet Blakeley - Locality Manager, PCT
• Liz Price - Education Welfare Service
• Joan Parry - Consolidation of Learning Team (COLT)

Note taker: Jo Cole

Item 1: Welcome

Julie welcomed everyone to the meeting and introductions were made around the table.

Lisa Cook explained that she is attending the meeting on behalf of her manager, Lisa Cane.

Janet Blakeley attended the meeting for the first time. She is the Locality Manager for Services for Children & Young People from the PCT.

Item 2: Apologies

• Anne Short - Primary School Rep - Yew Tree, Dukinfield
• Sue Collins - Primary School Rep - Arlies, Stalybridge
• Pauline Venus - Youth Service
• Alyson Harvey - Connexions
• Diane Goddard Secondary School Rep – Mossley Hollins

Item 3: Notes of last meeting and matter arising

Mossley Clinic
Julie reported that the issue discussed at the last meeting has been resolved.

Item 5 – Area Action Plan Updates

• Action Plan No 4.4: Change for Children Events
  Julie reported that the Change for Children Events have been renamed, to be called Neighbourhood Network Events – this will be discussed in more detail later in the meeting.

Item 6 – Consultation to inform the Area Profiles

• Julie informed the group that consultation took place before Christmas across various places within the 4 areas, as part of the NCH Participation Project. The results have been collated into a report and Julie has received the draft version this week.
• Julie gave a brief update on the headline results and explained that the results will inform Common Processes and the Area Profiles of Need.

Item 10 – Calendar of meetings for the year and venues

• Gabrielle queried the venue for the meeting on 30th March. Julie asked that it be recorded in the minutes that the venue is Ridgehill Children’s Centre and not Ridgehill Child and Family Centre.

Item 4: Area Action Plan

4.1 Action Plan No. 2: Integrated Processes

Referral Arrangements

Julie explained that a proposal has been approved by CLT to align common assessments and referrals.
Julie summarised the proposal, reading out the background and the issues to be considered.
This proposal will be emailed out this week to an agreed distribution list.
Discussions followed regarding issues relating to common assessments and referrals.

Lisa

• Assisted a colleague in completing a common assessment. Looked daunting at first but was relatively straight forward.
• Does a common assessment have to be completed before a child and family meeting can be convened? Julie confirmed that this is the correct procedure – although there are some exceptions and common assessments are completed at the child and family meeting .

Liz

• Following on from Lisa’ query, Liz gave an account of an instance where one of her officers had requested a child and family meeting in order to ensure a coherent common assessment was undertaken by the relevant practitioners who would be at the meeting. Children’s Social Care refused to attend the meeting until one had been completed. This matter has since been resolved.

Gabrielle

• Gabrielle felt concerned by Liz’s comments and will address this at her next management meeting.

Julie

• There is going to be a drive to complete common assessments. Managers sitting on the ACMT need to actively promote common assessments and encourage staff to use JASPER.
• In the beginning, the acronyms for common assessments and child and family meetings were the same (CAF). This has led to a great deal of confusion when entering information on to JASPER.
• There are issues with primary and secondary schools not completing common assessments or accessing JASPER. This is particularly worrying considering the average age of a child on JASPER is 13-14 years old.
• Pat McKelvey is looking at funding for CAF Champions – possibly one in each of the four areas. Meetings and workshops will be arranged to support practitioners and discuss any issues.

Gabrielle

• The training happened quite a while ago – most people have not put their training in to practise and have therefore forgotten the procedure. Refresher courses are needed.
• Some people think they need to complete every section of a common assessment – this is not the case.

Liz

• The training didn’t allow practitioners to study examples of completed common assessments, possibly comparing good with poor. Workshops need to be organised to allow people to collectively complete a dummy common assessment. The message needs to be that they are not as daunting as first though and not every section has to be completed.

Janet

• Are any issues with the completion of common assessments within health? Gabrielle felt they were not receiving common assessments from the PCT but were still getting quite a few referrals.

Service Information Directory

After consultation, the Service Information Directory (SID) has been revamped and revised, resolving a lot of the issues regarding the difficulty to find things. It will soon be relaunched and there will a consultation period.

Julie explained that SID also links in to the wider communication strategy, which looks at how we link up all our information, what leaflets are available and how we communicate with parents, families and young people. The Public Information Strategy Group has been established to co-ordinate this.

There was a discussion regarding what information should be on SID and that some smaller neighbourhood groups would prefer the information as a hard copy folder. Julie acknowledged that this would be possible but that it runs the risk of being out of date as soon as it is printed.

It was felt by most people that SID has not been promoted and shared enough with agencies, key partners, and the voluntary sector. In response to this, Julie reported that, at the Neighbourhood Network Event tomorrow, Kath Astley will have an information stall to promote SID.

The Area Co-ordination Staff Directories for each of the 4 areas will be linked to SID and they will be password protected.

Anyone wishing to visit the SID website, please go to:

www.tameside-sid.org.uk 

Management Information: December 2007

The statistics as at 31st December 2007 were circulated prior to the meeting.

This report provides information on the use of "Common Processes" as recorded on JASPER at a given point in time and since the system went live during December 2006. It provides an overall count of specific activity during the period, e.g. total number of Common Assessments completed. The report does not give a summary of the total activity associated with "Common Processes" as not all practitioners have access to the system to use this information at this time.

It is important to note that reporting on activity in each of the 4 areas requires each child's record to have an LLPG (land and property gazetteer) validated address. Not all child records have a validated address which means there is potential for a discrepancy in the overall activity to that in the area statistics.

In total there were 1692 instances of information to share with action being taken on 134 of them. 37 Common Assessments have been undertaken and 3 Child and Family meetings have been convened. 609 Lead Professionals have been assigned.
Julie asked people to note that the figures for October are considerably more than other months because of the launch of the common processes. Julie compared the results from this area with the results from the other 3 areas and confirmed that it is a similar picture across the borough.

The following views were expressed: -

Gabrielle

• There is an issue around closing your involvement. JASPER will continue to show that you have information to share even when you have ceased working with the child / family. Julie will follow this up.
• The total figures on the front page don’t seem to be accurate. There are more that 609 children assigned with a lead professional just in children’s social care alone.

Lisa

• Queried the number of lead professionals assigned and child and family meetings convened for this area. This should be more than zero as all children’s social care staff are using JASPER. Julie will follow this up.

Liz

• Clarification is needed as to when a meeting is classed as a child and family meeting and when it should be entered JASPER.
• If a child and family meeting is arranged verbally between practitioners, this will not show on JASPER.
• The total number of child and family meetings convened in the whole borough seems to be incorrect i.e. there have definitely been more than 3.
• At her team briefing on Monday, she will remind her staff about entering child and family meetings on JASPER.

It was felt that the format for presenting these statistics was very informative and useful. Julie explained that these statistics will become a standing item at future meetings giving data for the latest period.

Conclusion: The figures are not correct and therefore do not give an accurate overview of the work being undertaken in the area. The format for presenting the data was well received.

Action items:	Person responsible:	Deadline:
Julie to speak to Jane Forrest regarding the accuracy of these figures.	Julie Lord	To update at the next meeting
Liz Price to encourage her staff to record child and family meetings on JASPER.	Liz Price	Monday 4th Feb

4.2 Action Plan No. 8: Monitoring Progress to Integration

Julie explained that an online survey aimed at frontline staff was conducted during November and December 2007. The survey was conducted by the Audit Commission on our behalf and 391 staff participated.

Now that the results have been collated, a report is being prepared in order to analyse the results. The results and analysis will be published as soon as possible.
Julie summarised that most of the results were quite positive. The breakdown of the services participating in the survey was also interesting.

Julie gave some headline results but reported that the full results and analysis will be published soon.

In response to one of the results, Julie has written a proposal for involving the schools councils / eco-committees more. The school councils would come together at neighbourhood level within their areas and these groups would be used for consultation purposes.

Stemming from this, Julie talked of the possibility of a consultation website for children and young people. This would involve reps from each school council logging on to the website, noting the details of the consultation and taking it back to their peers. Their feedback / results can then be logged on the website.

The website will also have a message board and a ‘big brother’ video diary page for children and young people to leave comments.

The website would be run as part of the NCH Participation Project and will have a link to the Tameside website.

Item 5: Update Children and Young People Plan

Julie explained that the Plan has to be reviewed every year to ensure progress is being made. This year the review will take the form of a self-assessment as this is a requirement of the JAR.

The self-assessment will look at how and if we are fulfilling the targets as set out in the table at the back of the plan and the shared priorities for 2007/08 (page 25).

The self-assessment will also involve consulting with children and young people to establish if things have changed based on their priorities for improvement, including:

• Reducing vandalism
• Other people causing trouble
• Stopping people being beaten up
• Cars driving too fast
• Bad people smoking and taking drugs

Liz commented that we need to ensure that we are gaining the views of a wide range of social groups of young people. Sometimes consultation only gets done with the groups who are willing to engage and this can lead to a skewed view.

A discussion followed regarding the groups of young people who are engaging with various services and the ones who are more hard to reach.

It was reported that the detached work carried out by the Youth Service does engage with young people who hang around on the streets who would not normally engage.
Julie reported that a great deal of work has been done by Carolyn Brierley from the Young Carers team to offer more support to young carers in schools. There is now a designated person in schools for young carers to contact.

The Domestic Violence Project Manager, Karen Davies has been working with a few schools to produce drama presentations to raise awareness on domestic abuse. Mossley Hollins will be showing their presentations in assembly at 8.40am daily between 4th and 6th February.

Julie reported that these presentations are very powerful and highlights the issues of domestic abuse. Karen also offers drop-in sessions at the school at certain times during the day.

Anybody wishing to get more details about the shows next week, please contact Joan Parry or Karen Davies.

There was also a discussion about the services that are available and whether they could be delivered in schools. The drugs clinic operating at Dale Grove Secondary Centre was used as an example.

It was acknowledged that most of these services are bought in by the schools and are targeted at particular vulnerable groups.

Item 6: JAR Area Workshop / Event

Julie explained that JAR Area Workshops will be taking place in each of the four areas to promote the JAR and to raise awareness.

These are likely to be held in April. More details to follow soon.

Item 7: Staff Directory

The staff directory was circulated with the papers for this meeting.
Julie requested that everyone take one final look at their section to check for mistakes as this will be published on SID in the next few days.

Liz confirmed that there are some amendments that need to be made for her section and she will email them through to Julie.

Action items:	Person responsible:	Deadline:
Everyone to check their section of the staff directory and email Julie with any amendments	All	ASAP

Item 8: Neighbourhood Network Events

The Neighbourhood Network Event for the Stalybridge, Dukinfield and Mossley area is taking place tomorrow (Wednesday 30th January) 3.00pm – 5.00pm at Dukinfield Children’s Centre.

Amongst other things, there will be:

• Information stalls
• Free healthy snacks
• A prize draw
• Pampering for parents
• Face painting for children

Julie explained that there will also be some low level consultation undertaken. To pool resources and keep costs down, she explained that this event is being run alongside the Family Learning Event which is also taking place at Dukinfield Children’s Centre, organised by Ginny Casey.

Neighbourhood Network Events that have already taken place in the other areas have proved very successful with high numbers of attendees.

It is anticipated that parents with children of ranging age groups will attend, as the location is within close proximity of a number of primary and secondary schools.
The event has been publicised by displaying flyers in shop windows, in children’s centres, handing them to parents in school playgrounds, and emailing them to managers for circulation within their teams.

Liz and Gabrielle both requested notification at an earlier stage of the next event as they would both be interested in having an information stall to network with families in a more informal setting.

Julie confirmed that the next event will take place on 6th May, 2.30pm – 4.30pm, at the Mossley Youth Base. Julie will have further discussions with Liz and Gabrielle about their requirements.

A discussion followed regarding the size of Mossley Youth Base and whether it would be appropriate to co-ordinate activities between there and the children’s centre, with some activities taking place outside. Linda offered the use of gazebos and other equipment in case of bad weather.

Julie extended the invitation of having an information stall to all managers – please contact Julie if interested.

Action items:	Person responsible:	Deadline:
Julie to have further discussions with Liz and Gabrielle regarding the event on 6th May.	Julie / Liz / Gabrielle

Item 9: AOB

Request from Veronica Hyde (via Julie)

Veronica Hyde from the T3SC has requested information from managers in relation to the following question: -

Who do you actively link in with in the voluntary, community and faith sector?

• Gabrielle - Churches with the Christmas toy appeal
• Linda - NCH

Julie requested for everyone to email her with their details, even if it is a nil return.

Action items:	Person responsible:	Deadline:
Email Julie with details of links with the voluntary, community and faith sector.	All	ASAP

Local Information Events

Linda informed everyone of the forthcoming information events being held in Micklehurst, Ridgehill and Crowswood.

They are entitled Chicken Chase (to coincide with Easter) and will take place on Monday 17th March, Tuesday 18th March and Wednesday 19th March. Tuesday 18th March will be held at Micklehurst. Linda will double check about the other two dates and will circulate the information.

Linda explained that these events are designed to be fun for all the family and a good way of sharing information. The events last year were very well attended.
Anyone interested in having a stall at one of the events, please contact Linda on 0161 331 2385.

Action items:	Person responsible:	Deadline:
Linda to circulate details of the events.	Linda Sidebottom	ASAP

Mossley Children’s Centre

Julie reported that the official opening of Mossley Children’s Centre will be scheduled in the near future.

CRB Checks

There was discussion regarding the number of members of staff that have not had a CRB check or who have had a CRB check more than 3 years ago. It was acknowledged that this could be highlighted as part of the JAR.

THE MEETING CLOSED AT 3.30PM

GLOSSARY

• ACMT Area Co-ordination Management Team
• APIR (profile) Assessment, Planning, Implement and Review
• CAF Common Assessment Framework
• CAMHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
• CMM Capability Maturity Model
• CLT Children’s Leadership Team
• CRB Criminal Records Bureau
• CWDC Children’s Workforce Development Council
• CYP Children and Young People
• CYPSP Children and Young People Strategic Partnership
• DDA Denton, Droylsden and Audenshaw
• ECM Every Child Matters
• EIG Early Intervention Group
• ISA Information Sharing and Assessment
• ISSP Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme
• JAR Joint Area Review
• JASPER Joint Assessment System for Prevention and Early Referral
• LA Local Authority
• OBA Outcome based accountability
• PCT Primary Care Trust
• SENCO Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator
• SID Service Information Directory
• T3SC Tameside Third Sector Coalition
• TOR Terms of Reference
• YOF Youth Opportunity Fund
• YOT Youth Offending Team