Denton, Droylsden & Audenshaw

Area Coordination Management

Time: 10.00
Date: Friday 8th May 2009
Venue: Greenside Children’s Centre

Present:

Bob Shaw  -  Area Co-ordinator & Chair
Lorraine Kitching -  TMBC
Diane King -  Youth Service 
Chris Harris  - Connexions
John Rogers -  Greenside Lane
Sue Lennie -  St Thomas More
Phil Massey -  St Stephens School
Maureen Wallis  - EWS
Harvey Hudson -  Children’s Social Care
Julian Sacofsky - TMBC

Note taker: Lindsay Patchett 

Item 1: Welcome

Bob welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked them for their attendance.
Introductions were made around the table.

Item 2: Apologies

Apologies received from Lorna Grennan, Sally Dicken

Item 3: Notes of last meeting and matter arising

Agreed as an accurate account

Item 4: Family Group Conferencing – Julian Sacofsky

Julian Sacofsky gave a brief background to Family Group Conferences:

The idea for FGC originated in New Zealand. Social workers working with Maori families found that care packages were not working as children were being placed in “white” families and this was proving not to be a positive experience for the children. They therefore decided to work with the whole family when problems arose. By engaging the whole family they found that placements were available within the wider family as opposed to placing children with families from other cultures.

Julian explained the process for FGC within Tameside.

• Members of the family will be involved alongside professional at the family meeting. The professionals will give details of their input with the child/children and any concerns they have. The family will be given “private” time to discuss the issues raised and their ideas will be put into the “pot” and looked at alongside other solutions offered by professionals.
• Professionals wishing to set up family meetings will make referrals through Julian.
• Julian stated that he had already had a lot of requests/enquiries for meetings.
• The earlier the meeting is called the better the outcomes appear to be.
• Everyone who attends the meeting is there because the family have agreed to them being there.
• The family are required to complete a consent form before Julian contacts them.
• Families may see this process as a better option before “social work” involvement.
• Some families have a very good capacity to deal with family issues

Points raised:

What is the referral criteria?

At present we are prioritising those cases going towards to court stage. Would like to see FGC integrated into the planning process for all families.

Is there evidence of the outcomes?

Hulls evidence shows better outcomes if FGC are completed at an early stage.

What if certain family member’s situations are not conducive to the child’s wellbeing?

Professionals will give clear messages about what is and isn’t acceptable at the start of the meeting.

Julian distributed an information sheet with details of Family Group Conferences and his contact details.

Item 5: Common Processes

The Common Processes data was distributed to the group.

• Increase in CAF’s taking place
• Huge increase in information to share in April

Item 6: PIP

Lorraine Kitching gave a demonstration of PIP – Tameside’s Partnership Information Portal which was set up to bring together data from Tameside Partnership

Web address: http://www.tamesidepip.org.uk/ to register.

• PIP is only available to Tameside MBC employees or members of the Strategic Partnership
• Anyone wishing to have access will need to agree to terms and conditions before being registered.

Lorraine demonstrated how to use PIP and gave details of the data that is available.

Item 7: Area Profile for Denton, Droylsden and Audenshaw: Key Indicators

Bob gave a presentation illustrating what is available on PIP. This is a selective sample of useful data.

Bob asked meeting members what data they would like to see available. The following suggestions were made:

• Number of pupils on roll compared to census
• Pupil tracking
• No of parents with HE education
• JASPER stats

Bob asked meeting members to go back to their managers and request that post code data held by managers (that was appropriate) be added to PIP.

Item 8: Early Intervention – update on consultancy work

Consultation is continuing – now working with Schools Heads
There are to be area workshops in June/July

Item 9: Children and Young Peoples Plan update 2009/11

There is a draft plan available (see agenda paper)
Responses to be emailed to Tom Coffey

Item 10: Reporting back on local networks

Diane reported that the weekend work is going really well
Diane distributed papers regarding “Shine Week” 6 - 10

Item 11: Dates of future meetings

Time: 10.00
Venue: Greenside Children’s Centre
17 July 2009
2 October
4 December

Item 12: Any other business

Harvey gave details of imminent changes to Children’s Social Care

• Assessment and Family Support Team moving to Duke Street and will be named “ Social work support Team”
• All teams will be based in areas
• Other teams to be based at Duke Street;
• Family First Team
• Children’s Out of Hours team (solely for children)
• MIS Team

Harvey will let us have a copy of the new structure if available in electronic form.