Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership

Newsletter: Edition 11 (Summer 2007)

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In this edition:

• Priorities for 2007/08 for work
• Review of the Children and Young People Plan
• Findings from mapping of children’s workforce
• ‘Tell Us’ Survey
• Tameside’s LAA went live in April
• Every Parent Matters
• Tackling Teenage Pregnancy Rises
• Update from the Area Co-ordinators
• New Local Safeguarding Children Board Policies
• Rumble in the Jungle
• New Name for National Child Index
• Children’s Centres and Extended Schools Update
• New powers to issue parenting contracts
• Pathway into Health scheme
• National Play Day

Board News –

• CYPSP 2007/08 Membership proposals agreed
• Children & Young People’s Strategic Partnership Special Meeting
• Immediate priority actions for the CYPSP

Priorities for 2007/08 for work

With children and young people Following agreement by Children and Young People Strategic Partnership, Chief Executives of our main partners and the DFES our priorities for 07/08 are as follows:

• To reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy
• Continue to strengthen support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing through a comprehensive CAMHS
• Continue to raise attainment in all Key Stages with a strong focus on under attaining groups and schools
• Improve attendance and inclusion outcomes in targeted schools
• Increase the proportion of young people moving into education, training and employment
• Improve children and young people’s health outcomes, including a reduction in obesity and substance misuse, through the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

In addition to the above key priorities we will:

• Continue to work hard to reduce the impact of domestic abuse on children, improve the stability of placements for looked after children and ensure that safeguarding issues are kept high on the agenda.
• Develop integrated services for children with disabilities
• Develop a comprehensive and well publicised range of support for parents

Review of the Children and Young People Plan

In June 2006, Tameside CYPSP published our first Children and Young People Plan. The Plan set out our ambition for developing greater integration and effective partnership working across all agencies for children in Tameside under the Children and Young People Strategic Partnership through our developing Children’s Trust arrangements.

The 2006 Children and Young People Plan set out 11 priorities for our work with children and young people, which were fully agreed and ratified across schools, health services, Tameside Council and all our partners in the borough including the Police and the voluntary sector.

Included in the Plan were issues such as promoting better mental health for children and young people and their families; reducing the impact of domestic violence on children and young people; and reducing school exclusion rates. The review of the Children and Young People Plan will be completed by mid-June. The review also acts as the joint self-assessment for the Annual Performance Assessment for 2007.

Further consultation with children and young people is taking place in order to inform the review. Copies of the plan, including an executive summary and a children’s version are available on the CYPP Partnership website www.tameside.gov.uk/cypp.

The new agreed priorities for the coming year, as reported in our last bulletin, will form the basis for a revised CYPP Plan which will be for three years 2007-2010.

Findings from mapping of children’s workforce

Work to map the local children’s workforce in Tameside has recently been completed through a consultancy arrangement, Melyn Consulting, and the Tameside Children’s Workforce Development Strategy Group has been considering the initial overview report from this work. 517 separate job roles have been identified and grouped by workforce clusters:

• Social Care (General Social Care Council / Skills for Care)
• Education (Training & Development Agency for Schools)
• Youth Work and Support (Lifelong Learning UK)
• Early Years (Children’s Workforce Development Council)
• Community Justice (Skills for Justice)
• Health (The Nursing & Midwifery Council / Skills for Health)
• Sport, Leisure, Health & Fitness (Skills Active)

There has shown to be a gender imbalance with more females being represented in the children’s workforce.

There is also a need to link job roles to the National Qualifications Framework and the Common Core Skills, which include areas like information sharing, multi agency working and understanding transition issues. Plans are being developed to disseminate the findings more widely, and these will be used as part of a workforce development seminar planned for later in the year.

‘Tell Us’ Survey

As part of the APA and JAR inspections, some 900 children and young people will be involved in a web based survey known as the Tell Us 2 questionnaire. The feedback received from children and young people in this survey will be used by inspectors to make judgments on some aspects of children’s services in the local area, form hypotheses about the quality of particular aspects of provision, and then to decide on which aspects they would need to collect first-hand inspection evidence. In Tameside, the Tell Us 2 survey went out to schools in April for completion by 25th May 2007. Some 57 schools were approached to take part in the survey and a sample selection of year 6, 8 and 10 was chosen.

Tameside’s LAA went live in April

A Local Area Agreement (LAA) is a three year agreement, based on local Sustainable Community Strategies, that sets out the priorities for a local area agreed between Central Government, represented by the Government Office (GO), and a local area, represented by the lead local authority and other key partners through the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP). They devolve decision making to the local level by relaxing central government constraints and the pooling of funding streams. Greater freedoms, through the agreement of enabling measures, provide the opportunity to think innovatively, and develop new solutions to local priorities.

The primary objective of an LAA is to deliver genuinely sustainable communities through better outcomes for local people. LAAs also have the secondary objective of:

• Improving Central and Local Government relations
• Enhancing efficiency
• Strengthening partnership working
• Framework for local authorities to enhance their community leadership role

LAAs will develop a range of outcomes based on local priorities, which all partners in the area will work towards achieving. Each outcome will have a designated owner who is responsible for leading on the achievement of that target.

The outcome sub-groups have now been arranged

The Chairs and Area Co-ordinators have met and discussed the membership and the format of the meetings. The Chairs& Co-ordinators for each theme are:

Enjoy & Achieve - Chair Steve Noble, Sue Garnett Co-ordinator. Economic Wellbeing - Chair Sheila Piazza, Bob Shaw Co-ordinator. Be Healthy - Chair Pat McKelvey, Dave Munday Co-ordinator. Positive Contributions - Chair Claire Bibby, Julie Lord Co-ordinator. Stay Safe will be coordinated through the Local Safeguarding Board. Membership will be reviewed regularly and other people will be invited to specific meetings if there is a particular issue on the agenda.

Every Parent Matters

‘Every Parent Matters’ sets out the important role of parents in improving their child’s life chances and educational attainment and the role of government in supporting them to achieve this. It brings together ways in which the Government is promoting the development of services for parents, as well as their involvement in shaping services for themselves and their children. It also highlights practice where public services are already working with parents in innovative ways, particularly with those parents that are most disadvantaged and for whom services have often been inaccessible. In Tameside, a number of people are getting involved in developing a local parenting strategy which will include developing parenting support services, for example in children’s centres. We aim to help parents to offer the best support they can to their children through the development stages from birth to adulthood.

• Make confident and informed choices which they feel are right for their family
• Working in partnership with services to reinforce the benefits for their children’s outcomes
• Developing strong and confident parenting skills
• Addressing any emotional or mental health problems
• Preventing further unplanned pregnancies
• Continuing or re-engaging with education and training

The strategy will cover the range of parenting support to deliver improved outcomes for children from information, early intervention and preventative services through to the use of enforcement measures.

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 maximise opportunities for local neighbourhood 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.

Tackling Teenage Pregnancy Rises

Tameside, in line with a number of other LA’s in the North West, has seen an increase in rates of teenage conceptions in 2005. This was disappointing as we had seen a decrease in 2004, which went against the trend for the North West.

Although we can expect to see some variation in the figures, the complex issue of teenage pregnancy will not be resolved by the end of the strategy. Over 42% of areas in the North West are expected not to reach the target of 50% reduction by 2010. In order to implement the strategy effectively we need to ensure teenage pregnancy remains a priority over a sustained period of time to achieve the societal and behavioural changes required.

The Teenage Pregnancy Partnership Board (TPPB) have recently submitted an annual review to Government Office North West. Within this document were listed the key initiatives that the TPPB have agreed will be the priority areas for 2007/2008.

They include ensuring all key stakeholders have a clear understanding of the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy and that they are clear on their responsibilities to support the implementation of the TP strategy. We will be implementing recommendations from the Young Peoples Sexual Health Service Review in an attempt to halt an upward trend in our local Teenage Pregnancy rates. Plans are to develop a Condom Distribution Scheme to ensure wider availability of condoms to young people.

We will ensure that all our distribution centres are where young people meet and are young person friendly.

Alongside this approach will be to implement programmes of work that raise the expectations of our young people to achieve their potential.

Update from the Area Co-ordinators

The Children & Young People Strategic Partnership approved the Area Action Plan for 2007/08, on April 19th. The plan links to the Change for Children agenda and to the Tameside Workforce Development Plan. JASPER, child and family meetings, common assessment framework and lead professional arrangements feature significantly in the plan. Additional actions are to be included in the plan from partner agencies and managers attending area coordination management teams. Team leaders will already have a copy of the plan and teams are being encouraged to discuss it in their meetings with a view to feeding into the Plan. Area Coordinators are happy to attend team meetings to discuss

New Local Safeguarding Children Board Policies

The following Tameside Local Safeguarding Children Board policies are now available on the LSCB website www.tameside.gov.uk/childprotection.

• 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 contact the LSCB direct.

Rumble in the Jungle

A Children’s Network voluntary sector event was held in March, by the Third Sector Coalition to help consolidate some of the development work that has been taking place within the voluntary sector, and to establish a formal children’s network for the borough.

New Name for National Child Index

The national information-sharing index, part of the Every Child Matters programme, is now known as `ContactPoint’.

ContactPoint will be operational in Tameside from 2008 following on from preparations made in implementing our JASPER system.

As with JASPER, ‘ContactPoint’ will provide a quick way for those working with children and young people to find out who else is working with the same child or young person, making it easier to deliver more coordinated support and improve outcomes for children. It will be available to authorised staff who need it to do their jobs.

The new name `ContactPoint’ was chosen following substantial stakeholder research that identified the need for a name which made clear what the national tool would do. In addition it was also important to differentiate it from the various local pilot indexes.

The website: www.ecm.gov.uk ContactPoint includes information about the tool, including a Q&A document to explain more about the need to have such a system in place.

Children’s Centres and Extended Schools Update

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.

New powers to issue parenting contracts

From 29th June 2007, Local Authorities (LAs) and Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) will have the power to enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders where anti-social behaviour is the trigger under the Police and Justice Act 2006. This follows up on the Respect Action Plan commitment to ‘to widen the range of agencies which can apply for a parenting order where a child’s behaviour requires it. This will mean that RSLs will need knowledge of, and access to, parenting provision in their local area, in order to give out information to parents and refer them to this provision. For more details on the new powers see the Respect website www.respect.gov.uk

Pathway into Health scheme

The Pathway into Health programme has been developed in partnership with Tameside MBC Sports Development, the School Sports Partnership, Ashton Regeneration, the Safer Stronger Communities fund and the Sport and Physical Activity Alliance to provide parents and carers of Key Stage 1 pupils in Smallshaw/Hurst and Ashton Regeneration primary schools with resource bags containing a variety of sports equipment and a set of activity cards. The resources will be introduced to children, parents/carers in the school setting through taster activities. Parents/ Carers will be asked to come to these taster activities to receive the resource packs and undertake some initial training and development around how to use the resource cards and equipment.

Using the cards parents/carers will be able to re-create the activities and games and make use of the equipment provided in the home setting, promoting physical activity. The resource bags will be used to encourage all pupils to take part in physical activity at home building on the levels of activity they experience at school.

National Play Day

A day of play is to be celebrated with a variety of events in Hyde Park and round the borough. The event is to be free and will have activities for all ages including competitions; raffles; fancy dress; nature walks; music and dance workshops; as well as a slalom race track for ‘boarders, ‘’skaters’ and ‘bikers’.

Tameside 2007 - Hyde Park (off Lodge Lane, Hyde) - Sunday 5th August: 12.00-4.00pm

Board News –

CYPSP 2007/08 Membership proposals agreed

Tom Coffey Children, Head of Strategy and Commissioning Unit, Services for Children and Young People, TMBC put forward the names of individuals to sit on the following

• Partnership Board
• Executive and Joint Commissioning group
• Outcome subgroups

Resolution:

These were agreed

Tom Coffey also presented the CYPSP Performance reporting schedule 2007/08 and this was agreed.

Stay Safe outcomes progress reporting

Rafik Iddin Unit Business Manager, Social Services presented the LSCB performance report and LAC stability report. A Bullying Action Plan was also considered by the CYPSP. New Local Safeguarding Children Board Policies are now available on the LSCB website www.tameside.gov.uk/childprotection

• 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.

Children & Young People’s Strategic Partnership Special Meeting

On the 17th May a special meeting of the CYPSP was held, which looked at:

1. Review of discussion items and actions arising from the previous Away Day
2. To develop work programme for year
3. Review of Joint Commissioning arrangements
4. Review of Children’s Plan
5. To hold a joint meeting of the CYPSP and Local Safeguarding Children’s Board LSCB

Immediate priority actions for the CYPSP:

• Establish a Joint Area Review Action Group (JARAG) and that this be the existing Strategy and Commissioning Management Team in Services for Children and Young People, TMBC. This would both steer the process and analyse the data/ information from the Outcomes Sub groups.
• School improvement engagement- Ian Smith fed back how the School Advisors are linked into the ECM Outcomes in their challenge of schools to take on issues of sexual health, LAC and Child Protection. Tameside’s approach is being adopted nationally and it was felt that the school advisors needed to be more linked into the integrated processes.
• Link strategies, to enable a golden thread such as joint planning and needs assessment
• Make CAF/JASPER data available to better assess need
• Improve communication, e.g. develop the website further
• Develop needs assessment with locality information and links more into health data
• Make the participation network/systems more effective in terms of consultation processes
• Highlight the importance of the message “Child comes first “
• Engage with the Voluntary sector networks and community.
• Ensure equalities issues are addressed

Resolution:

It was unanimously agreed that the LSCB Performance Monitoring Sub Committee should take on the function of the Staying Safe Outcome Group and therefore report to both the LSCB and CYPSP.