Services for Children and Young People Scrutiny Panel

Alcohol Consumption by Children and Young People in Tameside

The authority along with Partnership organisations in Tameside and Glossop have identified alcohol as a key area of concern affecting health and well being since the first Tameside Alcohol Strategy was agreed in 2003.

The Tameside Alcohol Needs Assessment highlighted some key areas of concern in relation to young people. It found, for example, that there are high rates of binge drinking in males from aged 15 and female acute intoxication admissions aged 10-14 outnumber males.

The TellUs2 survey of year 10 pupils indicates that local levels of drinking alcohol are above the regional and national average for Children and Young People in the borough

The Scrutiny Panel wish to examine the impact of Alcohol consumption on children and young people in the borough. In particular looking at steps taken to reduce harmful drinking for children and young people and reduce the rates of alcohol consumption.

The Panel may also be interested in examining the links between alcohol and teenage conception.

This review will help to support the Children and Young Peoples Strategic Partnership in decreasing the level of alcohol misuse for children and young people in Tameside.

This review will also support the Tameside Local Area Agreement Target relating to teenage conceptions and contribute to the ‘Healthy Tameside’ aim within Tameside’s Sustainable Community Strategy.

Services for Children and Young People

Cllr R Welsh

Opportunities for Children and Young People to engage in physical activity

Childhood obesity is a growing national issue, with Tameside’s Local Are Agreement performance indicators highlighting that levels of obesity are higher than average.

Despite the intervention of healthy schools programmes, there are still barriers preventing children from making healthy choices both inside and outside the school environment.

The Scrutiny Panel are interested to look at the provision for physical opportunities for children both in schools and during the evenings and weekends.

The Scrutiny Panel are also interested in looking at the mechanisms for identifying obesity in children and the steps taken to focus interventions and reduce levels of obesity.

Parents’ views and attitudes regarding physical activity opportunities for their children, and the support available to help them make healthy choices for their families may also be included.

This review will help to promote the uptake of physical activity, and support the Children’s Trust target to increase the number of children undertaking 2+ hours of physical activity. In line with ‘Every Child Matters’, the review will support the ‘Be healthy’ and ‘Enjoy and Achieve’ strands, and the Sustainable Community Strategy theme of ‘Healthy Tameside’.

This Scrutiny review supports the Tameside Local Area Agreement target relating to obesity and positive activities (participation of young people).

Services for Children and Young People/  Lifelong Learning

Scrutiny Panel

The Effectiveness of Steps to Address Educational Attainment in Areas with High Levels of Deprivation

Research by the former Department for Children Schools and Families demonstrated that deprivation in a particular area has a substantial impact on the performance of children and young people at every Key Stage. Tameside is currently the 56 th most deprived Local Authority area in England and as a result has to address significant challenges in relation to the level of educational attainment within the borough.

The Scrutiny Panel wishes to examine the steps that are taken within Tameside to ensure that the impact of deprivation on educational attainment of children and young people within the borough is minimised.

The Scrutiny Panel may also wish to examine different factors which impact on educational attainment within areas which have higher levels of deprivation, including, gender, ethnicity, economic background, Looked After Children, and time of birth.

This Scrutiny review supports the Local Area Agreement targets relating to educational attainment at Key Stage 2 and 4.

The Scrutiny review also supports Tameside’s Sustainable Community Strategy in relation to the ‘Learning Tameside’ aim.

Services for Children and Young People/  Lifelong Learning

Scrutiny Panel

Services for Safeguarding Children

The members of the panel were aware of the benefits of integrated services and effective partnership working, and suggested that a review into where this has been most effective and where there are areas for improvement may be a useful scrutiny exercise.

Common processes which are used between partners to monitor the safety of children such as the Common Assessment Form and ContactPoint play a significant role in the safeguarding of children in the borough and the panel may wish to examine the effectiveness of the systems.

The Panel may also wish to consider the effectiveness of the new arrangements for the Tameside Safeguarding Children’s Board and how partners within the borough work to ensure the safety of children.

Developing integrated services is at the heart of the Children’s Trust and the Children and Young People Plan identifies a series of actions that support the successful attainment of a number of Local Area Agreement targets and Every Child Matters strands, which this review will also be able to support.

Services for Children and Young People

Scrutiny Panel

Educational Attainment

Improving educational attainment is a key national and local priority.

The Scrutiny Panel has been involved in ongoing performance monitoring of educational attainment for a number of years.

Performance monitoring of educational attainment is an important role for the Scrutiny Panel, as it provides the Panel with an opportunity to help ensure that progress in relation to this key priority is developed and sustained.

This review supports the Tameside Children and Young People Strategic Partnership Trust and Corporate Plan priority to improve educational attainment. The review will support a number of Local Area Agreement targets around educational attainment.

Furthermore, this review also contributes towards Tameside’s performance against more general Council priorities, including Tameside’s Sustainable Community Strategy under the Prosperous Tameside and Learning Tameside aims.

Lifelong Learning

This will be carried out annually

Building Schools for the Future

Through the Building Schools for the Future programme, every secondary school in England will be rebuilt, remodelled or refurbished over a 10-15 year period. Tameside has been allocated around £200m to transform secondary school provision in the borough.

During 2010/11 the Panel will be involved in monitoring progress against key milestones of the project. In addition the Panel will consider the ways in which new schools are designed to promote physical activity.

Ongoing monitoring of the Building Schools for the Future project supports the Council’s Sustainable Community Strategy Learning Tameside Aim.

Lifelong Learning

Regular monitoring

Teenage Conception Rate

Local Area Agreement performance indicators show that the rate of teenage conceptions in Tameside remains high and has not shown a significant reduction. In order to help monitor progress towards reducing teenage conceptions the Scrutiny Panel wishes to receive reports on the steps taken to reduce conception rates.

This ongoing monitoring exercise supports the Council’s Sustainable Community strategy in relation to the Healthy Tameside and Supportive Tameside Aims and the Local Area Agreement in relation to reducing the under 18 conception rate.

Services for Children and Young People

This will be carried out annually

Tameside Local Area Agreement Targets

The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 placed a duty on responsible local authorities to prepare a Local Area Agreement (LAA) in consultation with partner organisations.

The Tameside LAA 2008-11 was endorsed by the LAA Executive on 29th May 2008 and launched at the Tameside Strategic Partnership (TSP) Annual Conference on 12th June 2008. The LAA was reviewed and refreshed in April 2009.

The 2007 Act gives Scrutiny Panels powers to hold the local authority and partnership agencies to account in achieving LAA targets.

In particular the Act gives Scrutiny Panels the power to:

• scrutinise progress towards achieving LAA targets;
• request information from partner organisations signed up to particular LAA targets;
• expect partner organisations to consider and respond to scrutiny recommendations concerning the targets they are signed up to.

The Scrutiny Panel will receive performance monitoring information on LAA targets relating to this Scrutiny Panel on a quarterly basis.

This performance monitoring exercise supports the Council and Sustainable Community Strategy priorities relating to 'Supportive Tameside’, 'Prosperous Tameside’, 'Learning Tameside’ and 'Attractive Tameside’

Tameside Strategic Partnership