Co Production Activity
Tameside Children’s Services has engaged in a range of Coproduction and Engagement activity. This page gives some examples of this work.
Tender for the provision of a Childrens Rights, Advocacy and Independent Visitors Service
Children and Young people from the Children In Care Council (CICC) have been involved in the tender preparations and tender evaluations for the above contract.
Prior to advertising the Tender the YP were involved in sessions with Commissioners to help them understand the service and what we needed to do as part of the tender evaluations.
The YP were asked to interview bidders for the contract as part of the overall evaluation process supported by the Participation Officer and Commissioning Officer.
The interview process had a weighting of 20% of the overall score so the YP evaluation process could make a difference to the overall winning bidder.
The YP identified 4 questions that were important to them and session leading up to the interviews were held to ensure everyone knew what they were doing.
Once the contract has been awarded the YP will be involved in the performance monitoring of the contract with the successful bidder.
Parent Carer Survey
Tameside and Glossop SEND Improvement Group wanted to take a closer look at how well we are delivering joined up support to young people and families and how we could improve and plan for change over the coming years. In order to do this we needed to listen to families.So, in the autumn of 2020 Tameside’s Special Education Needs and Disability Improvement Group commissioned a survey to reach out to families in Tameside where a child or young person 0-25 years has special educational needs and/or a disability.
Working collaboratively with a small group of parents, a survey questionnaire was developed to collect information about the lived experiences of families and capture their suggestions on how SEND services might be improved.
We had an amazing response with responses from 320 families. Over half (178) of these families had a child who was supported by an Education Health & Care plan.
The families suggested 10 key areas that we improve on. Please take a look at the plans here.
Emotional & mental health support for children and young people in Tameside & Glossop to age 18
We are undertaking an important development of the offer for emotional & mental health support for children and young people in Tameside & Glossop to age 18. Over the past few weeks, we have been working in partnership with a range of children and young people, experts, mental health practitioners, local charities and service providers, to develop a new model for how we offer early support and advice for children & young people's emotional and mental wellbeing. The new offer will start in September 2021.
As parents, families and people who work to support children & young people, we would like to invite you to take part in order to share your thoughts, experiences and ideas to help us to continue to shape this new offer. We want to speak with a range of people from Tameside & Glossop. It is not important that your child or young person you support has used services in Tameside & Glossop or directly experience emotional & mental health challenges.
To be part of the conversation follow the link to book a place in the conversation. You don't have to be an expert in emotional & mental health, we simply want to learn from your experiences in trying to support a child or young person's emotional & mental wellbeing.
In order to support co-production activity in Tameside, teams are encouraged to use the Co-Production Mapping Tool to identify existing strengths, improve user involvement and promote positive engagement. Co production tool
Signs of Safety
Catherine Davis, Signs of Safety Programme Manager worked alongside the young people from the Children in Care Council to write a leaflet and design posters to promote signs of safety - a strength-based framework for safeguarding families. The posters designed included a pledge written by the young people. The posters, leaflets and pledge were launched in May 2019, the young people presenting their work alongside the Directors of Children’s Services and head teachers.
Signs of children's safety A3
Signs of children's safety leaflet
Procurement of young people’s mental wellbeing support
Representatives from the Clinical Commissioning Group and Population Health Team worked alongside representatives from the Youth Council to procure a service to support young people with their mental wellbeing. The young people identified what they wanted and didn’t want from a service, how it might be accessed and opportunities to have their voice heard as the service develops. Their needs were written into the service specification within the procurement process and young people had representatives on the tender shortlisting panel and were included on the interview panel to procure the service in 2019.
Wrigglers and Gigglers & Relationship Tennis
A consultation session with young parents was arranged in December 18 to discuss what activities they might want to be involved in as previous opportunities had varied in their success. The young parents decided on an initial session to get to know each other and discuss the support they might like. The session was a success and the group chose the group name ‘Wrigglers and Gigglers’, location, venue, time and day of future sessions and took responsibility for leading the group. Every 3 months the Parenting Team and Family Nurse Partnership consult the group as to the activities or support they’d like – examples of activities arranged include first aid training, information about child development or support to access other services. During winter 2019/20 the group has co-produced a document ‘Relationship Tennis’ which aims to provide advice for parents, practitioners and children about how to manage parental conflict better.
Voice of the Child Strategy for Tameside Educational Psychology Service
Tameside MBC, Tameside Educational Psychology Service and The University of Manchester worked with focus groups from the Youth Council, Young Carers, Young Parents Group, Greenside Primary School & Rayner Stevens High School to ask how they would like to be involved with developing the Tameside Educational Psychology Service and how they would like to continue to support this development. Some of these children and young people had special educational needs and some did not. For information
C&YP Travel Co-production Project
Disagreement and Mediation Service
Consultation with Parents
Initially a letter was sent to five people who had recently used the service and had either a positive or negative experience. The five people were identified by Pupil Support Services.
No replies were received from sending out the letters.
Following this a Survey Monkey questionnaire was developed and forwarded to parents by Our Kids Eyes Parent Partnership links.
There were 10 surveys completed by parents who used the service, and;
- Nearly 67% had heard of the service
- 22% have used the service
- Of the people who used the service 100% were happy with the service they received.
- 100% said that they were not any aspects of the service that were not useful.
Some comments from Parents:
- Be transparent and explain BEFORE complaints escalate about what the legal responsibilities are especially schools.
- Open & honest.
- Plain English approach.
- Possibly provide support when dealing with the local authorities.
- They pointed me in the direction of Parent Partnership at Jubilee Gardens in Droylsden who were fabulous. Found case law to back up my findings which was used for supporting evidence.
- In every area of SEND the wait times are too long causing our children to suffer.
- There should be accountability across the board for people not putting the needs of the child first and not completing all the paperwork needed for the agencies to work together.