IMPROVING CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Integrated Services

Some children and young people tell us that they want easier access to health Services and settings and easy access to a range of information in a range of venues and formats, with the adults who young people approach for information being well
informed. Young people want services provided locally, but not always in school, so they can easily get there unaccompanied.

By 2009 we will:

• Strengthen existing joint arrangements for the collection of data, and analysis of need on a neighbourhood basis
• Jointly commission services to meet local need
• Provide children’s social care services from localities
• Use ‘smart’ technology for improved access to services in all our localities
• Implemented the Common Assessment Framework citywide
• Integrate services for children and young people who are looked after
• Have in place a Youth offer (by March 2008) - advising young people how they can access services at a universal, targeted and specialist level. It will bring services together to deliver targeted youth support,
  information advice and guidance and publish positive activities in a comprehensive and fully accessible
  way
• Establish and implement a clear plan to roll out integrated service delivery across the city using established best practice.

Parenting

Some children and young people tell us that they want to be able to get help and talk about problems, leaving them with fewer worries. They identify friends and family support as critical. They also expressed aspirations for their parents to stay
together, to argue and fight less and avoid excess alcohol and drugs.

By 2009:

• The Parenting Board will drive the development of the Parenting offer
• Accredited training will be offered in key areas appropriate to range and need of parents
• Collaboration with Criminal Justice partners will ensure the principle of early intervention and prevention rather than enforcement remains at the heart of service delivery in dealing with anti social behaviour
• We will have a Parenting strategy that builds upon the good work already embedded across the city from partners, is responsive to the expectations and aspirations of parents, delivered when and where parents need support and advice to ensure that every parent can access services that enable them to be confident parents

Prevention

Preventing adverse outcomes and intervening early at times of vulnerability in their lives is equally important to children and young people growing up in Sunderland. Some children and young people tell us that they are concerned about smoking, drinking, drugs, crime, safety in their homes and on the streets, bullying and racism.

By 2009 we will have in place a set of early preventive measures to include:

• A set of practice and service prevention standards and principles for all staff across children’s services
• A common assessment and early intervention framework including age-appropriate risk and resilience
  factors for all children and young people
• A directory of services and resources accessible to staff and service users
• An information sharing protocol agreed by Children’s Trust partnersAccess to ‘Contactpoint’, the information sharing index of children and young people, for appropriate and trained practitioners
• Strategies to secure the future of preventive interventions that evidence sustained improvements to children and young people’s outcomes
• A range of trained professional working to agreed parenting support models across the city

Safeguarding

Some children and young people tell us that they want their families to be safe from crime, to live in
non-racist communities, have good neighbours and roads to be safe.

By 2009 we will:

• Develop a broader remit in relation to safeguarding and promoting life chances, whilst maintaining a clear
  focus on the effectiveness of multi agency work with children and young people who are the subject of
  a child protection plan and/or child in need plan
• Achieve a shared understanding across partner organisations of thresholds for work with children “in need” and those who are at risk of harm, and effective co-ordination of multi-agency responses to children in need
• Develop the effectiveness of multiagency responses to children and young people who are vulnerable because of domestic violence, parental mental ill-health and/or problem drug and alcohol use, working across both children’s and adult’s services
• Promote safer recruitment and supervision policies and procedures and arrangements for the management of allegations against people who work with children and young people
• Further develop the role of the LSCB in ensuring the effectiveness of safeguarding work undertaken by the Local Authority and partners, individually and collectively, by strengthening arrangements for the quality assurance of work and performance reporting
• Continue to raise the awareness of staff and volunteers in partner organisations about their role in and contribution to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children
• Put in place within the LSCB framework, arrangements for reviewing information on all child deaths and for using the information to inform strategic planning

Attainment and the ECM agenda

Some children and young people tell us that they want to be happy and do well in school and to have more things to do after school and at weekends. Some of them say that they feel pressured by peers, parents and schools.

By 2009 we will:

• Increase the number of schools with Healthy School status
• Continue to champion healthy eating and commit to meeting government standards in all compulsory settings
• Deliver the anti-bullying strategy in schools and other settings
• Champion the anti-bullying charter mark
• Continue to raise standards for all across the educational system
• Increase the number of young people staying on in education or training beyond 16
• Target our especially vulnerable young people and put in place the support they need to achieve
• Rebuild those secondary schools in phase 1 of BSF
• Have 3 Sunderland model academies
• Review provision for children and young people with special and additional educational needs and ensure that it meets current and anticipated future demand
• Carry out a review of school places
• Establish an educational improvement partnership with schools and other key partners to drive the ECM agenda
• Have 18 Children’s Centres in place to deliver integrated and localitybased services to children and families

Participation of and feeding back to children and young people

Some children and young people tell us that participation is important to them. They have told us that they
want a chance to have their say, they want to be listened to, and they want to see evidence that what they say makes a difference.

By 2009 we will:

• Fully implement the Children and Young People’s Democratic Engagement Strategy
• Feedback to children and young people the impact of their involvement in the review of CYPP
• Use existing events in the children’s services calendar to consult with children, young people and their parents/carers
• Embed ‘Hear By Rights’ standards or their equivalents across all services for children and young  people
• Establish a mechanism by which all services doing participation work with children and young people feed
  key messages into central, strategic planning forums
• Actively engage children and young people who may experience inequality or social exclusion and their families in consultation and participation activity, and ensure participation activity is made accessible for them
• Act upon what children and young people are telling us and work with them to achieve this

Equality and diversity

Some children and young people tell us that tackling bullying and racism are priorities for them, and that they want to be able to join in as citizens and feel a valued part of the city.

By 2009 we will:

• Understand the demographics and needs of our under 18 population and their families (under 25 if disabled), to ensure equality and diversity is explicit within each priority of CYPP, and across services for children and young people
• Remove barriers to accessing services by implementing Impact Need Requirement Assessments (INRAs)
• Actively engage children and young people who may experience inequality or social exclusion and their families in consultation and participation activity
• Promote and respect diversity within all children’s services and challenge prejudice and discrimination

Children and young people who are vulnerable

Some children and young people tell us that racism is a problem that needs tackling, that they want to live
at home with their families and feel safe and happy there, and that disabled children and young people should be able to get out and about and do the same things in their leisure time as other children and young people.

By 2009 we will:

• Implement actions to achieve the 9 objectives of the EDCM Charter
• Work through the strategic partnerships to deliver improved outcomes for children and young people who are disabled or have a learning difficulty and children looked after
• Agree the mechanism by which work to improve outcomes for children and young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds will be co-ordinated and driven forward
• Actively engage vulnerable children and young people and their families in consultation and participation
  activity
• Set actions to ensure the needs of vulnerable children and young people are explicit within each priority of CYPP
• Embed the needs of vulnerable children and young people into planning and monitoring processes, including all strategies written to support the implementation of CYPP, all service and team plans and performance monitoring mechanisms

Workforce development

Through the Every Child Matters (ECM) change for children agenda, there is a requirement for each local area to produce a multi-agency Workforce Development Strategy to support the management of change towards more effective multi-agency working to improve outcomes for children and young people.

By 2009 we will:

• Have in place a more highly effective Children’s Services workforce through the use of appropriate training and development
• Develop and implement a strategy to proactively recruit and retain high quality staff to hard to fill posts
• Agree a baseline establishment from which to develop future structures to ensure capacity to deliver excellent services to children and young people
• Have developed and implemented an effective integrated workforce structure to meet the needs of
  Children’s Services
• Establish a baseline training needs analysis including common skills and competencies to inform workforce development plans in order to build capacity and deliver excellent services

Joint commissioning

The Children’s Trust acknowledges that effective joint arrangements for the planning and commissioning of services is essential to achieving improved outcomes for children and young people and for the Trust to achieve the priorities set out in the Children and Young People’s Plan.

Consequently, the Trust has decided to implement the DfES Joint Planning and Commissioning Framework. A gap analysis has been completed based on the framework and an action plan is in place to introduce joint commissioning arrangements across the Trust by March 2008.

By 2009 we will:

• Establish a shared model and framework for future commissioning by testing the implementation of the DfES framework through the following areas of joint work: Early Years, Children Looked After, Youth Services, Education Psychology, and Training and Development
• Have in place the resources necessary to support and challenge services at all stages of the commissioning process by the establishment of a Children’s Trust joint commissioning team
• Have a clear Commissioning Strategy to implement our current 10 priorities in 2008-9 and for implementing the next Children and Young People’s Plan 2009-2012