Children's Trust
Cheshire East Children’s Trust brings all partners with a role
in improving outcomes for children together to agree plans and
prioritise their services to improve children’s well-being and to
ensure services work closely together - particularly on issues
where partnership working is essential to make progress.
The Trust produces a joint 3 year plan known as the Children and
Young People’s Plan -CYPP, which is updated every year.
Planning ahead – the Cheshire East Children and Young People’s
Trust
The Trust brings together services which support children, young
people and their families, such as; the Council with its Family
Information Service, health services, the Police, the Youth
Offending Service, Connexions and schools.
The Cheshire East Children and Young People’s Trust’s priorities
are:
- To help Children and Young People keep and feel safe;
- To support individuals and families as early as possible;
and
- To help Children and Young People feel good about themselves
and others
“Whether children and young people have concerns are about
childcare, education, health or even domestic violence – the
Cheshire East Children and Young People’s Trust is there to work
together to make sure Children and Young People are healthy, feel
safe, can achieve their potential and are able to feel part of
where they live.
The plan was created following consultation with Children and
Young People – the authority is keen to hear from people who have
found the information useful or have want to be involved in the
improvement of services provided to Children, Young People and
their families by emailing: childrenstrust@cheshireeast.gov.uk
. We have also created an accessible text version of the leaflet
for visitors who use assistive technology.
Who are the key players?
The Children's Trust board is made up of senior officers from
across children's services including the Local Authority, Police,
Health Services, Schools, Colleges and Voluntary Sector. Everyone
that has a stake or interest in outcomes for children has a voice
and can participate in the planning and review process, this
includes parents, children and other agencies that do not sit on
the main Board. The Board is Chaired currently by the Director of
Children's Services.
How will we deliver our priorities?
Current consultations
There are no current consultations at this time.
Past Consultations
We consulted with a group of Young People on the format of the
new Children and Young People’s Plan. They told us that:
- They wanted something small to put into their pockets
with key contact details around each of the priority areas.
- They wanted to be able to contact us electronically and on
Facebook
The small leaflet is available to download and we are
developing a facebook link through the Family Information
Service
Services for young people in the Borough
In February 2011 Cheshire East Council invited members of the
public to have their say about services for young people in the
Borough. The exercise intended to gather views about the impending
changes to the Cheshire East Youth Support Service delivered by
Connexions Cheshire and Warrington Ltd.
The following response identifies the main issues raised by the
public and other service providers and explains how Cheshire East
Council has taken this into account in the eventual service changes
that are about to take place.
Cheshire East Parenting Strategy Consultation
We asked: "What would you say are the best things about being a
parent?"
You said: "Spending time with your family" and "Watching
your children grow and develop"
In March we ran a consultation where we asked you to give us
your views in a survey. The
Parenting Consultation report (PDF,
121KB) outlines some of the findings of the
consultation and lets you know what our next steps are.
What next?
Cheshire East Children’s Trust will now produce a Parenting
Strategy that will guide the way in which all services and support
for parents is offered and delivered. All of the views above will
be taken into consideration when writing the Strategy to ensure we
respond to what you have told us about what you want and when, how,
and where you would like this to be.
We can’t promise to get everything right all of the time – but
by having a good understanding of your views as a result of the
consultation we will be able to do it better.
Thank you for taking the time to get involved. We always welcome
your ideas, views and comments.
One Minute Guides
Cheshire East Council, along with its partners in the Children's
Trust and Local Safeguarding Children's Board, offers a range of
services for children, young people and their families and
carers. For more information check out the Children and Families One Minute Guides. The
following one minute guides give a brief summary of some of the
relevant service areas that we are working on together. These
have been put together to help everyone have a better understanding
of what we are doing, why we are doing it and who is involved.
Policy Updates
General Updates
Our New CAF Training Programme 2012/13 is now available.
The training is aimed towards practitioners and covers how to
complete assessments.
Please book using the
Children and Families Learning and Development application form (MS
Word, 50KB).
Please submit your application/s or address any queries to
John O'Connor at the
Workforce Development Team .
Ofsted Inspection
OFSTED have now published the report on our
recent inspection of safeguarding and looked after children (PDF,
157KB).
We feel the report fairly reflects the
progress made in Cheshire East over the last 2 years in
strengthening the effectiveness of our safeguarding arrangements
and improving our support arrangements to cared for children in the
Borough. I am pleased that OFSTED have acknowledged the
significant steps taken across the partnership of
agencies.
Next steps involve putting together an
Improvement Plan for the Areas for Improvement identified in the
report with robust mechanisms for tracking implementation.
However, we need to go above and beyond those areas. We need
to be ambitious and challenging of ourselves and I will be
exploring through the Children’s Trust, Local Safeguarding
Children’s Board, and with Councillors how we can further
strengthen our work. Please take the time to read the report and
share with colleagues.
Changes to Statutory Social Care functions
Cheshire East Council has now made changes to
the way in which it delivers its Statutory Social Care functions to
children, young people and their families and carers.
We are committed in working towards Cheshire
East being a place where all children and young people are
supported well to maximise their life chances and a place where no
child is left behind because organisations do not work together. To
achieve this, we have developed a more responsive way of working
with locally based services working efficiently together in
partnership to address needs earlier for vulnerable children, young
people and their families and carers.
We have produced a
Statutory Social Care Information leaflet (PDF, 237KB) to
outline the key changes within Social Care including available
contact details for the new Children’s Assessment Team
(
CAT
) service.
Meeting Dates
The Trust Board met as follows:
- 11th January 2012 2pm to 5pm, Municipal Buildings
Crewe
- 22nd March 2012 9am to 12pm, Westfields in CS2 +
3
Summary of Our Last Meeting
Summary Children’s Trust Meeting 24 November 2011
Another packed agenda for the Children’s Trust in Cheshire East
with a new member to welcome, the new Local Safeguarding Children’s
Board chair Eleanor Roaf.
As usual the Board discussed progress around our 3 priorities.
Lorraine Butcher is pleased that schools and early years settings
have a solid message about safeguarding our children and young
people. She reported the increase in the numbers of common
assessments that are being undertaken which supports increased
awareness of safeguarding amongst agencies. Still more to do though
in terms of integrating our work and supporting mechanisms.
One way of enabling this is by co-locating the safeguarding team
at Dalton House bringing together professionals from the Police
service, Adult services and Children and Families in the same
building to tackle safeguarding issues which will ensure we have a
relevant and effective safeguarding workforce.
Head of Early Intervention and Prevention, Tony Crane then
presented a position statement around this priority introducing two
new services; a new family support service and first contact
service both enabling easier and more appropriate access to
services that will enable improved early intervention and
prevention and better support our more vulnerable families. Tony
then stressed the importance of having effective services in place
to support our young people. We are taking this as an opportunity
to integrate services and have set up a multi agency group to
tackle this.
Fiona Field reported on progress against the Emotional Health
and Wellbeing Priority. She highlighted a consultation event which
was held for representatives working with children and young people
giving the opportunity for consultation on the new Emotional Health
and Wellbeing Strategy. Some key issues where shared and the final
Strategy will be brought to the next Children’s Trust meeting for
signing off.
Also under this priority, Steve Tatham gave an overview of the
services available for Child and Adolescent Mental Health services
(CAMHS). There is a range of provision mostly through health,
however the Trust is working to introduce a more preventative
agenda which will focus on how to keep young people well. The key
challenge here is to ensure that staff can be trained to identify
issues early and to address these issues.
The Trust monitored its performance against these priorities
through use of a performance matrix, and reported back on some high
level targets, all of which monitor our performance working in
partnership and are moving in a favourable direction. A new
delivery group has been set up which will ensure the delivery of
these three priorities. The Children and Young People’s Plan
Delivery Group. This replaces the Children’s Integrated Programme
Board.
A report was presented on the educational achievement of
vulnerable groups of children and young people. The report
highlighted that in nearly every case these young people are
performing less well than their peers, the Trust agreed to continue
to monitor interventions and support offered to these groups.
Narrowing the gap was an area identified in Ofsteds Annual
Children’s Services Assessment. The Annual Children’s Services
Assessment is an assessment of all the services offered to children
and young people and the rating given is a culmination of all the
inspections. Overall we are performing well.
The critical areas were safeguarding and tackling the inequality
gap which is an acute issue as the gap remains quite wide in
Cheshire East. The Trust was pleased with this overall rating.
The Trust received an update on children and young people’s
participation. A mapping exercise revealed that there was lots of
consultation and participation being carried out but that there was
no collective understanding of what young people were telling us. A
programme of activity has been produced under the 3 priorities and
the results from this programme will be reported to the January
meeting.
The 11 million takeover day was very successful. Three cared for
young people took over the roles of Lorraine Butcher, Tony Crane,
Kate Rose and Geoff Beadle for the day and came up with interesting
questions and insights. All the young people really enjoyed the
experience and one young person was amazed to find out the number
of people involved in ensuring that young people are provided with
the care that the need. We are hoping to make this bigger and
better next year with more young people and more managers involved
across the different agencies involved with children young people
and their families.
Information about previous meetings of
the Children's Trust.
Cheshire East Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB)
The Cheshire East Local
Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) is the key statutory
mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations in each local
area will cooperate to safeguard and promote the welfare of
children in Cheshire East and for ensuring the effectiveness of
what they do. Our aim is to work together so that children in
Cheshire East can be safe from abuse or harm at home and within our
community. This site provides information for the public, children,
parents, carers and professionals. The Director of Children’s
Services sits on this Board as well as the Children’s Trust
ensuring synergy and good communicative work between the Board and
the other partnerships.
Links to Partner sites
