HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

CHILDREN’S SERVICES PANEL

THURSDAY 9 MARCH 2006 AT 2.00PM

BUILDING A CULTURE OF PARTICIPATION OF CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE – RESPONDING TO THEIR VIEWS AND OPINIONS

Report of the Director of Children, Schools and Families

Author:-Martin Bailey, Participation Manager

Tel:-01992 556971

Exec Member:- Jane Pitman

1.Purpose of the Report

To inform Children’s Services Panel of:

The growing requirements to involve children and young people in decisions which directly affect them and to involve them in shaping services, and the benefits accruing from this way of working.

2.Action Required

Members are requested to note the work being undertaken to build a culture of participation and invited to make comment on the contents of this report.

3.Summary

The report sets out:

1.The national contexts which are shaping both children’s participation and public consultation.

2.The benefits of involving children in decision making.

3.The arrangements to develop consultation, participation and involvement work with children and young people within CSF and within the Hertfordshire Children’s Trust Partnership.

4.Some examples of good practice in Hertfordshire

5.The views of children and young people collected from surveys in the last year.

6.How the views of children and young people are being used in the Annual Performance Assessment.

The Body of the Report

The National Contexts

In order to understand the wider context to participation, consultation and involvement with children and young people, there are four issues to consider:

  • Legislation.
  • Public decision making
  • Citizenship
  • The new and evolving arrangements for children’s services

1.Legislation

There has been a recent growth in the requirement to specifically consult and involve children and young people as seen in statutory, non-statutory guidance legislation and service standards. All of these are underpinned by the UN Convention on the Right of the Child. A selected list of relevant legislative guidance is contained in Appendix 1.

2.Public Decision Making

Decision making in public services has changed considerably in recent times, there has been a move to more transparency and openness in such organisations, with the public more able to get information about services, the decisions taken and what is recorded about them. There have also been considerable moves towards changing the way in which decisions are taken, with public and user involvement seen as a key part of the process.

There has also been an aim of involving many groups who may not have been so well involved in decision making in the past. Specifically, the Comprehensive Performance Assessment,(CPA) (Audit Commission 2005) measures how well Local Authority services are being delivered to local people and communities and it now requires that all public consultations must demonstrate that they engage with ‘harder-to-reach’ groups including children and young people.

3.Citizenship

There has also been the development of citizenship and inclusion policies for young people. The Crick Report: The Advisory Group onCitizenship (1998) stated the importance of active citizenship, the need to help young people develop skills and confidence to become engaged in decision making and therefore to take greater responsibility for the things in their community.

At key stages 1 and 2, Citizenship is part of the non-statutory framework for PSHE and Citizenship. In September 2002, Citizenship became part of the national curriculum for key stages 3 and 4 and schools have a statutory requirement to teach a programme of study covering:

  • How the attitudes of individuals and communities affect quality of life
  • Being involved in the community and learning skills to enable participation in society
  • Gaining knowledge about politics, people, processes and institutions and learning how to make a difference

The Green Paper Youth Matters (DfES 2005) focuses on a number of key issues for young people:

  • How to engage more young people in positive activities and empower them the shape the services they receive
  • How to encourage more young people to volunteer and become involved in their communities
  • How to provide better information, advice and guidance to young people to help them make informed choices about their lives
  • How to provide better and more personalised intensive support for each young person who has serious problems or gets into trouble.

The Russell Commission: A national Framework for Youth Action and Engagement (March 2005) vision is of:

‘a society which young people feel connected to their communities, seek to exercise influence over what is done and the way it is done and are able to make a difference by having meaningful and exciting opportunities to volunteer’.

The Russell Commission also says that young people must be involved in the design and implementation of the volunteering activity.

4.The Arrangements of Children’s Services

The Children Act 2004 (November 2004) is the legislative framework which implements the Every Child Matters agenda. It provides for a Children’s Commissioner who has responsibility for championing the views and interests of children and young people which includes the promotion of their rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also places a duty on Local Authorities to promote co-operation between agencies to improve children’s well-being as defined under the five outcomes, for the creation of an integrated framework of inspection and the conduct of Joint Area Reviews to measure local areas’ progress in improving outcomes for children.

This suggests that children’s rights and their views will be key issues in future working practices as part of outcome focussed work.

The Children Act 2004 also makes clear the need for local implementation in line with the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services (NSF September 2004), which sets standards for children’s health and social care. These are set out in Appendix 2.

The Children Act 2004 also offers new rights for Children in Need and those involved in Child Protection and clarifies the need to ascertain the wishes, feelings and views of children a part of the decision making process (Willow: Ready, Steady, Change 2005).

The Children’s Workforce Strategy (DfES 2005) states:

‘… listening and responding to children and young people

becomes an integral part of everyday practice…’.

These two points not only extends the group of children who are entitled to participate more fully in the social care processes, but that it is not only their views that need to be ascertained, it is also their wishes and feelings.

Every Child Matters: Change for Children also makes clear the need for a skilled and effective workforce to be able to deliver integrated services and achieve better outcomes through the Children’s Workforce Strategy (DfES 2005) and the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for Children’s Workforce (DfES 2005). Details of these are set out in Appendix 3.

The initiatives outlined in the previous four sections provide an imperative and powerful catalyst for developing a culture of participation. Participation however has different meanings for different people in different places. These are explained in the next section.

Participation – what do we mean

In order to develop a common understanding and language about participation, consultation and involvement, it is important to examine the different professional ethics, values and aims and the outcomes they primarily seek.

Health -Place emphasis on the care and safety of patients as their primary concern, through partnership working with colleagues throughout the NHS and the community and involving patients in their care and to give support to make healthy choices (Choosing Health 2004 sec 25)

Schools and Learning –“Teachers have insight into the learning needs of young people...They have high expectations for all pupils, helping them progress regardless of their personal circumstances and different needs and backgrounds” (General Teaching Council website).

Social Care –The Code of Practice for Social Care Workers advocates that they should work to improve the rights, interests and independence of users and protect them from danger and harm. They also work to build relations of trust and confidence with them and their carers and are accountable for the quality of the work that they do.

Youth Work – “The purpose of youth work is to facilitate and support young people’s growth through dependence to interdependence, by encouraging their personal and social development and enabling them to have a voice, influence and place in their communities and society” (National Youth Agency, 2004).

Therefore it seems reasonable to expect that:

  • A social worker may act primarily in relation to a child’s safety.
  • A teacher may understand participation in relation to the child’s learning and learning needs
  • A youth worker may focus on empowerment and personal/social learning and development
  • A health professional may tend to consider health and well-being as most important
  • A service quality/strategic planning manager may well focus mostly on service improvement, data collection and inspection criteria.

Given the issues detailed above, children and young people’s participation, consultation and involvement need to be seen in the context of:

  • The move towards transparency and openness of organisations
  • A national citizenship and inclusion agenda
  • The growth in legislation, guidance and inspection criteria requiring Children’s Service Authorities to involve children in different types of decision making
  • The need for common language, understandings, skills as part of integrated working arrangements

To enable this, CSF and partners in the Hertfordshire Children’s Trust Partnership have developed a common understanding which brings together the legislative requirements, best practice research and key issues relating to different professions and agencies. It suggests:

There are common underlying principles to any involvement work, that it should be based on the notion of respect for the child and their views, that the development of positive relationships is essential to hearing children’s voices and that children have the right to have their views heard.

There are four areas of activity which affect all agencies and organisations. Children must be involved in decisions which affect them as individuals,expressing their views, wishes & feelings on care plans, assessments, reviews, learning styles and needs). They should also have differing options to be involved at the organisational level, such as thorough surveys, groups, evaluations, inspections, forum, councils, governance & commissioning. All children need a process to make redress, should there be something serious that they need to bring to he attention of someone. This could mean a nominated person or a known way to take something forward more formally.

Finally, in order to make informed choices and to know the decisions following their input, there must always be information and feedback given in a timely and meaningful way.

The benefits of involving children and young people in decision making

There are potentially significant benefits to involving children and young people in decision making, these can be:

  • Individual outcomes
  • Impact and change for Organisations
  • Benefits to the Community

Appendix 4 sets out the benefits accruing in all these 3 aspects.

Examples of good practice to date

There are a number of good examples where children have been involved in decision making, where innovative practice has been developed and where children have benefited as a result of taking part.

Youth Charter

The Youth Charter has been developed to raise awareness and inform both young people and adults about rights and responsibilities. It aims to help to empower young people and contribute to the development of citizenship both in and out of schools, to help services become more ‘young person focussed’ and friendly and therefore help to improve outcomes for young people and to contribute to service improvement through user feedback.

This Charter is based on The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the Every Child Matters outcomes, the views of young people and the National Service Framework for Children and Maternity Services.

Almost one thousand young people were involved through schools and consultations including disabled children, care leavers and looked after young people, excluded groups, young carers, minority ethnic groups and district youth councils.

There are a number of resources which accompany the Youth Charter, including a DVD, school lesson plans, a photo story, posters and cards. These will be distributed across many partner agencies at the end of March 2006, and will be available for members.

Children’s Fund

March 30th will see the Speak-up event organised by the Children’s Fund to celebrate participation and involvement, to begin the consultation on the Children’s Charter

(for those aged 5 to 13) and includes an interview with John Harris, Director CSF, by children.

The Children’s Fund also run the children and young people’s forum Keens Utd.

Schools

Some schools have developed different ways to involve children in the school, examples include:

  • Head Teacher ‘question time’ for all students
  • The use of the Strathclyde Self Evaluation CD
  • The use of Viewpoint Interactive to offer pupils an opportunity to contribute to the school self evaluation and to the planning of services for all children
  • Peer mentoring, mediation and support schemes which enhance sexual and relationships education, anti-bullying and anti-racism schemes as well as giving leaning opportunities to the young mentors.
  • Children with Special Education Needs contributing to their assessment and reviews.
  • Children helping develop the Hertfordshire Youth Charter which sets out their rights and helps develop their responsibilities.

The WroxhamSchool was inspected in February 2006 and judged to be an outstanding school. The lead inspector was particularly impressed with the way in which children participated fully throughout all aspects of organisation, decision making, teaching and learning throughout the school. He commented that their way of making decisions about their learning was particularly "powerful" and that he "wished more schools could work in this way". In twenty years of Ofsted inspection he had never witnessed a school where children were so involved as active participants.

Surveys

There have been four major statistical surveys with children and young people aged up to sixteen over the past year. The Health Related Behaviour Survey led by Drug Action Team and Healthy Schools Team; The Children’s Fund Viewpoint survey; the Looked after Children’s Viewpoint consultations led by the Independent Reviewing and Participation Team and the DfES Children In Need User Experience Survey led by the Participation Team and others.

Over eight thousand children and young people have been involved. Specific surveys have been held with Looked after Children, Children in Need and Children’s Fund groups as well as many schools within different OfSTED categories, communities with differing levels of deprivation and children of varying ability. This would meet the CPA Harder Test requirements for ensuring diversity in consultations.

All data has undergone external verification and practice has been in accordance with both participation standards and research methodology. It should, however, be noted that whilst it is critical that CSF involve children and young people in service evaluation and development, the principle underlying aim of all participatory activity is the well-being, empowerment, learning, development and safety of the child(ren) themselves.

The data has been analysed and reported in relation to the Every Child Matters outcomes and sub outcomes and full details can be found in the Appendix 5.

How survey data is being used to plan for the future

The information gathered form these surveys is primarily being used in the Annual Performance Assessment (APA), which makes judgements about:

  • The council’s children’s services and how they contribute to improving outcomes for children.
  • The council’s capacity to improve.

Section 4.3of the APA and Joint Area Review guidance (OfSTED 2006) covers:

Children and young people are encouraged to participate in decision making and in supporting the community

Evidence is soughtunder three specific headings:

  • Individual involvement in key decisions about their future
  • Key local decisions, particularly about things they enjoy
  • The planning and management of services and activities

However, Involving children and Young People is also a cross cutting theme that needs to be evidenced in all outcome areas, so will be a significant topic in the assessment process.