Children Young People and Families Plan

Childrens Summit Workshop

Priority 1 : Family and Hidden Harm

Will this action achieve the aim?

Action 1

  • The mechanism needs to ensure a coordinated approach, clarity of roles, to avoid duplication and gaps
  • Not led by the Council – a community coordinated approach
  • Needs to be underpinned by information sharing
  • Key worker needs to bring in specialists as required and coordinate support for families

Action 3

  • What will the strategy do?
  • As commissioners Shropshire Council should be asking for the best care, support, quality of relationships between carers and children. Less emphasis on material goods.

Action 5

  • Perpetrator programme – no resource for this yet. Possibly not the right action. Change to working with perpetrators. May be best to be less specific at this stage as it may not be the UPP.

Action 4

  • Key is to embed the protocol so perpetrators and frontline staff understand and deliver it.

How should the Voluntary and Community Sector be involved?

Action 1

  • Locality structure – can be easier for some VCS who have a local focus to engage, but for others that are county wide, can be difficult.
  • VCS can engage better with communities compared to statutory agencies – achieve engagement with families, better able to challenge and change behaviours and attitudes.
  • Can advocate on behalf of families with statutory agencies.
  • Co-production being part of the decision making process. Better links to Children’s Summit.

Action 3

  • Do LAC receive external support from organisations to help them understand reasons they are in care? (eg domestic abuse specialist able to explain more about this) This is a role the VCS could take.
  • Is there a role for the VCS in providing a volunteer (peer) mentor programme for LAC? Positive role model / positive relationships.

How should young people be involved?

  • Young people who have experienced hidden harm and come out at the other side can provide peer support and talk about their experiences to other young people.
  • MYPs etc are not representative of the kind of young people that need support. VCS organisations can help target those YP that have/are likely to receive services, eg sport organisations are good.

Action 3

  • Peer mentoring for LAC

What else can we contribute towards this aim?

  • Better understanding of what support is out there in VCS and ability to pull that in as required.

Action 5

  • Healthy relationships awareness raising in schools to start to stop the cycle of domestic abuse.

General

  • Early prevention is the ideal, but often the first time we come across a family is when they are at a high level of need. Are there better things we can do at this stage and how will these be resourced?
  • Psychological therapies
  • Understanding attachment
  • Focus on the added value of working together

Missing

  • Mental health support for parents is a gap in this plan – relationship between children’s services and mental health services and also low level MH issues dealt with at GP level.

Priority 2 : Transition Planning and Arrangements

Will this action achieve the aim?

Action 6

  • Huge implications and depends on who you are engaging with
  • Families – funding – adults – by the time they get there = crisis
  • Transition starts at 14 and doesn’t end at 18. Needs to bridge the gap to 25.
  • Consideration for emotional transition for both child and parent.
  • Transition planning – supporting the families to navigate the maze.
  • Planner – independent. Has potential to move in the right direction.
  • Appropriateness of placement – out of county – Long term impacts.
  • Possibly this is too broad? What is the baseline?
  • Achievement varies from individual to individual. Fighting hard.
  • The language is to educational
  • Education = skills for life.
  • Rewording of the measures – enabling YP to stay in their communities – helping groups to be able to cope with YP with difficulties. Not the state.
  • Positive spin on this – people being actively supported in their communities – intelligent use of local communities. Employers – they need to be supported.

Action 7

  • Housing and benefits – difficult for this group. Are the right people around the table?
  • Nothing new. Working with partners – what support is there?
  • What signposting is available? Transport and help to get there.
  • Needs to be the motivation there.

Action 8

  • Are the carers getting their care allowance?
  • Where are the resources?

How should the Voluntary and Community Sector be involved?

  • Provision of what isn’t available- meeting needs- FUNDING.
  • Those working with the family (VCS) etc – need to b involved with creation of the plan.
  • The statutory duty to provide – provision could come from the VCS- flexible, added value, networks – commissioning needs to be flexible.
  • Holistic approach – Health, Social Care, Community needs.
  • Consultation needs to be as open as possible.
  • Scoping / mapping = just clarifies what is out there – it’s about putting it into practice.
  • Not taking VCS for granted and assuming we will be there - funding.
  • Is the VCS involved with the SEND strategic group? Are the right people there?
  • Children’s Trust – who? What influence?

How should young people be involved?

  • Actually having a say
  • Advocacy for parents – Is there advocacy for young people?
  • Opportunities to express views.
  • MYP – are they representative – they might not be the ones here with the plans?
  • Has to be a multi agency approach – sensitive – cohesive.
  • Child needs to have trust – building that trust from 14.
  • Clarification around ‘advocacy’ is needed – helping the young person to understand and where needed taking a softer approach. eg autism - need a longer time and a different way of receiving information.

What else can we contribute to this aim?

  • Increase choice
  • Employers need support
  • Flexibility – eg with targets if working with young people.

Priority 3 : Emotional Health and Wellbeing

Will this action achieve the aim?

  • Generic social work teams – moving away from specialisms
  • Further work required on defining the aim
  • Involvement of
  • LAC
  • Safeguarding
  • Leaving care teams
  • Use of voluntary sector organisations at early stages
  • Better use of resources
  • Mapping what is available and what skills are out there to tap into.
  • Capacity
  • Early help and compass – referral form should include voluntary services
  • More join up required across services and sections – reduce duplication
  • It shouldn’t matter who provides help
  • Role of adult services
  • More focus on early intervention and prevention involving adult services
  • Training and awareness raising
  • More rounded approach and establishing links
  • A coordinator similar to ‘care coordinators’ in GP services to gather information on services in VCS

How should young people be Involved?

  • Physically go to them
  • Need to involved the hard to reach and involve community groups
  • Voluntary sector 1:1
  • Pupils in special schools
  • “young adults”
  • Young health champions
  • Role of schools
  • Anonymous questionnaires
  • Stigma and discrimination of mental health – how do we overcome this?
  • “Targeted youth” role
  • Role of technology eg; game about depression
  • TAMHS

What else can we do to contribute to this aim?

  • Education and knowledge re emotional distress and the support required for this
  • Normalise but acknowledge support appropriately
  • Better utilisation of the VCS (risk shrinking, loss of expertise and knowledge)
  • Support to help children identify their needs
  • Role of school nurses – training?
  • Wider role of school educators – pastoral role, training, time commitments.
  • Learn lessons from adults (eg in the criminal justice system.)
  • Recognition of life events – information
  • The role and contribution of education welfare officers
  • Challenging parental ‘attitudes’ and ‘views’
  • Preventing workers supporting C&YP
  • Threshold’s (How do we manage the grey area? eg safeguarding)
  • Tackle stigma of mental health issues
  • Recognition of volunteers rather than stigmatise
  • Where is the child’s voice?
  • Diagnosis not always helpful
  • Training – priorities and coordination

Priority 4: Building Communities

Action 11

How can the VCS contribute / lead on this action?

  • VCS to work within their own sector to clarify resources and who’s doing what, so that local people know the VCS and can be encouraged to get involved.
  • Acknowledged the lack of coordination in community development: i.e. what does the Council’s CAT do? What does the VCS do? What is the role of the VCS assembly and the Shropshire Infrastructure Partnership.

Will this action achieve the aim of buildingcommunities?

  • The answer is YES, but it is not clear HOW the action will work. It seems too generic.
  • Questioned the link between action and measure of child poverty: there are many other factors that contribute to child poverty. Perhaps an additional measure could be
  • No of children accessing health services
  • No of children with health problems access community resources

How should CYP be involved?

  • More than just a voice: become part of VCS and become co-creators, “breaking the cycle”
  • More linking between developments

What else can we contribute collectively to this aim?

Closer integration of VCS, as opposed to fragmentation. We don’t mean organisational integration necessarily, but more working together on projects.

  • Encourage community mindedness collectively and recruit newcomers)
  • Suggestion that there are too many forums of interest, but we could add one for health inequalities. The alternative was to embed health inequalities thinking in all existing forums.
  • Talk to the community: what does a good community look like?
  • Encourage stand-alone VC groups to join VCS.