Contents

Page no.
Introduction / 3
Our Priorities for 2013 – 2014 / 4
Our Principles / 5
The Milton Keynes Context for Children and Young People / 6
The Children and Families Partnership / 8
Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children Board
/ 9
Milton Keynes Health and Wellbeing Board
/ 10
Providing Effective Support
/ 11
Partner Organisation Priorities Relating to Children and Families / 12

Introduction

Better services,better connected delivering betteroutcomes

I am pleased to introduce our Children and Young People’s Plan 2014-2015.

This plan sets out the way we have agreed to work here in Milton Keynes. It does not go into the detail about what individual partners will be doing as it is for each partner organisation to demonstrate this in their own plans and through our agreed priorities set out by the Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children Board and the Health and Wellbeing Board. Instead it sets out the framework, through which we are working in partnership, including:

  • How through the Children and Families Partnership we will continue to rigorously monitor performance and provide professional challenge and support in areas where further improvement is needed.
  • How through the Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children Board we will work collaboratively with our partners to ensure our vital work to safeguard children is co-ordinated and scrutinised.
  • How through the Health and Wellbeing Board we are developing our plans to further integrate services and ensure positive transitions.

The tough economic climate has meant budget reductions and difficult decisions for all partners. Despite these circumstances, more children and young people in Milton Keynes are achieving better outcomes in many areas of their lives. By working together I have no doubt we will continue to make Milton Keynes an even better place for children and families to live.

Gail E. Tolley

Director of Children’s Services

Chair of Children and Families Partnership

Our Priorities for 2014 - 2015

In Milton Keynes partners are passionate about working together to achieve the best outcomes for children and families. The Children and Families Partnership has agreed the following priorities that all partner agencies will contribute to in delivering positive outcomes for children and families.

  • Reducing Child Poverty

Ensuring that children, young people and families are supported out of poverty.

Poverty can have a profound impact on the child, their family, and the rest of society. It often sets in motion a deepening spiral of social exclusion, creating problems in education, employment, mental and physical health and social interaction. We want Milton Keynes to be a place where all children can enjoy their childhoods and have fair chances to reach their full potential.

  • Safe and sound

Ensuring that all children and young people are safe and well cared for.

We want all children and young people to be able to live in their own families and communities without harm or fear of harm. We will work to support families to maintain and develop the strengths and resilience needed to remain together, but not shy away from our responsibilities when things become unsafe. We will also work to ensure that children and families are safe from crime and the perception of crime to ensure that they are able to be engaged fully with their communities.

  • Best Chance in Life

Ensuring that all children and young people can be healthy.

We are committed to giving all children an equal chance to fulfil their potential and through working in partnership, the Children and Families Partnership and Health and Wellbeing Board will improve the health and wellbeing of children and families across Milton Keynes.

  • Achieving the best

Ensuring that all children, young people and parents/carers are able to attain and achieve in education, training or employment.

We want our children to have access to the best education system that is defined by diversity, collaboration and above all quality. Whatever form of governance our schools choose to take, we regard them all as our partners, central to our work to improve outcomes for all children and young people in Milton Keynes. We also want young people, parents and carers to have access to employment and employment readiness opportunities that help them to help themselves and their families to thrive.

At the heart of the Children and Families Partnership is adetermination to focus effort on theseimportant priorities which we knowhave a huge impact on responding to the life chances for children and young people.

Our Principles

The Children and Families Partnership has determined three key principles that underpin the work of the partnership and that of member organisations in pursuance of the partnership agenda.

Principle 1:Promote a culture of professional accountability for delivery outcomes.

The partnership will aim to:

  • build relationships between members founded on mutual trust, respect and openness;
  • promote an understanding of the different organisational roles, responsibilities and priorities;
  • align business and service planning and monitor, support, and challenge organisational performance; and
  • agree action where improvement is needed that is prompt, effective and proportionate.

Principle 2: Ensure child and family centred service delivery across organisational boundaries.

The partnership will aim to:

  • deepen our understanding of how children, young people and families experience multiple interventions;
  • enable earlier and more integrated assessment of need and facilitate effective local information sharing;
  • challenge partners to join up service delivery and prevent organisational boundaries and established practice from getting in the way of integration; and
  • champion the involvement of children, young people and families in planning the services that they need and want, and in helping evaluate their effectiveness.

Principle 3: Facilitate the efficient use of resources

The partnership will aim to:

  • promote the most efficient use of resources, minimise duplication and improve the targeting of limited resources on those most in need;
  • identify where public money can be spent more effectively through radical service redesign;
  • champion the commissioning of services based on robust evidence about need and effectiveness; and
  • provide a platform on which to build new area based funding applications.

The Milton KeynesContext for Children and Young People

A fast growing and changing population

Milton Keynes Council serves a total population of 252,400, including 68,300 (27%) children and young people aged up to 19. This is a younger age profile than is seen in England as a whole where 24% of the total population is aged under 19.

In comparison to other local authorities, Milton Keynes had the seventhhighest rate of population growth between 2001 and 2011, with an overall increase of 17%. This is considerably higher than the comparable national rate of 7%. Overall the local population aged under 19 increased by 13% but growth was much higher in the 0 to 4 age group with an increase of 38%. This reflects an upward trend in the number of births in recent years, with live births increasing by 39% between 2001 and 2011. The comparable England figure was 22%.

Milton Keynes not only has a growing population, it is also growing in ethnic diversity. The Office for National Statistics estimated that the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) population increased from 28,500 in 2001 (13.4%) to 46,000 in 2009 (19.4%).

At January 2014, 36.6% of the school population was classified as belonging to an ethnic group other than White British compared to 27.3% in England overall. In schools 22.2% of pupils speak English as an additional language. Urdu and Tamil are the most commonly spoken community languages in the area. Some 10.2% of pupils are of Black African heritage, representing our largest single ethnic group.

The percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals (taken from the January 2014 School Census) in the primary phase is 12.8% (England 18.1%) and in secondary phase 11.8% (England 15.1%). Of note is that Milton Keynes has a reducing but still significantly higher under registration rate (11%) for free school meals compared to national (22%).

The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010 ranks Milton Keynes 211th out of 326 local authority districts (with one being the most deprived). Of the 139 Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in Milton Keynes, seven are within the 10% most deprived in England and 17 are within the least deprived 10%.

The current economic climate continues to impact on young people regionally and nationally. The annual statistic for the proportion of young people (aged 16 – 19 years) who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) was 5.3% in Milton Keynes. This is better than the national and regional averages. 87.4% of young people in academic Years 12 and 13 (i.e. aged 16to 18) were in education or training at the end of March 2014.

The Children and Families Partnership

Milton Keynes Council is a strong, strategicchampion for children, young people and theirfamilies. As the democratically elected authority,the council has a clear mandate to support and further parents’ and children’s’ interests and act asthe ‘accountability hub’ for local public servicedelivery. Alongside its democratic processes, the councilvalues the importance of robust professionaldialogue with local organisations in order to driveservicedevelopment and deliver improvedoutcomes.

The Children and Families Partnership is a forwardlooking partnership that reflects the changingnational policy environment and local context andoffers the opportunity for us tocontinue to worktogether in a realistic and responsible way toimprove the lives of children, young people andfamilies in Milton Keynes.

The partnership is made up of invited senior leaders from across children’s services joined by the cabinet member for children and young people and one representative of each of the political groups on the council. Membership is further extended to the chair of the Safeguarding Children Board.

Membership includes representation from those organisations with a duty to cooperate as set out in section 10 of theChildren Act 2004:

  • Local Authority
  • Health services
  • Police
  • Probation

Extending to other local partners:

  • Community and voluntary sector
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • Early years providers
  • Further education college
  • Schools and Academies (Primary, Secondary and Special)

The partnership is chaired by the Director of Children’s Services. It meets as a formalboard every twomonths. A planning group, appointed bythe chair, will assist with agenda setting. When an issue is identified by thepartnership as requiring attention, thechair of the partnership mayrecommend the establishment of acommission. The membership of thecommission will include members of thepartnership, specialist advisors andco‐opted members, chosen for theirexpertise or interest. Commissions willcarry out a time limited investigationand make recommendations for action.

All members of the partnership share a commitment to continuousimprovement and working together tomaximise the potential of each partnerto realise our vision:

“Better services,better connected, delivering betteroutcomes”

Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children Board

The Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children Board was established under Section 13 of the Children Act 2004 as the statutory mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations within Milton Keynes co-operate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people and ensure the effectiveness of the work undertaken by partners in this area.

The functions of an SCB are set out in primary legislation and regulations. The core objectives of the local SCB are:

  • to co-ordinate what is done by each person or body represented on the Board for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the area of the authority; and
  • to ensure the effectiveness of what is done by each such person or body for that purpose.

In order to fulfil its functions MKSCB agrees priorities and has a Business Plan. The priorities for 2014-15 are:

  • Child Sexual Exploitation
  • Missing Children
  • Risky Behaviours

The MKSCB Business Management Group monitors progress against these and oversees the work of the sub-groups as allocated in the Business Plan.

MKSCB depends on everyone, whether professionals or volunteers, parents or members of the public having an understanding of their own personal or professional responsibility to safeguard children and being vigilant and proactive in carrying it out.

The MKSCB develops relationships with other boards and partnerships so as to avoid one board duplicating work in Milton Keynes that is already being addressed by another board or partnership.

The relationship between MKSCB and the Children and Families Partnership is significant in ensuring the safeguarding agenda is prevalent across the broader children’s workforce in Milton Keynes. The Chair of MKSCB sits as a member of the Children and Families Partnership; and the Chair of the Children and Families Partnership sits on the MKSCB. There is also a protocol in place between the two partnerships to ensure that there is strategic and operational coherence across policies, protocols, services and practice.

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Milton KeynesHealth and Wellbeing Board

The Health and Wellbeing Board is astatutory partnership which was introduced as part of the NHS reforms outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and has been in place in Milton Keynes since April 2013. It is responsible forensuring an integrated and coordinatedapproach across the NHS, social and publichealth services to developand oversee the implementation of theHealth and Wellbeing Strategy.

Through working in partnership the Health and Wellbeing Board will improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities across Milton Keynes. Drawing from a range of documents[1] the Board has identified three key strategic priorities to focus on during the period 2012-2015:

  • To Improve Wellbeing
  • To Reduce Early Deaths and Tackle Major Diseases
  • To Reduce Health Inequalities

The Health and Wellbeing Board has four key principles to underpin this strategy:

  • Invest resources across all our communities in a way which achieves similar outcomes for each. We want to do all that is possible to reduce the unacceptable level of health inequalities between different communities within Milton Keynes.[2]
  • Actively build on the strengths of communities (the ‘asset’ approach) and engage people within those communities in taking action[3]
  • Shift the budget allocation towards primary and secondary prevention and away from reactive, acute health and social care services
  • Identify and better respond to the needs of different groups within our population including, forexample, the young, black and minority ethnic groups (BME) groups, the hearing and vision impaired, the LGBT community, those with a learning disability, mental ill health, neurological conditions, long term conditions and older people.

The Director of Children’s Services and Lead Member sit on the Milton Keynes Health and Wellbeing Board. There is also a protocol in place between the two partnerships to ensure that there is strategic and operational coherence across policies, protocols, services and practice.

Providing Effective Support

Children’s Services, the Milton Keynes Safeguarding Children’s Board and the Children and Families Partnership have an agreed model of thresholds that enables all services and partners to deploy their resourceseffectively and meet the varying needs of families.

Across the services we provide, there is continuum of support for children, young people and families in place. We believe that this is essentialin order to tackle disadvantage and behaviour such as worklessness, truancy, drug and alcohol addiction and anti-social behaviour and ensure that vital support isn’t simply removed at the first sign of success.

We have a model in place - commonly referred to as the ‘effective support windscreen’ which provides a shared language and consistent approach to enable us to work together and share information.

Our effective support approach recognises that all children, young people and families should receive universalservices, such as maternity services, health visiting, access to a children’s centre and a high quality school place. We expect that these universal services should seek, together with parents and families, to meet the needs of children and young people so that they are happy and healthy and able to learn and develop securely. Universal services are provided as of right to all children, including (and especially) those living in more troubled families.

Services relating to the priorities within the Children and Young People’s Plan relates to children, young people and families with additionaland considerableneeds. The partnership should offer joined up help and support at the earliest point, in a voluntary way where families remain in control. To do this we are committed to working together in an open way with families to identify strengths and needs, to find practical and achievable solutions, and to provide the right amount of information, advice and support.

Where families face significant challenges in supporting their children to remain safe, services are delivered by Children’s Social Care at the specialist level. However, wherever possible it is our joint intention to support children to remain with their families wherever it is safe to do so, but provide high quality services to children should they become looked after.

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Partner Organisation Priorities

Relating to Children & Families

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Children & Families Partnership: Priority One
Reducing Child Poverty.
Partner Agency / What are we doing? (Partner priorities and activities) / How will we know we’ve made a difference?
Milton Keynes College / Working with partners to deliver the skills necessary for adults to gain employment through:
  • Neighbourhood Employment Project (ACE)
  • Work Based Academies (Sector specific)
  • Thames Valley Offender Learning Project
  • Phase 2 Youth Project (working with young people to the age of 24 with less than 2 GCSEs or Care Leavers).
/
  • Working with employers we will be able to support their recruitment to ensure there is a supply of suitable candidates
  • Reduction in NEET figures
  • Reduction in the number of adults and young people in Milton Keynes not in work.

Milton Keynes CCG / Engaging in and supporting local partnership working arrangements.
Joint children’s commissioner in post.
Process in place to ensure all CCG proposals are impact assessed. / By working in partnership and jointly commissioning services a strategic an integrated approach with a focus on child poverty will be achieved.
By working with other partners to monitor the impact of a joint strategic approach to reducing poverty.
CNWL- MK CAMHS / Multi Agency working across Health & Social Care through MARM - this work focuses on the reduction of sexual exploitation of children particularly for run away and high risk youngsters. /
  • Evidence of collaboration and coordinated work approach across agencies
  • Reduction in child sexual exploitation in the key high risk groups.

CNWL-MK SCHS / Practitioners identify children and families that would benefit from early help services such as Children and Families Practices.
Support is being offered at a time when parents may be more responsive to change, or children more able to speak about their experiences and difficulties. / Numbers of children below poverty threshold is reduced.
A reduction in the number of children requiring intervention from level 4 specialist services.
All practitioners signpost to local and national support groups for newly diagnosed conditions. / Feedback from children and parents.
Community Paediatrics actively contribute to assessments for ‘Disabled Living Allowance’ and ‘Housing Benefit’ applications and write supporting letters to charities that offer help with holiday breaks for children with complex medical conditions. / Parents are able to access appropriate support.
MK SLT / New delivery model for SLT services into Children’s centres, following review findings, to ensure support is targeted towards the 50% of children presenting with SLCN from socially deprived backgrounds. / Short term impact -Therapy outcomes for group work will be measured.
Longer term impact on CLL levels on school entry.
MK wide EY communication strategy to improve identification of SLCN, improve access to targeted intervention and provide a Communication competency framework for the EY workforce with associated programmes of training. / CC staff will feel confident in identifying SLCN and in providing targeted intervention within their setting.

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