Third Sector Early Years Forum
Thursday 17th November 2016, Lochside Children’s Services Centre
- Introduction to Vicky Wan
Vicky gave an update of the national GIRFEC project, which is funded until March 2017 to work with local authorities. Vicky is to work with the Early Years Forum until this date to help the forum influence child services planning and to develop an action plan.
- Connect Conference 2016- workshop
The original idea for this workshop was to ask for feedback on the action plan. There was a discussion around how appropriate this would be as many people would not have seen the action plan.Discussion that the forum want to deliver a high quality workshop and that this conference was too soon. A decision was made to pull out from running a workshop at Connect in favour of a future event specific to the Early Years Forum. Beth to inform Eppie of the decision to pull out of the conference
- Feedback on Early Years Action Plan
Discussed the importance of ‘ownership’ of action plan- the forum leads on it and is responsible for it.
The action plan has given the forum a clear remit, but it now needs to start being put into practice. It was highlighted that the action plan is a working document, it is flexible and can be altered as needed. If anyone wants to start working on the points in the action plan, contact Christine.
TIC meetings and cluster meetings could be a platform to promote the forum and raise interest in using the action plan as a tool.
This lead into a discussion around the governance structure of early years in Dumfries and Galloway. Currently there is no third sector representation on the Early Years Strategic Group. Questions raised that need to be investigate were:
- What groups have third sector representation?
- Where are the gaps?
- What to do we need to be on?
- Where is the Council’s early year action plan?
Also discussed was the potential need for a children and young people forum to consider the large amount of crossover of work. Early Years was thought to be wide enough for now.
- Feedback from GIRFEC workshop
Beth fedback from the GIRFEC workshop delivered by the Alliance. This workshop promoted the resources they have developed to help facilitate training on understanding GIRFEC. Discussion over the need to train the forum and the staff in their organisations on GIRFEC. Vicky has developed a questionnaire to assess confidence around information about GIRFEC. This will be send out to forum members for them to comment on and then Vicky will adapt it and develop a survey monkey version which will then be sent out to third sector organisations and their staff. The responses to the questionnaire will be used to inform future training needs. Feedback on the questionnaire needs to be sent to Vicky by 30th November- all members to action.
- Joint issues
Discussion on the introduction of 1140. The increase of child’s funding for 1140 hours from 2 years of age will have a big impact on the third sector. The extra training required takes up lots of time and resources, and some organisations are struggling to retain staff as wages are higher in the private sector. There is a need to consider practical solutions to these issues.
- Future Meetings
Discussed the initial idea of a rotating chair and different people writing minutes etc. This could put some people off the forum, particularly if they lack confidence. Agreed to have same chair etc. for each meeting until confidence grows. Agreed that the agenda doesn’t need to be checked by everyone in the group. Forum members will send potential topics and issues to discuss and Beth and Christine will meet to decide on the final agenda for the next meeting.
Discussed what members thought about using the doodle poll to decide the date of the next meeting. Agreed it was better to set the next date at the end of each meeting as some people will not know until last minute if they can attend or not.
The next meeting will be 19th January 1:30-3:30pm at Lochside Family Centre.
Items for the agenda include a discussion of an Early Years network event and of point 1.3 and 1.4 on the Action Plan. Contact Beth to add items to the agenda.