THIS IS WHAT WE ARE AIMING TO ACHIEVE

Attainment and achievement: We will ensure that our schools and collegesenable children and young people to learn, achieve highly, and realise their potential.

  • Developing and implementing our strategy for offering a diverse school provision.
  • Supporting schools to improve academic performance at all stages.
  • Developing the 14-19 strategy, ensuring wider engagement and effective communication.
  • Developing early years provision to ensure that it promotes children’s development and well-being, and helps children meet early learning goals.
  • Reducing the number of schools below floor targets.

Protectingchildren and young people: We will strengthen the services and processes designed to keep children and young people safe from maltreatment, neglect and abuse.

  • Ensuring that all partners, agencies and the community accept responsibility to robustly ensure the safety of children and young people.
  • Re-building our front line services and ensuring that effective safeguarding and review procedures in place.
  • Ensuring that people working with children and young people are properly vetted, skilled and trained.
  • Ensuring that Safeguarding thresholds are appropriate, clear, universally known, agreed and applied.
  • Ensuring that the ESCB is effective.

Resilient, safecommunities: We will ensure children and young people to feel safe and secure were they work, go to school and live.

  • Reducing negative incidents such as bullying and discrimination and ensuring the effective implementation of the anti-bullying strategy.
  • Improving arrangements for dealing with domestic violence incidents.
  • Supporting victims of crime and reducing anti-social behaviour.
  • Ensuring that the partnership’s activities to reduce the number of killed and seriously injured on the road contains specific initiatives targeted at children and young people.
  • Developing effective action for preventing the first point of crime.

Tackling poverty: We will seek to reduce the impact of poverty and the economic downturn on the lives of children and young people, and improve housing provision.

  • Taking targeted action to reduce the number of school leavers and care leavers who are not in Employment Education or Training.
  • Ensuring Housing strategies contain targeted measures that address the needs of vulnerable children, young people and their families.
  • Supporting parents back to work and providing information and support on benefit take-up.
  • Promoting Post 16 education - 6th form colleges, work based learning, and access to further and higher education.

Supporting parents, carers and families: We will provide appropriate support, including services to young carers, and intervention where necessary.

  • Developing services to help develop resilience within families to cope with difficult situations, and to enable children to learn to manage their own risks.
  • Embedding the Common Assessment Framework and providing support to providers of universal provision to enable them to effectively use the process.
  • Ensuring that appropriate child care is available and accessible.
  • Supporting young carers and ensuring that parents who rely on their children as carers receive appropriate adult support services.

Improvinghealth and wellbeing: We will reduce health inequalities, help children and young people make informed healthy choices, and have access to the health services they need.

  • Ensuring that children and young people are aware of, and can minimise, the risks to their health and wellbeing of their lifestyle choices.
  • Developing Mental Health services to ensure that they are provided in an effective and timely manner.
  • Taking action to ensure that young people are sexually healthy and to further reduce the number of teenage conceptions.
  • Taking action to reduce the misuse of drugs and alcohol.
  • Ensuring that Children and young people with log term difficulties are properly prepared and supported for the move from paediatric care to adult health services.

Narrowing the gap: We will improve the life chances of looked after children, young carers, and of other children and families at risk of poor outcomes.

  • Taking measures to reduce the gap in outcomes in different parts of the County by targeting support and initiatives at areas and groups where there is a risk of poor outcomes.
  • Developing procedures to ensure that no child or young person is discriminated against because of their background, including learning difficulty or disability, gender, ethnicity.
  • Ensuring personal and welfare support is available to all young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities aged 16–19 to support their education or training.
  • Ensuring that services targeted towards looked after children are effective in improving their outcomes.
  • Reducing exclusions and increasing attendance.

Enjoying life: We will provide children and young people with opportunities to have a fulfilling and enjoyable childhood, and to be inspired by the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

  • Ensuring that there is a wide range of local, accessible, affordable and safe activities, and places to go, for children and young people.
  • Ensuring that children and young people are involved in designing the services that they need and in assessing the effectiveness of those services.
  • Ensuring that there are opportunities to play, participate, and realise potential in arts and cultural activities.
  • Ensuring that we maximise the educational, aspirational and social potential provided by the Olympics and Paralympics.