Voluntary Sector Children and Youth Forum

Notes of the meeting held at The Attlee Centre

17th July 2017

Present: 14

Welcome & Introductions

Tania Shaikh, as Chair for this meeting, welcomed everyone.

The Attlee Centre’s work with children and young people in Tower Hamlets

The Attlee Centre strongly believes that all young people should have access to a wide range of opportunities to support their social, emotional and physical wellbeing and development in a safe and secure environment.

They provide Play and Youth services for 5 to 19 year olds; up to 25 years for those with additional needs; after school, weekends and school holidays. They are a fully inclusive provision. Their work is influenced by the needs of the Children and Young People who attend the centre and all activities are adapted to include everyone. More information can be found here http://attleecentre.org/

Current developments

· Children and Families Partnership Board (CFPB)

Councillor Amy Whitelock-Gibbs is the new Chair, as she is now Cabinet Member for Education and Children’s Services.

A CFPB subgroup has been set up to link between the CFPB and the new Tower Hamlets Education Partnership (THEP) Tania Shaikh is our representative on that sub group. It is possible to become an associate member of THEP. Alex will send information out on how to do this.

· Tower Hamlets Together (THT)

As part of the THT work to integrate health services for young children, there will be four children’s centres (CC) that will be prototype children and family hubs. Once a transformation manager is appointed, each of the hubs will bring together local organisations to see how they could work together. More information to follow.

The hubs are Mile End CC, Whitehorse Ocean CC, Meath Gardens CC and Chrisp St CC (which is to have a new building).

Children’s Centres are also to start supporting families of children from 0-11.

· Early Help

Tower Hamlets is developing an Early Help Strategy; there have been workshops and there is a survey and it will go out for consultation once in draft.

Liz Vickerie, Head of Support for Learning Service & Lead Officer Social Inclusion, who has been a champion of early intervention/help is retiring.

· Multi Agency Family Violence Reduction Plan

There are some workshops to develop Outcomes Based Accountability framework for this area.

· Summer Fun brochure

This was due out, and would be circulated once published.

· Concerns about safety links to recent knife and acid attacks. How to respond to knifing and acid attacks, and to protect practitioners and young people over the summer? Alex hopes to set up a meeting with new police youth inspector Chris Soole in the next few days. His contact details are

Discussion also covered concerns following Grenfell for fire safety, and high rise concerns and multi-occupancy. It will be good to have some advice on what to do in a fire too, for families but also child-friendly.

· Youth Outcomes

There has been some workshops recently to co-produce a youth outcomes framework. This work has been supported by PYL and Centre for Youth Impact. As a result of the workshops, this vision has been proposed:

By 2020, all young people in Tower Hamlets will be inspired to take ownership of their lives and their futures, and to effect positive change in their communities

Four key outcomes for young people in Tower Hamlets that all LBTH youth services (LBTH youth service and commissioned services) will work towards have been coproduced by a mixture of voluntary sector and LBTH colleagues:

· Young people have an increased sense of agency in their lives and their communities

· Young people feel more optimistic about their futures

· Young people are better able to access holistic and supportive opportunities across the borough of Tower Hamlets

· Young people increase their critical thinking skills

There have been some queries about the first one, but mainly about the meaning of ‘a sense of agency’.

Definition of ‘a sense of agency’

‘Your ability to take action, be effective, influence your own life, and assume responsibility for your behaviour’

‘Agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative—the opposite of helplessness. Young people with high levels of agency do not respond passively to their circumstances; they tend to seek meaning and act with purpose to achieve the conditions they desire in their own and others’ lives.’

‘Agency and control; the degree to which they perceive themselves as accountable for both personal achievements and failures.’

‘Initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world.’

The new tender for youth services will include these outcomes, as well as an outcomes framework which includes measures for the outcomes that the youth service and commissioned providers will develop together.

Liaison with Cheryl Rehal, Head of Children’s Commissioning, Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)

Priorities for the CCG’s commissioning for children and young people in Tower Hamlets.

Cheryl introduced the commissioning intentions for maternity and children’s services in Tower Hamlets that the CCG is working on for 2018/19. They are trying to work more closely with other services in the borough. Since the CCG was established about 5 years ago, there have been more changes nationally. In Tower Hamlets this means the CCG will be doing more joint work with THT. There is also a STP (Sustainability and Transformation Partnership) across 7 NE London boroughs, to form a health and care partnership working across the NE London footprint, across borough boundaries. This therefore has an impact on how services are commissioned.

Cheryl went through the priorities, these are detailed in the pdf attached to the minutes. They need to be finalised by 23rd December; Cheryl recognised that this doesn’t link with local authority commissioning timescales.

Key points from discussion

· How to find children who are experiencing exclusion

· Changes in commissioners has meant that responsibility for obesity has changed

· Partnership can present possibilities/positives, but also a culture of completion and secrecy

· Is it possible to set up a directory of potential providers?

Next meeting date:

The next meeting will be in September.