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Peter Evans
Cabinet Member for Children - Start of Life - Lead Member for Children
Chairman of the Start of Life Partnership Board
Email: peter.evans@westsussex.gov.uk
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Working in partnership is vital to the delivery and success of the Start of Life Programme, and I am extremely grateful to our partners for their continued hard work and support.
Partnership working is coordinated and monitored by the new Start of Life Partnership Board. The Board has a wide remit, encompassing the whole of the Start of Life Programme and builds on the success and strength of former partnerships, which began with the Children’s Trust, followed by the Think Family Partnership.
I intend to continue to build upon these strong examples of multi-agency working, and I look forward to continuing to work with our partners in the future.
I will report on the work of the Start of Life Partnership Board through this newsletter, and information on the first meeting can be found later in this edition.
Dear Colleagues
I’d like to take this opportunity to say ‘hello’ and introduce myself as the new Executive Director for Care, Wellbeing and Education. I’ve been in post for just over a month and a lot has been happening both locally and nationally. Louise Casey has now produced her report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham and earlier this week the Government published its response. The Casey report makes chilling reading and I think one of the key lessons is that we have to listen to what children and families are telling us – and senior managers need to listen to what their front line staff are telling them. So I’m going to use this introduction to make a request for your help. We need to be open, honest and to learn from one another across the service. If you are worried or concerned about something – don’t keep it to yourself – share it with your manager or ‘up the line’. I’d much rather learn about something from you at an early stage, even if it looks like ‘bad news’. I really want us to be a ‘learning organisation’ and part of that learning has to be based on your expert knowledge and understanding of the children and young people you are working with. So, please – don’t keep it to yourself.
I’m delighted that Annie MacIver has agreed to act as Director of Family Operations – and has nearly completed the redesign of her top team. I hope that by the next edition we’ll be able to introduce you to the new Director of Education and Skills (interviews being held 13th March)
You can find out more about Avril, and her plans, by watching her video.
I look forward to taking up my new role and working with Avril, colleagues and partners to ensure vulnerable children in West Sussex access services that are timely and have impact.
The new interim head of Children’s Social Care will be Amanda Radley and I am confident that she will continue to build on the work achieved to date. There will be a transitional period through April as we negotiate our new role responsibilities. Amanda and I are keen to create a climate of openness and clear channels of communication so that we can work collectively to keep children safe.
I am sure that a number of you will have heard about the modernising children’s social care programme, of which you will hear more from Amanda in the next edition. The goal of this programme is to ensure that we have the most effective structure, roles and high quality staff to support the authority’s aspirations to move from an Ofsted rating of ‘adequate’ to a local authority that delivers good and excellent outcomes for vulnerable children.
We know that changing a structure itself will not deliver the desired outcomes. Instead it is the behaviours of leaders and staff from whichever agency we represent that will determine our success. In Children’s Social Care we are holding ourselves and each other to account – this means frank conversations and taking a collaborative approach.
We are working hard to put our children, families and front line staff at the heart of our services, using their wisdom and experiences. This is not always comfortable but our experience so far is that working through discomfort brings creative solutions. It is this approach to leadership that I intend to take forward into the interim Director role and I very much look forward to meeting and working with you.
You can find out more about Annie by watching her video.
The first meeting of the new Start of Life Partnership Board took place on Friday 16 January 2015 and considered the following:
- The second phase of the Think Family programme (which incorporates the Government’s Troubled Families initiative) starts in April 2015 with a new emphasis on children in need, domestic violence, health issues and early help. The Board discussed how outcomes and performance for the Programme will be measured and endorsed an Outcomes Framework.
- The Leaving Care Service Plan was endorsed by the Board and has been formally adopted by the County Council. The plan sets out proposals for a dedicated service for young people who are leaving the care of the County Council. The new Service will ensure that there is a wide range of provision in place to meet the needs of young people so that they leave care fully equipped to manage adult life.
- The County Council is adopting the Signs of Safety approach across social care to improve the way it works with children and young people. The Board received a briefing on Signs of Safety and were encouraged to raise awareness in their individual organisations.
- The West Sussex Early Help Action Plan was discussed, in particular the approach to delivering the Plan; along with the Family Support Point (the initial point to access for help and support) which will improve the experience of residents accessing services.
The next meeting of the Partnership Board takes place on 12 March 2015 and will consider:
- The re-design of the County Council’s Children’s Social Care Service.
- The re-design of the Children’s Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Service, including Children’s & Adults’ Mental Health Services).
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HolistiX a new case management system. * The proposed operating model to be used for the Think Family Programme from April 2015.
The Partnership Board includes representatives from the County Council, District/Borough Councils, the NHS, Sussex Police, voluntary organisations, schools and government agencies. It meets every two months and monitors the effectiveness of partnership and joint work to ensure West Sussex will have children who are given the best start in life by ensuring the delivery of the Start of Life Programme.
We are pleased to announce the next phase of the Early Help transformation across the county – now called Family Support.
Throughout the county we already provide families with excellent services from early years through to youth services, but don’t always look at the needs of a child through a ‘whole family approach’.
We believe that by focusing on the family as a whole and improving coordination of services we can provide better support at the earliest opportunity. If we can help families as soon as a problem emerges, then we can prevent things escalating and sometimes leading to social care intervention.
We are currently working with partners (e.g. probation, health workers, schools), keyworkers (Think Family) and other family services (voluntary & community) to develop Family Support Networks in each district and borough. The aim is that by joining-up services and initiatives available to support families locally, families will get help from the right service as soon as possible. The networks will also provide drop-in sessions so that families can self-refer. Six new networks are being piloted across the county this spring to test out the new ways of working.
There will also be a Family Support Point (FSP) that provides one front-door into statutory social care and early help, bringing together staff of the Children’s Access Point (CAP) and the new Early Help Resource Centre (EHRC). Meaning anyone who is concerned about a child, but the concern does not require social care involvement, will get immediate support through the EHRC and connected to services that can help. Previously there has been no single point of access to this level of family support. The FSP aims to be in operation this spring.
The lives of more than 1,100 families in West Sussex have been turned around thanks to the West Sussex Think Family Partnership. Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that the Partnership has met its phase one target to help 1,165 families that needed extra support to solve the problems they were facing – ahead of schedule and within budget.
The Partnership is the local version of the Government’s Troubled Families initiative and draws together a range of organisations and teams to work with a family in a way that helps them address their problems such as anti-social behaviour, unemployment, poor school attendance and domestic violence. The aim is to help people become more self-sufficient and resilient and produce sustainable outcomes.
So far the Partnership Team has helped:
- 665 families get an adult family member back into work;
- 932 families or family members stop causing anti-social behaviour;
- 158 families or family members stop the crime they are involved in; and
- 660 children get back into education – attending for 85% or more of the time.
The County Council has given the go-ahead to extend Think Family for 2015/16 and has given support ‘in principle’ to continue the programme until 2020. The next phase could see another 4,000 families benefiting from the innovative approach that keyworkers and other specialists offer.
One mum helped by Think Family said: “The help I’ve had from my keyworker has been brilliant. I know I can rely on her, but she’s pushing me to keep fighting to sort out things for my son.”
The Think Family Partnership has now developed even further and is leading new ways that ‘Family Support’ will be provided across West Sussex in 2015 through the new Start of Life Partnership.
Across the Start of Life programme we have agreed to use Signs of Safety as the underpinning approach to how we work with children, young people and families.
All staff in Children’s Social Care have now been trained and Signs of Safety is being used across all service areas from the Children’s Access Point to Children Looked After teams.
 Signs of Safety, English Innovation Project, national leadership event Nov 14
In December 2014, we held our first West Sussex Signs of Safety practice conference. This day was a huge success due to the courage and honesty of the practitioners who stood up and presented their work. The conference was attended by over 100 staff as well as Dame Moira Gibb, West Sussex Cabinet Members and delegates from local universities:
“I was really struck by the impact of yesterday on those who attended and participated – including the service users and carers. For an organisation to provide a forum for practitioners to talk about their practice and what they are proud of is a huge culture change. To then hear from senior managers and officers that this is a commitment to a whole-systems shift is doubly impressive.” Cath Holmstrom – Principal Lecturer in Social Work, University of Brighton
We are continuing to work with Dr Andrew Turnell and Professor Eileen Munro (Signs of Safety English Innovation Project) to develop our practice with a particular focus on safety planning involving the wider family and community network.
Partnership working is a key focus for 2015-16 as we continue to expand the use of Signs of Safety across wider Children’s Services and other agencies. We now need to identify workforce development leads across all agencies and will work with them to plan how they will be involved and the level of training required for their staff.
For further information or a discussion about how you and your service can be involved please contact me.
Follow these links for further information about the West Sussex Signs of Safety implementation or http://www.signsofsafety.net/
An Education Working Group was set up following the publication of Phil Norrey’s peer review report in October 2014.
This group has worked quickly to develop a shared policy agreement for education in West Sussex and is a collaboration between head teachers from secondary, primary and special schools and County Council officers.
Geoff Lowry (Assistant Chief Operating Officer and Education Working Group chair) explains this new approach to policy and performance development in more detail.
We are continuing the process of implementing the SEND reforms, which are being managed by the SEND Board, in co-production with parent carers.
One of our key areas of work is transferring the existing 3500 Statements and Learning Difficulty Assessments to 0-25 Education, Health and Care Plans, which reflect the child or young person’s aspirations, as well as their needs.
We have until April 2018 to complete this process but are currently prioritising work on plans for children who are due to transfer school this September – primarily years 2 & 6 – so young people and families can be confident about which school they will be attending. Unfortunately this means at present there are some delays in completing new assessments, but we hope that current recruitment will ease this problem.
We are establishing an impartial Information Advice & Support Service. This is a new requirement similar to the existing Parent Partnership Service but also offering a service to young people.
We were also informed that Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission will be inspecting Local Authorities on how they are implementing the reforms – this will start in 2016.
Detailed information about the reforms and services for children & young people with SEND and their families is available on the Local Offer website.
The redesign of the Early Childhood Service is now complete and the service is working with colleagues from across Children’s Services and partners to review current processes and establish new ways of working for local integrated teams around children and family centres.
It is difficult during a time of change and therefore the service was pleased that when Ofsted visited our Arun West group of children and family centres (Treehouse CFC, Felpham CFC and The Villages CFC) in January, the inspection outcome was ‘good’. There is still more to do in other areas of the county but this demonstrated that joined-up working by colleagues from across Children’s Services and partner organisations can help make a real difference for children and families.
The service has introduced a weekly email broadcast for all early years and childcare settings to inform practitioners of national and local news.
For further information on the new arrangements please email: CYPSECSCentral@westsussex.gov.uk
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