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Children and Families Programme

Regional Lead: Heather Sahman

Partnership and multiagency workers are vital to the success of the Childrens programme and many aspects of the work involves a range of agencies. The priorities for 2009 have been identified in partnership with SHA Children’s leads and includes the following:

  • Commissioning
  • Children with a disability
  • Transition
  • Vulnerable groups
  • Maternity
  • Safeguarding
  • Partnerships
  • Leadership and capacity building
  • CAMHS

However, a flexible approach will be taken in response to both regional and national requirements. All work programmes are designed to respond to national, regional and local local priorities and are subject to chaneg in response to any additional policy objectives or further developments. A range of work is ongoing in these areas and new work is being planned for the forthcoming year. A brief update (this is not intended to be comprehensive but gives an outline of few aspects of the programme) is given below.

Commissioning The East Midlands has taken a very active role in regard to children’s commissioning in the past few years and has produced an East Midlands cross agency commissioning framework (applauded by both the Department of Health (DH) and Department of children, schools and families (DCFS)). It is planned to develop this further and a pilot programme is also being considered to assist in the development of web based tailor made commissioning tools to help children’s commissioners to work more effectively – this is part of a national development. Currently discussions with the National Support Programme are ongoing to ensure work is complementary and that the most effective approaches to commissioning development are adopted within the region.

Aiming High for children with a disability An Aiming HIgh Board has been established to oversee the work and assist in the delivery of the recent government promise for children with a disability within the East Mids. The board is chaired by Bruce Buckley (Director of Children’s Services- Serbyshire county council) and will oversee a range of work programmes including:

  • Development of the core offer for the E Mids
  • Improving therapy services
  • Short breaks
  • Transition
  • Palliative care

An audit of services has been undertaken in the region and this has highlighted some areas in need of development. Parents/young people will be included in the work and this is an area that was highlighted as weak in some areas – we are currently exploring the possibility of establishing a website with a chat room etc to help with communication.

Transition This is a relatively new area of work and has been highlighted as an area requiring development both nationally and locally. Initially 2 workshops were held in September to identify issues which would make a difference, an audit was also undertaken. As a result a number of workstreams have been initiated:

  • Development of a regional transition framework- A seminar for 80 people was held in January to scope out the framework.
  • Development of a transitions pack that can then be amended locally
  • User involvement- There are two significant pieces of work currently ongoing. Consultation on a young person’s charter. An extensive regional project is underway in regard to an impact assessment of the maternity support worker role- this is due to report in Sept 09 The charter will then be utilised to provide the principles and standards for the East Midlands framework. Transitions Seminar Report
  • Consultation to identify barriers and solutions to accesss to higher education in regard to young people with a disability. (This issue was raised strongly in initial consultations with young people) There will be a number of further investigations exploring various aspects of transition.

Health of children in secure settings A project to undertake a Health Needs Analysis of young people and to assess the commissioning infrastructures and processes of health services for Young People in the 4 secure settings in the East Midlands. The East Midlands project will contribute to a wider DH project. Final reports will be completed by April 2009.

Leadership/capacity building and partnerships A range of leadership/ action learning etc programmes are either ongoing or in development to help staff in children and families services develop skills, share best practice and develop approaches to specialist issues. Previous similar programmes have proved extremely successful and have given excellent outcomes. One to one coaching and mentoring support is also provided where requested and this is also proving very successful.