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Child poverty research
Early intervention for families
The Children's Plan and Tameside's Priorities
Transition from children's to adults' services
Troubled Families Report
Supporting children in schools
Children in care figures - a case for early intervention
Troubled families Report links
Growing our strengths
Keeping children safe e-bulletin
Earlyarts national strategy
Family conflict and violence affecting four million families
Combating child poverty in Tameside
Reassessment of impact of spending review
Sector guide on how to use the Equality Act
Useful documents
News from the Tameside Safeguarding Children Board
Last month saw the release of the new revised government guidance, Working together to safeguard children: A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This sets out how organisations and individuals should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and how practitioners should conduct the assessment of children. The guidelines set out core legal requirements and make it easier for individuals and organisations to know what they should do to keep children safe and promote their welfare.
More information: tinyurl.com/cvatsafeguarding
Tameside Safeguarding Children Board (TSCB) - reflective review pilot
TSCB is in the progress of piloting the use of reflective reviews for cases where there has been a Child Protection Plan (CPP) for 2 years or where practitioners felt progress on implementing the CPP was not good enough to give confidence that the child is being protected from harm. Early learnings from reviews suggest that:
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CPPs are often adult focused. Reviews have helped refocus plans onto the child.
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There is a lack of evidence of the impact of parental difficulties on the child.
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Reflective reviews have helped to evidence non engagement and to clarify the consequences of non-engagement with parents.
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Reflective reviews encouraged practitioners to consider ways of helping parents to have ownership of the changes that they need to make and sustain.
More information: http://tinyurl.com/TSCBpilot
Child poverty research
End Child Poverty has published new figures (February 2013) on the level of child poverty in each constituency, local authority and ward in the UK. More information: http://tinyurl.com/CVATendchildpoverty
Early intervention for families
‘Working with Troubled Families: a guide to evidence and good practice’ is a tool to help local authorities and their partners on how best to work with troubled families and the evidence about family intervention. The report looks at academic evidence, local evaluations of practice, what practitioners have said works in their services and what families say makes this work different and successful for them. More information: http://tinyurl.com/cvatearlyintervention
The Children's Plan and Tameside's Priorities
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Promote healthy lifestyles with particular
focus on obesity and alcohol.
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Improve emotional health and well-being for
all children, young people and their families.
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Promote the safety of all children and
young people in all settings with a focus on
domestic violence.
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Increase the proportion of young people
moving into education, training and
employment and promote positive role
models.
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Continue to raise attendance and attainment
at all phases of learning with a strategic
focus on vulnerable children and looked after
children and continue to narrow the gap for
the lowest achieving children.
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Reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy.
Transition from children's to adults' services
Two new films from SCIE focus on transition from children’s to adults’ services for young people with mental health problems. In the first film, four young people from different parts of the country share their experiences of transition. The second film features a pilot scheme developed by Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust to address the difficulties that young people face and to try to ensure that they do not lose contact with mental health services at the time of transition. More information: http://tinyurl.com/cvattransitions
Early Intervention and Prevention
Graham Allen is the MP leading the fight to support investment in early intervention. He has proposed the establishment of an Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) in Early Intervention: the next steps, a report to parliament published in January 2011. He followed this up with Early Intervention: Smart Investment, Massive Savings, published in July 2012.
On 13 July 2012, NAVCA hosted a seminar to explore both the positive role that small voluntary and community sector (VCS) groups can and do play in early intervention and the challenges they face to taking part. Chief among these challenges is the burden and cost of evidencing the impact of small community groups' work. if you want to find out what happened at this seminar you will find a range of information below.
• Seminar report
• Seminar presentation slides
• Emily Williams, HomeStart Central Cheshire
• Chris Wallbanks, Nottingham City Council
• Julian Cox, New Economy Manchester
• Bernard Leech, Greater Manchester Third Sector Research Network
• Elizabeth Young, HomeStart UK
Also at the seminar, Adam Lang of the Big Lottery Fund drew attention to their report Improving Futures: New projects to transform the lives of children, published in July 2012.
Supporting children in schools
The Government has made two announcements regarding the pupil premium:
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The Pupil Premium will rise to £900 per pupil next year - around 50% higher than last year.
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£50 million will be available for summer schools for the Pupil Premium scheme to run again next year.
Ofsted have published a document detailing how schools are using the Pupil Premium to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils, based on a survey of the views of 262 school leaders.
More information: www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/pupil-premium
Children in care figures – a case for early intervention
The Department for Education has released the latest figures for the number of children in care in the year ending 31 March 2012, including reasons why the children included were being looked after. The figures show that:
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There were 67,050 looked after children at 31 March 2012 - an increase of 13% compared to 31 March 2008.
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The number of looked after children is now higher than at any point since 1997.
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There were 3,450 looked after children adopted during the year ending 31 March 2012. This was the highest figure since 2007 and an increase of 12 per cent from the 2011 figure.
More information: www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s001084/sfr20-2012.pdf
Troubled Families Report
Louise Casey CB has published a report (http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies) highlighting the chaotic personal histories of the families who will be targeted as part of the Government's work with 120,000 troubled families by 2015. The report details stark real-life accounts from families, with experiences often passed from generation to generation, such as domestic and sexual abuse, teenage pregnancies, poor parenting, social care interventions, police call outs and educational failure. It also contains Louise Casey's early conclusions that a whole-family approach is often best for dealing with multiple and inter-linked problems; rather than approaches that deal with single problems or single individuals within a household.
Key recurring themes highlighted in the report include:
• Dysfunctional and unstable family structures;
• History repeating itself within families and between generations;
• Extended family and antisocial networks within communities reinforcing destructive behaviour; and
• The need for one assertive family worker who offers practical help and support but also sanction in dealing with families.
• Dysfunctional and unstable family structures;
• History repeating itself within families and between generations;
• Extended family and antisocial networks within communities reinforcing destructive behaviour; and
• The need for one assertive family worker who offers practical help and support but also sanction in dealing with families.
To get involved in debating these issues in Tameside contact Vee, Tel: 0161 339 4985 ext 2015 or Email: veronica.hyde@t3sc.org
Troubled Families Report links
• Report on personal histories of the families to be targeted by Government's work with 120,000 troubled families: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• Stark real-life accounts from families: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• The real family impact of domestic and sexual abuse, teenage pregnancies and poor parenting: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• The real family impact of social care interventions, police call outs and educational failure: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• A whole-family approach is often best for dealing with multiple and inter-linked problems – new report: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• Key recurring theme in troubled families report 1: dysfunctional and unstable family structures: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• Key recurring theme in troubled families report 2: history repeating itself within families and between generations: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• Key recurring theme in troubled families report 3: extended family and antisocial networks reinforcing destructive behaviour: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
• Key recurring theme in troubled families report 4: the need for one assertive family worker: http://tinyurl.com/CVATtroubledfamilies
Growing our strengths
Growing Our Strengths is a two year programme to support the voluntary, community and faith sector to be more confident in how it measures the effectiveness of its early intervention work. It is a partnership of Action for Prisoner’s Families, Family Action, the Family and Parenting Institute, led by Action for Children. There is a new programme of events and a range of resources to support you in demonstrating how your services make a difference to the lives of vulnerable families and children. More information: www.actionforchildren.org.uk/growingourstrengths
Keeping children safe e-bulletin
Tameside Safeguarding Children Board’s e-bulletin is full of useful information and is already received by over a hundred contacts four times a year. If you are not receiving this please contact veronica.hyde@t3sc.org to ensure you are on the mailing list.
Earlyarts national strategy
Earlyarts have published their National Strategy for effective practice to nurture creativity among the children. This includes ensuring that early years professionals have access to up-to-date research on development and creativity, integrating creative skills and processes into training and creating partnerships across the early years and creative sectors.
Family conflict and violence affecting four million families
New research from the charity 4Children reveals the extent of conflict and violence in Britain’s families. A survey of parents with children under the age of 18 showed that over half of parents with children experience serious or frequent conflict - which equates to about 4 million families with children in this country (where families are defined as parents with children under 18 years of age). Only 7% of parents said there was no conflict in their home.
Combating child poverty in Tameside
More than one in four children live in poverty in Tameside and this is becoming more widespread, therefore it is a priority for the Tameside’s Children’s Trust.
The strategy for combating poverty is now being refreshed. If you have any ideas as to what should be in this strategy, please contact veronica.hyde@t3sc.org
Reassessment of impact of spending review
The four UK Children's Commissioners have called for an urgent reassessment of the impact of the Coalition Government's Spending Review on the needs of vulnerable children.
In a joint report launched on 21 November (International Day of the Child), the Commissioners outline serious concerns at the high levels of persistent poverty across the UK. They highlight the need for children to be given priority in national and local budgets so that vital children's services are protected.
The report also examines progress made in five areas - participation, children with disabilities, child poverty, children seeking asylum and juvenile justice - against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, an internationally binding minimum standard for all children and young people that was ratified by the UK government twenty years ago.
Sector guide on how to use the Equality Act
The Equality and Diversity Forum's
'How to use the Equality Act 2010: A guide for voluntary and community organisations' looks at how the new equality law can be used in advocacy, service delivery and campaigning work. Useful documents
2020 Children and Young people's Workforce Strategy
