Meeting documents

1 THE ISSUE

1.1 All local authorities are required to produce an integrated Children and Young People's Plan for April 2006 to March 2009. This report outlines how the Children & Young People's Plan has been developed in Bath & North East Somerset for publication on 1st April 2006.

1.2 The Children & Young People's Plan will provide the over-arching strategy for the Council and all its partner agencies to deliver services for children, young people and their families. Consultation with children, young people and their parents and carers has to be central to the Children & Young People's Plan.

2 RECOMMENDATION

2.1 That the Council Executive endorses the Children & Young People's Plan 2006-9 for publication on April 1st 2006 and refers it to the full Council meeting on 30 March 2006 as part of its Policy and Budget framework.

2.2 That the Council Executive asks the chair of the Children & Young People's Strategic Partnership to report progress on the implementation of the plan.

2.3 That the Council Executive asks the Chair of the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership to present a further report detailing how performance with the implementation of the Plan will be measured, in particular identifying key performance indicators with respect to the "five outcomes" and their consequent places in the hierarchy of balanced scorecards.

3 FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

3.1 There are no direct financial implications arising from this report. The service developments in the Children & Young People's Plan 2006-9 will be funded from existing budgets across all agencies.

4 THE REPORT

4.1 The Children & Young People's Plan sets out how services
will be provided to all children and young people in Bath and North East Somerset and therefore will have a major impact on the achievement of the Council's improvements priorities particularly in relation to reducing fear of crime, improving life chances for disadvantaged teenagers, and improving the environment for learning.

4.2 The Council has responsibilities under the Children Act 1989 to provide services to families and children in need, including those in need of protection and looked after children. these duties are primarily undertaken by Social Services working in partnership with other Council Services (e.g. Education, Housing, and Leisure Services) statutory agencies (eg. Primary Care Trust, Connexions, Police) and voluntary organisations (eg Barnardos, the Children's Society, Off the Record).

4.3 The Children Act 2004 includes the requirement for each local authority to draw up a single over-arching plan for all services for children, young people and their families. The responsibility for drawing up this plan in Bath and North East Somerset was delegated to the Children & Young People's Strategic Partnership who set up a small multi-agency group to co-ordinate this task.

4.4 The Department for Education and Skills provided local authorities with some guidance about the structure and contents of the Children & Young People's Plan. The Plan is expected to be a strategic document which will ensure services deliver outcomes for children and young people and their families as set out in the Children Act 2004 (the 5 outcomes - be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, achieve economic well-being), the National Services Framework and the Youth Green Paper 2005.

4.5 In accordance with this guidance the approach we have taken is to build on existing multi-agency work to develop a Local Preventative Strategy. The Local Preventative Strategy, which we have been developing since 2003, was formally launched in March 2005 and has previously been presented to the Council Executive. The Local Preventative Strategy identified two strategic directions; promoting children's health and well-being and preventing children's ill-health and poor well-being. It also identified a range of under-pinning activities to achieve these 2 strategic directions. Delivery plans have been developed for all the actions identified to achieve these two strategic directions and underpinning activities. By incorporating the Local Preventative Strategy delivery plans into the Children & Young People's Plan, Bath and North East Somerset will achieve improvements in all 5 outcomes for our children and young people. In addition, the local priorities and outcomes from the annual performance assessments have been incorporated.

4.6 The Children and Young People's Plan 2006-9 replaces seven statutory plans including the Children and Young People's Services Plan, the Early Years Development and Child Care Plan and the Education Development Plan. It also replaces twelve non-statutory plans. There continues to be fifteen statutory plans which link to the Children and Young People's Plan including the Youth Justice Plan and the Health Schools Programme.

4.7 Structure & Contents : The Children & Young People's Plan includes the following:

· Brief Introduction

· Vision, values and principles

· Analysis of need and the 5 outcomes.


· The way-forward - projects and actions to achieve outcomes

· Money and resources to deliver the Plan

· Monitoring and review of the Children & Young People's Plan

Annexes:

· Children & Young People's Plan linkages to other plans and strategies

· Detailed chronology of the development of the Local Preventative Strategy and its evolution to the Children & Young People's Plan.

· Consultation with children & young people in relation to the Children & Young People's Plan

· Consultation with parents and carers in relation to the Children & Young People's Plan.

· List of contacts for each planning/monitoring group

· Table showing the linkages between the projects of the plan, Children Act 5 outcomes, local priorities and the National Service Framework

· Table showing performance indicators against the 5 outcomes

· Proposed Children's Trust Arrangements diagram

· Glossary and descriptions.

4.8 Agencies contributing to the Children & Young People's Strategic Partnership and the Local Preventative Strategy were consulted last autumn about a draft plan. The draft Children & Young People's Plan was endorsed by the Children & Young People's Strategic Partnership in December 2005. Since then there has been an extensive consultation process and amendments have been made to the draft Plan. This has included consideration of the draft plan by the Health and Social Services Overview & Scrutiny Panel and the Education, Youth, Culture & Leisure Overview & Scrutiny Panel, the Local Strategic Partnership and the Integration Project Board.

4.9 We are still waiting for information on budgets and performance indicators to complete some sections of the Plan and we are consulting on the front cover (to be included before final dispatch).. The Plan is being presented to the Council Executive, full Council and the Health Partnership Board for endorsement in March prior to publication on 1 April 2006.

5 RISK MANAGEMENT

5.1 A risk assessment related to the issue and recommendations has been undertaken, in compliance with the Council's decision making risk management guidance.

6 RATIONALE

6.1 The Council is required to work with partners to produce a Children & Young People's Plan 2006-9.

7 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED

7.1 None, the Council is required to produce a Children & Young People's Plan.

8 CONSULTATION

8.1 Consultation about the Children & Young People's Plan has taken place across the various agencies that contribute to the Children & Young People's Strategic Partnership. The draft plan was widely circulated and placed on the Council's website for comments.

8.2 A Participation Strategy for both children and young people and also for parents and carers has been developed. There has been extensive consultation with children and young people about this strategy and on various elements of the Children & Young People's Plan. The consultation with parents and carers has been more directly about the Children & Young People's Plan but will also include how they want to be involved in service planning in the future. Comments made by children, young people, their parents and carers have been included in the Plan and their more detailed comments shared with those planning services.

8.3 The draft Children & young People's Plan will be shared with Unions and Parish/Town Councils for information on 23rd February 2006 for information.