Childrens Services Needs Analysis Evidence Base The APA Self - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Children’s Services Needs Analysis

Evidence Base

• The APA Self Assessment and outcomes
• The Joint Area Review data set
• Audit Commission survey of school views of their LA
• Inspection outcomes
• The requirements of PSAs and LAAs
• Review of current business plans
• Feedback from individual services
• Feedback from voluntary organisations
• Feedback from children and families

Areas for Further Evidence

1. Feedback from external organisations and other departments, particularly:

• PCT
• Police
• LSC
• Housing
• Regeneration
• CIP
• 2. More feedback from children and families

Areas for exploration in the Joint Area Review: Being Healthy

• Outcomes for CAMHS and the timeliness of referrals

Staying Safe

• Timeliness of assessments
• Long-term stability of looked after children

Enjoying and achieving

• Rate of unauthorised absences
• The attainment gap between targeted groups and highest achieving groups

Making a positive contribution

• Work to prevent new offenders entering the youth justice system.

Economic well-being

• Progress of underachieving groups and standards reached in academic attainment

post-16

Emerging issues

Management and Organisational Issues 1.Developing a co-ordinated approach to Children’s Services This will include the full implementation of the Council’s re-organisation and continuing work to build effective working systems across all the organisations working with children and young people.

• 3. Recruitment and Retention of staff in shortage areas

There is a continuing shortage of key categories of staff in social services and health. Teacher recruitment has improved but there remain some particular shortages. There will also be the need to enhance the skills and qualifications of many groups of staff who are working with children.

• 2. Further develop opportunities for children and young people to contribute to the development of services

This refers particularly to the implementation of the new Participation Strategy

• 4. Developing a co-ordinated approach to sharing information and data

The first stage will be to share information about all the available services in a structured way. Work on linking IT systems will continue.

• 5. Improve communications between schools and social services, particularly in relation to looked after children.

The Audit Commission survey shows that schools consider this to be an area of weakness

• 6. Develop preventative/ early intervention services (tier 2)

This will involve the development of multi-agency teams working with children and families at an earlier stage in the hope of reducing the number of looked after children and the number of exclusions from school

• 7. Implementation of the Extended Schools Strategy

This is a government strategy to develop enrichment and support activities with local clusters of schools working in partnership with partners. This will include the development of new Children’s Centres.

• 8. Placing more Looked After Children locally

This will provide more stability for the young people and will also enable resources to be used more efficiently

• 9. Integrating services for children with disabilities

This is the first area in which joint commissioning and a common assessment process will be implemented.

• 10. Developing Youth Work

This area is highlighted in the Youth Matters Green Paper and is likely to be a focus of the Council’s Local Area Agreement

Targeted programmes

Schools Issues

• 12. Identify schools causing concern and ensure that they become more effective

During 2006-07, School Improvement Partners will be introduced. This is a government programme to reform how schools are monitored and supported and it will require changes to how the LA carries out these core functions

• 13. Improve support for schools in areas currently rated unsatisfactory.

The Audit Commission survey shows that schools have identified technical services, health and safety, financial management, ICT, admissions and planning school places as areas for improvement.

• 14. Raise the attainment of groups of pupils currently under-achieving

A number of priority groups have been identified including certain (but not all) ethnic minority groups, white working class children, looked after children and Traveller children. This was highlighted in the APA.

• 11. Achieve targets for the continued improvement in pupil attainment

The government expects to see year on year improvement in standards as seen in tests and examinations at all key stages