PAPER B

CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSON’S COMMITTEE – 26 MARCH 2003

THE ISLE OF WIGHT CHILDREN’S FUND

REPORT OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT CHILDREN’S FUND MANAGER

REASON FOR COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION

This report has been submitted to provide members with an update on the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund 2002/2003

ACTION REQUIRED BY THE COMMITTEE

That the Children’s and Young Person’s Committee

1 Note the update on progress of the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund

2 Invite the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund to provide further update to Members in due course

BACKGROUND

The Children's Fund is money from the Department for Education and Skills administered by the Children and Young People’s Unit through regional branches based in Government Office. The Children’s Fund is targeted at 5-13 year olds to tackle disadvantages and inequalities, which derive from child poverty and social exclusion.

The Fund is focused on developing services that support multi-agency working, bringing together preventative services that recognise the value of partnership working between the voluntary, community and statutory sectors as well as the beneficiaries of such services.

The programme:

• Supports services to identify children and young people who are showing early signs of difficulty.
• Provides children and young people and/or their families with the support they need to realise their potential and thereby overcome poverty and disadvantage.
• Secures long-term improvement in children's lives by building capacity in the local community.
• Actively involves children, young people and their parents in planning and delivering services.

To date, the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund has bid for and been allocated a total of £1,779,000.00 over four years (2002 to 2006) with a further £135,600.00 pending a decision from the Children and Young People’s Unit at Government Office for the South East. This represents a significant investment to the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund is managed by a programme manager employed by Social Services and Housing and seconded over to the Rural Community Council. A Children’s Fund Partnership forms a steering group to direct the programme manager and is chaired by the Head of Children’s Services. The Children’s Fund Chair and manager are members of the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership Board to whom the Children’s Fund reports.

UPDATE

The following fifteen service developments have been agreed based on local consultation. All have involved children and young people in the development and ongoing delivery of services.

Young Persons Transport Researcher

The young persons transport researcher was employed by the Isle of Wight Youth Trust and represents an early success for the use of Children’s Fund resources. The one-year post was created to take forward the transport issues raised at the Wight To Be Heard Conference in 2002. As their first job since leaving school, the post holder has helped children and young people identify their own transport needs and solutions to the Rural Transport Partnership. The post also facilitates the involvement of children and young people in the development of their local Parish Transport Plans to access Parish Transport Grants.

Enhanced Healthy School standard

The Enhanced Healthy School Standard within the Local Education Authority provides additional whole school modules of resources, training and ongoing support for the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund initiatives. These include Accident Prevention, Oral Health, Domestic Violence, Healthy Eating and Young Carers. This innovative approach has generated interest at a regional level within the Government Office for the South East.

Accident Prevention Training

The Primary Care Trust’s Injury Prevention Forum, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust’s Ambulance Training Department and the Access Partnership (suppliers of approved National Safety Books) together with Primary and Middle Schools have been supported by the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund. This has provided every 7 year old with an Early Years First Aid Handbook and every 10 year old with a First Aid Handbook together with “A Teacher’s Interactive Guide to First Aid” CD-ROM, and First Aid training provided by the Ambulance Service’s Training Department. Special Needs Schools and High Schools with young people with special needs were also included. This innovative work has been responsible for six other Children’s Fund areas around the UK setting up the same initiative based on the work here on the Isle of Wight.

ORAL HEALTH PROMOTION

The Health Promotion Department within the Primary Care Trust has built on the successful Sure Start Oral Health Promotion programme to provide training, resource packs and support to schools to undertake Oral Health Promotion across the whole Island.

WOMEN’S REFUGEE AND SAFE KIDS GROUP

The Women’s Refuge has been funded by the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund to deliver preventative work and support to families affected by domestic violence. A Safe Kids group has been established to provide a safe secure environment for children and to deliver Protective Behaviour training. Future developments include training, awareness raising and support through schools for children affected by domestic violence.

LOOKED AFTER CHILDREN DROP IN CENTRE

The manager of the Looked After Children Service has supported children and young people to set up their own committee to find a place for a drop in centre, decorate it and help run it. The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund provided funding, the Local Education Authority (LEA) enabled the expansion of the Looked After Children Service and Connexions supported the initiative in terms of close working and sharing of premises. This has received interest from other services across the UK with several invitations to share this good practice at conference.

PREVENTING YOUTH OFFENDING PROGRAMME

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund has enhanced the existing YOT to enable full risk assessments to be undertaken with a home visit in all cases of young people subjected to a reprimand and final warning. Once the risk factors of offending behaviour are identified an appropriate intervention programme is developed with the child/young person and their

family in order to reduce the likelihood of re-offending. This involves the Youth Service and the LEA as well as the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DIETICIAN

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund supports the Islands’ Healthy Eating on a Low Income Forum employ a Community Development Dietician. Plans are under discussion as to how this enhances existing work with the Healthy Schools Standard, Health Promotion, the Dietetics Service and the Primary Care Trusts’ application to the New Opportunities Fund for the ‘Five a Day’ fruit and vegetable scheme.

CAROUSEL FOR CHILDREN WITH LONG TERM OR LIFE THREATENING ILLNESSES

The aim of providing resources to Carousel is to continue to provide key supportive services to children suffering from long tem and terminal illness; to create a demonstration project in respect of integrated health and social care delivery between voluntary and statutory children’s services providers and to facilitate service-user led planning and delivery.

YOUNG CARERS

The Young Carers School Support will develop a whole school approach for young carers including training, resources and support for schools as well as an enhanced young carers support/social group.

AFTER SCHOOL AND HOLIDAY ACTIVITY CLUBS

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund has supported activity clubs with sponsored places to which children are referred to support their care plan / educational plan. This includes access to a wide range of activities and study support and an Active Dads programme. The clubs are accessible to children with disabilities and a Sixth Form Mentor Support helps children in their transition from Middle to High School. In addition, some children and young people played a key role interviewing for two posts for the enhanced outreach service of the Family Information Zone.

FAMILY INFORMATION ZONE – MOBILE OUTREACH SERVICES

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund has supported the current Children’s Information Services (FIZ) to extend their work through outreach to schools and rural areas. This enables other services both within the Children’s Fund Programme (Oral Health, Community Dietician, Accident Prevention) and others to provide outreach services, and sign posts children/young people, parents/carers to other services. The service also includes the Local Network Fund Outreach and Support.

LOCAL NETWORK FUND OUTREACH AND SUPPORT

The Family Information Zone has employed an outreach person to advertise, encourage, support and facilitate local groups to apply for the Local Network Fund and other associated funding. They link both successful and non-successful applicants to existing training providers to support them make the best use of the funding. The post is part of the FIZ Mobile Outreach Service.

SUBSTANCE MISUSE FAMILY CENTRE

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund together with the Drug Action Team will enable the Substance Misuse Services provide an appropriate setting for substance misusing parents, families and young people to access therapy. This will include Psychotherapeutic training; Therapeutic play and parenting work to discreet client groups e.g. young men and single parents. The service will be open to all other agencies as well as on a self-referral basis provision and will be run by the Island Drug and Alcohol Service – Isle of Wight Health care NHS Trust.

WISE WORKSHOP INITIATIVE FOR SUPPORT IN EDUCATION

The Isle of Wight Children’s Fund supports the WISE programme to provide alternative education leading to qualification in a non-school setting for children and young people

excluded from, or not attending school. This builds on workshops run by the LEA and links with the Youth Service and the Children’s Fund Youth Offending initiative.

EMERGING FINDINGS FROM THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF THE CHILDREN’S FUND

Members may wish to consider the following learning points that have emerged during the first year of the Children’s Fund on the Isle of Wight.

1. If a new or an enhancement of an existing service is developed by the Children’s Fund it will not draw too heavily on statutory budgets. If in spite of planning it does not work for whatever reason, then the financial risk is managed and learning can be drawn from the experience. The overall approach to joint planning, commissioning and delivery may prove effective models and forerunners of services provided through Childrens’ Trusts. As many of the services are provided within the community and voluntary sectors, these approaches could yield valuable information about how the statutory sector brokers, supports and enables the delivery of local services through the community, voluntary sectors, and not-for profit social enterprises. These services offer opportunities to develop innovative pathways into employment as well as increasing staff recruitment and retention through national publicity of local good practice.

2. When developing new/shared/enhanced services, the physical location of staff and services from different organisations and/or professions in a new environment was the first step in encouraging new ways of working together. Early work with training providers to plan and deliver cross-agency and cross professional training proved useful, as did the secondment of staff into new services.

3. Local children, people, frontline staff and managers of services had lots of ideas, and often just require small amount of resources and freedom to take a few risks, to make something successful. Statutory services recognised this themselves but due to funding constraints found difficult to realise such opportunities. Links were made between what local people had asked for and what growth bids services were compiling as part of their business planning cycles.

4. All applicants for Isle of Wight Children’s Fund were supported through a defined commissioning process. Proposals referred to existing monitoring and performance assessment arrangements of mainstream services to minimise the administrative requirements on potential providers. This enabled potential and host providers understand how being involved contributed to their own performance indicators. Commissioners and finance directors in statutory organisations will be able to identify how services better meet the needs of children, are more cost-effective than current practice, contributes to the attainment of Public Service Agreements and hence could be a better use of future mainstream allocations.

5. When involving children, young people and their families there was the need for a short turnaround time between consultations that lead to changes in services. The development of some early initiatives provided tangible and practical examples for children and families to understand the potential of the Children’s Fund and that encouraged their involvement.

6. The Children’s Fund manager is co-opted onto the Sure Start Board, the Early Years and Child Care Development Partnership, the Youth Justice Forum and on the local management committee of Connexions. Their experience and expertise in delivering local programmes proved invaluable to the early successes of the Children’s Fund. These interrelationships play a key role in joining services up so that children, young people and their families experience seamless services.

The services commissioned by the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund play an important role in contributing to an Isle of Wight Preventative Strategy for Children and Young People, the Isle of Wight Identification, Referral and Tracking of Children at Risk Strategy and the Involvement Plan for Children and Young People on the Isle of Wight.

RELEVANT PLANS, POLICIES, STRATEGIES AND PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Each proposal commissioned by the Children’s Fund was required to identify how they planned to operate within the context outlined by the relevant plans, policies, inspections, Best Value Reviews, statements made in Service Plans and performance indicators.

CONSULTATION PROCESS

The priorities identified for action by the Children’s Fund were collated from an extensive consultation process with children, young people, families, carers, staff, professionals and from the community, business and voluntary sectors. Each proposal commissioned by the Children’s Fund was required to identify as to who had been consulted, when and how both in the planning and ongoing delivery of services.

FINANCIAL, LEGAL, CRIME AND DISORDER IMPLICATIONS

Each proposal commissioned by the Children’s Fund was required to complete a Service Level Agreement outlining both revenue and capital implications, not only for the first year but ongoing. The strategic planning and delivery of the Isle of Wight Children’s Fund is geared towards how the learning, resources and activities influence mainstream allocations and services beyond the term of the Children’s Fund. Section 17 provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act have been taken into account in relation to the preventing youth offending element of the Children’s Fund.

APPENDICES ATTACHED

No appendices attached

BACKGROUND PAPERS USED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS REPORT

None used in the preparation of this report.

Contact Point: Simon Dear, Isle of Wight Children’s Fund Programme Manager

C/o Rural Community Council

3 Langley Court, Pyle Street, Newport, Isle of Wight PO30 1LA.

Tel. (01983) 524 058, Fax. (01983) 526905

E Mail: [email protected]