Consultation on new statutory guidance for Children's Trusts and Children and Young People's Plan (CYPP) regulations

Legislation in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Bill 2009, which is currently in the House of Lords will have a significant impact on Children’s Trust co-operation arrangements and how local areas prepare their Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP).

The Bill will:

• extend the number of statutory ‘relevant partners’ to include schools (including Academies), colleges, and Jobcentre Plus
• require every local area to have a Children’s Trust Board
• give the Children’s Trust Board responsibility for developing the CYPP and monitoring its implementation by the Children’s Trust partners.
  

(The CYPP is currently the responsibility of the local authority) All areas will be expected to have a statutory Children’s Trust Board in place by April 2010 and publish their jointly owned Children and Young People’s Plans by April 2011.

As a consequence of the ASCL Bill, new Children’s Trust guidance and CYPP regulations are currently being drafted in preparation for a full public consultation with stakeholders and partners. The consultation is planned for early November, and will be hosted on the DCSF consultations website:http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/

Children’s Trust Board Meeeting

The Children’s Trust Board met on Tuesday 13 October and the following items were discussed:

• Sunderland Safeguarding Children Board
• Outcomes from Children’s Trust/Children’s Trust Strategic Partnership Workshop
• Workforce Innovation and Reform Strategy
• Children and Young People’s Plan Annual Report
• Flu Planning

Further information on the decisions agreed is available to download here>>.

Changes in the Law

The law has changed. From 12 October 2009, new measures are being introduced to help prevent unsuitable people undertaking paid or volunteer work with children or vulnerable adults.

It’s called the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) has been set up to help implement the Scheme and make decisions over who should be barred from working with vulnerable people. Those decisions are legally binding too. Failing to comply could result in both the employer and the employee or volunteer being prosecuted, or even going to prison.

From July 2010 all new employees, those moving jobs and volunteers who want to work with children or vulnerable adults can register with the ISA. From November 2010, they must be ISA-registered. From then on it will be illegal to employ new people who are not ISA-registered.

For more information about the changes download the fact sheet here>>.

The ISA has also produced a useful document called 'Am I affected?' which shows in diagrammatic format how the new law may impact upon you.

If you need any further information about the ISA, VBS, the ISA-registration process, who is affected and how, please visit www.isa-gov.org.uk or call 0300 123 1111

ContactPoint

On 8 October, Tom Jeffery, Director General for Children and Families at the DCSF, wrote to all local authority Directors of Children’s Services to provide a progress update on ContactPoint implementation. Read the letter.

Also, a public consultation on proposed changes to the ContactPoint Regulations (The Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007) is underway (2 October – 29 December 2009).

The key changes would:

• implement our commitment in response to Sir Roger Singleton’s review of safeguarding arrangements in independent schools to "…ensure that pupils who receive education in schools in England, but who are not ordinarily resident in England, are covered by ContactPoint."
  
  
• replace the definition of ‘parental responsibility’ used in the ContactPoint regulations with the definition of ‘parent’ to match that used by schools for the collection of schools’ census data. View the consultation documents and the press release.

Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures

The Government's Child Health Strategy - "Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures" - calls for every children's centre to have access to a named health visitor.  This is being taken forward through the "Action on Health Visiting Programme", which is a joint venture between the Department of Health and Unite the Union/Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association (Unite/CPHVA).

Further detail is set out in "Getting it right for children and families" which was published on 14 October.

Youth Justice System Changes

The youth justice system is about to undergo a major change on 30 November 2009.   The sentencing structure for young people will be greatly strengthened and expanded as a new community sentence, the Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO), is introduced. It is designed to combine the nine existing community sentences into one generic sentence and will be the standard community sentence used for the majority of young people. 

The YRO provides a menu of 18 requirements including reparation, treatment for mental health, drug or substance misuse, supervision and curfew which the court can choose from to suit the individual young person, taking into account the seriousness of the offence and the needs of the young person. It will offer youth offending teams and sentencers greater clarity and flexibility in the community sentencing framework and provide a more risk based approach to community sentencing for young people. 

The introduction of the YRO is a chance for local authorities to ensure that local services are available to reduce offending by young people in their area. Partnership working amongst the different agencies providing youth justice services is key to the success of the YRO and will serve to improve working relationships between local authorities, youth offending teams and partners.

In conjunction with the introduction of the YRO, the Youth Justice Board are implementing the Scaled Approach. The Scaled Approach has been designed to support the YRO and is a new way to match the intensity of youth offending teams’ (YOTs) work with young people who offend, to their assessed likelihood of reoffending and their risk of serious harm to others. The model, which was developed in partnership with YOTs ensures that YOT resources are focused on those most at risk.  It will inform the planning of interventions and provide greater information from which the judiciary can make decisions about a young person’s sentence.

Publication of scores for the disabled children's services national indicator

In December, the first full set of national and local indicator scores will be published for every local authority and PCT.  This is part of the National Indicator Set for local authorities (NI54) and ‘vital signs’ indicator for PCTs (VSC33). The indicator measures parental experiences of services (health, education and care & family support) for disabled children and young people aged 0 to 19 against the Aiming High for Disabled Children (AHDC) core offer standards.

The five elements of the core offer are:

• good provision of information
• transparency in how the available levels of support are determined
• integrated assessment
• participation of disabled children and their families in local services
• accessible feedback and complaints procedures

This is the second year that the national indicator has run; in the first year the parental rating for services was 59 out of 100 points, establishing a national baseline.  In addition, 30 pioneer local authorities took part in the survey and received local scores and reports.  This year scores will be available for all local areas, meaning that local authorities and PCTs will have an indication from parents in their area as to how well they are delivering services for disabled children.

More information is available online about the national indicator and core offer including links to the national research and local reports and a series of leaflets to provide stakeholders and parents with further information.

Young People’s Workforce Reform Programme

The programme is a key part of the government’s ten-year strategy for young people, Aiming High, and the 2020 Children and Young People’s Workforce Strategy.  The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) with key partners across the children and young people’s workforce are leading a series of reforms to create a more skilled and competent young people’s workforce.  The programme includes a significant investment in the leadership and management of the workforce, to support the contribution made by the third sector, and to help the workforce develop a set of integrated skills and competences.

For further information please visit the CWDC website.

Children and Young People's Plan 2009 - 2010

The Children’s Trust Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP) for 2009/10 is now available. The CYPP 2009/10 is a transformational plan providing continuity for the priorities and actions in the CYPP 2007/9 as well as setting out the planning process for establishing a 15 year strategy for the Children’s Trust. The plan can be downloaded here

Prevention Strategy Consultation

A copy of the prevention strategy Consultation 2009 -2012 is available to download here>>