Children's Trusts and Staffordshire

Children's Trusts are a response to Lord Laming's report of the inquiry
into the death of Victoria Climbié, which highlighted the extent to which
better working together and better communication are crucial. The evidence
from the inquiry confirmed many of the messages from previous inquiries into
similar child protection failings: the imperative to see and listen to children and respond to their needs, and to improve the quality of communication and joint working.

Children's Trusts have been created to address the fragmentation of responsibilities for children's services. They build upon, bring together and formalise the joint work that is already taking place in many local areas. Good examples of existing multi-agency work include: Sure Start, the Children's Fund, Connexions, Behaviour and Education support teams, children and young people's strategic partnerships, and Youth Offending teams.

The aim of a Children's Trust is to support those who work every day with children, young people and their families to deliver better outcomes.  This will mean that children and young people will experience more integrated and responsive services, and specialist support will be embedded in and accessed through universal services.

People will work in effective multi-disciplinary teams, either co-located or in a
 'virtual' manner using the Team Around the Child model.  This will mean joint
training to tackle cultural and professional divides, and the use of a 'Lead
Professional' model where many disciplines are involved.

     
Gill Stanford, Childrens commissioner

The Wider Partnership conference aims to provide a forum where the many stakeholders and organisations that provide services for children and young people can meet together to influence the Trust and find out about work being done.

The Community and Learning Partnerships (C&LP's) are local children and young peoples integrated service partnerships.  Services include both universal and targets services across the age range of 0 - 19. These are based around school pyramid localities and bring together statutory, voluntary and community, private sector, District/Borough Council services with parents, carers, children and young people to deliver the Core Offer of Extended Schools and Children's Centres.  The key function of the Community and Learning Partnerships is to provide the opportunity to build services around the child, young person and family, to support parents and carers and to promote prevention and early intervention. Initially these will be established in 32 areas with Super Output Areas in 30% of the most deprived areas.  The second phase will roll out across Staffordshire an additional 20 C&LP's.

The eight District Children's Trust Boards are the local strategic bodies of
multi-agency partner representatives assisting the Staffordshire Children's Trust in planning, coordinating, and ensuring the delivery of services to children and young people in the Districts and Boroughs.  The District/Borough Children's Trust Boards will receive reports from the Management Advisory Groups of Community and Learning Partnerships and will advise them on service provision and configuration to address the balance of need in the District/Borough.  In addition District/Borought Children's Trusts may, from time to time, commission Community and Learning Partnerships to deliver services and/or commission other agencies to deliver services within Community and Learning Partnerships. 

The Staffordshire Children's Trust Executive (ISG) is a large group with representatives of each District/Borough, each PCT, and each County multi-agency group e.g. ACPC, Children with Disabilities.  It also has representatives of universal services such as schools, youth services, Early Years, the voluntary sector.   This group is the 'engine room' of the Trust making decisions about how to integrate the services that we will need to provide for children and young people in the future. 
Find out more about the Staffordshire Children's Trust Executive (ISG).

The Shadow Children's Trust Board is a board of Children and Young People who are interested in issues which concern children and young people, and wish to help to make a difference.  They will be telling the Children's Trust Board about issues for children and young people in Staffordshire, talking though the Trust Plans and Strategies and influencing future priorities for service delivery.   Over the next twelve months boards, Shadow Trust arrangements will build on existing forums at district level to support the District and Borough Boards.  

 

                "All services working 
                together will make a 
                positive difference to 
                the lives of children 
                and young people." 
                (Peter Traves:
                'Building a Children's 
                Service').                              

           
         Peter Traves

The Trust Board is a small group of Chief Executives and Directors and is responsible for the governance of the Trust. 
Find out more about the Trust Board.

Last Modified: 06/11/2007 12:17:12
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