Blog! 20th March 2008
Well, it seems so long since I sat to write my blog - so much has happened in the last few months.
Staffordshire is looking at how it can provide better services to and for young people, in the form of an 'Integrated Youth Support Service' (IYSS). This is about services for young people 'joining up', so that young people have 'no wrong door'. In other words, you can get advice about anything in any youth setting - the ideal is that you'd be able to get advice about things like health, benefits, jobs, qualifications, places to go and things to do - all in one place!
Several events for staff have been held to talk about how this could work best and what this new service should look like. One of the things that I want to do is find out what you think young people's services should be like, so you can email me your views or look out for one of a series of events across the county over the next twelve months; I'll keep you posted! You can also visit the link here to find out more: /isg/workstreams/IYSS/
Something else I've been involved with is setting up a 'children in care council'. The government's white paper 'Care Matters' is about making things better for children in care. Before it was written they asked hundreds of children and young people across the country what they thought about being in care. One of the strong messages that came back is that no one listens to you when you're in care. So - one of the recommendations of this paper will be that every local authority (council) has a children in care council to make sure that children in their care ARE listened to. I asked the young people who 'took over' for the day in November if they wanted to set this up and they did! They've now met three times since Christmas and are just finishing their 'constitution' - this is like having a recipe for making a cake, to make sure it works properly and includes things like - how often they'll meet - how many people should be in the group - what do they want to do?
They all agreed that they want to improve things for other children who are in care or may be coming into care.
At the last Children's Planning Network (professionals) we held a workshop to look at how we, as professionals work with children and young people and how we should be consulting with you. From this, I've drafted a 'strategy' - a formal document that will let everyone know how we should be working with children when we want to find out what they think. I'm taking it to the next meeting on the 1st April, to see what they think - once everyone has agreed that it's OK, then Ill publish it her.
Via have finished their evaluation of the children and Young People's Plan and are preparing a workshop so that hey can share this with the Children's Trust Board members and also with the writers of the plan. Their views will be included in this years up date of the plan and for next year, I'll be asking Via to think of the best ways to let children and young people know about the plan.
I attended the UKYP Youth Parliament elections in February - there were thousands of votes, so well done to all who were elected! The hard work starts now!
The 'Big Bruvver' project has been nominated for a national award, for involving children and young people. The team has to go to London in May - I will let you know how we get on in my May blog!
Next time I'll talk to you about Building Schools for the Future and my plans to make sure that children and young people are involved in shaping their learning for the future.
Gill
Last Modified:
20/03/2008 09:04:44
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