June Activity Blog

Parents involved in writing the local authority inclusion policy

I have been undertaking some work with Gill Stanford the Commissioner for Children and a lady called Lynda Mitchell, who works in the School Improvement Division (SID). SID is in the process of rewriting their inclusion policy and to help children and their parents be part of the rewrite we have been creating a DVD. We have worked with groups of parents and children to get their views on inclusion and the DVD will be used to encourage other parents and children to have there say. The comments that Lynda collects will be used to help her consider the content of the inclusion policy.

Parents to be involved in recruitment of the new CLL corporate director

Peter Traves, the Director of Children's Services was keen for parents to be part of the interviews for the Deputy Corporate Director, so we have helped make this happen and now have parent representatives as part of the interview panel!!

Parent's views go far and wide

The DVD of parents now features on the corporate webpage as well as my webpage; this is helping to get parents views about services to a larger scale audience.

Parents help set Children Trust priorities

Like all other Local Authorities we have something called a Children's and Young Peoples Plan. This plan lays out the priorities and key actions that agencies who work with children and their families will be taking to improve outcomes for children. The plan is informed by data and also by what people tell us…. every three years something called a Joint Strategy Needs Assessment (JSNA) is undertaken, in brief this is the data that helps us decide what we need to do.

Children and young people in Stafford have been helping decide the key priorities for the Children and Young Peoples plan and their views form part of the JSNA. This year is the first where we have also taken the voice of parents and made sure their key messages form part of the JSNA. What we have done is taken the 2000 voices we collected and taken the key messages about what you as parents see as important for making sure your children get the best possible outcomes in life and asked for these to be part of the JSNA data set. This has been agreed - so parent's views will now also inform the priorities of the next Children's and Young Peoples plan which will be out in 2010. We will probably want to talk to you more about this as 2010 approaches.

Charlotte hears about the needs of prisoners with children

I met with the chief executive of women's aid who does a lot of work with mums in prison. She was telling me about some of the barriers to support  these women and to their families who are caring for their children. One of the Community and Learning Partnerships  is looking to work with us to undertake a piece of work whereby we can get the voice of this group of mothers and find out what they and their families need from services and then look at how we can change practice to support some of the messages they tell us.