Children and Young peoples Plan - Overarching themes

Making York the best place where children and young people can grow up.

	Below are the key messages that came out of the consultation across all of the theme areas. If you want to know more about what people told us you can download a longer summary for the 'overarching themes' section.

Key Messages

Child Poverty

There are 3.9 million children living in poverty throughout the UK today, coexisting with the current insecure economic climate, York is conscious of a possible local downtown.

The Children and Young Peoples Plan links to the Sustainable City aspirations. The ‘Sustainable Community Strategy’ sets out a clear vision for the city and its commitment to ensure that it remains a supportive, thriving city and at the forefront of any social and economic change.

The generational recurrence of child poverty is a cause for the continuation of child poverty. The current work by York on early intervention and prevention, ‘Narrowing the Gap’ and decreasing the difference in academic achievement aims to help eradicate child poverty.

It is recognised that diversity in family living plays a role in the continuation of child poverty. A number of risk features such as larger families, workless families, ethnic minority groups and those families with a disabled member have been identified as more at risk. In order to continue to challenge child poverty head on, the diversity of child poverty must be recognised and subsequently the different economic challenges each situation faces.

The impact and experience of poverty on the life experiences of children & young people, often concentrates on future outcomes rather than what is wanted or needed now, however each of the 5 ECM themes have links

Safety

• lack of affordable and accessible transport
• potential rise in Anti-social behaviour if the cost of alternative entertainment rises
• Safety in the home could be threatened by cost savings

Healthy

• Cost of living and food rises may have an impact on healthy eating therefore weight (It is known that a key factor in childhood obeisity is disadvantage)
• Poverty can lead to a stressful environment, with impact on a child’s mental and physical health

Enjoy and Achieve

• achievement in school is often vulnerable when environmental factors are challenging
• more difficult to remain within further education because it becomes to expensive, living costs too high

Economic Well- Being

• NEET figures may rise – unemployment is likely to affect young aand inexperienced in the workforce
• Possibly fewer jobs in a variety of sectors

Participation - difficult to participate in leisure activities - Charlotte Breen Children’s Trust Unit

We would support child poverty as a priority in the plan. Tackling this underpins much of the work in the plan for the children and families affected.

Inequalities influence health and health behaviours and we’d be keen to further develop an approach that doesn’t just focus on the end health problem but is holistic. We need to think about the skills and circumstances as well as the services that children, young people and their families need for health and wellbeing. Part of this might be about a community development approach engaging with families. A social marketing approach could also be worth considering. NYYPCT Health Improvement Team

14-19 Partnership,

With the Local Authority, through its Lead Strategic Partner role in the 14-19 Partnership, taking responsibility for commissioning 16-18 education from 2010 the ultimate accountability runs through to the YorOK Board. We would like to see this linkage made more explicit and given a much higher profile. This would support us in our efforts to better focus providers on the interests and needs of all learners across the city and to overcome sectional interests.

We support the concept of interdependence of ECM and standards, and expect that the next CYPP will point to challenge and support (and its results) influencing commissioning decisions regarding 16-18 provision from 2010 when tha LA assumes responsibility for this.

Need an emphasis on working more extensively with the voluntary sector and actively encourage the development of enrichment activities with associated community benefits. 14-19 Partnership

Strategic Partnerships

There are many areas where other partnerships in the city can support this work. The York@Large partnership has specific child centred targets regarding sport, but through its wider cultural remit draws together some of the key cultural and informal learning providers for young people in the city. Future collaborative working between the partnership and with key providers would be most welcome and would recognise the role York @Large can play out-with the sports sector. NRM – York@large

In particular the Trust needs to work much more closely with Safer York Partnership and the YOT. It is not yet clear that YorOK has fully embraced the youth ASB and youth crime prevention agenda, and SYP does not have a clear distinct approach to children and young people - leaving a significant crack in the paving. YOT

Commissioning Strategy

An integrated commissiong strategy is essential. Commissioning in complex, multi-faceted arrangements must enable the positives of more simple arrangements. For example: the ability to respond swiftly to identified need; to use shared need to broker partnerships; to encourage creativity; to ensure the involvement of children & young people. Mature partnerships garner trust and respect but also recognise the importance of indicators to evidence success.

The Integrated Commissioning Strategy would have failed if, as a result, investment was diverted from direct service to invest in managing the information. This is a fear as there are few examples of the opposite taking place. CAMHS EXEC

Throughout this submission is threaded the need for robust targetting of early intervention services etc. That is what the YOT sees as the principle weakness in provision. There are some excellent projects and a great deal of interagency cooperation at practitioner level. But it does not constitute a clear strategy or a programme of work.

Workforce strategy

Having a clear children’s workforce strategy is key, but there are issues here for early years PVI settings as these must be included in the strategy but are not direct employees of the local authority. Steps to Quality Group

Work on the child workforce strategy linked to the PVI sector is beginning to evolve through its relationships with the TDU and local training providers. Funding to enable a large number of people to access training to graduate status is being used effectively in the city and this programme will be linked to a wider strategy of creating a route for training from level 2 entry to masters Level for our most experienced and committed practitioners. EYESP