Welcome to the April Briefing for voluntary and community groups.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about what you read particuarly topics you want to see in future bulletins get in touch with us at [email protected], 0161 834 9823.
Contents:
Work continues developing a new approach to Early Help in Manchester, and it has been great to see so much strategic and front line engagement from the voluntary sector, shaping the work and ensuring it is relevant to voluntary sector groups and the communities that they work with.
The Fourth Voluntary Sector Early Help Summit will be on May 14th 1pm - 4pm. Book your place and find out more here:
The Third Summit carried on the work Macc has been facilitating, bringing the voluntary and community sector (VCS) together with the Early Help Team within Manchester City Council (MCC) to look at how we can work together to improve outcomes for Children, Young People and Families within the City.
Beth Plant from Macc was joined by Julie Heslop, Maureen Howell, Early Help Strategy Manager, Emily Gee and Rosie Hamer from the Transformation Team and Philip Bradley from Regeneration at Manchester City Council along with a number of voluntary sector organisations including Barnardos, Home Start North and South, Hideaway Youth Project, Together Trust, Wythenshawe Community Housing Group, Care for the Family and Groundwork.
See the report of the third summit here.
Consultation on the Thresholds of Need to access services in the City is happening now, as the Council reviews its Threshold of Needs document - find out more here or come along to the next Early Help Summit
Safe Families for Children is an international programme that provides early help to families and is looking to start work in Greater Manchester through the Audacious Church. It is an initiative that provides a range of support to families including befriending, emergency respite to parents (such as if a parent has to go into hospital and they don't have family or friends who can look after the child). It originated in Chicago and has been piloted in the North East. Find out more about the project here
The Board are working on a draft statement of intent, which articulates their strategic vision and the way partners want to work together. We will be consulting with voluntary sector groups to ensure that it reflects the values, approaches and relationships within the sector.
The Board had a discussion about the Health and Wellbeing Board Outcome that it will be overseeing- Getting the youngest people in our communities off to the best start
This is to support the wider Health and Wellbeing Board strategic review -
There are two headline outcomes related to this target
- The headline outcome for priority 1 is: - to improve children’s readiness for school (engage effectively with their school):The agreed indicator: The percentage of children achieving a Good Level of Development at the end of Reception( or the relevant national measure used following proposed changes to the Reception baseline) (PHOF 1.2)
- The second headline outcome for this priority is: - Children aged 5-18 are able to access early help and support when issues are identified.
The board went on to discuss what the most useful indicators would be for these outcomes, particuarly whether there should be an indicator around "familiy resilience" This is an issue that will be discussed further at the Voluntary Sector Early Help Summit.
There followed an interesting discussion about what school attendance of 2-5 year olds can reveal about outcomes for children, and it turns out that it's quite a lot! There is useful information about how families are making use of the free child care places for two year olds. Also school attendance in reception years can be very low for some children, sometimes this is due to sickness and sometimes because of wider issues affecting the family.
Youth Employment and Raising the participation age.
From summer 2015, the duty to participate in education or training applies to all young people aged up to their 18th birthday. Elaine Morrison Head of 10-19 year olds presented a report to the Board outlining how Manchester is responding to this. It also outlines the labour market analysis and predictions for the skills required for the future job market. Read the report here
OFSTED National Early Help Review - of their thematic inspection evaluating the effectiveness of early help services for children and families provided by local authorities and their partners. The report draws on evidence from inspections, from examining cases in 12 local authorities and from the views of children and young people, parents, carers, practitioners and managers.
The full report is here , a summary report prepared for the Children's Board is available here.
Use of MCAF - Groups should still be using the Manchester Common Assessment as part of their multi-agency working with children with multiple needs.
In the longer term the assessment may be replaced but in the short term it is still the tool that is being used. For further details see the MCAF Briefing.
Thematic Reports from OFSTED
OFSTED will be conducting an interim review during May to review how Manchester is progression. It will review how the OFSTED Improvement Board is progressing and talk to a range of partners about the current situation in Manchester.
Safeguarding Reports
National Social Care Review of 2013-2014 - Findings draw upon over 5,600 inspections of a range of crucial social care services, including local authority children’s services, children’s homes, fostering services, adoption support agencies, secure training centres, and residential family centres.
Female Genital Mutilation - Afruca have just released a report into Female Genital Mutilation in African Communities in Greater Manchester and have developed a set of recommendations.
The summary is available here and the full report here.
There are rounds of European Funding - being managed at a Greater Manchester level, that have potential for Children Young People and Family groups. Find out more here.
If you have any questions about European or other funding please contact the capacity building team on 0333 321 3021
Macc are offering a short training session on Co-production on June 30th. Find out more here
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Report on Raising the Participation Age | 346 KB |
 Safe Families for Children Presentation | 1.46 MB |
| Ofsted Thematic Briefing Early Help | 66.5 KB |