Draft Levels of Need Document - Voluntary Sector Consultation

The draft Levels of Need document aims to set out a clear, understandable description of the level of need that should be present in order to access certain levels of services across the city. It will be discussed at the Early Help Summit on the 14 May.

Thresholds are a critical issue for the sector and our service users and we need to work together to solve these issues. We are all aware of the difficulties of accessing appropriate services, the rise in waiting times coupled with people presenting at voluntary sector organisations with more and more complex issues who don’t now meet thresholds for other services.

As well as being a legal requirement for each local authority, it is fundamentally important that Manchester gets this document right. It is part of the work we are doing to improve cross sector collaboration and understanding of available services (public sector and voluntary sector), so that together we can best support children, young people and families in the right way at the right time.

The Early Help Team have asked for voluntary sector feedback by 14 May.

Please bear in mind it is still very much in draft form - at this stage please focus your comments on the content not the design and layout of the document.

The first few pages provide a ‘page at a glance’ for each level. The appendix contains much further detail should practitioners wish to seek out more information.

The Early Help Team have asked for feedback on:

• Language / Terminology (especially the section headings) - they want the themes to be less value laden and judgemental. For instance they are considering changing the eight section headings to the following five themes:

1. Home life - i.e. housing, income, borrowing, heating, hygiene, repair, rent, family relationships
2. Work life - employment status, fulfilling aspirations, making ends meet, use of skills
3. School / College life - i.e. attending achieving, good support, access to choices, use of skills
4. My Social / Community life - friends, family neighbours, digital access, use of local resources, parks and swimming pools, local activity etc
5. My health and wellbeing - check-ups, smoking, drugs drinking, exercise, eating, vaccinations
   
   They thought the use of 'my' creates ownership. We can talk about aspects of each in terms of positive and negative. And this overcomes the issue of drugs and alcohol as being a 'topic'. It kind of supports the idea you don't have to have a really serious issue to have early help advice or support, just one aspect of your life might be needing something else.

• Content in each level - are the indicators in the right place?
• What is missing? - from both the text / tables

Please ignore the Step up - Step down page. This is being developed in line with the Children in Need framework.

Comments and feedback should be emailed to: [email protected] by 14 May or you can bring it to the Early Help Summit.

If you have any questions please contact Beth Plant Policy and Influence Manager, on 0161 834 9823, or email: [email protected]