Thursday 19 February 2015, 10am - 12noon
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.
This work programme developed due to a range of issues:
• The recent Ofsted Inspection - which found that Manchester’s Children’s Services and Safeguarding Children’s Board were inadequate and highlighted the need to strengthen the work around Early Help in the city
• The current social and economic context - the recession, public spending cuts, voluntary sector cuts and long-standing issues of social and economic deprivation in local communities
• The reduction in real wages and welfare benefits and the increasing use of sanctions impacting the communities that the volutnary sector work with
• Public sector and voluntary sector workers are all overstretched trying to tackle increasing demand and need to come together with children, young people and families, to think differently
Fundamentally, there is overwhelming evidence that the effects of austerity measures, including the welfare reforms, have increased the challenges that all agencies face in providing services to provide positive activities, fun and play, increase wellbeing and resilience, create strong communities and keep vulnerable children and families safe.
Details of the previous summits are available here
Background:
There have been some significant changes since the previous summit.
1) The Council has been consulting on next year's budget cuts, although they are not confirmed, we are aware of what the Council is 'mindful' to do and how this will impact on our services, service users and wider communities
2) We have a new Interim Director of Children's Services, Gladys Rhodes-White
3) Early Help has been moved from Education and Skills to Social Care and now sits under Julie Heslop, Strategic Lead Integration and Prevention for Children and Families
4) The Early Help Strategy and the level of needs document is being re-written and it is crucial that the voluntary sector has a strong voice in this process
The Meeting
1) Beth Plant, Manager of Policy and Influence at Macc Introduced the meeting and recapped on the work that has been carried out at the previous summits
2) Julie Heslop, Strategic Lead Integration and Prevention for Children and Families:
Julie has been leading on the development of a number of areas of social care for the council, particularly: the Multi Agency Public Safeguarding Hub; Troubled Families and Complex Dependency. She has now taken on the additional challenge of Early Help. It was felt that it fitted best in the continuum of interventional within social care rather than where it previously sat within Education and Skills. The work will take forward the progress made under Elaine Morrison and Elaine will continue to be involved in aspects of Early Help.
Julie is very keen to further develop the positive engagement of the voluntary sector in the Early Help Programme.
Julie's Presentation is available here.
A report to the Children's Board analysing the Manchester Common Assessment Framework (MCAF) how it's used and what the main presenting issues are, is available here.
3) Early Help Hubs
The group had a really interesting disucssion about the idea of Early Help Hubs - how can we bring everybody together at a local level to better support children and families before they reach crisis point.
Notes of the discussion are available here. It is an idea that we will be continuting to explore with the Council and other partners.
4) Actions arising from the meeting:
• MCC to look at sharing a regular update with the VCS (similar to the update currently shared with schools) in order to improve communications around the Early Help Strategy and Activity
• Clarity to be given on active phone lines providing advice and support on Early Help cases and referrals going forward
• Consideration will be given for a VCS rep to sit within the Manchester Public Service Hub
• Early Help should consider other specific issues facing the city and communities, e.g. Femal Genital Mutilation, Child Sexual Exploitation and what role the strategy has here
• MCAF Task and Finish Group
• Communication to be given that the MCAF is still in use and we all must continue to use and complete them in order to continue to support families and record activity
• Feedback and comments on assessments should feed into the wider piece of work on single assessment being led by Sarah Jackson – a further session with Sarah and the VCS will be arranged
If you have any questions, contact: Beth Plant, Policy and Influence Manager, on 0161 834 9823, or email: [email protected]
