Developing Our New Children and Young People S Plan

Annex A

Developing our new Children and Young People’s Plan

Messages from children, young people and families

Background

Involving children and young people and hearing their voice is a well established part of how York works to deliver the best possible outcomes for families. The voices of children, young people, families and practitioners have played a pivotal role in the development of the new Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP).

The annual “Review of Voice”,completed in April 2015, brings together key messages from young people gathered through one-to-one work, participations groups, surveys and consultations. This knowledge of existing messages has formed a critical role in shaping the priorities for the new Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP).

In addition to building on our existing knowledge of what matters to people some additional direct consultation work has taken place over the summer. This included:

• Three onlineconsulation (one aimed at children and young people, one at parents and carers and another aimed at practitioners)

• Through community outreach (city centre, community/summer events)
• Through focus groups
• Through a group of young researchers
• Through our partners

The existing messages taken from the “Review of Voice” represent messages from thousands of children and young people. The direct consultation work engaged around 200 further young people, 400 parents and 184 practitioners and groups. A full list of the focus groups that have been engaged are available in Annex A.

A Thank you

The process of understanding what matters most to children, young people and families has not just been a consultation process. Children and young people themselves have played a pivotal role in helping to develop this understanding and gathering views from others. As well as thanking everyone that took part in the consultation and focus groups we would like to particularly recognise.

Young researchers

Over the summer a small group of young researchers have met on a weekly basis to explore themselves what they feels matter most to children and young people. They have produced their own report which should be viewed alongside this document.

Thank you to Liam, Amy, Callum and Katie for giving their time to help with this important work.

University of York – Student volunteers

Students from the University of York have given their time freely to support the consultation process for the development of a new Children and Young People's Plan. Thank you to Joy Martin, Denise Goh, Brooke Millhouse and Asma Ali for giving their time to do this important piece of work. Below is a short article written by Joy Martin about the groups experience of consulting with children and young people.

“This summer, I was fortunate enough to gain the opportunity to work with the York Children’s Trust and City Council, alongside three other students from the University of York. Our role was to help to develop the 2016 Children and Young People’s Plan by organising a number of consultation sessions with different Youth groups across the city. All of us returned from these sessions truly inspired by the optimistic and determined nature of the young people that we had met. During the consultation sessions, we discussed a number of different topics including housing, schools, pollution and crime. The young people that we spoke with were fantastic in the sense that they not only identified problems and areas for improvement for us but they also suggested potential solutions. All of us are now excited to see the ways in which our research may transpire into policy through the new Children and Young People’s Plan.”

York – A Good Childhood

The Children’s Society published the fourth annual Good Childhood Report[1] in 2015. It is based on The Children’s Society’s ongoing research on children’s subjective well-being, undertaken in collaboration with the University of York, which is the most extensive programme of national research on children’s subjective well-being globally. The purpose of this series of reports is to provide the best available up-to-date information about the perspectives of children in the UK on their lives and well-being.

The Good Childhood Report explores in detail a variety of measures to establish overall well-being. One measure replicated with 100 young people locally was in self-assessed satisfaction with different aspects of life. Children and young people were asked to rate how happy they are with these different areas on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being “Very satisfied”

It should be noted that due to the difference in sample sizes between the national and local figures there will be a larger margin of error on the accuracy of the local averages. Taking this into account it can be seen that York broadly matches the national picture for young people’s self perceived happiness.

A large scale piece of work was undertaken in the 2015 summer term through York schools in partnership with City of York Council and Leeds University. This research explored high level questions related to children’s emotional and mental health in York. Over 6,000 children and young people have taken part in this research. It has not been possible to reflect on this research and its findings for this report but it will of course form a key source of information to improve our understanding.

We can see from the direct consultation work that took place to inform the development of the new CYPP that generally people feel positively about York as a place for children and young people to live. The figure below shows how happy children and young people and parents or carers are with their local area.

There are many comments from children, young people, parents and carers which paint a positive picture of York as a safe and happy place to live.

“It is a great place to live and have community activities. York is a very unusual but incredible place and people should take the time to appreciate this.” – Young person

“...everyone is friendly and there is not much crime” – Young person

“...it is safe and I have lots of friends” – Young Person

“Historical city but not stuck in history, instead it’s quite forward thinking” – Young person

“Minorities such as the LGBT group are now getting a voice and representation, the same positive change is needed for all young people.” – Young person

“I was very happy living in York (now lives outside York) up until the age of 18 as my Social Worker always went over and beyond to help me” – Young person

“Lots of open space and parks, places for them to run around. We can walk to lots of facilities and park and ride is convenient” - Parent

“Safe village where children can 'play out' unsupervised. Good sense of community. Good access to cycle track, play facilities and excellent village primary school and catchment for excellent secondary.” - Parent

“Nice people, low crime, housing density is not too high, good community feel, good schools, good public transport, emphasis on cycling, sports, swimming and music opportunities.” – Parent

It is reassuring to see so many positive comments about people’s experiences of living and growing up in York. However this is not the story for everyone who took part in the consultation. A number of clear priorities emerge from the consultation which will need to be tackled in order to achieve the ambitious vision of the Children and Young People’s Plan. These priorities and the messages from families are explored in more detail in the following sections of this report.

Establishing Priorities

Practitioners strongly agreed on key priorities for the new Children and Young People’s Plan. This can be seen in the table and chart below where practitioners were asked how important different priority areas were.

In addition to the priorities above practitioners identified 19 other potential priorities. These are summarised in the table below.

A number of these additional priorities can be seen within the context of the core priorities already identified.

• “Partnership working” is the most commonly identified additional priority. The reasons behind this can be found in some of the comments made by practitioners:

“Many services have returned to working in silos since the transformations processes and not enough emphasis is on multi-agency working. More needs to be done to regroup services and bring them back together to remember why we are all providing a service and how this must be smooth and seamless.”

“Increase rather than decrease multi-agency working - this must be addressed at joint commissioning level as well as at the 'coal face'”

• “Community engagement” is another common theme which compliments the “partnership working” themes highlighted above. In particular comments suggest community engagement should take a focus of:
• including communities within our partnership working arrangements
• taking a more coordinated approach to volunteering across our children and young people’s workforce
• building community capacity and resilience to meet different levels of need outside of statutory provision.
• “Positive activities” is another area identified by practitioners as a potential priority. Where practitioners are suggesting this priority it is in recognition of the positive impact activities can have on well being, health and early help.
• Where “transitions” has been identified this could be in relation to a number of different transitions. For example moving from childcare into school, leaving care, moving from children to adults services, NEET and links with adult safeguarding arrangements.

Consultation work with children and young people also highlighted a number of key priorities. The table below shows how a summary of how feedback from children and young people attending focus groups breaks down against key priorities.

A key message which came through from children and young people is that they want the plan to be about their future but also very much about the here and now. This is reflected in the strong weighting given to the priorities above which have a greater immediacy to them.

It can also be seen from the table above there is a sizeable set of additional priorities identified by children and young people taking part in focus groups. These represent a diverse range of priority areas which are summarised in the chart below.

It can be seen that a significant number of the comments from focus groups related to positive activities. A broad range of feedback from children and young people is reflected under this category. For example:

• More places to hang out with friends.
• Cheaper access to things like cinemas, bowling alleys and gyms for children and young people.
• More activities aimed at young people who identify as LGBT.
• More support for disabled young people to be social. For example carers not available to support them to go out in an evening or see friends.

An issue which was closely related to positive activities was transport. The main theme emerging under this category was the cost of transport to get around York and the surrounding villages. This was particularly highlighted as an issue where children and young people wanted to access activities outside of their local area.

From the online consultation the main barriers identified to accessing positive activities were cost, availability in the local area or transport costs. The barriers to activities identified by young people are shown in the chart below.

The feedback gathered by young people who completed the online consultation generally echoed messages given through the focus groups. The table below shows in descending order what children and young people feel would make their life better.

Key differences are that the online respondents placed a greater priority on planning for the future and ways to volunteer than those in focus groups.

Having a voice

A high priority for all partners in recent years has been on developing the quality and breadth of opportunities for children and young people to have a voice and be involved in service design and delivery.

Encouragingly some clear progress is shown when asking children and young people if they feel their views have been listened to. This is shown in the chart below comparing responses in 2012 to 2015.

The proportion feeling their views were not listened to has remained fairly static (16% in 2012 and 17% in 2015). However the percentage who feel their views have been listened to has increased significantly (33% in 2015 to 70%) now.

This is a very encouraging picture but as outlined in the “Review of Voice 2015”[2] report there is still more work to be done to make sure voice and involvement arrangements continue to improve. From the consultation to support the development of the new CYPP we know:

• 29% of children and young people say that in the last year people have asked for their opinions about living in York or their life.
• The Youth Council raised concerns about the effectiveness of school councils and the need for meaningful opportunities for children and young people to have a voice.
• Disabled children and young people painted a more mixed picture. Some experiences were very positive and empowering and others less so. The main reason for there being differing experiences came down to the way individual practitioners may approach voice. In particular “new” practitioners listening to the voice of parents and carers ahead of the disabled child or young person. Children and young people suggested that practitioners should undertake training to help them better understand individual children rather than making assumptions.

View on the priorities

In this section some key messages from children, young people, parents, carers and practitioners in relation to the priorities of the new Children and Young People’s Plan are explored.

Narrowing the Gap

Children and young people often identified challenges they felt they personally faced or had seen others face. The nature of these challenges changed from young person to young person and from group to group. Key themes which emerged were around:

• Being seen as a label (e.g. young carer, looked after child, disabled) rather than seen first as a person with hopes, dreams and aspirations. Young people want others to understand about the issues they face but do not want to be defined by them.

“We don’t want sympathy, we want to be acknowledged.” – A young carer

• Young people strongly highlighted that they want support to make sure they are ready for the future at key transitions and into adult life. As well as thinking about tomorrow, children and young people also said that they want help and support with their lives now to help them to achieve and be happy.
• There was some concern from families and practitioners about how changes to services available across the city could lead to worse outcomes.

Whole family working

The concept of “whole family working” can be seen in some of the feedback from children and young people. For example:

• Children in care highlighted the need for a stable home and family.
• Disabled children and young people highlighted the complexity of family life and the connections between income, welfare and well-being.
• Young carers described the challenges that can be faced when trying to access services for family members.

From our existing knowledge of messages from young offenders we know how they view relationships in their family.

• 82% of young offenders feel cared about by their family.
• 86% say they have a secure and stable place to live
• 20% said they see their family having fights or arguments.
• 47% have lost someone special in their life.

We also know from the 2014 Stand Up For Us survey that 20.6% of primary school pupils reported they did not feel they had sufficient information about “family problems”.