Minutes of Children and Families Partnership Board Meeting

Thursday 20 October 2016 12:00 – 2:00pm

Community Space, Bernard Weatherill House,

Mint Walk, Croydon CR0 1EA

Present:

Cllr Alisa Flemming(Chair)

Agnieszka Gebka, CYPFN (PiP)

Amanda Tuke, Head of Partnerships & Children’s Integrated Commissioning

Bernadette Alves, Consultant in public health

Jane Doyle, Director of Universal People Services

Karen Stott, CYPFN (Off the Record)

Maria Nawrocka, Children & Families Partnership Manager

Penny Smith-Orr, Faiths Together in Croydon

Sandra Richards, Designated LAC nurse, CCG

Sara Milocco, CVA

Virginia Marshall, Special Schools Headteacher

Kim Bennett, Croydon Drop-In

Liz Driver, CALAT

Chris Leigh, Early Intervention

Clare Brutton, Children’s Pathway Redesign Manager

Apologies:Margaret Bird,Bernadette Khan,Maria Gatland, Shafi Khan, Mark Swindells, Paula Doherty, Sam Taylor, Ian Lewis, David Butler, Barbara Peacock,Andy Opie,Jo Fletcher, Raquel Tomlinson, Shade Alu.

1:Welcome, introductions and apologies:

Cllr Flemming welcomed everyone to the meeting. Apologies were noted. Round room introductions were made.

2:Minutes of Children and Families Partnership Board meeting held on Wednesday 20 July 2016.

The minutes were agreed as a true and accurate record.

Matters arising from the minutes:

The Children and Families Plan including Child Poverty Plan has been approved and is on the Partnership pages of the Council website.

Action 2.1: Maria Nawrocka to send link to Children and Families Plan to members.

Action 2.2:Members to share the Children and Families Plan within their organisations to ensure everyone is aware of the Partnership priorities.

Love Lane has now been shortlisted as Play Street of the Year by London Play – results will be announced at the awards ceremony on 27 October. This is a great endorsement of the Love lane and Croydon Play Streets.

The Childhood Obesity workshop was held on 5 October and was a great success. This is covered in Item 6.

3:Early Help: Best Start Engagement

Best Start provides a multi-agency model for improving universal and early intervention services for children from pregnancy to aged five and their families so that every baby, child and young person is equipped with social and emotional skills and resilience to maximise their life chances, enabling them to realise their potential

Best Start is driven by function not professional demarcation with cross-disciplinary working and leadership changing the way professionals work together and with children and families.

There are three workstreams:

  • Communications
  • Commissioning
  • IT

The Best Start Awareness Day on 14 October was a networking opportunity, bringing together a range of partners, as well as a chance to engage with parents and explain the Best Start approach. The event involved health visiting, school nursing, breast feeding, children’s centres,school admissions, two-year-old funding and voluntary sector partners. The event was well attended by families who found out more about services available.

Going forward Best Start would build on community development and volunteering. There was a parent champions programme to encourage other parents to engage. A parent buddies scheme was being piloted at Kensington Avenue with the intention of rolling this out more widely. It was noted that parent buddies would be particularly beneficial for those with children with SEND. It was also important to identify buddies from particular faith communities. Community builders would work in each locality.

Parents had also been involved in co-design and governance of Best Start with a parent-led steering group.

[1]Action 3.1: Send Best Start contact details, facebook page and maps of children’s centres and Health Clinics to members.

4.1Reduce child poverty:

The young people led Child Poverty Strategy identified four themes:

  • Poor education - low education achievement, lack of qualifications and training.
  • Environment – poor quality housing and living condition, rundown areas that lack facilities.
  • Unemployment - joblessness, lack of income and less opportunity
  • Poor health – young people can experience poor physical and mental health

4.2Reduce child poverty: Small Steps to Employment

The Small Steps to Employment started as a six week programme for 7 parents on the cusp of losing benefits. All were out of work bringing up young children. The programme was delivered in collaboration between CALAT and a children’s centre.

The course involved all the elements required to support people on the transition into get a job. All parents had confidence and literacy needs but there was also support in writing a personal statement and developing a CV. All seven were now in work, volunteering or in training.

There were now five progammes across the borough and they have been extended to eight weeks. The parents were all referred through the children’s centre host.

CALAT provided a wide range of family learning in the community working with both parents and children

Action 4.1: Liz Driver’s contact details to be shared with members.

4.3Reduce child poverty: Flexible Working

The Partnership survey of lone parents had identified that lack of working opportunities that fit with childcare responsibilities was the main barrier to employment. The current focus in reducing child poverty was on achieving accreditation for Croydon as a Flexible Working Borough.

Flexible working benefits:

–Employers - attract, retain and progress the best talent; deliver services cost efficiently; and adapt to changing business conditions.

–Individual employees - balance their work, family life and community commitments.

–Social benefits - more inclusive local labour market; reducing the number of people dependent on benefits; reducing the number of children of working parents who live in poverty; enabling older workers to stay in the labour market; enabling carers to balance their caring responsibilities with paid work.

Part of the process was about the Council as an employer and recruiter and part about influencing other employers in Croydon to increase flexible working opportunities.

The Flexible working steering group is currently developing the Implementation plan. When this is approved by Timewise Croydon will be accredited as a flexible working borough.

The action plan is organised by five themes:

  • Leadership;
  • Flexible Working (within the Council);
  • Flexible Hiring (by the Council);
  • Flexible Labour Market (Other Croydon employers); and
  • Flexible Commissioning.

The Steering group were consulting on including the following high level actions:

  • Ensure our recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible including reference to flexible working
  • Improving understanding of current flexible working arrangements through
  • Introducing an Employment Charter for Croydon which includes a commitment to flexible working and timewise accreditation

It was expected that the Implementation Plan would be submitted in November with accreditation in December, 2016.

Board members undertook a bench marking exercise on attitudes to flexible working in partnership organisations.

5.Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health

The Local Transformation Plan was being refreshed: the priorities were unchanged but was more specific around some themes particularly universal and community services and the very vulnerable, especially looked after children and young offenders.

Provision needs to be evidence based, to meet need and meet our priorities.

There were presentations on the services offered by voluntary sector partners. All voluntary sector partners had experiences an increase in demand for their services and had been able to extend their offer due to funding from the Local Transformation Plan.

Croydon Drop-In (cdi)

CDI provide free, confidential services to young people 10 – 25 who live, work or study in the borough of Croydon and opening hours had been extended to 8pm. They use volunteer counsellors and currently have a six week waiting time,

The core services provided:

  • Drop-In support service ( an open door policy / open access provision)
  • Counselling Service
  • Advocacy and Advice a wide range of information on health; housing; money; debt employment/training - working within a Human Rights framework
  • Counselling In 8 Schools (primary and secondary)
  • Outreach Health and Wellbeing Education,
  • TALKBUS service and Community Support
  • Information / Sign Posting / Support
  • Young Peoples’ Groups
  • Training – Accredited and non-accredited courses and workshops
  • Parent Infant Partnership – In partnership with Croydon Best Start and PIPUK - PIP is a new initiative for CDI.

Off the Record (OTR)

OTR provide a wide range of free, friendly and accessible support services for young people in Croydon and Sutton.

  • Counselling – a friendly, non-judgemental and confidential space for 14 – 25 years olds to explore their thoughts, feelings, beliefs or experiences with a trained listener.
  • Compass - specialist mental health service providing support to young people in Croydon who are refugees, asylum seekers or forced migrants.
  • The Young Carers Project - a free, friendly and professional service, offering support to young people (aged 7-25) who are caring for a parent or sibling.
  • BME Community Development Workers - helps the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) community to develop mental health services. By providing support to mental health and community organisations to help the development of services for young people and young adults aged 0-35 years.

In Summer, 2016 Skyline was launched to provide online counselling and workshops to young people aged 14-25 in Croydon and Sutton.

The workshops are free, informal and online, providing practical help and information about key issues such as depression, stress, anger or anxiety.

SkyLinecounselling provides one-to-one support online. Users write about their problems giving them space to explore their thoughts and feelings in their own time and in their own personal space.

The counselling happens through a secure website, so messages are exchange privately and confidentially with a counsellor. There is a choice of live chat or message-based counselling.

Other voluntary sector provision

There was a diverse range of services provided by the voluntary sector in Croydon to support children and young people emotional wellbeing and mental health. These include:

  • RASAC
  • Cassandra Learning Centre
  • Safer London Foundation
  • NSPCC
  • Croydon Relate
  • Time4me
  • Place2Be
  • Roundabout
  • HomeStart Croydon
  • Woodside Bereavement Services
  • Young Roots
  • Asset Based Community Development
  • Health Champions

Action 5.1: Contact details of the voluntary sector organisations supporting children and young people emotional wellbeing and mental health to be circulated to members.

Action 5.2: Skyline services to be promoted with school nurses and special school nurses

Action 5.3:Skyline services to be promoted at GP events

Action 5.4:Skyline services to be promoted through the schools bulletin

Action 5.5:Skyline services to be promoted at Secondary Heads meeting

Action 5.6:Skyline services to be promoted through Faiths Together in Croydon newsletter

Action 5.7:Skyline services to be promoted at SENCOs Forum

6.Reducing Childhood Obesity

The Healthy Weight workshop brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including young people, concerned with reducing obesity in children and young people. 60-70 ideas were generated by the participants which were voted on to identify the top ten.

An action plan would now be developed covered physical activity, healthy eating and self-esteem and a range of activities already being undertaken as well as areas where value could be added.

From the many actions in the Plan it was important that these were prioritised to ensure that the work of the steering group was focussed and achievable. There also needed to be a balance between heathy eating and physical activity. Success would depend on strong community engagement and ownership of the plan.

7.AOB

The Partnership launched its new e-learning course on Autism Awareness in April. This was developed with parents and carers in Croydon. Already almost 500 people had completed the course and the ratings were extremely positive with 99% ‘agreeing’ or ‘strongly agreeing’ with the statement ‘I will be able to apply the knowledge I have learned’.

Action 7.1: Details of the e-learning offer to be circulated to members

Action 7.2: Proposals for future Board meeting items to be sent to Maria Nawrocka

The Chair thanked everyone for attending.

Next Meeting of the Board: Thursday 20October 2016.

Action No / Action / Action by / Status
2.1 / Link to Children and Families Plan to be sent to members / Maria Nawrocka / Complete
2.2 / Members to share the Children and Families Plan within their organisations to ensure everyone is aware of the Partnership priorities. / All / On-going
3.1 / Send Best Start contact details, facebook page and maps of children’s centres and Health Clinics to members. / Maria Nawrocka / Complete
4.1 / Liz Driver’s contact details to be shared with members. / Maria Nawrocka / Complete
5.1 / Contact details of the voluntary sector organisations supporting children and young people emotional wellbeing and mental health to be circulated to members. / Maria Nawrocka / Complete
5.2 / Skyline services to be promoted with school nurses and special school nurses / Amanda Tuke / Complete
5.3 / Skyline services to be promoted at GP events / Sandra Richards / Complete
5.4 / Skyline services to be promoted through the schools bulletin / David Butler / Complete
5.5 / Skyline services to be promoted at Secondary Heads meeting / David Butler / Complete
5.6 / Skyline services to be promoted through Faiths Together in Croydon newsletter / Penny Smith-Orr / For 10.4.17 Newsletter
5.7 / Skyline services to be promoted at SENCOs Forum / Agnieszka Gebka / Complete
7.1 / Details of the e-learning offer to be circulated to members / Maria Nawrocka / Complete
7.2 / Proposals for future Board meeting items to be sent to Maria Nawrocka / All / On going

CFP Board 20/10/16Page 1

[1] The PRISM consortium is commissioned by Best Start to deliver courses to parents of children under 5 who are identified as having a Social & Communication Difficulty.