Central Locality Forum Special Briefing

Feedback Pro forma

Central Locality Forum Action Plan Priority / Identify any work arising from a Fairer Start
Attendees / Pam Birtle (CLF), Anne Howard (CLF, Julie Derbyshire (SRCGA), Steve Brock (CLF), Aishah Waithe (Catalyst), Sarah Robinson (SBC)
Discussion
At the May 2014 meeting of the Central Locality Forum, it was agreed that a special briefing on a Fairer Start would be held for members of the forum rather than a task and finish group. The following information was provided to those who attended:
  • In recognition that the first few years of a child’s life are crucial to their development and in setting the foundations for positive outcomes across the life course, Fairer Start aims to ensure that every child has the best start in life.
  • The overarching target is school readiness as outcomes in later life are improved if a child reaches school readiness.
  • Stockton Town centre ward is being used as a pilot area as only 46% of children are achieving good school readiness.
  • The community will set the foundations for this project and are one of the most important assets for the project. Opportunity for community champions who could signpost to services and wider families such as grandparents
  • Are identifying what works well locally to ensure no duplication – an example was given of the Peoples Pantry concept.
  • The project will systematically identify and target children, families and communities, holistically assess individual needs, provide tailored packages of support, develop systems and processes to provide a central point of contact, coordination, referral routes, follow up, tracking and monitoring.
  • The approach will be built on the ten recommendations set out by the WAVE trust in their ‘Conception to Age of Opportunity’ report. Two of these recommendations - ensure good, health-led multi-agency work and ensure early years workforce have requisite skills are where it is hoped there will be capacity and assets in the community to add value to this.
  • Funding of £500k for 2 years is provided by the CCG, public health and resource from Catalyst, funding to be identified for the 3rd year of the project. The majority of this funding is for community resource. If it is identified that a service needs to be redesigned, the CCG and local authority will look at this under current budgets.
  • Asking for input from communities to feed in what did/did not work in the past
  • It was requested that there is a rep from the Central Locality Forum on the group which will look at ideas for the project.
  • The engagement specification is currently out to tender at

Actions: / Due to low numbers in attendance at this session, Aishah to attend a future meeting of the Forum to update on progress and for any community champions in post to attend.
It was requested that Aishah include a rep from the CLF on the action group for the project.
Any other information: /