Children Young People and Families October Briefing

Introduction
OFSTED
Early Help
CAMHS
Domestic Violence

Introduction

Over the last couple of months there have been a number of important developments that will impact on the work of the  voluntary and community sector in the city and their work with Children, Young People and Families.

This briefing summarizes the main issues that Macc is currently working on and the key themes of the City's partnership boards including Manchester Safeguarding Children's Board, and Manchester Children's Board. At the bottom of the report are some of the papers from the September Partnership Meetings.

The biggest news has been about Manchester's OFSTED Inspection and the social care arrangements for the city being deemed "unsatisfactory".  Alongside this Macc have  been working with the voluntary sector  about changes to Child and Adolescent Mental Health and the  redesign of domestic abuse services within the city known as "Delivering Differently".

 If you have any questions, would like further information  or have any  comments, get in touch with us on 0161 834 9823 or [email protected]

1.1 OFSTED

The inspection of Manchester City Council and MSCB Safeguarding arrangements by OFSTED  was deemed unsatisfactory. The full report is available here.

A summary of the key findings is available here.

The OFSTED report raises a number of interesting questions about social care but it did not really consider   the role of the  voluntary and community sector.

OFSTED is currently consulting on its next inspection framework will work with partner agencies in a more integrated way.  OFSTED has said that

"This marks a major step forward in the way that the contribution of local agencies is assessed with regards to the help, care and protection of children, young people and families"

Unsurprisingly, the main focus for the MSCB under the leadership of the new chair Jane Booth,  and the Children's Board will be bringing Manchester up to a satisfactory standard of safeguarding and social care for children.

However, given the current economic and social environment, and the fact that so many local authorities are failing OFSTED inspections, it raises questions as to whether it is possible within current levels of funding, to  realistically expect local authorities to be able to deliver  high quality services.  This is part of a wider debate for all sectors to have about the kind of services that we want in our city.

1.2 So what happens next?

There are a range of actions that will take place to try and bring services up to a satisfactory standard.

 OFSTED will issue a compliance notice, outlining what it expects to happen.

A multi-agency team of  sector agencies is meeting with OFSTED to implement the recommendations - Mike Wild Chief Executive of Macc has been invited to attend these

In practice it will mean that there are higher levels of scrutiny and more intense pressure to be seen to  improve and to improve very quickly. 

The Safeguarding Board will be reviewing its structure and looking at how it can engage all partners more effectively - it needs to consider who sits on the board - are they the right people - how is it using sub groups and task and finish groups?

The challenge within this is that, what may be needed to comply with OFSTED may not be  the same as what is needed in the long term to develop the best services for children and young people in the city. 

The  Council will be pushing ahead with changes to the way that Manchester Common Assessment Framework and Early Help are implemented as well as implementing the new Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub which it wants to be up and running by April 2015.  It is currently piloting a multi-agency triage of domestic abuse cases as a prelude to this.  The time frame for the development of this domestic abuse triage was very short and there was not consultation with the voluntary sector  groups about it.

Training provision around Safeguarding particularly how learning was disseminated from serious case reviews was flagged as a problem.  The board had already commissioned a report about training provision and the difficulties in finding sufficient resources and trainers to enable a strategic approach to be taken for learning and development.  

1.3 Meeting with the Voluntary and community sector about OFSTED and the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)
Macc organised a meeting for Karen Dolton Assistant Director of Safeguarding from the Council and Julie Heslop, Strategic Lead for Prevention to discuss the report and the development of the MASH. The minutes are available here.

The Children, Young People and Families Leaders Group will be writing a response to the OFSTED report which will be shared with the partnership boards and with the wider voluntary sector.

2: The Voluntary Sector Summit on Early Help
Macc and Manchester City Council invite Voluntary and Community Sector Groups to this summit hosted by Elaine Morrison, Head of Commissioning 10-19 years Manchester City Council and Beth Plant, Policy and Influence Manager at Macc.

In the light of the recent OFSTED Inspection which found that Manchester’s Children’s Services and Safeguarding Children’s Board were inadequate, combined with the recession, public spending cuts and long-standing deprivation in local communities there is a considerable challenge for all sectors working together to provide high quality services. 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.

There are key challenges for the city understanding the role the voluntary sector plays in terms of:
• How VCS groups, particularly small groups work with children, young people and families (CYPF) who are under the radar of public sector services
• How VCS groups works CYPF with high levels of complex needs
• What can we do working with partners to ensure children and young people get help early enough that it will make a difference?

This summit will be part of a wider programme of work with the Council to increase the connection between the work the VCS does to support CYPF and the Early Help approach of Manchester City Council.

To book on click here

3: Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in the City. (CAMHS)
The Council and NHS are currently reviewing their CAMHS provision. Like other services it is considering how they could intervene earlier, at lower levels of need in order to reduce the number of people presenting with acute difficulties.

James Williams - Strategic Commissioning Manager ( Programmes ) for Manchester City Council had presented a paper to the Children's Board.  Macc spoke to him about ways he could involve the VCS  in the consultation about the future vision of CAMHS for the City.

James came to meet VCS groups to discuss the CAMHS review and also ways in which they could encourage their service users to be involved in the consultation as it had been recognised that the voice of service users needed to be seen in the consultations.

The minutes of the meeting are available here

The key issues that arose from the meeting were:

• The need for the Commissioners to more clearly understand the role of the VCS both as a strategic partner in developing solutions to CAMHS provision.
• The need to map how the VCS is funded to deliver CAMHS and how it draws in money from external sources such as trust funds, this additional funding is often dependent on core funding being provided by the Council.  This complex map needs to be understood before funding decisions are made about public sector commissioning.
• There is a gap in service user voice - many of the VCS groups are best placed to support their participation and the commissioners are keen to work with the VCS to carry out this engagement about the future of CAMHS.

Following the meeting Beth Plant and John Butler (Macc Mental Health Development Worker) arranged to meet with James Williams and Elaine Morrison (Head of Commissioning 10-19) to discuss how to take these issues forward and are supporting the Commissioners to undertake this wider research with the sector.

Early Intervention Psychosis Service
John Sainsbury, Service Manager of the  Early Intervention Psychosis (EIP) Service, which is delivered by Rotherham and Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust approached Macc because he wanted to build stronger links between his service and the VCS, to promote the work of the EIP and to understand how they could refer more to the VCS.

The minutes of the meeting are available here:

The key issues that were brought up were:

• There is the need for awareness raising between VCS and CAMHS services which would have benefits for service users and VCS and public sector services.
• EIP staff to identify which areas/ issues they are looking to refer into:
• There are capacity issues if EIP start referring more to the VCS and it can't be assumed that groups have a lot of spare capacity.  Such a process would need to be properly managed and the resource implications assessed.

The minutes are available here.

4: Domestic Violence Service  Redesign - Delivering Differently
Manchester City Council has been awarded funding by National Government to look at the way it and partners delivers domestic violence services under the Delivering Differently Fund  A team of consultants is working with Hazel Summers, Head of Commissioning, Andy Bowie and Shirley Wood- Gallagher from the Commissioning Hub within the City Council to look at this. 

The team are currently consulting on the future of the services delivered and funded by the public sector.

Macc has been working with voluntary sector providers to support their engagement in the process and to promote the  role of voluntary and community sector organisations as strategic partner with expertise in the needs of the city and not just as providers of services commissioned by the public sector.

To be effective it is critical that future strategy and commissioning understands what is provided by the sector, how it is funded, how it draws in extra funding such as from trust funds and how core funding provided by the public sector is needed to draw in money from external sources for service provision. 

If these factors are not taken account of, then understandings of the current landscape of domestic abuse services end up being severely skewed towards a public sector framework.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Papers (CAMHS)

 OFSTED And MASH

 Children's Board Themes

Family Povery Strategy and Action Plan Report.  It is useful  alongside this to look at the  Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission Presentation on Social mobility and child poverty in Britain.  Another recent review of child poverty published by End Child Poverty reveals that  t Manchester has the fourth highest levels of child poverty in England at 39%

Looked After Children Commissioning Report

Improving Attendance and attainment Report

Child Health Profile Report for City of Manchester