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Children's Trusts - general information

 

ECM BannerChildren's Trusts bring together all services for children and young people in an area, underpinned by the Children Act 2004 duty to cooperate, to focus on improving outcomes for all children and young people.

They will support those who work every day with children, young people and their families to deliver better outcomes - with children and young people experiencing more integrated and responsive services, and specialist support embedded in and accessed through universal services.

People will work in effective multi-disciplinary teams, be trained jointly to tackle cultural and professional divides, use a lead professional model where many disciplines are involved, and be co-located, often in extended schools or children's centres.

Children's Trusts will be supported by integrated processes. Some processes, like the Common Assessment Framework, will be centrally driven, whereas others will be specified at a local level.

While integrated delivery can be fostered in many ways, and at many levels, making sure the system overall is meeting the right needs for the right children and young people requires effective integrated strategies:

  • A joint needs assessment
  • Shared decisions on priorities
  • Identification of all available resources
  • Joint plans to deploy them    

This joint commissioning, underpinned by pooled resources, will ensure that those best able to provide the right packages of services can do so.

All of this requires arrangements for governance that ensure everyone shares the vision and give each the confidence to relinquish day-to-day control of decisions and resources, while maintaining the necessary high-level accountability for meeting their statutory duties in a new way.

Across the whole system there are some unifying features which help to link the various elements:

  • Leadership at every level, not just the director of children's services, but at the front line 
  • Performance management driving an outcomes focus at every level, from area inspection to rewards and incentives for individual staff     

Listening to the views of children and young people - on the priorities at a strategic level, and on how day-to-day practice is affecting them personally For more information visit www.surestart.gov.uk