Cllr. Tom Harney

Cllr. Chris Meaden

Peter Brandrick

Andy Styring

Emma Dodd

Jill Billinge

Richard Longster

Shanila Rhooi

None.

With regard to item 4 of the previous minutes, the Director will be writing to schools to request that they continue to cooperate with the Children’s Trust Board as per current practice. The engagement of Head teacher representation at the Board has strengthened the Board and it is a benefit to all Children’s services that this engagement remains in place.

Resolved: That the minutes of the meeting held on 24^th September 2010 be confirmed as a correct record.

Mark Ellis updated that Contact Point for Wirral was officially closed down on the 6^th August 2010. Work is underway nationally to explore alternative arrangements for recording professional contact and involvement with children.

He added that the Monroe report is being carried out nationally and investigating how the use of ICT may aid that work being undertaken in Children’s Social Care.

Resolved: The Board noted the report.

Nancy Clarkson outlined the Child Poverty report. The new strategic lead for Child poverty will be Emma Degg. The Child Poverty Bill received Royal Assent and became an Act of Parliament on 25th March 2010. The Act establishes national targets to end Child Poverty in the UK by 2020 and places a number of duties on local authorities and other local delivery partners to work together to tackle child poverty.

A ‘National Review of Poverty and Life Chances’ has been charged with studying the extent of poverty in the UK and making recommendations to help less affluent families. This review is being headed by Frank Field MP and is due to report in December 2010.

Wirral is planning to develop and approve a Child and Family Poverty Strategy to be in place by April 2011. It will outline how co-ordinated services will tackle child and family poverty up to 2020 and will be reviewed every three years. There will be an opportunity in future years to integrate the Child and Family Poverty Strategy with the Sustainable Community Strategy.

Bev Morgan noted that she has met with Emma Degg to discuss further consultation to inform a more robust needs analysis.

Sue Brown reiterated the importance of the involvement of all partners and the other partners expressed an interest on being involved in future planning. It was noted that significant notice would be preferable to allow attendance at any meetings. The board would also like to see the timescales of the future stages and information regarding the governance of the strategy to be shared.

Nancy Clarkson noted that timescales for consultation and the project will be revised in light of the new lead.

Resolved:

The Board noted the report and confirmed the Children’s Trust Board support and involvement.

Anne Tattersall gave a presentation on the delivery of Health Services in Schools, (HSIS).

·  In July 2008 the Wirral Health and Wellbeing Charter for Children and Young People was launched.

·  The National Support Team (NST) for teenage pregnancy visited the Borough at the same time. The NST recommended the role out of the charter to all secondary schools. This move was supported by senior leaders within CYPD and the community.

·  The vision for HSIS is to improve health and wellbeing both in schools and the community. It is linked to the Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) and Personal , Social, Heath and Economic (PSHE) areas of the curriculum.

·  Early results show that the service is being well accessed by both genders of young people. Services accessed include a teenage health check, lifestyle and weight management, Chlamydia and pregnancy testing.

·  Feedback from users of the service is positive comments from users include:

“I feel more confident about saying no to sex” and “You don’t need to drink alcohol to have a good time” and “I am not going to have a baby until I am least 25!”

Area Commander John Martin asked if the anti social aspects of alcohol use is addressed as well as health impacts.  Anne noted that this is covered and also included as part of the PHSE curriculum.

Debbie Mayor asked if the impact of the HSIS on teenage pregnancy can be measured directly.  Anne noted that information could be collated and overall teenage pregnancy rates are decreasing across the Borough.

Sue Brown asked if the HSIS profiles users of the services, especially with regard to the prevalence of ADHD.  Barbara Baker noted that young females present differently from males with ADHD and may be more likely to need to access the service. Anne noted that this wasn’t recorded at the moment but that it is something that could be looked into.

Fiona Johnstone asked what additional services may be in place from January. Anne responded that smoking cessation and further targeted support for contraception services.  Overall this would be delivered by ensuring that staff are skilled within these areas. Staff training will enhance the level of service provided in the core offer.

Cllr Sheila Clarke thanked Anne for a very informative presentation and noted the importance of this work and the resulting positive outcomes for young people.

  Resolved: The Board noted the presentation.

Peter Wong sent his apologies; Debbie Mayor reported that Peter would circulate his report to the Board. 

Councillor Sheila Clark recommended that a future meeting would be focussed on commissioning. 

Bev Morgan added that many VCF organisations have funding that ends in March.  Meetings are currently taking place to discuss priorities and work in children’s services.  Maureen McDaid will be attending the January Board with a paper detailing priorities and areas of needs. David Armstrong noted that the council will not receive details of the settlement figure from central Government until early December; at this point it will be a clearer to make decisions on spending. Bev Morgan added that these timelines will prove very difficult for some VCF organisations. 

Fiona Johnstone added that the Public Health Bill paper is due to be published and will impact on commissioning for Children’s Services.  The PCT will still be the accountable body for spending until 2013.

Fiona added that the GP consortia are currently forming; as they develop their role in commissioning their representation at the Board will need to be established.

Fiona Johnston or representative from the GP consortia will give an update at a future meeting. 

Resolved: That the next meeting will have a commissioning focus.

Mike Potter and Sheila Lynch and gave a presentation on the current position of young people NEET in Wirral.  The NEET TIGER team was established in March 2010 to target the reduction of young people NEET in Wirral. It is expected to be a short term team to review the situation and propose changes and recommendations to reduce NEET.

The team is made up of Wirral Council, Connexions, Wirral Further Education establishments and Rocket training.  The team looked in detail at the origins within the 16 to 18 NEET cohort, detailing local variations across the Borough and identifying local hot spots. The team also examined the NEET joiners and leavers profile and found that a significant amount of young people became NEET as they were coming from terminating a programme.

The current position is 100 young people less NEET that this time last year. The age of those young people NEET is now more concentrated on those young people aged 17 to 18.

Mike Potter added that with new proposed coalition government funding colleges and universities will be more selective in placing students and that places are capped, in addition the future of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is not certain. The loss of EMA will discourage some young people from applying for further education.

Kathryn Podmore noted that level of prior attainment of the NEET cohort would inform better provision planning for these young people.  Sheila Lynch responded to say that work is underway in this area to establish an information sharing agreement to enable prior attainment profiling of the NEET cohort.

David Armstrong gave thanks to Mike Potter and Sheila Lynch for their hard work on this issue.

Concern remains around the ability to hit the target of 6.9%.

Cllr. Sheila Clarke thanked Mike and Sheila for their presentation and the work carried out towards reducing NEET in the Borough.

Resolved:

The Broad endorsed the report;

The board noted the intention of the Tiger Team to end at the target period of January 2011;

Noted the potential request for additional funding to continue the NEET reduction work;

Endorsed the actions taken by the Tiger Team;

Endorsed the need for continuing focus on 16-18 NEET.

Mark Parkinson outlined the annual report of the Enjoy and Achieve strategy group.

Key achievements include:

·  Good progress on the primary and secondary school review.  A summary report will go to cabinet shortly, at the end of this 6 year project.

·  Improvements around narrowing the gap at the early years phase. 

·  For primary schools maths has improved significantly.

·  KS4 has improved by more than 4%.  All but one school now above the National Challenge floor targets, the one school that remains below floor target just fell short.

·  The Extended school programme has now finished. All schools in the Borough now provide the full core offer. The programme will now become mainstreamed into schools.

·  Children’s Centres continue to develop, the full complement of centres and satellites will soon be complete.

·  One to one tuition programme has been successfully implemented.

·  Leadership Management Programme has been noted as an example of good practice.

·  Results for Looked After Children at KS2 and KS4 are good.

·  Foundation Stage learning programmes are being rolled out and are having an impact on engaging young people.

Areas for improvement include:

·  Challenging targets still remain for early years.

·  Measuring the impact of children’s centres.

·  Academic achievement of boys in early years, especially with regard to communication and writing skills.

·  Development of e-learning and the virtual learning environment.

·  Narrowing the gap for SEN and FSM children.

·  Improve academic performance at post 16.

·  Implication regarding the increase in participation age to 18.

Issues for Concern

·  Schools White Paper will set the direction for school improvement services and the role of the local authority.

·  Changes to funding in the LA and the subsequent reduction in capacity. 

Mark added that this report could and should be circulated with interested partner agencies.

Cllr Sheila Clarke added that the Enjoy and Achieve outcome for children had a very positive year, the case studies in the report are very interesting and to be celebrated. Cllr Clarke added that there should also be focus of the “enjoy” aspect of the outcome. Mark responded that some case studies have been compiled to illustrate successes within the “enjoy” outcome.

Resolved: The Board noted the report.

Mark Parkinson gave a brief background on the CFSB, which focuses on the needs of children aged up to five. Mark presented the report which highlights changes to the membership of the Board and strengthened the terms of reference.

Sue Brown suggested a representative of YOS may be available to attend the Board.

Resolved: The Board approved the amendments to the terms of reference and to the membership of the Children First Strategic Board.

The second quarter performance report was presented to the board. Nancy Clarkson informed the Board that nationally a review of National Indicators and data collections from schools and the local authority was taking place. Any national changes will be reflected in local reporting. In addition, Local Area Agreements (LAA) have been abolished by the coalition government. Monitoring of these targets will continue until the end of the year and the situation would be reviewed. 

Resolved: The Board noted the report.

Nancy Clarkson gave an overview of the performance of the LAA indicators for quarter two.

Mike Potter commented on the importance of working to the 2010/11 LAA NEET target despite that the national abolishment of the LAA. Nancy Clarkson noted that this issue had been highlighted at the Children’s Trust Executive and that locally this target would remain.

Resolved: The Board note the report.

Cllr. Sheila Clark requested that any comments on the paper circulated should be sent to Nancy Clarkson.

David Armstrong updated on the latest position within the Children and Young People’s Department. Currently a staffing review is underway; a letter went out to staff in October to invite staff to take voluntary severance and staff will be informed of the decisions later this week. Decisions have been taken in respect of statutory duties and front line service delivery.

The date of the next meeting was moved to the 18^th January 2011, 09:00 – 12:00, PEC, Acre Lane