Information for Parents, Carers, Children and Young People
The aim of the 'Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ programme is to help services working with children, to work in more joined up ways and to share information in a standard way so they can better meet the needs of children, young people and families. The programme is based on recommendations from the inquiry into death of a young girl called Victoria Climbie, where services were not joined up or provided early enough to prevent her death.
The Children Act 2004 provides guidance to make sure that the necessary changes happen. The Act places a duty on those working with children and young people to work together effectively to improve outcomes for children. Standardised ways of working and supporting tools have been developed nationally and must be adopted locally by all agencies in Bristol to ensure consistency of approach and service experience for families. These are summarised below:
1. Information Sharing guidance which includes a flowchart and handbook for practitioners and a leaflet for parents which sets out good practice for the way information should be shared. For further information click here.
2. The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a new assessment to be used by all agencies to assess children aged 0-19’s needs based on the five every child matters outcomes; be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well being. The assessment looks at all angles of a child’s needs e.g. health, education, physical needs. For further information click here.
3. If the common assessment results in the need to work with more than one agency, then there is the new role of the
Lead Professional
who acts as the coordinator of work with the child, family and other agencies.
The lead professional will:
- Act as a single point of contact for the child or family to reduce overlap and inconsistency
- Be someone that children, young people and families can trust, who will support them to make choices and navigate their way through the system
- Coordinate the delivery of the actions agreed - the lead professional will ensure that children and families are supported with well planned and regularly reviewed actions
- Communicate effectively with partners - the lead professional will draw on the skills and expertise of specialist practitioners
- Help to coordinate and focus the multi-agency team around the child and young person
4. Multi-agency panels to bring different agencies together round the table with families, to develop plans to meet needs indentified by a CAF.
5. The national database ContactPoint which will contain very basic data about all children 0-18 years across England and the contact details for services that are working with them. In Bristol there is Bristol Local Information Sharing System (BLISS) which provides similar information in the period before ContactPoint is available. For further information click here.
6. A service directory called One Big Database to provide information about services for families across the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire area.
By making these changes families should see:
- Better joint working between agencies to deliver services earlier
- Improved information sharing between services to reduce the number of times that parents have to repeat the same information to different agencies working with them
- Earlier help for children when problems first begin to emerge
- Prevent children from slipping through the net of services so that all children are safe and well
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