1. Service manager Gloucester
The Child’s Journey
Gloucester
GSCB Road shows 2012
Vicki Butler
Service manager Gloucester
Karen Watson – Service Manager within Children services.

2. How well do you know your Locality
Gloucester (North and South)

4. How many children live in Gloucester?
b) 28097
c) 31084
Answer c) 31084

5. How many CAF’s have been completed on children living in Gloucester since April 2012?
Answer – a) 85

6. In the last 12 months how many contacts were about children in Gloucester?
Answer- b- 5893

7. Of those contacts how many needed to have an initial assessment?
b) 1852
c) 1926
Answer – a 1728

8. How many children have a child protection plan in the Gloucester?
b) 117
c) 133
Answer c - 133

9. Quick recap - Munro May 2011 – Munro final report of three.
What helps a professional make the best judgements they can to protect a vulnerable child?
15 Recommendations to implement ‘A child centred system’

10. Recommendations in a nutshell
Government should review working together
Inspection framework should look at the contribution of all partners including health, education, police, probation etc in the child’s journey
LSCB’s have clear roles and accountability in terms of assessing the effectiveness of delivery and training
LA’s and partners to secure sufficient provision of local early help for CYP
Child should be at the centre of what we do

11. The case for early help
Prevention will do more to reduce abuse and neglect than reactive services
Co-ordination of services is important to maximise efficiency
Good ways of identifying those children who are in need of early help and support.
Services offering early help are not aimed just at preventing abuse and neglect but at improving life chances for CYP.
Early help is an ambiguous term – referring to both early help when the child is young , but also the emergence of a problem at any stage of a child’s life.
The moral argument to minimise adverse experience for CYP endorsed by UN rights of the child. Itis difficult to reverse the harm done to CYP development. It is cost effective – preventing more serious problems which are more expensive to put right.
Research tells us that many features of family life are associated with adverse outcomes, mental health substance misuse, domestic abuse. How do we identify these children?

12. “Safeguarding a child is best achieved by responding to need at the earliest stage. The best protection is often secured by providing the appropriate help in the most appropriate way at the most opportune time”
Lord Laming
Proposals
Build services around families
Intervene early
Improve accountability

13. The ‘windscreen’ – A continuum of need, assessment and service delivery  
Talk through the windscreen
Universal
Vulnerable – may have unmet need at a low level – small levels of support may meet these needs – eg speech and language therapy
Complex – needs will be more difficult to meet – will require several agencies to work together to meet these needs. This works best when they are working from a single plan – CAF.
Acute – this is when needs have reached a high level and will often require specialists to work alongside other practitioners to resolve need, for example CP, Youth Offending etc.

14. What Children and Families say
Parents, children and young people told us that when there are problems, they want to be able to get advice easily. They have also told us that they want to be able to get specialist support before things become a crisis. (Gloucestershire’s Children and Young People’s Plan 2009 – 2012)

15. What next?
How well do we work together in Gloucester? Are we able to offer and provide early help? What can we do next?