All organisations that work with children share a commitment to safeguard and promote their welfare. The Hampshire Local Safeguarding Children Board co-ordinates the work of all partners with responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people.

Inter-agency training is provided so that there is a shared understanding of the tasks, processes, principles and roles and responsibilities. These local arrangements are planned and delivered in line with the national guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), 2006). In practice this means that:

• there are more effective and integrated services at both strategic and individual case level;
• there is improved communication between professionals, including a common understanding of key terms, definitions and thresholds for action;
• there are effective working relationships, including an ability to work in multi-disciplinary groups or teams;
• there is sound decision making, based on information sharing, thorough assessment, critical analysis and professional judgement.
• all public, private, community and voluntary sector organisations have clear policies, processes and procedures for child protection;
• there are rigorous systems in place to ensure compliance with the Independent Safeguarding Authority vetting and barring scheme.

Services and provision must be developed with children and young people for them to be relevant, effective and sustainable. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child underpins Hampshire’s participation strategy for listening and responding to the voices and ideas of children and young people and engaging them fully in the development of service provision, providing opportunities for personal growth and achievement.

Hampshire’s participation strategy outlines ambitious aims and objectives, reflecting commitment to the engagement of children and young people and implementation of the national Hear by Right framework.

Examples of successful participation activities include:

• Placing an emphasis on pupil voice in schools and an ethos of rights, respect and responsibilities, providing systematic opportunities for children and young people to participate in decisions so that they learn to make an active contribution to their school, community and wider society.
• Representatives from 11 district councils on the Hampshire County Youth Council, influencing key decisions and ensuring that the voices of young people are heard in service development.
• The engagement of children and young people in the work of the Youth Inclusion and Support Panels, empowers them to make positive choices about their own lives.
• The influence of children and young people in driving forward the development of district play strategies and youth strategies.
• Services for young people - providing a local youth offer, high quality opportunities designed with and for young people, listening to and promoting their voice and involvement.
• Hampshire’s commitment to the implementation of Aiming High for Disabled Children and the Every Disabled Child Matters Charter, ensuring that disabled children and young people are involved in the planning, commissioning and monitoring of services, including both specialist and universal services.
• The Care Council for children in care, which provides the opportunity for children and young people to be involved in the planning, commissioning and monitoring of services. In 2008, the Care Council designed a ‘pledge’ outlining the six areas they wanted the County Council to work on. Subsequently, the children and young people designed a poster to depict the Pledge – shown in diagram 5, below (the full poster can be found on the Children’s Services Department Care Matters web-pages).

Diagram 5: The Children in Care Pledge

Supporting and engaging with parents and carers will ensure that services are accessible, inclusive and responsive to local needs and aspirations. This will require further development of key strategies, including:

• The Positive Parenting Programme ‘Triple P’, which helps parents to nurture relationships, build their skills and confidence and supports well-being.
• Hampshire’s Family Information Service, Hantsfish, which provides parents and carers with access to web based information and services.
• Elected parent representatives sitting on the governing body of every school.
• Parents and carers as key partners in the development, delivery and governance of children’s centres.
• District parent support officers working closely with schools, parents, parenting services and practitioners to ensure that a comprehensive range of parent support services are available to meet needs in each area.
• Ensuring that through the Parent Partnership Service, parents and carers play an informed part in planning provision to meet their child’s SEN; building partnerships between parents and carers, the local authority and school and encouraging parents and carers to be involved in the development of local policy and practice.

By 2010, a model for Children’s Trust arrangements will be developed, building on the strategic work of Hampshire’s Children and Young People’s Partnership.  These Trust arrangements will need to be understood, valued and implemented at a local level. Nationally, the duty to co-operate is being extended to schools, colleges and Jobcentre Plus. The engagement of such key partners in Hampshire’s Children’s Trust arrangements will be critically important to improving outcomes for all children and young people.

The newly imposed duty will provide a legal basis for Trust arrangements but will not, in itself, create the sense of shared purpose and mutual respect necessary for more integrated working. The success of the Trust is dependent on a whole system approach to children’s services – recognising that no one individual, service or organisation can work alone to improve outcomes for all children and young people.

This will require:

• drawing a clear distinction between strategic, executive and operational issues so that all partners are clear about their remit and accountabilities;
• strengthening local partnership arrangements including schools and colleges, which will support the county Children’s Trust arrangements;
• having access to detailed and robust data for needs analysis and planning;
• developing commissioning strategies (see Appendix 3), building on the experience gained through the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Commissioning Group and our services for disabled children;
• developing robust financial, budget and performance management systems and strategies for aligning budgets (see Appendix 3);
• ensuring that representatives on the Children’s Trust board have a mandate for committing their organisations resources and effective systems for reporting back;
• building on our work in involving children, young people and their parents and carers in the planning, delivery and evaluation of services and provision;
• ensuring that governance arrangements focus on delivering better local outcomes for children, young people and families rather than on structures and processes.

In working to reduce inequalities and narrow the gap between children and young people who do well and those who do not, consistent, high quality arrangements need to be in place to identify all those who need additional help and to intervene early to support them. Essentially, this means putting the needs of children and young people and their families first and making sure that services meet their requirements.

The Children’s Trust will work to enable children and young people with additional needs to have easier access to support, by improved integration of services. This will include services delivered through Building Schools for the Future, Extended Schools, children’s centres and strategies for CAMHS, behaviour and attendance and SEN.

Providers of services for children and young people have a duty to ensure that services are accessible and to encourage engagement with the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a standardised approach for assessing a child's additional needs and deciding how they should be met.

Services will work together in local groups to deliver a partnership approach based on identified need. This will be supported and facilitated by integrated service planning through:

• a comprehensive approach to prevention and early intervention by the establishment of local cluster partnerships of services;
• local access to advice and support services, based on the identified needs of individual children and families;
• the engagement of vulnerable children and families in the planning and delivery of services;
• preparing and training all agencies to use the CAF; and promotion of the lead professional role in co-ordinating services for individual children and families;
• ensuring all professional services work together in providing support, preventing any unnecessary referral of families;
• development of local service directories to signpost provision against identified needs;
• ongoing evaluation of service provision against need to inform the commissioning cycle.

In Hampshire, this is being supported through:

• Development and improvement plans for children’s centres and early years settings.
• Rigorous school self-evaluation and support and challenge through school improvement partners.
• Collaborative working between early years settings, children’s centres, schools, colleges and partner organisations to deliver:
  - behaviour improvement partnerships;
  - extended services in and around schools;
  - access to sport and leisure activities through school sports partnerships;
  - curriculum enrichment through the community plans of specialist schools;
  - improved transition between phases;
  - new and innovative pathways to learning through 14-19 consortia (schools, colleges, training providers and other agencies who work in partnership to provide courses for 14-19 year olds); and
  - outreach services from special schools.
• Early years settings, children’s centres, schools and colleges working with a range of partners, statutory agencies and community and voluntary organisations, to identify and address the risk factors that prevent some children and young people from realising their potential.
• More inclusive approaches to school improvement planning and engaging partners in the process of identifying priorities for action.
• Taking every opportunity to develop new and existing places to learn that are exciting, inclusive and sustainable.

• schools;
• social care;
• services for young people;
• play work;
• health services;
• early years;
• youth justice;
• family support;
• sport and recreation;
• creative and cultural services..

The workforce includes both paid employees and volunteers, managed through public, private, community and voluntary organisations and agencies. Building the capacity of this workforce involves extending those distinctive specialist skills whilst creating the relationships and trust, skills and understanding necessary for effective integrated working (see Appendix 3).  

Diagram 6: The children’s workforce

Building Brighter Futures: next steps for the children’s workforce, DCSF, 2008

Continued work with national agencies will build the capacity of our children’s workforce and develop leaders at all levels and in all sectors. These agencies include:

• the Training and Development Agency;
• the Children’s Workforce Development Council;
• Skills for Health;
• Skills Active;
• the National College for School Leadership;
• and other sector specific training bodies.

At a local level, the community and voluntary sector continues to develop community leaders to meet identified needs and find local solutions. Opportunities will be created for joint training and continuous professional development, sharing knowledge and learning from each other to develop the generic skills and understanding necessary in an integrated workforce.

Those working directly with children and young people are often able to see at first hand the positive impact of services, manifested through:

• the acquisition of new skills and knowledge;
• improved health and fitness;
• growing confidence and resilience;
• creativity and receptiveness to new ideas;
• improved behaviour and a willingness to take responsibility for themselves and others;
• empathy and concern for others.

However, those who do not work directly with children and young people also have a major contribution to make to the success of this Plan. For example:

• managing the allocation of resources so that they are targeted and equitably distributed;
• ensuring key personnel in the children’s workforce are in place and have the necessary support to do their job;
• co-ordinating services and engaging new partners;
• improving access; creating new provision;
• improving communications;
• providing leadership and management;
• building safer, healthier more cohesive communities;
• the role of other professionals outside of the children’s workforce e.g. police, adult social workers and health professionals.

In order to support all professionals in the delivery of services, the provision of an underlying infrastructure of IT systems and efficient business processes is essential. As such, there is widespread commitment to working towards providing high quality and appropriate IT systems for both front line and support staff. In addition, the continual improvement of business processes to streamline work activities, ensuring the most efficient use of time for all staff, is part of the continuing culture of challenge and change to improve service delivery. Largely, the staff providing IT systems and support to business processes are not front line, but provide an essential component to the effective delivery of first class services to every child. It is recognised that without their work and focus on this underpinning infrastructure, all front line services would be disadvantaged.