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1 Summary

1.1 The Children and Young People's Plan (CYPP) for Hampshire went out to consultation with all partners and stakeholders on 4 January 2006. The first section of the draft consultation document has been sent to all elected members and is attached to this report. The draft document for consultation is just that - very much a draft. All partners and elected members are now encouraged to give feedback and make suggestions to further develop the plan. Publication is planned for May 2006, following formal approval by the Executive Member for Children's Services.

1.2 The CYPP supports aim 1 of the Corporate Strategy, Maximising life chances but also sets out the main priorities for children, young people and their families across all the activities of the County Council and its partners. The CYPP will be a very important supporting document for the new Corporate Strategy, and is being taken into consideration as the new Corporate Strategy is developed.

1.3 The CYPP supports all the aims of the Children Act and is the main statutory strategic plan for children and young people arising from the Act.

2 Content of the first section (attached)

2.1 The attached first section of the draft CYPP emphasises its main purpose - as a plan for all children, young people and their families in Hampshire, and everyone who works with them - regardless of the organisation they belong to.

2.2 It also shows the draft vision and guiding beliefs that, in the final document, will represent the vision and beliefs for all people and organisations in Hampshire working with children, young people and their families.

2.3 On page 6 you will find a list of the main partners involved in the process of preparing the CYPP.

2.4 On pages 8 and 9 the overall priorities and target areas for improvement are set out.

3 Second section

3.1 The main document is available on Hantsweb at www.hants3.gov.uk/cypp. For each of the priorities and target areas for achievement the second section sets out:

· the current position

· where we want to get to

· actions

· main supporting plans

· main indicators of progress

4 Preparing the CYPP

4.1 As the Lead Children's Services Authority for Hampshire, the County Council has a duty to lead the preparation of the CYPP, which is a statutory document. However, the development of this plan has been very much in the spirit of partnership, with a multi-agency steering group (see page 6 of the first section) that has met monthly. All members of the steering group have contributed to the drafting of the CYPP and have shown a very strong commitment to the process.

4.2 During September 11 consultation workshops took place across the county (one in each District Council area). These followed a county-wide event in July. They were organised jointly with the relevant district council. Approximately 1100 delegates attended, from a very wide range of statutory, voluntary and private sector organisations, with a mix of managerial and front line staff. Every event included young people as delegates.

4.3 The workshops consisted of a series of short presentations on the Children Act, the preparation of the CYPP (both delivered by HCC staff), the National Service Framework (delivered by a Primary Care Trust representative) and the local picture (delivered by the District Councils). Most events also had a presentation from local young people. Following these presentations the delegates worked in groups, first to identify what they felt should be the priorities set out in the CYPP for Hampshire, and secondly to identify local actions that could take these priorities forward.

4.4 Feedback at each of these events was very positive. Delegates said they had appreciated the opportunity to think through the issues with a wide range of other people and organisations providing services to children and young people in the area. Many organisations did not know others existed and had found the contacts they made very valuable (this was the single most repeated piece of feedback). There was also appreciation of the genuine spirit of consultation at each event.

4.5 The District Council children's lead officers have also said that they found the workshops very useful. Many of these lead officers are now keen to work with their Local Strategic Partnerships to build their own frameworks and local CYPP around the overall CYPP for Hampshire.

5 Participation of children and young people

5.1 Connexions have led on this work on behalf of the CYPP steering group. Connexions and the Hampshire Youth Service must be thanked for enabling and supporting up to 12 young people to attend each district consultation event. The input from young people at each event proved very valuable, particularly so where they gave a presentation and mixed with the adults in the workshops.

5.2 The outcomes from previous engagement with young people, have also been taken into account, and serve to further reinforce the priorities and main target areas for achievement that have been identified for the draft CYPP.

6 Structure and layout of the CYPP

6.1 The basic principle has been to keep the CYPP as simple as possible, with the aim of it being accessible to staff across all agencies to guide priority setting and activities on the ground. The target areas for achievement are set out around the 5 main aims of the Children Act.

6.2 The government guidance on the CYPP says that it should take account of a wide variety of plans. We have extracted the priorities from the plans of the main partner agencies and these are reflected in the CYPP where appropriate. However, if the CYPP is to be effective, it must in turn influence the future direction of these major plans, and this will be a major test of its success, and the strength of the partnership working that has created it.

6.3 The web-based version of the CYPP that is published in May will provide links to a wide range of plans and processes across all partner agencies that will support the priorities identified.

7 Data and management information

7.1 The CYPP will be supported by a raft of data from various agencies. However, the main dataset has been agreed as the Joint Area Review (JAR) dataset of 265 indicators. Work is underway to ensure that these can all be produced at least at a County-wide level to meet the demands of the JAR which will take place in 2007/08, alongside the County Council's CPA.

7.2 In order to really assess need however, analysis of data has to take place at a much more localised level. Many agencies are working with individual, postcoded data or sub-ward data. Therefore over the next year work on the JAR will focus on presenting the management information from the data at the most local level possible to support service planning and resource allocation.

7.3 For the purposes of the CYPP it is proposed that a small group of headline indicators form the overall indicators for the plan. 12 such indicators were agreed as part of a wide consultation with partners in March 2005. Subject to review of these against revisions to the JAR dataset (August 2005) from which they were drawn, these will form part of a slightly expanded group of indicators for the CYPP.

7.4 A targetted set of data for each district will also be presented with the plan to offer some local background.

8 Consultation on the plan

8.1 The consultation on the draft CYPP began on 4 January and will finish on 31 March. This allows the 12 week consultation period agreed in the voluntary sector compact.

8.2 The majority of the consultation will take place through the mechanisms already in place within partner agencies. A timetable of the main meetings when each agency will consider the plan has been drawn up. This includes all Local Strategic Partnerships.

8.3 Members of the steering group, and in particular the lead County Council officers, will be attending these meetings and conferences of partners and stakeholders over the next three months to present the draft CYPP and listen to comments and suggestions.

8.4 Engaging with children, young people and their families will be an important part of the consultation. Both primary and secondary schools will be working with their school councils to offer feedback. Work will be undertaken by Connexions, the Hampshire Youth Service and the many voluntary sector organisations working with children, young people and their familiees to consult them and listen to their ideas. Simple materials have been prepared to assist with this process.

9 Final approval and publication

9.1 Following the consultation, a revised document will be considered by the steering group and then final approval will be given by the multi-agency Children's Services Board (or its successor) and the Executive Member for Children's Services. Publication should then be possible for early May. The final document will be submitted to the Plain Language Commission for a Crystal Mark award.

9.2 10.2 Consideration will be given to the need to publish a summary version of the plan, and possibly a wallchart setting out the main milestones for 2006/07.

10 Links to the Local Area Agreement

10.1 The development of the proposals for the Local Area Agreement have taken place alongside the work to identify the priorities for the CYPP. The proposals in the LAA therefore support specific areas of the CYPP and the plan also dovetails with the second Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA2).

11 Legal implications

11.1 None

12 Financial implications

12.1 All the main priority areas and target areas for improvement in the CYPP are currently underway to some extent. They are not `new', although some are much better developed than others and there are varying scales of partnership working. This year's budget setting process for Children's Services, particularly the work with schools, has focussed on supporting the main priorities within the draft CYPP. However, over the coming three years the CYPP will begin to drive the setting of budget priorities across all partners and will be the key planning and budget setting document for Children's Services.

13 Personnel implications

13.1 None directly. The whole restructuring of Children's Services will contribute to the role the County Council will play in the delivery of the CYPP.

14 Impact assessment

14.1 A full impact assessment will be undertaken for the CYPP during the consultation period.

15 Crime prevention issues

15.1 The reduction in youth offending is an important target area for achievement within the CYPP and Wessez Youth Offending have been extensively involved in the drafting of that section of the plan.

16 Views of the Local County Councillor

Not applicable.

Recommendations

1 Recommendation

That members of PRC consider the draft CYPP and take the opportunity of the consultation period to the 31 March 2006 to:

· ensure all their contacts know of the consultation and have an opportunity to contribute their ideas

· offer their own feedback and ideas on the draft CYPP.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

None