Caroline Baxter Head of Integrated Services for Children with Disabilities Phone: 020 8547 5849 020 8487 5498 Email: caroline.baxter@achievingforchildren.org.uk Fax: 020 8391 0034
8th September 2015 Dear Parents and Carers, The long summer break is now behind us and I wanted to write to keep you updated with news and information from the Integrated Service as the new academic year commences. We have now been a joint service across both Richmond and Kingston for a year and it has to be acknowledged that while a great deal has been achieved there have been some challenges and I want to address them here and reassure you that we are working hard to improve the services that are delivered. We aim to work in a full and transparent manner with all of our partners of which the most important are children, young people and their families. Where at all possible we consult and liaise around for example service development, individual support packages and staff recruitment. There have been concerns raised specifically about the changes to the Aiming High funded activities in Richmond. I acknowledge that the consultation was very limited with Richmond parents but time pressures meant that it was a choice between progressing with the commissioning process and delivering services or waiting to fully consult and most likely have a break in services. The programme of choice has in fact grown, and parents from both boroughs can now access activities in either Kingston or Richmond. I am delighted to say that the numbers of children and young people who are accessing Aiming High funded projects has grown in Richmond to almost 300 which is a 49% increase on last year. While this is good news we want this number to grow even more. Our target is to match numbers with Kingston which are 500 children accessing Aiming High funded activities. Questions have been raised around funding cuts for the service. As with all government funded departments and programmes we have had to face shrinking budgets. We have made those efficiencies but have worked hard not to impact on front line services to children and we believe we have succeeded in this. The joint management of the service across both boroughs has been where we have made the majority of the savings alongside the economies of scale of bringing teams and some services together. I wrote to all parents earlier in the summer to inform you of publication of the new joint eligibility criteria for Social Care teams and the Children with Disability Register. Both are available on the Achieving for Children Local Offer Website. http://www.afclocaloffer.org.uk/
Moor Lane Centre Moor Lane Chessington Surrey KT9 2AA