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
I have had requests for more clarification as to how the criteria are applied and what impact this has had. Every referral accepted by the social care team within service is assessed by a Social Worker. This assessment is a detailed and in depth review of the individual child, their strengths and needs. The assessment is judged against the criteria and each child will be allocated to the most appropriate AfC team. A child’s needs change and so for those who are accepted to the ISCD review assessments will need to be carried out every 6 months to ensure that the very best and appropriate support is in place. Assessment documentation will be shared with parents and should be agreed with the member of staff completing the assessment. If you would like a copy of your child’s current assessment at any time this can be arranged just ask your allocated worker. If you disagree with the outcome of the assessment you can register your concerns with the relevant team manager who will review it again with the worker. If you are still not happy with the outcome of that review you can lodge an appeal with me in my capacity as Head of Service. I would like to take this opportunity to again reassure parents that if your child is allocated away from the ISCD Social Work team to the ISCD Transition and Family Support team this will not affect the package of support your child receives. Should your child’s needs increase again and social work input be required they will be reallocated. Parents have raised concerns, particularly in Richmond, that the criteria seem to be tougher than they were previously. What has changed is that the criteria are now being implemented more appropriately than they were previously. We acknowledge that there were mistakes made under the previous management and this is now on impacting on the numbers of children and young people who are eligible for direct services from the ISCD. Overall we have closed 31 cases totally to the service in Richmond in the last year but it must be noted that a significant proportion of those have either moved out of the borough, turned 18 or have voluntarily chosen not to access support from the service. There were 4 young people who reported that they were affected socially by the closure of their cases and while we source alternative non assessed need provision they have been offered additional in house support as a good will gesture. We would like to thank the parents groups who brought these 4 families to our attention and worked to ensure that additional support was provided in the interim. We have had mixed reviews of our communication. Some parents and parents groups have said that it has never been better others are less complimentary. We are working with all the parent groups and our service users to ensure that we provide the most appropriate and accessible documentation and communication as possible. Please look out for “easy read” question and answer sheets around short breaks and how to access funding which will shortly be published. In partnership with the Send Family Voices group we will be running detailed consultation and monitoring programmes around the short breaks activities in both boroughs. Please do give us your feedback. The more we know about how good or bad provisions are the funding can be appropriately targeted and the next commissioning cycle can be child, young person and family needs led.
Ofsted have loomed large over the summer. The Royal Borough Kingston received a rating of “Good” from their inspection of services for children in need of help and protection; children looked after and care leavers and review of the effectiveness of the local safeguarding children board. This is a fantastic outcome and we believe a real validation of the hard work that has gone on in Kingston over the last 3 years to bring the services back to a good standard. We are not complacent though and will be looking to improve that judgement to an “outstanding” next time we are inspected. Ofsted also inspected two of our ISCD activity groups – one in Kingston and one in Richmond. We were delighted to receive a very good result for both. AfC have now registered with the Care Quality Commission for our Home and Community Support Service and our Community Nursing Service. The young people who access the services provided by the Participation Team have been wowing audiences around the local area and beyone with their insight and advice on successful participation and inclusion of young people with disabilities. The SEND Champions have made speeches to various groups and local authorities, made videos for websites for example the Local Offer site, they worked on the preparation and delivery of the Local Offer Launch event. All their work has been very well received and they continue to be in demand. Their work has been noticed nationally and they have been nominated for a “Children and Young People’s Now Award” Staffing news: We have recently said farewell to Reshma Bessesar, Manager of the Social Care Team in Richmond – who has left us for the very best of reasons, to have a baby. Sarah Beagle a social worker in Richmond has also moved to pastures new. The new ISCD Guide to Services has been published and is available electronically or should you wish for a hard copy version please let us know and we will ensure one is sent out to you. This applies to all our documentation. Should you wish for any of the paperwork we produce in hard copy please do let us know and we will send it out to you. We are determined to hear the voices of children, young people and parents and will be working closely with the young people and parent support groups to hear about what is working, what is not and how we can answer any of your questions. We were delighted that Send Family Voices were awarded funding from Contact a Family to be the link organisation for parent participation in the boroughs. We would recommend that you contact the group as they are an invaluable resource for information, advice and peer support. They can also advise you as to how to contact other local disability specific support groups. We would also recommend contacting the Kids Charity who run the SENDIASS and Information Services now in Richmond and Kingston. Contact details: Send Family Voices - sendfamilyvoices@outlook.com Kids – RichmondKingston@kids.org.uk There are lots of other local groups available to support parents and contact details for many of these groups can be found on the Local Offer website.
I will be running Parent and Young Peoples Drop in sessions on the following dates: 21st September 30th September 19th October 21st October
23rd November 25th November 15th December
10.00 – 11.30 11.0012.30 1.30 – 3.00 9.30 – 11.00 10.0012.00 10.00 – 11.30 10.00 – 11.30 12.00 – 1.30
16th December
12.00 – 1.30
27th October
Moor Lane Centre
Parents
Windham Croft Centre
Parents
Moor Lane Centre Windham Croft Centre
Parents Parents
Moor Lane Centre
Young People
Moor Lane Centre
Parents
Windham Croft Centre
Parents
Moor Lane Centre Christmas celebration coffee and mince pies Windham Croft Centre Christmas celebration coffee and mince pies
Parents and young people Parents and young people
We have had a very successful summer of ISCD in-house provided activity groups that have supported almost 200 children across both boroughs and the activities were rounded off with our annual and wonderful Family Fun Day. Please see below for some memories from the summer.
If you would like to discuss the content of this letter or wish for any further information please do not hesitate to contact me directly or come along to the drop in sessions. With very best wishes for the new term. Yours sincerely
Caroline Baxter