Our vision is:
"We want to help all our children and young people to achieve their full potential and enjoy life."
We can do this by working together in partnership:
to ensure that we keep all children safe and families together where this best meets the needs of the child.
Our vision is part of our wider commitment to create a secure and confident future for the people of North East Lincolnshire that ensures everyone has the opportunity to lead a full, healthy and satisfying life. Better lives - Stronger Communities is the aspiration that guides our LAA2. North East Lincolnshire is changing, it is focussing on future opportunities for our community and how we can help people achieve their aspirations. As a Local Strategic Partnership we are committed to delivering positive change.
No longer is the focus of the Local Strategic Partnership set on single issues and dealing with them in isolation. We have recognised that more can be delivered by working together, with and through our community, to bring about lasting change. We have used the consultation feedback for the LAA2 as a key source of community intelligence and mapped this against national expectations and the pressures faced by each partner organisation and have reached the conclusion that there are 2 key causation factors - worklessness and child and family matters.
The diagram outlines the LSP priorities for the local area and the relationship between them.
These two factors underpin our LAA2 and have been translated into our ambition to:
- create the conditions to sustain more and better jobs in the area and enable local people to access these by addressing barriers to participation and raising skill levels
- raising the aspirations of our family units and promoting the opportunities that will be made available, encouraging people to make positive life choices
The Children's Trust is represented on the Local Strategic Partnership and is leading on the Children and Young People's Block of the LAA2.
Our Aim
Our aim is to support all children and young people in our area to:
- be healthy and safe;
- enjoy learning;
- achieve their full potential;
- make a positive contribution to their community;
- have a good sound basis for economic independence and well-being.
We recognise that supporting parents is key to achieving these aims and that parents have responsibility for bringing up their children. However, as partners in the Children's Trust we can provide a range of support mechanisms and integrated services. Where parents cannot provide that support we will act as excellent Corporate Parents across the Children's Trust. We have developed a Parenting Strategy and, in The Way Forward Section, we provide an update on the progress we have made and what our next steps are in delivering this strategy.
In achieving our vision, we continue to strive to make North East Lincolnshire a place where:
- children and their families live in safe, secure communities and neighbourhoods;
- families have the confidence and capability to protect and care for their family members;
- children and young people with disabilities are able to maximise their potential for healthy, happy and successful lives;
- looked after children and young people are able to maximise their potential for healthy, happy and successful lives;
- children and young people feel safe and are protected from harm;
- services work together in strong and innovative partnership to ensure that children and families get help quickly when problems first arise;
- information is shared to promote the best interests of children and young people;
- the Children's Trust arrangement is well established and arrangements are in place to drive forward delivery of our Local Area Agreement outcomes;
- the Local Safeguarding Children Board continues to safeguard children and young people in the community by working with the Children's Trust Partnership to champion and challenge everyone who works with children and young people;
- children, young people and their families are at the heart of policy making and decisions that affect them;
- children have access to cultural facilities and activities that stimulate creativity and imagination, enhancing learning and the development of social skills;
- children can enjoy good physical and mental health and live a healthy lifestyle;
- young carers are supported both within and out of school.
We have already started to deliver against these objectives and the 'One Year On' section outlines the progress.
Our Priorities
Detailed below are our top priority areas for 2008 - 2010. The 2008 Needs Assessment has informed the identification of these priorities and, as a result there has been some slight amendments identified for the 2008 - 2009 refresh, these are highlighted below.
Stay Safe
- Reduce bullying and racial abuse
- Reduce domestic abuse in the home
Be Healthy
- Improve access to sexual health services
- Lower the number of teenage pregnancies
- Improve emotional health and well-being
- Reduce childhood obesity (new priority)
- Reduce substance misuse, including alcohol consumption (new priority)
Enjoy and Achieve
- Improve school attendance
- Enable children and young people to achieve highly through improved standards in all schools but particularly in secondary schools and post 16 provision
- Enable all young people to progress by 2 levels during each Key Stage and especially in English and Mathematics (new priority)
- Ensure that children with disabilities have access to specialist services as well as equal access to all universal provision (new priority)
Achieve Economic Well-being
- Gain employment and /or enter into further education or training at 16 years old and beyond
Make a Positive Contribution
- Have a say and participate in decision making opportunities
- Help to make a safer community
- Reduce the number of young people who offend and re-offend
- Give access to suitable accommodation for all vulnerable young people (priority re-worded)
In the centre pages we set out the key objectives for delivering these priorities and more detailed information can be found in the Outcome Service Improvement Plan.
This plan demonstrates our commitment to work together as partners to improve the well-being of children and young people in North East Lincolnshire and the support we will provide to parents. The priorities are embedded in the plans of all the partner agencies including the current Local Area Agreement. A wide-range of strategies and plans drive the delivery of our priorities and statutory responsibilities. These are listed in appendix A and here we highlight the links across the five outcomes.
The five outcomes and the priorities of the Children and Young People's Plan support the delivery of the outcomes in the Community Strategy:
- Children are born healthy and thrive
- Children are ready to learn and ready for school
- Children and young people make informed , safe and healthy choices
- Children and young people live in a safe and supportive community
- Children and young people achieve success in academic, social and cultural development