We continue to be committed to engaging with children, young people, parents and carers in developing the services that support and improve the well-being of all children and young people. To meet this aim we developed a Participation Strategy last year which has adopted the Hear by Right Standards. Hear by Right Standards are a national framework for measuring the engagement of children and young people. It is used to ensure that consultation and engagement activities are planned and delivered to a high standard. We are now in the process of refreshing this strategy and over the coming year we will integrate it in to the Local Strategic Partnership's Community Engagement Framework.
Over the last year we have continued to develop our neighbourhood study programme which is about children and young people working together in their neighbourhoods to review what it is like to live in their neighbourhoods. This project arose from the Neighbourhood Study in the Joint Area Review process. The children and young people involved in these projects have learnt a range of skills and it has enabled us to engage and empower children and young people to make a positive difference to their local communities.
Other Participation Activities include:
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Carrying out further neighbourhood studies in East Marsh (review one year on), West Marsh, Nunsthorpe/Bradley Park/Grange, Immingham, Willows/Wybers/Healing/Great Coates and Cleethorpes. Seventy one children and young people have been involved in this project to date.
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Supporting the development of community groups for children and young people formed following the neighbourhood studies in East and West Marsh (East Marsh Action Group (EMAG) and Young People 4 Progress) to discuss local issues and influence positive change.
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Restarting LAC participation groups and forming a Council for Children in Care group - 2 meetings have been held already.
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Holding a Council for Young People Conference for Democracy (October 2007) and a Conference for the UKYP elections (March 2008). In total over 200 young people attended these events. Regular meetings to discuss topics such as workforce development have also been held.
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The SUPPORT Children's Forum producing 2 newsletters produced with the views of children for their peers with the aim of encouraging others to get involved with the debates as well as join meetings to discuss topics important to them and others such as workforce development. The newsletters were distributed to all primary and junior schools
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Undertaking a Hear By Right Audit with children and young people using the National Youth Agency Building Standards tool.
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Working with current groups to inform the Children and Young People's Plan Refresh.
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Developing a Children's Citizens Panel.
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Holding a Secondary School Council Forum meeting to discuss how the Forums can come together to discuss common issues.
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School council training delivered through Healthy Schools to improve the consistency of both primary and secondary School Councils. This involved 3 secondary schools and 2 primary schools and also 3 virtual desktop training sessions.
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Use of the Virtual Desktop to communicate with school councils.
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Neighbourhood Forums in 3 areas to distribute Youth Bank Funds.
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Children and young people developing "Communicating with Children and Young People" training in the form of an E-learning package and DVD.
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Working with Children with disabilities to improve how they are involved in their reviews.
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Promotion of children's rights to children and young people from Year 5 upwards and staff working with children and young people.
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Communicating with Young Carers group to support and improve the ways they can get involved.
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The East Marsh Children's Centre piloting and developing techniques to work with the under 5s to gain their views on being healthy through a project with the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England (11 Million Project).
During 2007/2008 Children and Young People have told us that:
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The environment they live in should be clean from fly tipping, dog fouling, vandalism and graffiti.
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They are interested in environmental issues and improving them through influencing the future of matters such as energy saving and recycling.
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They have seen improvements in their community since giving their views on what needed to be improved and how, particularly in the East Marsh Area.
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They want to see and understand what is happening to deal with and reduce bullying
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They want to feel safe in their communities through better lighting in parks and on streets.
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They want to stop speeding cars and have bus stops in safe positions.
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There should be activities that engage all young people to prevent boredom and anti social behaviour.
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They want to be involved and have a say about how facilities and services are developed.
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They want to improve access to and appropriateness of services they use.
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They want to increase the awareness of all young people about their emotional health and well being.
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They want to challenge stereotypes of young people and increase positive images of young people in the media.
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They want to be involved in helping improve children and young people's physical health and emotional well being especially in connection to reducing obesity and eating disorders.
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They want adults communicate with and understand the views of all children and young people better and would like to help them do that.
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They have ideas and opinions on the housing conditions and developments in their area.
These have been taken from the issues that children and young people have raised in the Neighbourhood Studies, Council for Young People (CfYP) main discussion topics this year through their group and conferences, the SUPPORT Children's Forum and East Marsh Action Groups.
During 2007/8 there have been several changes directly resulting from listening to children and young people' views in North East Lincolnshire. These include improvements to the environment they live in such as parks being painted and repaired, more dog fouling bins being installed, community wardens and Police Community Support Officers patrolling the parks and streets and the condition of some housing has improved following the neighbourhood study films.
A group of children and young people in the West Marsh have been involved in planning for the new park equipment in the Duke of York Gardens, this is currently being installed.
Using children and young people's views we have written funding applications to the BIG Lottery for the Young People's Fund 2 and My Place bid.
Members of the Council for Young People spent time with Grimsby Evening Telegraph to raise the issue of positive images of young people in the media, which has led to an improvement and we are keen to further improve this.
Children and young people have been involved throughout the planning for the rebuild of Grant Thorald Library to ensure it is based on the whole communities needs. Over the coming year we plan to see many more examples of how children, young people and their families are involved in and influencing positive change in their community and the services they access.
Links Between Every Child Matters and School Standards
There is a mutual dependency between Every Child Matters and school standards agendas and these should be driven forward together. There are expectations placed on schools in delivering standards, the Every Child Matters agenda and extended services as follows:
In North East Lincolnshire we are responding to this through a team of Children's Service Advisers. This team is charged with developing the full range of ECM outcomes within partnership groupings of schools and increasing access to geographically based multi-agency teams.
The core message for schools is that they must provide a safe environment for all their children and should then focus on achievement. However they must also consider the wider role they play in contributing to other outcomes for children. The school partnerships are built on the extended schools clusters where the full core offer enables choice, including holiday activities for example.
Individual pupil progress is debated on a termly basis and tracking in schools now indicates that gaps for some groups are closing.
Schools should establish a strong performance focus which quickly identifies emerging and effective practice as well as any delivery issues/problems in ECM and standards. There should be a real focus on standards in all parts of the delivery system.
School partnerships enable group approaches to improvement through, for example, the effective sharing of performance data, group curriculum projects on virtual learning environments or improving boys' writing. A common transition project has resulted in parents from 9 schools engaging with the Parents' Institute, early transfer of pupils to one Academy and all schools working with personal development programmes in the lead up to this year's transitions.