The Children’s Act 2004 requires local areas to have Children’s Trust arrangements in place for April 2008. Through the Children’s Trust, Local Authorities will work with their relevant partners to improve the well-being of children and young people across 5 key outcomes, which are set out in the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Programme. The five outcomes which matter most to children and young people are:
- Being healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle
- Staying safe: being protected from harm and neglect
- Enjoying and achieving: getting the most out of life and developing the skills for adulthood
- Making a positive contribution: being involved with the community and society and not engaging in anti-social or offending behaviour
- Achieving economic well-being: not being prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full potential in life.
Bury Children’s Trust Arrangements
The Trust Board is a small strategic group chaired by the Chief Executive of the Council, Mark Sanders. The Board members hold strategic responsibility for planning and budgets within their relevant agencies and the Board will provide the multi agency governance arrangements required of a Children’s Trust.
The Children’s Trust Board is supported and informed in its decision making by 3 important groups. These are the Strategic Planning & Commissioning Group, responsible for producing an audit of need, highlighting the priorities in each of the outcome areas and, under the direction of the Trust Board, commissioning the activities to address the priorities. This group will be responsible for producing the Children & Young People’s Plan, in consultation and liaison with the associated groups.
The Board will be further assisted in its work by the Performance Improvement Group, which will be responsible for ensuring improved performance against the Children & Young People’s Plan and for identifying emerging priorities. This group will steer the work of 5 ECM Outcome Sub Groups.
The third group supporting the Children’s Trust Board will coordinate and guide the range of activities that are taking place in Bury as part of the Every Child Matters agenda, including the Workforce Strategy, Extended Services and Children’s Centres, Integrated Youth Support, the Participation, Prevention and Parenting Strategies, the implementation of the Common Assessment Framework and the development of the Children & Young People’s Network.
Useful documents and links:
Children & Young People’s Network
Through the Children & Young People’s Network the Children’s Trust communicates with and involves a broad based network of statutory, private, community and voluntary agencies. Here's a link for further information about the Children & Young People’s Network.
The Children & Young People’s Plan 2007-2010
The Children’s Act 2004 introduced a requirement for each Local Authority to produce a Children and Young People’s Plan, setting out how the Authority, in collaboration with partners, will meet their respective responsibilities in respect of services to children and relevant young people.
The Children & Young People’s Plan 2007-2010 has been developed by a partnership of statutory and voluntary agencies, schools and colleges, children and young people, and parents and carers, through a wide ranging consultation process.
It sets out the framework for partnership working to deliver the shared improvement priorities, and shape future service delivery to improve outcomes for all, and in particular for vulnerable groups and those most in need.
The priorities and cross-cutting themes of the Children & Young People’s Plan are aligned to the themes of the Local Area Agreement, ie, to engage with and strengthen communities; and to reduce inequalities.
The Children’s Trust has undertaken a Refresh of the Children & Young People’s Plan which updates the information in the Plan in the light of recent changes and current data. This includes the implementation of Children’s Trust arrangements in Bury; the new Government 10 year strategy which requires Local Authorities and partners to have an integrated youth support strategy in place; the Making it Better health reconfiguration; and updated data including the schools results for 2007 and the Strategic Needs Analysis.
The Children & Young People’s Plan will be reviewed in 2008 in line with the statutory requirement to conduct a formal review of the Plan in each year in which the Authority is not producing a new Plan.
Children and Young People's Plan 2007-2010 (840kb 64 page pdf)
Children and Young People's Plan Summary (85kb 4 page pdf)
For further information about the Bury Children’s Trust, please contact the Children’s Trust Development Officer, telephone 0161 253 7346, e-mail ChildrensTrust@bury.gov.uk.
