What is wrong with the way we do things now?
At the moment children and families are supported by a wide range of organisations and people. Most people who use these services are happy with the help they receive. There are, however, some problems with the current way of doing things.
Lack of joint planning:
At the moment each agency (education, health, police etc) tend to plan their work in ways which works best for them. Sometimes this means that they are delivering similar services to each other and at other times there are leaving important gaps in services and the needs of some families are not being met at all. In particular the Government wants services for children and young people that are easy to access, work well together and make a real difference to the lives of children.
Lack of influence from people who use services:
Across the city children and young people are consulted about the quality of the services they receive and what they want to see in the future. Their voice, however, rarely gets heard at the highest level and therefore does not make as much difference as it could.
Lack of co-ordination:
Unsurprisingly, given the lack of joint planning, many workers on the ground focus only on one part of a child’s life, such as their health, family relationships, or school, rather than looking at the whole picture. SCYPP will be a way of delivering services differently, not just putting the existing services together in one organisation. These services should make more sense to the people who use them.
Sharing information:
One of things that enables organisations to support children and families is information: What are the difficulties? Who is trying to help? What are the good things about the situation? What has been tried in the past? etc. In particular, when they are working out what a child or young person needs (an assessment), several people can end up asking the same questions and then not sharing the answers with each other. Under current laws and with services being delivered by so many different organisations, it is sometimes difficult for different organisations to share this information with each other.
Preventing problems early on:
Everyone believes it is better to support children, young people and families before problems become serious. However, most money is spent on taking action when serious problems arise because that is when agencies have to get involved. Often there has not been enough money to prevent problems at an early stage and be there if things have got more serious. In the future we will have more flexibility to shift money and people from helping children and families in crisis to preventing problems happening in the first place. This is not going to be easy to achieve, but it is more likely to happen than at present.
This page was last updated on 16 September 2005
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