The pledges - investing in young people

The council focuses on services, activities and opportunities to support young people and children in achieving their full potential. We encourage more involvement of young people so that they can influence decisions that will affect their lives.

We provide a wide range of services and facilities for young people. We also support families to help improve the lives and futures of individuals. We have targets to reduce the numbers of looked after children and reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

What went well in 2009/10

• Salford's 3D fostering programme has been praised for its commitment and dedication to improving the lives of young people. This fostering service provides extra support for the carers of young people aged 10 to 16.
• Despite the economic downturn we continued to reduce the number of young people not in employment, education or training.
• We provided seven apprenticeships within our Grounds Maintenance division and ran a successful apprentice programme within our catering service.

Our challenges

• The recession and cuts in budgets and welfare payments may result in more children and young people experiencing poverty.
• In May 2010, Ofsted inspectors carried out a two week investigation of the authority's safeguarding and looked after children service - the service that protects and cares for at risk children. Inspectors said the safeguarding service was "inadequate" and that services for looked after children were "adequate" and met minimum requirements.
• Over the next six months, we will continue to work extremely hard to address these problems. We have a new leadership team in place which will be putting improvements into practice and we have asked that inspectors come back in six months to see what progress we have made.

What we will do

To tackle child poverty we will:

• Improve life chances by creating 800 new job placements under the Future Jobs Fund programme, 300 of which will be within the council.
• Provide support services for young parents in children's centres.

To improve the council's safeguarding of children and looked after children service we will:

• Deliver an improvement programme which will bring in extra social worker expertise to manage all child protection cases effectively.
• Recruit and retain staff to reduce the reliance on agency and interim staff.

This page was last updated on 6 May 2011