How does our Children and Young People’s Plan relate to other strategies and plans in Nottinghamshire?
The Nottinghamshire Children's Trust brings together the organisations responsible for services for children, young people and families across the county. Our Children and Young People’s Plan sets out the key improvement priorities for the Trust, and describes how they will be achieved. It covers services for all children and young people in Nottinghamshire aged nought to nineteen and also services for those young people aged twenty and over leaving local authority care and services for young people with learning difficulties up to the age of twenty-five.
The organisations that make up the Children's Trust are also part of the Nottinghamshire Partnership, the wider Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) for the county. This is made up of organisations that work for all citizens of Nottinghamshire and includes public, private, community and voluntary organisations.
The Nottinghamshire Sustainable Community Strategy (2009-2026) is the long-term strategy of the Nottinghamshire Partnership. The Local Area Agreement (LAA) sets out priorities for action from the Sustainable Community Strategy.
Nottinghamshire is a two-tier authority with seven district or borough councils, as well as the County Council. There are local LSP groups in each of the districts or boroughs. Each LSP has its own community strategy and plans which feed into the county Sustainable Community Strategy. This allows district priorities to be reflected in a countywide plan.
Our current LAA is for 2008-2011, and our new Children and Young People’s Plan will be for April 2009 to March 2011 to align with this.
A number of partnership strategies and plans for particular work areas contribute to achieving our Children and Young People’s Plan priorities. These are listed on the Nottinghamshire stategies and plans page.
We have a diagram to show our levels of planning, from strategic planning through to setting objectives for individuals who work with children, young people and families.
The Nottinghamshire LAA sets out six themes and ten cross-cutting priorities for action that will help us to achieve these themes. The Children's Trust takes responsibility for the children and young people achieving their full potential theme of the LAA and has a key role in working with the wider Nottinghamshire Partnership to promote priorities for the LAA that relate to children, young people and families.
The Corporate Director of Children and Young People's Services also sits on the Safer Nottinghamshire Board which has responsibility for the A safe place to live theme and shares responsibility for the activities relating to reducing youth offending and anti-social behaviour.
We have a diagram to show Nottinghamshire’s LAA themes and the cross-cutting priorities that relate to them
Our Children and Young People’s Plan embraces the priorities agreed in the LAA. We have developed these further by consulting with our workforce and with children, young people and families to identify ten improvement priorities.
In 2008, Nottinghamshire’s public services worked together to produce a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). This provides an overall picture of the lives of all citizens of Nottinghamshire, including children and young people. It includes information about health, learning, employment, crime and community safety.
Nottinghamshire County Council, Bassetlaw PCT and NHS Nottinghamshire County have also developed a Joint Commissioning Framework (JCF) for health and social care. This will respond to the needs identified in the JSNA and focus on working together to improve the lives of local people.
The JCF has seven focus areas, including the commissioning of services for children and young people. The children and young people’s focus area has five key aspirations for joint planning or commissioning, developed from the Children and Young People's Plan improvement priorities. The JCF aspirations are to:
- reduce teenage pregnancy rates and improve sexual health
- reduce obesity levels among children
- improve mental health and well-being
- improve services for children and young people with additional needs (this is not a specific priority within the Plan but is implicit throughout)
- reduce the negative impact of substance use and smoking on children and young people.
