How well do our services support children, young people and families in Nottinghamshire?
Various external judgements are made about the quality of services across our Nottinghamshire Children's Trust. In 2008 the wide ranging Joint Area Review (JAR) found that, in Nottinghamshire, service management was ‘good’ and capacity to improve further was also ‘good’. Safe recruitment practice was identified in the JAR as a major strength across all agencies with good multi-agency arrangements to respond to domestic violence and when children go missing.
Specific services identified as ‘good’ in the JAR and related inspections included:
- support for those in the local authority care with outstanding support for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people, high quality care from trained and well-supported foster carers and very good participation of children and young people in reviews
- the provision for children and young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, resulting in exceptionally low levels of special educational need (SEN) and disability tribunal appeals. The JAR particularly noted the breadth and depth of the early years phase, the innovative development and capacity building programme for short breaks and the stimulating and transformational Entry to Employment programmes
- the cross-partnership services led by Connexions to achieve a rate well below the national average for those young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)
- the work of the Nottinghamshire Drug and Alcohol Team (DAAT) partnership which has nationally recognised commissioning processes to deliver a comprehensive range of young people specific services, particularly targeted at the most vulnerable and found by a best value review to provide cost effective, well established ‘best practice’ services
- the quality of youth work provision in Nottinghamshire which was found to be good with outstanding features in the Nottinghamshire enhanced youth inspection report.
We aspire to move from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’ and further details are provided later in our Plan about how we will build on our successes and also work on areas for improvement in our services. Some examples of areas of improvements from the JAR were:
- Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) lacked sufficient capacity to meet assessed levels of need. In 2008-09, Bassetlaw PCT and NHS Nottinghamshire County invested a combined total of approximately £1.25 million in the new District Emotional Health and Well-being Service. This will sustain the development of an integrated delivery ethos across a whole system CAMHS
- transition arrangements, at key points, were too variable across the county and across services (key points include when children or young people change school or leave full-time education)
- progression pathways for students post-sixteen with learning difficulties and/or disabilities were not consistently available across the whole county.
How do we know this information about the situation in Nottinghamshire?
All our partner organisations collect performance data to plan their work and monitor how well they are doing. Our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) brings this information together. Other information such as population figures comes from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) or from census information. Inspections such as the Joint Area Review (JAR) provided us with information about how well our services perform.
