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Memorandum submitted by Walsall Children's Centres
1. Summary 1.1 This submission will address funding and partnership working within Walsall Children's Centres.
1.2 It will describe how funding is allocated to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged families in Walsall.
1.3 It will provide three case studies of work with other partners and services especially schools and health services
2. Children's Centres in Walsall 2.1 The vision for children's centres in Walsall is to establish a universal entitlement so that every child in Walsall has the best start in life, provided through the ready access to provision that meets their learning, health and family support needs. Our aim is to provide better outcomes for all children through a truly inclusive service.
2.2 All communities in Walsall will have access to children's centre services to meet their needs, requiring differing levels of support according to families' social and economic backgrounds and the existing services that are currently available. The development of children's centres within Walsall is based on a three phased approach. The first phase was based on providing support services for the most disadvantaged areas and then widening this to cover the 30% most disadvantaged areas in Phase 2. The third and final phase is to ensure that all communities in Walsall have access to Children's Centre services.
2.3 The development of Children Centres will require an emerging strategy, founded on the evaluation and commissioning of evidence based services.
3. Funding 3.1 The principle to devolve funding to centres is based on formula approach that gives flexibility to Centre managers whilst ensuring that sufficient funding is allocated to deliver the core offer of services. The aim is to give to give transparency on the factors that have been used and to provide sufficient funding to enable the core offer of services to be met.
3.2 It has proved valuable to continue some central funding for complementary family support, health co-ordination and father support workers where these services can be shown to have high impact and provide better outcomes for children and their families.
3.3 There are seven elements to the formula:
3.3.1 Centres serving the 10% most disadvantaged super output areas The Sure Start requirement for is for all the 30% super output areas to have access to full core offer of Children's Centre services. However, it is important to recognise that some of the Centres were established to meet the needs of highly disadvantaged areas. Therefore, an increased allocation has been made for those Centres serving the 10% most disadvantaged super output areas in Walsall. This will help to improve outcomes for all young children while narrowing the gap between the outcomes of the poorest children and the rest.
3.3.2 Family Support Daycare / Crèche This funding supports the delivery of childcare and/or crèche places for families in need who are also using at least one other service in the Centre, such as training or family support activities. Any respite identified at Level 2 Child Concern or above is to be funded from this funding allocation, not exceeding more than 2 places per week.
3.3.3 Reach Allocations have been based on the size of the Children's Centre reach area. This funding is intended to cover the costs for the Children's Centre Manager and premises costs.
3.3.4 Qualified Teacher support for centres serving the 30% super output areas Centres serving a reach area where more than 50% of the children under the age of 5 are in the 30% most disadvantaged super output areas are required to have a full-time equivalent Qualified Teacher working towards Early Professional Status. A ring-fenced funding allocation has been made to reflect this requirement.
3.3.5 Family Support An allocation has been applied to all Children's Centres to support at least 2 full time equivalent family support workers and must be used for this purpose. This allocation has been increased for the following year 2010/11.
3.3.6 Additional factor for health related family support An allocation has been applied to all Children's Centres to support at least 0.5 full time equivalent health related family support post and must be used for this purpose.
3.3.7 Outreach family support for centres serving the 30% super output areas Funding has been allocated for 2 outreach workers to support the most disadvantaged families to ensure they are accessing the services they need.
4. Work with other partners and services especially schools and health services
4.1 The Child Health Promotion Programme was piloted in the Birchills and Bloxwich North areas of Walsall from October 2008-February 2009. The aim of the pilot was to determine the views of Heath Visiting Teams, local Children's Centre staff and Maternity Services regarding a system of integrated working in order to implement the Child Health Promotion Programme. These views were used in the development of the national Healthy Child Programme by the Department of Health.
4.2 The feedback from professionals was generally positive. It was felt that integrated working increased the variety of skills within the wider children and young people's workforce. It gave clients a greater choice regarding the facilities they could use to access health care and parenting support.
4.3 Health visitors, midwives and Children's Centre staff developed regular "share" meetings where families' needs were discussed and an agreed package of support was put in place. These meetings have developed to include input from local schools, Homestart and Social Care. This ensured that families received services in an appropriate way, resources were allocated effectively and there was a reduction in the number of duplicate contacts. The outcomes for professionals were an increased understanding of each others' roles, identification of joint training needs and an appreciation of service constraints. It provided statutory and voluntary services the opportunity to work more closely, including undertaking joint visits, for the benefit of families.
4.4 Child Health Clinics were held in Bloxwich West Children's Centre which reached a wider client group than previous sessions had been able to achieve.
4.5 It is a requirement that Children's Centres make contact with all families within eight weeks of birth. Health Visitors already visit families within this timescale and by considering all workers part of the Children's Centre "virtual team" it made sense to maximise this contact. The Family Health Needs Assessment Tool was completed by Health Visitors and shared with Children's Centres to establish quality base line data about their families. This enabled Children's Centre staff to undertake a timelier visit at 15 weeks to gift the Bookstart pack and deliver weaning advice.
4.6 Lively Ladybirds is an approach to early identification developed by Sure Start Alumwell Pleck Children's Centre.This centre serves an area of two diverse communities that together make the Pleck ward of Walsall borough. Pleck ward is within the most deprived wards in the country. Problems that have been highlighted are poor housing, high unemployment, low educational attainment and poor health.
4.7 Lively Ladybirds sessions aim to enable staff to observe and assess individual children with a view to early identification of any additional needs they may have. The sessions are designed to meet the needs of the individual child.
4.8 The centre identified children through stay and play sessions, play in the home and family support who were not ready for nursery in the areas of independence, toileting, social and emotional skills, sharing and turn taking
4.9 The staff team used to identify and support these children included staff from the Children's Centre, health visitors, speech and language professionals, and teachers from the Early Years Special Educational Needs team.
4.10 The minimum age for referrals was 2 years and 3 months. A child may have been referred to the group by any professional in the community with whom he/she currently had contact, e.g. health visitor, family support worker, early years/crèche workers, nursery. The criteria for referral to the group were:
· Concerns about communication and interaction skills, e.g. the child avoids interaction, has problems communicating through speech and/or other forms of language, has delayed or poor speech, doesn't respond to their name or follow instructions. · Markedly lower levels of development and play than those of other children of the same age. · Inappropriate behaviour, e.g. aggressive to others, introverted or withdrawn, unable to follow routine. · Poor gross and/or fine motor skills · Difficulty with activities that require visual skills and/or difficulties with hand/eye co-ordination
4.11 The person making the referral completed a form with the parent/carer, clearly identifying the reason and gaining permission from the parent/carer to make the referral. Children were accepted into Lively Ladybirds for an initial period of a term. After this time, a review meeting was held with parents to inform them of their child's progress. Some children needed a fixed period of further assessment at Lively Ladybirds sessions.
4.12 Initially sessions were 2 hours but the children found this too long so it was changed to 1.5 hours, once a week, term time only and based at the local school. All sessions were structured to include: · Set welcome time · Free play ( to include an adult-led activity) · Snack time · Story/Rhyme time · Home/Good bye time.
4.13 A transition review and plan was put into place for each child leaving Lively Ladybirds in consultation with the child's next setting.
4.14 The outcome for these children is that they had a package of support in place ready to access their free early years entitlement. It has enabled early identification of specific needs and ensured smooth, effective transition from one setting to another.
4.15 The Children's Centre at Bentley West is in its third year of delivering a transition programme called Foundation for Learning to assist both children and parents with the transition from childcare to school nursery. This operates five mornings a week from April to July.
4.16 The planning is produced in conjunction with the Early Years co-ordinators from two local schools and identifies children's individual needs e.g. speech and language delay. Nursery teachers have an opportunity to meet their future nursery children prior to their start date.
4.17 The Early Year's co-ordinator has tracked children using the Children's Centre and has shown that their baseline outputs are higher than those children who enter school nursery without having attended the Children's Centre. This progress has been maintained throughout Reception and Year 1.
4.18 A recent Ofsted report concluded:
"The Children's Centre is led and managed well, and the excellent links with the main school ensure that children make a smooth transition to the Early Years Foundation Stage"
5. Conclusion
The funding formula helps Children's Centre to focus on the most disadvantaged and ensure core offer of services whilst retaining flexibility to deliver services that meet local needs.
Children's Centres in
October 2009 |