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Third Year Report

The year has seen a number of developments, the ending of the pilot with the increase to 38 Consortiums County wide, the sad loss of Diane Wagstaff and the announcement of two new roles in each consortium (parent support worker and children and young people’s worker).

The consortium has also achieved full core offer in 9 schools and has completed a SEF for county which has given dates for the remaining schools to achieve full core offer by 2010 whilst also highlighting vulnerable groups within the consortium for future work, such as looked after children, young carers, low skilled adults and single parents. The achievement of full core offer status is very much seen as a basis to expand and develop from to ensure that the provision of extended services tackles the barriers which vulnerable and hard to reach groups face in reaching their full potential.

The achievement of full core offer status is very much seen as a basis to expand and develop from to ensure that the provision of extended services tackles the barriers which vulnerable and hard to reach groups face in reaching their full potential.

As part of this focus on vulnerable groups the Common Assessment Form (CAF) was rolled out this year for children with complex needs and a multi agency support team (MAST) consisting of service leaders on which the consortium has 2 representatives, was formed to ensure that barriers to referral were addressed quickly.

Each consortium was tasked with creating a Multi Agency Team list (MAT list) which will be used to pull together a team around the child (TAC) to create a coordinated multi agency approach. The networks for integrated practice including the CAF began this year and are being the delivered in the local children centres and are designed to support professionals in the CAF process and develop new ways of working together.

Funding

This year the funding from county has been agreed for the next 3 years which enables a greater certainty for planning the development of extended services. The funding is to be used for the roles of extended school coordinator, Parent support worker and children and young people’s worker and provide some start up funding for projects the consortium identify as a priority in their plans through a process of needs assessment and which must have a sustainability plan in place.

Revenue funding

2008/09-£128,168

2009/10-£167,968

2010/11-£147,818

The consortium will also receive a one off contribution of £3000 to recruitment costs for the new posts.

Further to this the consortium successfully received £10,000 to run the dads and kids group in partnership with Shephall Children centre and in partnership with the north and central consortium gained £28,428 to develop a young carers network in schools.

The consortium has also been part of a successful bid with SBC for Big Lottery funding for £50,000 to provide play workers who have run play sessions in Peartree and Shephalbury Park in the school holidays for local children to access free of charge.

Partnership working and training

The consortium has been represented on the MAST by 2 members and by the coordinator on a number of partnership meetings this year including

District Children’s Trust Partnership
Extended services forum
Social Inclusion Forum
Teenage Pregnancy Forum
Stevenage Team
Stevenage Learning Partnership
Young Carers Network
Shephall Neighbourhood Team
Broadwater Children Centre Governance
Broadwater Children Centre partnership
Shephall Children Centre partnership

A good example of partnership working has been the increase in training we have been able to offer both staff and parents this year. Staff have received various training during the year including a full programme of Speech and language, protective behaviours and Autism awareness. While parents have received training in ADHD & Autism support, early years speech and language and visually impaired training.

Partnership working has also enabled a more cohesive delivery of services as all three extended school consortiums and children centres work closely together to ensure all delivery is focused and the best use of resources is made. Information for parents and students has also improved with collaborative information booklets produced for Adult learning week, family learning week and school holidays provision all of which have contributed to an uptake of provision.

To continue this collaborative theme a town wide web site is being produced by all 3 consortiums to provide the community with an easy access point for all relevant information this will be launched in September. This year the consortium has also in an effort to improve communication and participation has commissioned notice boards for all schools which will be easily accessible for all the school and wider community.

Parental and wider community engagement

Support for parents has also extended to a number of parenting and family learning courses, during this year alone we have had 20 such courses run with over 150 parents attending. Evaluations of these have been very positive with parents attending a muddle free maths course for example stating that 100% felt confident in helping their children after the course compared to 20% prior to the course. There has also been successful progression from this course with 2 parents signing up for a level 2 maths accredited course in September.

A project worked on in partnership with Relate will enable all consortium schools to refer parents for counselling free of charge next term and track the effect on the children of this intervention.

The community room has grown in success this year and has become widely used by a variety of groups including

Breast feeding network
Cheeky Monkeys toddler group
Contact visits
Autism training for parents
Speech and language training for both staff & parents
Protective behaviours
Visually impaired training
Parenting
Parents meeting
SEN Parent information sessions
Anti social work by Police
Dads and kids group

The up take of adult learning this year has been good with courses running each term and over 200 adults taking part in some kind of adult learning. This will be developed next year with an accredited course being offered for progression.

Wide and varied menu of activities

Alongside the various activities offered by individual schools, in partnership with Hitchin Football club playing for success the consortium had 2 schools attending an after school club for 6 weeks each which targeted low achieving children and all showed a significant improvement in achievement.

This has led to a further 4 schools being able to access this next year. Child UK ran sessions in 7 schools this year including Greenside which was a great success.

Mark Wright continued with his basketball club during the year and has 50 children attending and they have won a number of tournaments during the year, a remarkable feat for children who have never played before! The funding for Mark this year paid for all schools to receive 5 hours of basketball and 5 hours of athletics each.

The funding received for young carers will also fund an after school club for young carers in each consortium, somewhere for these children to have the chance to escape their caring responsibilities for a short while.

Finally we have put together a bid for the prevention 513 fund for after school activities for all the special schools in town in partnership with Child UK and the central consortium which will be notified in October if we are successful.

Future Planning

The coming year will see a focus on the remaining schools achieving the full core offer and a further strengthening and development of the work that has already been achieved by those schools which are already offering the full core offer to students and the wider community. There will be a targeted approach for identified vulnerable groups such as under achieving students including young carers and looked after children, lone parents and low skilled adults, whilst the barriers that special schools face in providing the full core offer will continue to be addressed at local and county level.

Building on the work already achieved by our consortium and with the development of the 2 new roles in parent support worker and children and young people’s worker we plan to have the capacity to really make a difference to the life chances of many vulnerable groups in our school communities in the coming years.