GIRFEC Matters… December 2011 Update

It’s good to be able to feedback that a significant number of settings (and members of staff!) are now confidently using the systems and structures put in place to streamline assessment and planning for children and young people in line with Getting it right for every child.

Since our last Update, Claire Kirbitson has been working with us for 16 hours a week to work with practitioners to take forward child and young person’s planning meetings and to help address barriers and obstacles as this work goes forward. In the rest of her week, Claire is an Early Intervention Worker in South West Edinburgh. From January Mandy Shiel (a Principal Teacher in Wester Hailes Education Centre) will be joining us full time for one term to take forward the same work.

Both Claire and Mandy would be delighted to hear from any school setting where some extra support to implement Getting it right for every child would be considered helpful (you can contact them through girfec@edinburgh.gov.uk)

Diane Devlin (NHS Lothian’s Lead Officer for Getting it right for every child) continues to offer practical guidance and support to NHS practitioners within Edinburgh and she will be working with Public Health Nursing teams across the city over the coming weeks. Please contact Diane on diane.devlin@edinburgh.gov.uk with any requests for her to visit your establishment or team

Practice development continues to be offered in the following ways:

• An “Introduction to Getting it right for every child in Edinburgh”: a PowerPoint presentation either for individual learning or for delivery by managers and team leaders across children’s services. This will eventually become an e-learning module
• “Getting it right for every child in Edinburgh in Practice” is a 3hour session, originally aimed at those undertaking the role of Named Person or Lead Professional. It is also very useful for managers supporting staff undertaking these roles or for those in community based or citywide services who need to understand about welfare concerns and the increasing focus on early and effective identification in children’s services

Increasingly,” in practice” sessions have been delivered in single agency settings and often to whole staff teams (including all school based staff). Having the pre-reading as a requirement has been helpful and the sessions have run smoothly with high levels of engagement and helpful and positive feedback. Sessions have usually been delivered in local areas and associated partner agencies have also been invited where possible/appropriate

We will continue to offer open sessions and currently have dates organised for 20th January, 15th, 21st February, 9th and 23rd March at Waverley Court. There is capacity for 20 places per morning and afternoon session with each lasting 3½ hours. For more details, and to book on to these dates or arrange a bespoke training event, please contact: girfec@edinburgh.gov.uk

Care Coordination

Getting it right for Care Co-ordination.

Carol Rice, Strategy & Development Officer (Disability) and the Lead for Care Co-ordination and Diane Devlin (NHS Lothian’s Lead Officer for Getting it right for every child) met with a group of local practitioners to discuss embedding Care Co-ordination’s multi-agency approach, pathways and paperwork within Getting it right.

Similar policy drivers promoting the Lead Professional and Key worker role have led to Care Co-ordination Network UK’s Scottish development officer post being incorporated into the Long-term Conditions Alliance Scotland (LTCAS), children and families division.

Research findings from previous studies, concluded that whilst Care Coordination had grown rapidly there were a number of challenges for the future. These included: funding; inter-agency working; equitable access; proliferation of coordinated planning mechanisms; the ability to put children and their families the heart of planning and review meetings; lack of understanding of the key worker role; ongoing training for key workers.

The majority of these challenges have now been superseded by the Getting it right in practice approach which has been mainstreamed to ensure early identification and support for all children and young people, by adopting a joined up streamlined approach to addressing their on-going and changing needs. Getting it right in Edinburgh has sought to minimise and streamline planning meetings into a child or young person planning meeting, using standardised paperwork.

Discussions are on-going regarding a citywide Children’s Services Management Group (CSMG) for children with additional support needs.

Carol will be presenting her report to the Strategic Development Group (Disability) on 13th December, recommending the integration of care co-ordination into Getting it right. A statement on the outcome and recommendations from this meeting will be made in due course.

Getting it right in Edinburgh’s Colleges

One of the city’s Educational Psychologist’s recently coordinated a very helpful meeting in Edinburgh Telford College. Along with a colleague from Stevenson, we explored where and how Getting it right for every Child might add value to the work that is being done in Colleges and also the links between these establishments and the Named Person. It was agreed that a similar session should be held with other college-based colleagues in the New Year and that in the interim the colleges would explore the issues raised further.

Children Services Management Groups

All six locality-based Children’s Services Management Groups are established and have met at least twice. The intention is that they meet 6 times a year with the twin responsibilities of actively supporting staff to implement Getting it right for every child at a neighbourhood and cluster level and managing performance in respect of improved outcomes for children and families. We will continue to provide updates about CSMG work in future communications. Meanwhile, Ttheir remit for the groups can be found at: http://egfl.net/girfec/resources.html and we will continue to provide updates about their work in future communications.

Getting it right for every child in South East Scotland

All 5 local authorities are now working collaboratively with NHS Lothian and NHS Borders and L&B Police to look in more depth at the implementation of the Core Components in the different localities and to share good practice. The event held in June at the Corn Exchange was followed up by a smaller gathering in September and two more cross-authority meetings before March of next year. The Scottish Government is funding a managerial post to enable more collaborative work to take place and to develop greater consistency of approach and Edinburgh is expecting to make a significant contribution to that process, beginning with hosting a session next week on Assessments and Child’s Plans

Auditing Children’s Plans

A first audit of Children’s Plans will take place in early February 2012. The purpose of this is to begin to quality assure the use and consistency of these plans and to further develop good practice. To begin with the audit process will consider plans of school age children only. The next audit will be extended to under 5s. Work is well underway to recruit a multi-agency team of “readers” for this process which is based on the approach that has been undertaken in auditing the Social Work files of Looked After and Accommodated Children. Each school will be asked to provide two examples of Child’s/Young Person’s Plans and a random selection of Plans currently on SEEMIS will also be included. aA separate communication about this will be sent out next week

”My Views for my Team”

Several colleagues have been supporting a review of some of the leaflets originally developed to implement Getting it right for every child and have been able to involve some children and young people in that process. We intend to continue this work and then provide revised materials on the website so that they can be downloaded by colleagues in the workplace. We are also exploring the use of inter-active assessment tools developed by other local authorities (My World Triangle and the Risk and Resilience Matrix) to see whether we can also make them available here in the city.

Education Scotland – review of the readiness of education services to implement Getting it right for every child

Edinburgh was one of 11 authorities selected to contribute to this national review and we are looking forward to receiving feedback from the visits and interviews carried out by the Inspectors in a range of different establishments here in the city. The review has come at an interesting time in our own implementation process here in Edinburgh and I am sure will contribute to our learning and development in this respect

Please feel free to contact us at any time.

GIRFEC in Edinburgh Team

www.edinburgh.gov.uk/girfec 

girfec@edinburgh.gov.uk

lynne.porteous@edinburgh.gov.uk

diane.devlin@edinburgh.gov.uk

0131 469 3375