The Durham Five

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The Local Preventative Strategy for County Durham shares the same vision, values and outcomes as the Every Child Matters in County Durham Project.

In County Durham, all children, young people and their families will:

• Be healthy
• Be safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution; and
• Have economic well-being

All children , young people and their families will be:

• Listened to
• Take a full part in decision-making
• Comfortable with the decision making process
• Aware of the opportunities to be involved and
• Treated with respect and dignity

The intention of this document is to provide a broad framework for the development of preventative services across the County. It is not intended to summarise the range of current activity that is taking place in every locality, but to ensure that when agencies collaborate to plan for the safeguarding and promotion of children’s welfare, their orientation is towards prevention. Nevertheless, there some key developments taking place within the County that underpin the strategy. The policy drivers of the Children Act 2004 and “Every Child Matters: Next Steps”, Sure Start and Children’s Centres, the National Service Framework for Children, Young people and Maternity Services, the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, the Youth Crime Prevention Strategy, the CAMHS Strategy and the Children's Fund set a clear agenda towards prevention.

For the purposes of this strategy, prevention is defined as: “the promotion of child well-being by enabling children and young people to develop their full potential and the promotion of family well-being by enabling parents/carers to meet the overall needs of their children and themselves.” [A Crombie quoted in “Refocusing Children’s Services Towards Prevention: Lessons form Literature, Dartington Social Research Unit 2003]

The aim of the preventative strategy is to refocus children’ services towards prevention in order to achieve a better balance between investment universal and targeted services aimed at early intervention and a consequent reduction in more specialist intervention, where services are reactive to more serious chronic and acute concerns and which also carry high levels of risk management.

Within County Durham all children, young people and their families will have access to a range of quality services to meet their needs as appropriate. Services will be well connected at a local level. Where problems and difficulties require the involvement of more than one agency or professional, access will be seamless and easily achieved.

Current preventative interventions such as Sure Start, work carried out by the Children’s Fund and Extended Schools are concerned with the provision of services to all children within geographically and demographically determined areas and are orientated to improving a range of outcomes for children. The scope of the preventative strategy is to connect and build on the learning and service developments provided by these initiatives. In each locality the aim is to ensure that a menu of these services is available to all. Some of these services will be universal and open to all but others will be more focused and intensive. An improved system of assessment and planning, provided by the Common Assessment Framework, should ensure that vulnerable children, young people and their families can access services at the earliest opportunity.

The key elements of the local preventative strategy are as follows:

• To develop and implement a shared vision and values across agencies
• To audit needs and services within localities
• To focus on improving outcomes
• To ensure a local focus to priority setting and service provision to meet local needs
• To develop a more effective assessment and referral processes
• To work towards integration of services

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LP Strategy.pdf

Number of pages: 12
Size of file: 59KB

Contact: Mark Gurney
Tel: 0191 3833053