Welcome to the Children's Services Local Planning Groups
Below is brief explanation and history of the development of Local Planning Groups, alternatively you can access individual pages for the planning groups covering the whole of County Durham:
Derwentside
Durham and Chester-le-Street
Durham Dales
Easington
Sedgefield
Local Children and Young People’s Planning Partnerships have been established in localities across the county. Membership, chairing arrangements and governance and accountability arrangements have been developed by local determination, but there are a number of common factors. These are:
- The groups are co-terminus with Primary Care Trust (PCT) boundaries and cover: Durham and Chester-le-Street, Easington, Derwentside, Durham Dales and Sedgefield.
- The groups have been established with accountability to both their Local Strategic Partnership and the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership.
- The purpose of the groups is to provide a forum to agree common priorities, targets and actions between agencies in order to promote positive outcomes for children young people and their families. Key partners include public and voluntary sector agencies working in the localities.
Local Children’s Planning Groups will take responsibility for the development of key preventative interventions at a local level. Key partners will work to identify local initiatives, which will address locally identified needs and priorities. The Planning Groups provide a forum for linking existing groups and initiatives with mainstream services and organisations. The Planning Groups will be well placed to identify ways of attracting new funding and maximising existing funding opportunities. They will also create a forum for agreeing how existing services can work together more effectively at a local level to ensure greater accessibility to service users.
Their main focus will be to:
- Ensure strategic and operational link and coherence.
- Identify and ensure local needs are being met.
- Encourage children, young people, parents and carers to participate in service planning, delivery and evaluation.
- Implement the Local Preventative Strategy.
- Reflect local needs within the policy and strategic planning.
- Coordinate and monitor provision locally.
- Promote and support effective practice locally (multi-agency delivery, seamless provision, prompt and quality response).
