A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Council and councillors

Agenda item

PARTICIPATION AND ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

To receive a presentation on the development of a new Participation and Engagement Strategy from John Herbert, Participation and Engagement Lead Officer. A presentation from care leavers on the work of the participation group and the care leavers’ offer will also be given. 

 

A copy of the current Participation Strategy is attached.

 

Minutes:

A presentation (appended to the minutes) on the development of a new Participation and Engagement Strategy was received from John Herbert, Participation and Engagement Lead Officer. As a prelude to the presentation Bethany and Sheetal from the Participation Group spoke to Members about the work of the group.

 

During discussion the following points were noted:

 

·         The young people had received information about the Care Leavers’ Offer through staff.

·         The Plans put in place for young people were considered a good offer and members of the participation group who had moved out of area felt that Rutland offered more than other places.

·         In response to a question from the Chair, the young people felt that their views had been listened to and that they had had the opportunity to feed into the New Care Leavers’ Offer.

 

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The Chair thanked the young people for their contribution to the discussion. The young people then left the meeting and did not return.

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·         The Care Leavers’ Offer was a statutory requirement and Rutland’s new Care Leavers’ Offer would be published next week.

·         Over 20 Care Leavers had fed into the consultation meetings and their views and experiences had in turn fed into the new Offer.

·         The MyView App for Children Looked After (CLA) would be enhanced and extended for use by Care Leavers and could be used, for example, for questionnaires so that the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) could be better prepared before reviews.

·         Children and young people would be involved in developing new features for the next version of the MyView app.

·         Having sought the views of young people, the Independent Advocacy Service now employed two models; issues based, as some children wanted to speak to people they did not know so that advice was impartial, and relationship based where children were reassured by speaking to individuals they had an existing relationship with.

·         A steering group was being set up to plan an awards ceremony to highlight some of the amazing achievements of young people.

·         Children’s Services had registered with ASDAN, the National Qualifications Awarding Body to offer qualifications and talents training for CLA, Care Leavers, Service families and those using Youth Services.

·         Officers had worked closely with service families and were looking to develop a ‘Local Offer’ type database for them with information, advice, resources and activities.

·         The new strategy was welcomed by Councillor Harvey who was reassured that the children’s voice was being heard throughout.

·         Councillor Razzell, as the Armed Forces Champion was particularly pleased to see engagement with service families.

·         Councillor Begy asked how officers reached the whole teenage demographic not just care leavers. Mr Herbert cited the Youth Council and work with schools to find out what young people wanted. In addition the youth engagement team were very good at doing outreach work, going out on the streets to understand what young people needed and what they were interested in. Capacity of the team was however somewhat limited as it consisted of just two full time equivalent youth workers.

·         Future iterations of the MyView app would cater for all children but Mr Herbert recognised that there needed to be engagement on all different sorts of social media platforms.

·         The signs of safety practice model used by Children’s Services was about asking questions of the whole family as well as of other involved parties such as religious groups or the police and helped to ensure the most vulnerable children were helped. 

·         Mr Herbert was conducting an audit with all teams to see how they were recording feedback, where they were storing it and how often they analysed it. Use of this data would help to develop services.

·         Having been asked what success looked like to him, the Participation and Engagement Lead officer responded that it was young people being involved, and inputting to and directing projects so that they were co-produced. Any product or service was better if the users were involved in its design and development. There were however certain criteria set according to the budget available.

·         The Director of Childrens Services was far more ambitious for the new Strategy and was not satisfied with the existing level 3 target. The department wanted level 4, pushing for level 5. Mr Herbert’s role had not existed previously but was created and recruited to in order to achieve this aim.

·         The Chair requested that six monthly reports on the success of the new Strategy be fed back into Scrutiny.

 

Supporting documents: