Children's Fund Programmes

A key aspect of all of these packages is that the actions/activities funded are new, or expansions/developments of proven innovations, which will be underpinned by greater co-operation between Departments and their agencies to secure more effective services through integrated service delivery.

Total funding allocated to the C&YP funding package is £28.4 million in 2006-07 and £33.3 million in 2007-08 and this will be included in baselines of relevant participating Departments. References in this document to funding for individual elements of the package give the amounts available in each year.

In terms of allocations in support of activities, two broad complementary approaches to targeting of resources have been agreed:

• area-based: drawing on Neighbourhood Renewal areas, but recognising that there are disadvantaged areas beyond these, including the needs of deprived rural areas; and
• client-based: (as will be necessary for some elements of the package such as looked-after children and child protection issues, children with special needs and disabilities, some services, and for some allocations to schools which will reflect the proportions of pupils entitled to Free School Meals).

The Department of Education, as lead department for the C&YP funding package, has worked with other key departments to draw up a programme of measures across a range of areas to be developed and taken forward over the next two years.

The overall objective of the C&YP funding package is to reduce underachievement and improve the life chances of children and young people by enhancing their educational development and fostering their health, well-being and social inclusion through the integrated delivery of the support and services necessary to ensure that every child has the best start in life.

In pursuing the objective of the package a range of actions / activities will be taken forward under the following key themes:

• Extended Schools
• Extended early years provision
• Looked-after children and vulnerable young adults
• Youth provision
• Child protection
• Children with special needs and disabilities

Theme 1: Extended Schools [£13.25m/£13.3m]

Many schools already operate beyond the normal school day offering a variety of provision, with many examples of innovation and good practice. Developments are ad hoc, however, and not directly funded through school budgets. The Extended Schools concept (8am to 6pm) is at the core of the C&YP package. Extended Schools will provide activities based on their particular circumstances and needs, but taken from a ‘menu’ which will include breakfast clubs, after-school study support and after-school youth, sport and leisure activities; programmes for parents and community use of schools. The focus will be on supporting learning, creativity and healthy lifestyles, including tackling obesity in children and young people, with funding being allocated directly to schools.

The initiative will be targeted on nursery, primary, post-primary and special schools located in disadvantaged areas. This will mainly cover Neighbourhood Renewal Areas, but also include schools in other areas, including rural areas, reflecting the numbers of pupils entitled to Free School Meals. This funding is additional to the £995 million being made available for schools’ delegated budgets in 2006-07 and the support services and initiative funding which they routinely receive.

The £13.25m being made available in the first year of the programme will be allocated as follows:-

• £10m/£10m for front-line activity in schools. It is anticipated that in excess of 300 schools will benefit from the fund in the first year. Funding will support the employment of school co-ordinators and some local activity, both within individual schools and in collaboration with others in the commissioning of services;
• £1.75m/£1.8m for school-based counselling support for children and young people, including training costs of increasing numbers of fully-trained counsellors to meet increased demand; this is to complement central Government funding of some £420k per annum provided to the Education and Library Boards for provision of counselling services, which is in addition to funding which the Boards themselves and children’s charities devote to this area.
• £0.5m/£0.5m for Creative Learning Centres: the three Creativity Learning Centres (Studio On at Crossnacreevy, AMMA at Armagh, and the Nerve Centre in Londonderry) provide children and young people with a unique opportunity for creative learning through digital technologies. These centres have been supported to date by a cocktail of funding from various sources including the Creativity Seed Fund which is no longer available. C&YP funding will be used to develop new programmes and target new groups to access the facilities from school children, teachers, youth groups and youth leaders, prioritised towards children and young people in disadvantaged areas.
• £1m/£1m for centralised services, support and administration, and for monitoring and evaluation for the package.

Theme 2: Early years provision (0-4 yrs) [£3.85m/£7m]

The early years element of the package seeks to develop coherent support for pre- school children and their parents through a new model of service delivery and a greater range of support.

The two main social policy areas for children in the 0-4 age group in Northern Ireland are Sure Start and the Pre-School Education Expansion Programme. Sure Start aims to work with parents and children to promote the physical, intellectual and social development of pre-school children – particularly those who are disadvantaged – to ensure that they are well prepared for school and later life; this new initiative comes on top of existing planned provision of some £28m for the 2005-06 – 2007-08 period. PSEEP rolls out pre-school places (statutory and voluntary) to meet demand, and existing planned provision for the 2005-06 – 2007- 08 period currently totals some £25m. The objective of this Theme is to provide a seamless link between the two, building on their success and adding to the services they currently provide.

• A £1.75m/£3m expansion of Sure Start. The expansion will include new projects, satellite services and existing projects expanding their boundaries to incorporate additional wards. The expansion will focus on areas of need but will primarily target children under the age of 4 and their families who are either within the 20% most disadvantaged wards or living in areas with shortages in provision.
• A planned developmental programme for 2 year olds (£0.75m/£2m) will focus on constructive play in group settings to enhance the children’s social development, build on their communication and language skills, and encourage their imagination through play. This programme has natural links to both Sure Start and Pre-School and will help to create a seamless transition to the pre-school environment as well as engaging with parents and providing a joint care/learning environment.
• Day care (£0.65m/£1.2m) to be provided within Sure Start projects; this funding will identify and meet need for day care in areas of deprivation to allow parents to access work or training.
• £0.6m/£0.8m to provide the facilities of the Pre-School Education Expansion Programme in conjunction with Sure Start. This will allow Sure Start to make seamless provision for children from birth until they enter school and will provide places for some 570 children in their pre-school year.
• Finally, £100k will be allocated in 2006/07 to increase the enrolment of Traveller Children in pre-school settings.

All of the above provision will be made through or linked to extended schools wherever possible.

Theme 3: Improving education provision and support for looked-after children and vulnerable young adults [£2.85m/£2.75m]

The majority of looked-after children, around 70%, are in foster care, while the remaining 30% are in residential care. Existing support systems are insufficient to meet the educational and development needs of children in care. Needs have also been identified to ensure that the voices of young people in care are heard through the availability of independent advocacy services and to support young people leaving care as they make the transition to adulthood.

These measures provide for additional support for children and young people in care to enhance their participation in education by:

• supporting and equipping foster carers to discharge their role effectively as ‘first educators’ of the child in their care: at a cost of £1.04m in 2006-07 and 2007-08, a parenting and education support service to foster carers will be created. This will comprise a team of development workers which will be established and based within the voluntary sector to provide training for foster carers around parenting matters and about the education system. Provision for foster carers will include access to an education/training credit of around £800 per annum in respect of all children aged 4-17 years who are in care longer than six months. Credits can be used, for example, to acquire a home computer and/or to fund tuition for a specific educational or personal development need. Foster carers will be advised and supported by the development workers in how best to use the education credit to assist in the educational or personal development of the child in their care. This initiative comes on top of a planned investment of £6m over the next two years to increase the number of foster carers in NI.
• supporting staff in residential care settings to promote improved educational outcomes for the children in their care: With provision of £0.3m/£0.3m, an education outreach officer will be based in each ELB area to support and work in close co-operation with social services and staff in residential settings to sustain the continuity of educational placements and assist with early intervention to prevent any problems developing to crisis point. A further £100k has been allocated in the first year to refresh computer equipment in children’s homes.
• enabling young people who are not yet ready for independence to remain living with their former foster carers, and to encourage more young people leaving care to continue in education or training up to age 21: Very few young people are ready to move to fully independent living at age 18. A special fund of £0.75m/£0.75m has been allocated to enable those young people leaving care who are particularly vulnerable to continue living in a safe and supported family environment up to the age of 21, and to promote higher continued participation of care leavers in education and training up to age 21.
• empowering children and young people in care to engage actively in the process of ensuring the system works in their best interests: while primary carers and social workers should be trained to act as effective advocates for the children in their care, in many situations independent advocacy creates a culture of openness where listening and responding to children’s concerns becomes an integral part of everyday practice. An independent advocacy and peer mentoring service for care experienced children and young people up to age 25 years will be established at a cost of £0.66m/£0.66m. Locally-based projects will be organised and supported by teams of qualified advocacy workers in each of the five new integrated Health and Social Services Trust (HSST) areas created by RPA and delivered by voluntary sector organisations working in collaboration with some input from the statutory sector. In addition, a programme of peer mentoring will be established in each RPA area to engage with children in post-primary education, particularly around the benefits of education and sustaining the current educational placement.
• This package of measures will improve the stability and continuity of care for the young people, empower carers to engage competently with the education system, reduce the social exclusion of looked-after children, improve educational outcomes and levels of school attendance and contribute to better long term outcomes in terms of employment, health and wellbeing. Importantly there will be an independent safeguard that empowers these young people to make their own decisions, develop their own strategies, define their own agenda and speak for themselves.

Theme 4: Youth Outreach Initiative [£0.75m/£1.025m]

This will be a new ‘outreach’ youth work provision focusing on marginalised and isolated young people in rural areas (and on interfaces in communities with a rural hinterland) as well as young people who are part of hard-to-reach communities of interest that fall under Section 75 including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), ethnic minority and disabled young people. Research has shown that deprivation in rural areas is very real. Although purpose-built youth facilities are not always available, it has been proven that a less structured approach can suit some children who would not normally attend a youth centre: the most successful youth work is often achieved by working with young people in their own environment. The funding will provide some 25 additional youth workers to serve these groups.

Theme 5: Child protection [£1.8m/£2.55m]

This Theme sets out a series of developments to strengthen child protection arrangements and foster inter-agency co-operation and collaboration. These are:

• increased access for children and young people experiencing abuse or at risk of abuse to first-line telephone helpline support: the response rate for a local helpline dedicated to dealing with children who are in need of advice, support or counselling and who may be at risk of abuse or in abusive situations is around 60%, around 12,000 calls. While capacity to deal with calls in respect of bullying will be expanded in 2006 by the creation of a dedicated helpline for this purpose, the positive response rate will still fail to meet known demand. The provision of an additional £100k in 2006/07 and 2007/08 will increase capacity to allow 70% of calls to be answered and improve the capacity for early intervention in abuse cases.
• support the voluntary and youth sectors to develop and improve their child protection arrangements: the Sports Council for Northern Ireland currently have a contract with NSPCC through which support is provided to the Governing Bodies of Sports, Community Sport organisations and other voluntary sporting organisations to audit and develop their child protection arrangements and to be kept up to date on best practice developments. £65k/£65k will enable the Sports Council’s programme of support to continue with the sport organisations and be developed and applied within the voluntary youth sector, with a view to 75% of organisations attaining ‘Getting It Right’ (GIR) child protection standards by March 2007 and 85% by March 2008. In addition, funding of £235k/£235k will be provided to improve child protection procedures and practices in the youth sector across Northern Ireland.
• create a network of specialist rapid response child protection teams: there are increasing numbers of referrals to social services and of children presenting with increasingly complex needs requiring increasingly specialist responses. This, combined with raised levels of awareness of child protection issues and rising expectations from the public about the quality of child protection services, has highlighted the need to reform and modernise our child protection services. To address this, front line child protection services will be re-organised on a consistent basis across Northern Ireland by creating Rapid Response and Assessment Teams in each of the five new HSST areas. These teams will be funded by a combination of redeploying existing resources and a further investment of £0.8m/£1.05m through this package.
• expand the provision of child contact centres, where children from separated families can enjoy contact with one or both parents in a safe environment. £0.5m in 2007-08 will allow for the provision of additional contact, counselling and mediation services across Northern Ireland.
• improve inter-agency co-operation and collaboration between schools’ staff and social services: each school has a designated teacher for child protection to whom concerns must be reported for action. Plans are already in hand for the Child Protection Support Service for Schools provided by the Education and Library Boards to be restructured in 2006 into a full-time professionally-managed service at an additional cost of £360k per annum over current spend. This will address some of the weaknesses identified in the support provided to schools’ staff engaged in child protection work, but not the availability of designated teachers to attend appropriate training, or to engage in networking with staff in other schools or with colleagues from the social services and other agencies. The provision of £0.6m/£0.6m will enable all designated teachers for child protection in grant-aided schools to be allocated 3 protected days each year for training and continuous professional development, including interagency training with social workers, to ensure they are appropriately skilled to discharge their child protection duties effectively.

Theme 6: Children with special needs and disabilities [£5.9m/£6.675m]

Special needs can include any difficulty that is a barrier to learning, health, well- being and social inclusion. This theme has 5 strands aimed at overcoming specific barriers faced by many children and young people.

• English as an additional language: there are currently over 2,500 children in Northern Ireland who have significant difficulty with English. The Department of Education has already provided £2.27m to Education and Library Boards and schools in 2005/06 to support children for whom English is an additional language. The package will supplement this by providing £100k in 2006/07 and £75k in 2007/08 for the translation into the most common 35 languages of a set of core documents used in schools by children and parents, the establishment of a website to which all schools will have access, and the creation of a call-off list of interpreters who can be used at meetings with parents. These measures will improve communication between parents, children and schools, and help ensure that the child’s educational needs are identified and met.
• Over the last 3 years within the health sector there has been a focus on action to develop services for children with special health needs. For example, developments in the area of eating disorders have improved the services for children and young people with an additional £1m being provided to develop community multi- disciplinary teams. The lack of adequate services for children with autism has been targeted by the development of an assessment service and the allocation of an additional £0.5m. There has also been a focus on the development of new therapy services for disabled children including speech and language therapy, supported by the allocation of an additional £1m. In addition, a particular concern has been the development of physical and sensory services for children including the provision of improved prosthetics and digital hearing aids, supported by the allocation of an additional £0.5m. All these improvements have been made from the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety’s mainstream budget.
• Additional resources of £4m/£4m through the C&YP package will provide for the establishment of multi-disciplinary support teams comprising of Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists and Social Workers, who will be able to provide support services to schools and other settings within the extended schools and early years arrangements. These teams will also provide specialised support to looked-after children and children who require protection. The Health and Social Services Trusts’ existing resources available to support schools on specific issues will also be ring-fenced, and service level agreements will be negotiated on an area basis to ensure that priority needs are met.
• Child and adolescent mental health/learning disability services: Child and adolescent mental health/learning disability services have developed over recent years, for example, to address the issue of inappropriate placements in adult mental health wards additional resources of £1.6m, of which £1.2m is recurrent, have been allocated to provide adolescent inpatient facilities. The Health and Social Services budget provides for the building of a new £5.1m 18-bed adolescent inpatient mental health facility for 13-18 year olds, which is expected to open in 2008. It also provides for a new 8-place Respite Care Unit, planned for the Belfast area, at a cost of £1.9m for children and young people with learning disabilities. A new Residential Respite Care Unit is also planned for the South West at a cost of £1.35m, providing 8 respite places for disabled children and young people. The package will strengthen provision by providing £0.5m in 2006/07 and £1.0m in 2007/08 to establish 2-3 Child and Adolescent Crisis Response Teams across Northern Ireland, depending on need and team composition, to enable appropriate clinical intervention for young people, prevent problems from developing into more serious conditions and where possible avoid admissions. The package will also provide £0.3m/£0.6m for the provision of alterative support in the community for the children who are currently being cared for at Muckamore Abbey Hospital in an unsuitable environment.
• Transition into Adulthood [£1m/£1m]: For many young people, the problems associated with transition from special school have been heightened by an uncertainty surrounding the availability of post-school placement within the adult health services. Additional investment over the last few years has been designed to provide greater flexibility in the provision of day care. The package will provide 100 extra age-specific day care places, to meet the numbers of school-leavers. The overall aim is to create capacity in the day care ‘system’ by moving older clients to more age-appropriate settings, and developing local, small scale projects with the voluntary sector, offering alternatives to facility-based activities. The funding will also provide additional children and youth respite places. This element also includes £100k aimed at providing social and life skills (independence) training as part of transition planning for young people over age 14 with statements of special educational needs. This supplements the Education and Library Boards’ existing funding of £400k for transitions co-ordinators and a transitions service.

Delivery, Monitoring and Evaluation

All the above services to children, young people and their families will be delivered in an integrated and collaborative way through close joined-up working between the relevant Departments and their agencies. Monitoring and inspection will be built in from the outset.

Link with Skills and Science Package

The child care available through the range of activities available 8am-6pm in Extended Schools, as well as the day care provision through Sure Start in disadvantaged areas, will help to support the New Deal + (Pathways for Lone Parents) provided through the Department for Employment and Learning’s Skills and Science Package.

If you would like any further information about any aspect of the C&YP package, please contact John Caldwell in School Improvement Branch of the Department of Education, Rathgael House, Balloo Road, BANGOR BT19 7PR Tel: 9127 9593 or e-mail: john.caldwell@deni.gov.uk

Department of Education, March 2006