ENABLING THE BEST START IN LIFE FOR Children and young people
What are our overall aims by 2028?
Effective partnership working is embedded between organisations and sectors around a clear set of shared priorities and outcomes for children and young people, maximising the impact of local resources and expertise, and avoiding duplication and missed opportunities.
Through the above, seamless, integrated and evidence-based care and support is delivered at the right time, enabling every child and young person living in Coventry and Warwickshire to have the best start as a foundation for a happy, healthy, safe and productive life.
Children and young people who are more vulnerable or who require additional support, including looked after children and children with special educational needs and disabilities, receive the additional care and support that they need to thrive and make a strong start in life.
To deliver the system responsibilities in relation to the expectations of the Children and Young People Core20PLUS5 model.
Children and young people feel safe and are protected from violence, harm, harmful practices, abuse and neglect at home, online and in the community.
What’s our starting point?
Our Integrated Care Strategy puts the shared commitment across partners in our ICS to supporting children and young people (‘CYP’) to get the best start in life at the forefront of our plans for the next five years. Developing and transforming our service offer for children and young people is an agreed priority across key partner organisations, and the benefits of adopting a system wide partnership approach to delivering this ambition are recognised.
In this context, we have commenced work to develop a Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Coventry and Warwickshire. Taking into account existing CYP workstreams, programmes and projects, and relevant objectives in the NHS Long Term Plan, the strategy will set out our shared priorities and outcomes to improve the lives of CYP and tackle inequalities in line with the national CYP Core20PLUS5 approach.
Following on from an initial stakeholder planning session, a programme of engagement is now being designed to shape and inform the development of the strategy; critical within this will be centring the voices of CYP.
What are some of the key links to other parts of the plan?
Prioritising Prevention and Wider Determinants – across work happening in the CYP arena there is a strong focus on prevention and early intervention. The development of the new strategy will further embed partnership working and approaches which enable us to identify needs and deliver services as early as possible.
Health Inequalities – partnership working is also an essential part of our approach to tackling inequalities and addressing the impact of wider determinants on the health and wellbeing of the CYP. Early engagement around the development of the new strategy has highlighted understanding and responding to inequalities as a central priority.
Collaboration and Integration – whilst partnership working and integration at a Coventry and Warwickshire level is important, our ability to achieve the overall aims set out above will be reliant on collaboration below system level.
Engaging and Involving People – we will seek to ensure that the voices of CYP and their families are heard and at the heart of decision making.
What will we be focusing on in the next 2 years?
Integrated Approach
Developing a Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Coventry and Warwickshire.
Establishing a system-wide Children and Young People Board to oversee the development of the programme of work and governance arrangements to deliver the new strategy.
Establishing processes to collect and share insight and intelligence about the needs of and health inequalities impacting CYP to inform priority setting, planning and service delivery on an on-going basis. Work is in progress in Warwickshire to deliver a CYP Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.
Identifying opportunities for joint resourcing and/or joint commissioning in relation to shared priorities via the Children and Young People Board.
Maternity and Neonatal
See Maternity and Neonatal Services section.
Physical Health
Delivering activities within our local Children and Young People Transformation Programme, which sets out shared priorities across key partner organisations focused on long term physical health conditions, including:
- Delivering the national Asthma Care Bundle through our local Asthma Care Bundle Action Plan;
- Developing a local Epilepsy Care Bundle Action Plan to deliver the national Epilepsy Care Bundle due for publication in 2023;
- Delivering the 2023/24 Diabetes Work Plan for CYP which sits within the all age Coventry and Warwickshire Diabetes Strategy;
- Developing a CYP Diabetes Action Plan for 2024/25;
- Undertaking a review of urgent care services – identifying models of care that could better meet the needs of CYP presenting in these services, and implementing changes to deliver quality improvement;
- Reviewing requirements and responding to the CYP elements of the national Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan to help recover urgent and emergency care services for CYP;
- Raising the voice of the child by delivering initiatives that increase and improve proactive engagement, consultation and liaison with CYP and parent carers. Initially establishing a Participation and Engagement Workstream, engaging experts by experience, the VCSE sector and other stakeholders, to inform the development of the new Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
Maintaining oversight of the delivery of the Programme through the system wide Children and Young People Transformation Programme Board.
Maintaining clinical input to the Programme via three established clinical networks for asthma, epilepsy and diabetes.
Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing
See Improving Access to Services - Mental Health section.
Health Inequalities
Developing the ‘Plus Groups’ for the CYP Core20PLUS5, taking into account system and Place priorities, and demographic and socioeconomic differences across our four Places.
Undertaking engagement across partners to develop actions to address the 5 key clinical areas set out in the CYP Core20PLUS5.
Delivering a system event on child health and air quality to recognise the impact of the natural environment as a key wider determinant of CYP health.
CYP with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)
Continuing work to deliver actions within the Written Statement of Action for SEND arising from the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission joint inspection undertaken in Warwickshire in 2021
Completing a SEND self evaluation at system level that builds on separate self evaluations undertaken in Coventry and in Warwickshire.
Assessing the impact of and developing a local plan to respond to the national plan for SEND due for publication in 2023.
Safeguarding
See Safeguarding section. Key issues relating to CYP include: new Serious Violence Duty; and asylum-seeking families and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Key Challenges
Developing and taking forward our multiagency Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
Developing an integrated governance model that provides effective oversight and drives delivery of the strategy.
Developing data and intelligence to generate detailed and shared understanding of what is working well and where gaps and challenges are for children and young people with long-term conditions before trying to implement change.
Developing Epilepsy Care Bundle and CYP Diabetes Action Plans that have shared system ownership and which can be implemented within existing resources.
Building capacity across the system so workstreams can be owned and delivered across multiple Places, settings, organisations and services.
Moving resources upstream to prevention work.
Meaningful engagement with children, young people and their families across all aspects of the strategy.
Obtaining robust and accurate data to support evidence driven approaches for children and young people clinical priorities.
Delivering and supporting the implementation of the SEND change programmes in order to better support children’s health and education.
Successfully supporting and delivering the new framework for SEND in our two Local Areas.
Reducing waiting times for children and young people with SEND so children can be seen and supported in a timely manner and deterioration or exacerbations can be avoided.
Meeting expectations set out in the Warwickshire Written Statement of Action.
Developing appropriate health data sets to inform the collective multi-agency requirement for the Serious Violence Duty.
Ensuring all unaccompanied asylum seeking children have their health needs met and are appropriately safeguarded.
Key Metrics and Deliverables
Engagement programme to inform the development of the new Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy completed by end of quarter 1 2023/24.
New Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy published by end of quarter 2 2023/24
System-wide Children and Young People Board established and inaugural meeting held by end of quarter 2 2023/24.
Implementing Year 2 of the local Asthma Care Bundle Action Plan and, in partnership with the relevant Clinical Networks, developing Annual Action Plans for epilepsy and diabetes.
This plan will be updated to reflect the priorities and outcomes in the new Children and Young People Health and Wellbeing Strategy by end of March 2024.