Decision details

35        CHILDREN AND FAMILY SUPPORT OFFER – DECISION TO CONSULT – The Interim Director: Children and Community Resilience and the Deputy Director: Learning Skills and Culture submitted a joint report seeking approval to consult with members of the public and relevant stakeholders in respect of the proposed Children and Family Support Offer. This offer had a broad scope, and brought together a number of functions across services for children including children’s centres, targeted family support and adult community learning. The new offer took a One Family Approach and helped to develop an integrated system that worked for all children, young people and families, where children were in their family, in their school and in their community.

Families in North Lincolnshire had long benefited from strong partnerships and effective multi-agency practice, however the changes brought about by COVID-19 had seen many service areas work even more closely together. An example of this was the strengthened offer to vulnerable families expecting a child or with a baby, where maternity services, health visitors, adult community learning staff, early years practitioners, family support and social care teams cooperated even more closely to ensure the right offer of help to those needing it.

As we moved into a new phase of responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an opportunity to consolidate and build upon these positive changes and examples of innovation and integration. Rooted in the council plan, the One Family Approach continued to provide the strategic framework for such development, with its ambition of ‘creating a system that works for all children, young people and families’, building resilience so that children remained in their families, in their schools, and in their communities.

The new Children and Family Support Offer set out how a range of council services and functions, including children’s centres, community hubs, adult community learning, FaSST (targeted family support), would collectively deliver a progressive, agile, enabling offer to children, young people and families in North Lincolnshire. There would be equality of opportunity to access the offer, with the expectation that families were enabled to find their own solutions online, in their communities, and through universal provision including Community Hubs. Targeted services would prioritise the most vulnerable, building resilience and reducing the need for specialist help, which when required for those that needed it would be swift and high quality.

This report sought permission to undertake formal consultation on the Children and Family Support Offer with members of the public and other stakeholders, in order to help develop a final version to be launched later in 2021 pending relevant approval.

Resolved – That the consultation in respect of the revised Children and Family Support Offer be approved.