Good communication and partnership working amongst professionals is vital to improving outcomes for children and young people in Leicester. As the JAR looked at all publicly funded services for children and young people in the city, including services directly managed or commissioned by the council along with those provided by health and youth justice services, it is even more crucial that all partners were engaged and involved in the inspection process and the post JAR work as a whole.
To support this engagement for the inspection, we set up a JAR Steering Group that acted as a multi-agency action group to ensure all the necessary work was undertaken in preparation for the Joint Area Review in January 2008. This also included the essential practical steps to try and guarantee a smooth inspection; as well as work to make sure that across agencies there was and sontinues to be a good understanding of our strengths and weakness and that plans are in place to further areas for development.
The group was directly accountable to the Leicester Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership and is chaired by the Senior Responsible Officer for the JAR within the Children and Young People’s Services.
The group met approximately every four weeks and was made up of the following member organisations:
Connexions Leicestershire
Learning and Skills Council
Leicester City Council Departments/Teams: including colleagues from Social Care and Safeguarding, Policy and Performance, Access and Inclusion and Learning Services
Leicester City Primary Care Trust (PCT) (including Specialist Community Child Health Services)
Leicester Constabulary
Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
University Hospitals of Leicester (including Director of Nursing)
Voluntary Action Leicester (VAL)
In addition to communication at the steering group, we met and communicated with and widely distributed our JAR Newsletter to a number of other organisations including:
Children's Fund (NCH)
Equality & Diversity Partnership
Fire Service
Leicester Council of Faiths
Leicestershire Council for Voluntary Youth Services (LCVYS)
Local Safeguarding Children's Board
Probation Service
Schools in Leicester City
Trade Unions
Universities and Further Education colleges in Leicester City
And many more local Voluntary and Community Sector organisations…
To see the JAR newsletter click here.