Children's area partnerships
Integrated service delivery at local level
There are some exciting things happening for children and young people in Walsall. One of these is the development of Children’s Area Partnerships.
The aim of the Children’s Area Partnerships is to meet the needs of children, young people and their families in a local area by services working together to ensure Every Child Matters in Walsall.
The Children Act 2004 requires all local areas to have Children’s Trust arrangements in place for April 2008. An important element of the Trust arrangements is delivering services at a local level. In a nutshell, the needs of children and their families in a local area will be met by services that work together to ensure the best outcomes for the children and young people.
The vision for Walsall is that this will be accomplished by Children’s Area Partnerships (CAPs) in each locality. These partnerships will complement the work of the Local Neighbourhood Partnerships by focusing specifically on Every Child Matters outcomes in meeting the needs of children and young people.
All the Walsall Children's Area Partnerships have been established. Each CAP has its own local chair and has completed the development support programme for extended schools and show that they can work in an integrated way.
Each CAP has a membership spanning the services and settings for that local area; schools are obviously at the heart of regeneration and these community developments and headteachers play a critical role along with other senior managers from across agencies/partners as well as colleagues from the community and voluntary sector. It is hoped that representation would be drawn from all of these areas.
It is clear that the CAPs will complement the work of the Local Neighbourhood Partnerships by focussing exclusively on the lives of children and young people through a community engagement approach. We all know that when partners in a community put their efforts and resources into addressing the priorities in a joined up way then the potential to improve the lives of children and young people is overwhelming.
While there is flexibility to address specific local issues, there are also agreed terms of reference and ways of working in order to ensure consistency across the CAPs. Terms of reference have been agreed and these will be regularly reviewed.
The CAPs are also instrumental in bringing some important agendas together, for example, extended schools, children’s centres, youth provision and targeted youth support. CAPs are an extremely important part of Walsall’s Children’s Trust arrangements and require the support of all agencies and settings in getting them off the ground successfully.
To find out more, please read the:
- CAP information booklet (PDF 1.02MB)
- CAPs terms of reference (Word 46KB)
- Locality Partnership Events summary report (PDF 606KB)
- CAPs commissioning flowchart (Word 31KB)
Maps
- View a map of the Children's Area Partnerships (JPEG 888KB)
- View a map of the Local Neighbourhood Partnerships and the Children's Area Partnerships (JPEG 751KB)
Contact us
If you have a query about a specific locality, contact the chair of that locality using the locality pages above.
If you have a general query contact:
Clint Osborne
IISaM Programme Manager
Children's Services
1st Floor
40 Darwall Street
Walsall
WS1 1TH
Telephone 01922 650497
Email osbornec@walsall.gov.uk
This page was last updated on 29 January 2010