Children and Young People's Plan 2008-11 Consultation

We are currently in the process of writing a new Children and Young People’s Plan for Worcestershire. This plan will be launched in May 2008 and will be available to view on this website.

To make sure that we are covering the right topics in the Plan and we are making it relevant to the children and young people in Worcestershire, we need to make sure we consult with children, young people, parents and professionals. We have carried out a range of consultation events and activities with lots of different people to get a varied input of what should be included in the new Plan, including what our vision for children in Worcestershire should be, what our main priorities are and what actions we are going to take in order to meet these priorities. The consultation period for this Plan began in October 2007and will be ongoing until the Plan is launched in May this year.

Consultation Events

We have organised specific events and also attended a series of pre-existing events that have involved a range of different people in various locations. At each of these events, presentations were given to inform the attendees about the new CYPP and workshops were carried out to get people’s views and ideas for the new CYPP.

The events we have attended involved a range of stakeholders including headteachers, Cabinet members, County and district elected members, parents, Local Strategic Partnership members and voluntary and community sector members. In order to consult with all these people we attended the following events

Heads of Special Schools meeting Middle School Partnership meeting Citizen panel event Cabinet meetings Parents Voice Steering group Headteacher/Pupil Referral Unit Workshop Chief Housing Officers Group Bromsgrove Local Strategic Council Worcester Association of Secondary Heads meeting Worcester City Local Strategic Partnership Senior Managers Meeting Worcestershire Council for Voluntary Youth Services Event Schools Admission Forum Primary Head Teacher events Wyre Forest Local Strategic Partnership Redditch District Council Elected Members Worcester City Local Strategic Partnership all Alliance members

We have also held two large-scale events at Worcester Rugby Club, which have included members from all partner agencies. The first was attended by over 200 people including professionals from all areas of Worcestershire. These events each lasted half a day and were focussed around workshops to decide on the priorities and actions for the new Plan.

Consulting with children and young people is a crucial part of the consultation process as this Plan is for them. We have carried out workshops with large numbers of children and young people to gain their views. We have attended the following groups and schools and also run our own events specifically focussed on consultation for the new CYPP. A large number of these groups involved parents as well as their children so we were therefore able to consult with two vital stakeholders at the same time:

Consultation Activities

As well as carrying out a large selection of events we also carried out different activities in order to gain people’s views and ideas about what needs to be done for children and young people in Worcestershire.

We organised an art competition for children aged from Nursery to Year 6 in Worcestershire schools. We asked them to draw a picture showing what they would like changed in their area to help us get an idea of what is important to them. We received over 100 entries, both group and individual, two examples of which you can see below:

Members of the Worcestershire Youth Cabinet selected the winning entries and they will be awarded £20 WHSmith vouchers at prize giving events. Winning group entries will receive money to spend on books for their school. All entrants will also receive a certificate, thanking and congratulating them for participating.

We have issued an array of questionnaires to different people to get their input on what they believe should be included in the new Plan. We have involved Parent Friend Associations, School Governing Bodies, Elected Members, parish and town councillors and the voluntary and community sector with these questionnaires.

We also held an online survey on the website plug and play www.plugandplay.org.uk

Versions of this survey were available for both children and young people and also adults in Worcestershire to complete.

The Results

Consultation for the Plan ended on 17th March and work is underway on writing the plan. All responses we have gained from each of these consultation events or activities will be collated into one report and analysed in order to establish the key themes that people want to be included in the Plan. This will then be used to help identify what the new vision should be for children and young people in Worcestershire, what our priorities are and how we are going to achieve them. By consulting with lots of different people and listening to their views, we are ensuring that the new Plan will help to make Worcestershire a better place for children and young people to live in and grow up in.