Central Bedfordshire Council

Creating Brighter Futures For Children, Young People and Families

Keep up to date with the latest information through Central Bedfordshire Children's Trust ezine First Hand ...

Central Bedfordshire was formed in April 2009 along with a number of other Unitary Councils across the country, following a Government White Paper on Transforming Local Government services in 2006.

As a new council, Central Bedfordshire has the rare opportunity to plan new and innovative ways of delivering and transforming services for our customers.

We are building upon existing good practice in service delivery and are continually fine tuning services further through a comprehensive business transformation to, make our resources work harder, find better ways of delivering services and increase value for money for our taxpayers.

Local Delivery of Services

About Central Bedfordshire

Central Bedfordshire covers 28 electoral wards from Potton in the north east to Southcott and Leighton Linslade in the South West.  Our 66 Councillors work tirelessly to represent the hopes and aspirations of their electorate.

Click here to view your Central Bedfordshire Councillors.

Committed to Partnerships

We work closely with our partners in both the Public and Private sectors through such vehicles as the Local Strategic Partnership to ensure the council along with public, private, community and voluntary sectors can deliver a more effective, joined up approach to providing local services. As a Total Place pilot authority we are working closely to find better ways to find ways to make the most of the money currently being spent in the Central Bedfordshire and Luton area.

Children, Families and Learning

Giving our children and young people the best start in life

Our Children and Young People’s Plan will ensure that every child and young person in Central Bedfordshire  should  be safe, healthy, and successful in education and employment and be able to make a positive contribution to society.

Click here to the current children's services directorate.

Teenage Support Parent Pathway

Click for information on the referral process. All young people under 20 who live in Central Bedfordshire, booking in with a midwife at Luton and Dunstable Hospital, Bedford Hospital and Milton Keynes Hospital will go through this pathway of support. This will also include Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the future. If you require further guidance, click here.

A Good Start

Through our Children’s Centres and Neighbourhood Centres, we can identify potential future problems for families and offer support at an early stage.

Each centre offers a variety of services to meet local needs, including family support groups and drop-in sessions, parenting classes, child and family health advice, help with training and employment, early years and childcare provision.

Protecting Children

We work with our partners in the Children’s Trust, to ensure all our children are kept safe through effective joint working and communication between all agencies involved in child welfare.

The Central Bedfordshire Children’s Trust has appointed an independent chair Maggie Blythe for the Central Bedfordshire Safeguarding Children Board.  The Trust has a CBSCB Strategy Board specific to the CB Children’s Trust, all the groups which sit under the CBSCB are joint groups which operate under both Central Bedfordshire and Bedford Borough Safeguarding Children Boards.

Central Bedfordshire Safeguarding Children Board

Off To School

Almost 40,000 children attend  our 138 mainstream and Special Schools  every day. Central Bedfordshire has many excellent schools and we are working to improve standards continuously.  The Central Bedfordshire Schools Forum enables schools to be involved in planning for future provision and support for young people.

Schools in Central Bedfordshire are increasingly serving their local communities and are the focus for other services for children and young people locally.

Our Play Rangers provide free activities for thousands of children and young people over the school holidays.  From creative arts and crafts to sports, drama productions and outdoor adventures.

Autism Pathway and Support in Schools

Specialist provision for Autism provided by:

St Swithun's Lower, Sandy
Holmemead Middle, Biggleswade
Samuel Whitbread, Shefford

Ramsey Manor Lower, Barton
Arnold Middle, Barton

Streetfield Middle, Dunstable
Manshead Upper, Dunstable

Places at Samuel Whitbread have been doubled and the provision has been split into Key Stage 3/4 and 6th Form. Special Schools Ivel Valley, Glenwood and Hillcrest continue to provide specialist expertise and provision in Autism and run the TEACCH training. The special schools outreach providers are running the training to mainstream schools on Autism Awareness, Structuring the Unstructured, Social Stories, Autism and Behaviour.

Pupil Referral Unit provision

The primary aged aspect of what was the PRU and the Behaviour Support Service have been commissioned out to schools, and the Jigsaw Centre opened in Houghton Regis Lower to run this service as an alternative provision and outreach support, managed by Hawthorn Park Lower, Beecroft Lower and Lancot Lower schools, all of whom have significant expertise in this area.

The secondary PRU, including Medical Needs, is now all based on the Kingsland site in Houghton Regis and is currently retained as a Local Authority PRU. For more information, please contact Helen Redding, Head of School Support, Children's Services on 0300 300 6057 or email Helen.Redding@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk.

Involving Young People

It is important that young people have activities to do, have a say and have somewhere to go.  Central Bedfordshire has dedicated staff who work with young people and listen to their views on what they would like.

We enable young people to make decisions on funding for youth projects through Streetcred grants.  Free Transport Tokens mean that young people can get to activities such as youth groups or safety forums in the area.

Cultural and Sporting Activities for the Family

We provide residents with a network of 12 libraries, some of which have been recently refurbished or extended, as well as a mobile library service and a community resource centre.

Central Bedfordshire has two theatres in Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard and six leisure facilities, five of which have swimming pools.  They are:

Dunstable Leisure Centre (with pool)
Flitwick Leisure Centre (with pool)
Houghton Regis Leisure Centre (with pool)
Saxon Pool and Leisure Centre, Biggleswade
Sandy Sports Centre & Athletics Track ( no pool)
Tiddenfoot Leisure Centre, Leighton Buzzard (with pool)

As a predominantly rural area, Central Bedfordshire offers many miles of well maintained bridleways, footpaths and cycle tracks as well as parks and open spaces.

The Children’s Trust Board

Children's Trusts are local partnerships which bring together the organisations responsible for services for children, young people and families in a shared commitment to improve children's lives.

• The Trust Board sets the vision and priorities for improving children and young people's lives with operational groups which are responsible for delivering the improvements and which report directly to the Trust Board

Children’s Trust Board meeting 1.12.11 agenda and papers, includes the minutes from the meeting of 15.9.11

Further information on the Delivery Groups is available at www.centralbedfordshirechildrenstrust.org.uk

The current membership of the Trust Board is:

The Children and Young Peoples Plan for Central Bedfordshire

The Trust Board adopted the first Children and Young People's Plan for Central Bedfordshire on the 3 September 2009 and Central Bedfordshire Council adopted the plan at its meeting on the 24 September 2009.

The Children's Trust Children and Young People's Plan for Central Bedfordshire was launched on 16 October. The Plan has been put together after speaking to over 4,000 local children, young people and their families about what they think is important and what can be improved across Central Bedfordshire to give them the best start in life.

This plan has been drawn up by Central Bedfordshire's new Children and Young People's Trust which is the local partnership of organisations working together to deliver the best possible services for families. The Trust's aim is to make sure that all children - wherever they live, whatever their background and whatever their age -are healthy, stay safe, enjoy life and achieve well at school and beyond, make a positive contribution to society and can achieve their full potential later in life.

A summary version of the plan and a poster is also available, for copies of these publications contact Karen Oellermann at:

Karen.Oellermann@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk

Visit www.centralbedfordshirechildrenstrust.org.uk

for more information on the Central Bedfordshire Children’s Trust.

Downloads:

• The Children's Trust Children and Young People's Plan for Central Bedfordshire
• A summary version of the plan
• Children's Trust poster

Commissioning in Central Bedfordshire

Commissioning is the process for deciding how to use all theresourcesavailable in a local area to improve the lives of children, young people and their parents in the most efficient, effective, equitable and sustained way. The diagram below explains this process:

The Children's Trust Board is responsiblefor leading on commissioning across allservices for children and young people. The Children's Trust Board willfocus on the needs of service users and their carers, and will set out a framework for deciding how best to commission services to meet these needs.

Commissioning Framework to the Children's Beds Children's Trust

Workforce Development

The development of the children's workforce is in the Children and Young People's Plan as an importantcross-cutting theme. The priority is to ‘develop an integrated workforce which is ambitious for all children and their families and expert in its practice'. The Central Bedfordshire Plan will have four key strands to guide its work. These strands are in the Children and Young People's Plan:

• Establish and promote a shared identity, vision, language, practices and services across the Children's Workforce
• Develop an integrated working and a single staff development framework based on a single needs analysis
• Increase the use of training hubs for learning in each area of Central Bedfordshire
• Put safeguarding at the forefront of Workforce Development

The Children's Workforce Development (CWD) Strategic Group has been established to drive this work forward. Membership includes partners from health, police and the private and voluntary sector as well as representatives from schools and the Council. The intention is to create a partnership of workforce leaders to focus on recruitment, retention, development and modernisation issues. A CWD Operational Group is being set up to complement the Strategic Group and ensure actions are taken.

The Children's Workforce Development Directory has now been distributed to schools, early years' settings and other organisations. This publication includes information about all training and development opportunities for everyone in the Children's Workforce. As well as identifying specialist support across the various different Children's Workforce groups, it also identifies an increasing number of ‘generic' opportunities to train and develop together. The aim is for more people to train and develop together so they understand each other's roles and become better integrated. The directory isupdated frequently online with new connections from groups that did not appear in the original paper version. The Directory is intended to become the first port of call for all training and development needs across the Children's Workforce.

Contacts

Click here to view the Senior Managments Contact Directory. Click here to view Who's Who - a directory of who's who in Children's Services, Schools and Families.

Local Authority Allegations Officer (LADO) for Central Bedfordshire Council

Rosemary Webster
0300 300 4833
rosemary.webster@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk