Welcome

We want all children and young people in Swansea to develop to their full potential.

We want children and young people in Swansea to have a flying start in life, be healthy, be safe in the home, in school and in the wider community, be educated, enjoy life, have a voice and make a positive contribution to help improve Swansea.

We will develop Swansea as a child and young people friendly place.  To enable this to happen we will base our actions around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) so that we ensure that the rights of children and young people are upheld.

We will work with children and young people so that they not just know their rights but respect the rights of others.  To help achieve this we will involve children and young people in decisions that affect them and use an approach called Restorative Practice which helps people discuss and directly deal with problems in a non-threatening way.

We know that a stable family environment supported by good parenting, good health, regular attendance in school, a high level of skills especially in literacy and numeracy, places to go, things to do and someone to talk to are essential for success as children and young people develop.  There are many problems that can arise that prevent children and young people from achieving the best for them and we will address these root causes especially in relation to the negative impact that family poverty can have on life chances.

To enable a flying start in life we will strengthen families by continuing to roll out the Flying Start programme in areas of deprivation so that we can support families by providing free childcare, additional health visiting and parenting and basic skill support.  Across Swansea we will provide health and parenting support especially where adults in the family lack confidence, the necessary skills to parent their children or where family life is not stable.

As much as possible we want to keep families together and where it is necessary for a child to be looked after, we will try to reintegrate them back into the family or quickly find a permanent and stable placement locally.

It is unacceptable that children and young people do not have the necessary skills to be successful and so we will work towards every 6 to 16 year old being a confident reader within 3 years.  This will not be achieved when some children and young people do not attend school and so alongside the drive to improve reading abilities we will identify, target and mentor poor attenders and their families so that attendance is significantly improved within 3 years.  We will also engage directly with families through the Family Learning Signature so that we can improve the support they provide for learning.

We want to make sure that children and young people can be engaged in meaningful activities with places to go and things to do.  There are however influences in the school and the wider community that impact on children and young people leading to risky or criminal behaviour especially in relation to the alcohol and drug misuse.  We will focus on reducing these behaviours and preventing re-engagement in risky activity.

Despite our focus on prevention and early intervention, there will still be times when children and young people need intensive support from agencies and we will make sure that this is timely, coordinated well and effective.

Various approaches will be used to help deal with the problems without needing referral to other agencies including the use of a common assessment framework and Team Around the Family and Family Group Conferencing meetings.  Where individuals are unsure about what action to take, a consultancy service will be available to seek advice and signposting to appropriate agencies.  Information sharing between agencies will be a critical part of the approach and through regular locality based meetings, a multi-agency approach will be used based upon this information in order to target and support those most in need.

We will constantly monitor progress on improving outcomes for children and young people and use various approaches to achieve this.

We will prioritise our work so that we can focus on making measurable improvements in the areas that matter most.

For some issues we will concentrate our work in certain localities in Swansea.  For other issues we will work smartly across the City and County in order to address individual needs.

We will support young people in their transition to adulthood, making sure we provide the right opportunities for education, employment and training.  We will provide support with housing and financial issues for those that need it.

We will continue to listen carefully to the views of children, young people, parents, carers, residents and professionals and ensure that we take their views into account when planning and delivering services.

We will aim for excellence in all our services for children, young people and families.

We will make sure that we target our work so that our efforts make a difference to those who need it most.

As a partnership we will continue to address issues which may get in the way of us working well together to support a family.  We will continue to improve the ways in which we share information across agencies and the ways in which we coordinate our services when we are working with the same family.