Following on from my last post ....

Here are the recommendations in the report, and all certainly worth considering if not actually adopting.

Children’s lives in Southend-on-Sea:  (A report by The Children’s Society)  Recommendations

·         Every child or teenager who goes missing or absent from home or care should be offered an independent return interview.

·         Ask your Local Safeguarding Children Board to audit the safeguarding response that agencies provide to 16 and 17 year olds and review thresholds for intervention to ensure they do not discriminate against or fail to assess 16 and 17 year olds.

·         Adopt an explicit policy that no child under 18 can be made ‘intentionally homeless’.

·         Review the local homelessness protocol to ensure all children under 18 who present as homeless receive a joint assessment from housing and children’s services.

·         Local authorities, as commissioners of supported accommodation for vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds, should ensure all these settings have effective safeguarding policies in place and are regularly scrutinised by the Local Safeguarding Children Board.

·         Health and Well-Being Boards should ensure local Joint Strategic Needs Assessments explicitly include children and young people’s mental health and the needs of different vulnerable groups at risk of developing mental health problems, to assess current and future need and inform commissioning strategies.

·         Local authorities – through Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards (LSCBs) – should review and monitor access to mental health support for children who have experienced abuse and trauma, ensure that such services are commissioned locally, and ensure that there are policies in place for priority access to services for all children who need it.

·         All mental health services should have policies in place on transitions for young people from vulnerable groups between the levels of CAMHS services and to transition to adult services. This would ensure that children do not fall through the cracks of services and that they have continuous access to mental health support. Policies on transitions should outline how CAMHS will work with other agencies in planning transition.

·         Prioritise resources raised through business rate growth for early intervention services, using local needs assessments and open consultation with local residents.

·         Local authorities should ensure the systematic collection of data for separated children with non-asylum immigration claims.

·         Local authorities should train social workers and Independent Reviewing Officers in the identification of children who are out of scope of legal aid and in how to best support their legal needs within this new and complex territory.

·         Local authorities should develop written policies that offer clarity on the nature and scope of their responsibilities in relation to legal aid for separated children.

·         Every local authority needs to have a welfare assistance scheme which does not exclude 16–17 year olds from support.

·         Annually monitor the spending on local welfare provision to build up a profile of need in the area.

·         Councils should exempt care leavers from paying council tax up to the age of 21.

·         Every local authority should have a debt collection strategy which includes measures to address the impact of collection on children.

·         Councils should not engage bailiffs for collecting council tax debt from families who are in receipt of Council Tax Support and have children.

·         Local authorities should use community hubs as locations to deliver outreach debt advice and fuel poverty work, to ensure hard to reach families are able to access this service and support.

·         Local authorities should advertise and promote the Warm Home Discount – a rebate of £140 on electricity bills for the most vulnerable – in services that families access, such as children’s centres.

·         Local authorities need to consider the impact of changes to disability benefits under UC on families.

·         The loss of the SDP is likely to be particularly severe. There will be a need to reconsider support services in light of this.

·         Local authorities have a key role to play in ensuring that families with children that need Alternative Payment Arrangements under Universal Credit are able to receive them.

·         Local authorities need to consider access to online provision of UC for local families – particularly for those requiring regular updates to claims, such as parents with childcare costs.

Children’s lives in Southend-on-Sea

The following are some extracts from Children’s lives in Southend-on-Sea (a report by The Children’s Society, May 2016).

·       There are currently 38,216 children in Southend-on-Sea, with 1,024 of these children being categorised as ‘children in need’. This report sets out recommendations on the steps you can take to help them.

·       In Southend-on-Sea, of the 1,024 children classified as ‘children in need’, 206 are aged 16 or 17.

·         Last year in the South East 1890 children aged 16 or 17 presented as homeless. These teenagers are often at serious risk of harm and can be escaping homes where they face problems such as substance abuse, violence or severe overcrowding.

·         In the year 2014–15, total spending on children and young people’s mental health spend services (across Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), local authorities and NHS England) in the South East was £73,971,000. The average local authority CAMHS expenditure for local authorities in the South East was £1,124,000 with the average spend across England being £949,000. In the same period, the average spending by CCG on mental health for children in the South East was £1,762,000 – compared to the England average of £2,721,000.

·         The Government allocated £4,777,613 in early intervention funding to Southend-on-Sea Council this year, that’s a reduction of £5,428,865 per year compared to 2010. This massive reduction means local authorities are less able to address the problems experienced by children and families at an early stage. Children suffer harm that could have been prevented and the state is faced with greater costs as they are forced to deal with more entrenched, serious and expensive problems at a later date.

·         44.71% Decrease in early intervention grant to Southend-on-Sea council between 2010–11 and 2015–16

·         In the South East, 660 unaccompanied asylum seeking children were in the care of local authorities. These are children fleeing persecution, war and abuse from across the globe. There are also many other children in the region with an irregular immigration status which can cut them from support and leave them with an unsecure future.

·         It is unacceptable that any child is living in poverty in the UK, let alone almost 3.7 million children. Poverty has a devastating effect on children, harming their immediate well-being and drastically reducing opportunities throughout their lives. There are 10,662 children living in poverty in Southend-on-Sea.

·         Our Debt Trap research also identified that in 2014–15 there were 3,850 children living in families in council tax debt in Southend-on-Sea. There are 1.6 million children living in families who have faced council tax debt, with 2 in 10 families visited by bailiffs to reclaim council tax. This equates to thousands of children experiencing fear, intimidation and worry at the hands of bailiffs.

·         Our report Show Some Warmth7 found that there are around 6,338 children in Southend-on-Sea living in energy debt. Children in families in energy debt are three times more likely to have damp or mould in their homes and to have been ill last winter, and are twice as likely to have breathing problems.

·         The introduction of the new Universal Credit (UC) benefits system will have a profound impact on millions of children and families across the country. Once it has been fully introduced, around half of children in the UK will live in families in receipt of UC.