The fledgling Sheffield Children's Trust, which plans to integrate services to children, families and communities through children's centres and networks of extended schools, received an early endorsement from the Government when it was given a prominent mention in the Green Paper, Every Child Matters.
Unlike other local authorities among the 35 Pathfinder trusts, which have opted to test their strategic integration on select groups of vulnerable children, the South Yorkshire council has adopted a 'whole-systems'
approach in what the Trust's recently-appointed programme director Carolyn Leary describes as 'a single overarching plan' for the city.
She says the council's thinking was shaped by the fact that the city, once synonymous with the steel industry, has extremes of wealth and poverty, from leafy affluence in the south-west to a couple of wards in the north-east which languish among the 2 per cent most disadvantaged in the country.
Ms Leary explains, 'We have had every Government initiative, and a few more, and we feel we have done an awful lot of piloting in local areas for different models. We didn't want to run this as just another initiative. We felt we needed to strategically capture all the initiatives that are around and make sure the lessons are integrated. The last thing we needed were more differential services.'
The same approach underpins the city's plans for 13 children's centres, which will be based around 'hubs' with links to existing 'satellite'
services within 'pram-pushing distance'.
Building up
Vicky Stringer, service delivery manager for the early years, education and childcare service, says, 'The children's centres will build on the achievements of Sure Start, early excellence centres and neighbourhood nurseries. We have spent many years building up these initiatives and therefore we felt it was important to build on what has already been working, rather than creating something completely new. The services provided at the hubs will be community-driven and professionally led, but we see no point in reinventing the wheel.'
Linda Taylor, senior manager for strategy and partnership in the Access and Inclusion Service with responsibility for developing extend-ed schools, says that it will be up to individual schools to decide whether they want to have full service status, offering the full menu of integrated services for children, families and the community.
She believes the proposal for networks of extended schools, with services spread across groups of them, would make better use of premises. It is soon to be debated by the city council's cabinet before it goes out for consultation to heads and governors.
But Ms Taylor is concerned that there is only a small amount of money to facilitate the transition to extended school status, no funds for ongoing costs and too much reliance on 'the vision and hard work of headteachers, backed by governors and staff working their socks off'.
She adds, 'There are funding streams around. But the problem is that they are so volatile, they take enormous amounts of energy and time and there is all the angst when they disappear.'
Funding needed
Carolyn Leary says the trust will access a further 40,000 promised by Government on top of the initial 60,000 handed out to those authorities who achieved Pathfinder trust status. But 'it's nothing like enough money', she adds bluntly.
'We particularly want greater local flexibility about how we spend funds which are tied to so many different initiatives and reporting systems. The Government should spend less time ticking boxes and checking whether we use the money, and more time checking what joint work we are doing.
'There is such a wave of enthusiasm locally to develop a joined-up agenda that agencies are coming to us with proposals to second staff, and we plan to develop a core team. Agencies are seeing the benefits of not duplicating resources. In education, for instance, we have a sophisticated management and information system, so we are considering using this across the board.'