Targeted Youth Support

The Targeted Youth Support Pathfinder is one of fourteen in England aiming to improve outcomes for young people; improve young people’s experience of services and improve the efficiency of service provision. With support and guidance from the TDA we have followed a structured Change Management process.

Geographic Target: Birtley Town and Kibblesworth, in the south of the region

Young People Target : All children and young people in the 8-17 age range who are vulnerable i.e. who display a combination of risk factors.

Multi Agency Group

All practitioners who work in the Birtley Town and Kibblesworth area are invited to come to the Multi Agency Group which has three main aims:

• To appropriately share information about children and young people members are concerned about and find out which practitioners are already involved
• To agree next steps to co-ordinate support for the child or young person. This may include assessment or a team around the family meeting.
• To improve practitioners’ knowledge of how other services work and what they can provide

The group has agreed how it will work together (593k PDF ) and how it supports the Common Assessment Framework, Lead Practitioner and Team Around the Family processes (29k Word).

South Area Panel

The South Area Panel is a group of managers with responsibility for the South Neighbourhood Management Area of the Borough. The group is responsible for unblocking problems for practitioners working in a multi-agency way with families and would mainly receive requests to do so from the Multi Agency Group.

Early evaluation of the Pathfinder has shown that:

• We are highlighting issues at an earlier stage and ensuring children are not lost in the system
• Information sharing and relationships between practitioners are better
• Practitioners have a better understanding of what agencies are able to do
• Where Team Around the Family meetings had taken place with full family engagement, feedback was positive

However, a number of issues need to be addressed:

• We need to reduce the number of other meetings happening in the local area
• We need to improve communication between the Multi Agency Group and South Area Panel