Item 11 - Nurture DIG Report
West Dunbartonshire Council · 22 May 2025
Back to Community Planning West Dunbartonshire Management Board — 22 May 2025 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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Management Board Meeting Development and Improvement Groups (DIGs): Highlights and Issues Report FOR INFORMATION ONLY X FOR DECISION Name of DIG Nurture Date of report 2/5/2025 Name and email of lead contact Lesley.James@West-Dunbarton.gov.uk 1 Highlights of activity and progress since last meeting The Nurture DIG Partnership implementation group focuses on the delivery and implementation of the Statutory Integrated Children’s Services Plan (ICSP) for West Dunbartonshire. An annual update to Scottish government is required on the plan that is currently being devloped. The sub group of the Nurture Dig are detailed as below Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing GIRFEC Children’s Rights/ UNCRC Family Wellbeing. The Promise Group Child Poverty Bairnshouse Each of the subgroup chairs undertake highlight reports which are considered at the DIG. The focus of the work currently has been updating and refreshing the plan and the approach. This work is being supported by the Health Improvement team and updates on action and measurable outcomes is near conclusion Support for Family For Families awaiting Neurodiversity Assessment The Community Mental Health Supports Grant will fund the second year of the Health Care Support Workers delivering family support to families awaiting a neurodiversity assessment. The funding unfortunately will be reduced and resulting in x2 posts coming to end which are supporting families on waiting lasts for mental ND assessments. Planet Youth ITEM 11
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Linking with education establishments to support Planet Youth action plans outlining support/learning for parents and staff. An input to the IJB board recently took place around the focus of Planet Youth at the start of this month. Planning underway to develop micro learning for staff and parents to increase confidence and convey key messages in relation to mental health, suicide prevention and self- harm awareness. Trauma Informed and responsive group being established to coordinate implementation of Roadmap for Creating Trauma-Informed and Responsive Change: Guidance for Organisations, Systems and Workforces in Scotland (2023) within West Dunbartonshire. A one-page summary of the Integrated Children’s Service Plan and Trauma related actions will be created. This will show the proposed developments and ongoing discussions with the subgroup leads. Trauma Informed related action to be include in all 5 nurtured dig subgroups re trauma. Actions will be developed with the Leads of each subgroup to ensure it fits the wider subgroup outcomes. Work underway to include 5 Trauma Skilled modules from turas onto WDC iLearn system to allow easier access to learning for WDC employees. The Promise Keeping the Promise 24-25 plan on a page.pdf Brothers and Sisters We have a brothers and sisters implementation group, which is overseeing progress in this area. We now have two quantitative data returns tracking this, and are about to do our second survey, which will provide more qualitative data on children who are separated from their siblings. We have a brothers and sisters action plan that we are currently working to. A Working group meeting on 23rd July to finalise survey questions and for plan finalised for supporting completion of this with children and young people. This work touches many other workstreams, for example – foster carer recruitment within the What would it take project, as well as Sibling assessments within the Better Hearings working group. Ailsa sits on these others groups and is able to ensure this work is connected up. Learning module content is now created Language We have a language working group that is looking at how we share and embed principles around language across services. This involves a test of chance within Review meetings, introducing a “Language matters check-in” to personalise language where children and young people want to. We will also be creating documents and learning modules/training around language principles, sharing care experienced people’s views and wishes around language. Children’s Voice and Data This project started on 1st July 2024, and will run for 18 months. We have a full time Participation Co-ordinator, a part-time Participation worker and a part-time data analyst all as part of this team. This work will span the spectrum of the Promise, from those involved in prevention, early help through to care experience and will seek to hear the views of as many children, young people, adults and families as possible, including them in a variety of
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flexible ways and being led by how they would like to see things change. The qualitative data that is gathered will then sit beside the quantitative data that our data analyst is able to support us with, looking across multi-agency data sources, considering the best use of data to measure our progress and thinking about what matters to families. Advocacy Services for Children and our Champions Board Advocacy provision provided by Who Cares Scotland? Has now been increased from 21 hours to 35 hours, and a new full-time post was recruited to week beginning the 4th February 2025 to reinstate our Champions Board . The Champions Board developments will support engagement and participation for care experienced children and young people, and provide a vehicle for change and feedback to the local authority and partners with the development of a mirror leadership champs group being developed. Continuing Care West Dunbartonshire Continuing Care Guidance has been developed and our support to kinship carers and young people on their 18th Birthday is being considered by the Integrated Joint Board in March 2025 Supporting our Workforce The work force Wellbeing group is established , and has come from consistent feedback from staff and families that the current local and National challenges around recruitment and retention of C&F social workers is impeding progress being made towards the Promise. A Practitioner Exploration Forum has now been launched in Children and Family Services create a safe, reflective space that is practitioner led and responsive to needs of the workforce and of the families they work with. Attendance at team meetings has taken place, and a further survey will be sent to the C&F workforce to explore further and increase representation. A Promise learning module is being created to support the wider workforce and eventually community wide learning around the Promise and care experience. The West Dunbartonshire Partnership has already created a version for Education that will be considered alongside this. GIRFEC ( Getting It Right For Every Child ) Report on parenting programmes Linking with the Whole Family Wellbeing parenting programmes are being offered via community hubs Progress on delivery and sustainability is reported to Scottish Government. Commission of intensive support service to children on the edge of care has been supported for a further 12 months with Includem delivering this service Locally which compliments the range of universal programme and Functional Family Therapy and Family Group Decision making. GIRFEC Implementation of the Access Help and Support teams for all referrals of concern to social work went live on 1st April 2025. The Team within Children and families services is currently being recruited to, which will support all requests for assistance and notification of concern are referred and assessed in line with Refreshed GIRFEC guidance. This will ensure a
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single point of contact for partners agencies where protection and safeguarding concerns exist. National GIRFEC guidance is clear that agencies raising concerns require to share appropriate information when concerns that a child may be a risk of harm and social work services have a duty to vary out inquiries and investigate those concerns. This dedicated team will enable enhanced communication and consistency of thresholds across the children’s services partnership. A GIRFEC lead officer role funded by HSCP reserves has been agreed and requires to be recruited to support the work of integrated children’s services planning and GIRFEC continued implementation. The post is now progressing thro job evaluation systems Outcome of developmental assessments for pre five children using NHSGGC Dashboard platforms GGC wide performance data is available to help quality improve services for children e.g. During 23/24 81-96% of children received a 27 month developmental assessment Local interrogation is helpful to understand rationale for why some children did not receive an assessment at this stage Children’s Participation and Rights Education continue to lead the UNCRC work in Schools and this will continue to be reported through our Nurtured Delivery and Improvement Group to the Community Planning West Dunbartonshire Management Board. Nurtured Group membership consists of partners from Educational Services, HSCP, Housing and Employability, Police Scotland, third sector partners, our Youth Alliance, Champions Board, SDS, Our Communities team and The Scottish Children's Reporter. The plans to develop our Children’s Rights are embedded and reflect the Local Outcome Improvement Priorities. Whole Family Wellbeing The pilot test of change sites as well as our digital point of access aims to ensure families are aware of support available to them and are empowered to access that support. Support is easily accessible, stigma free and located in places that work for children and families within their local communities. We were informed by a range of very sobering statistics about our community, such as: 20% of our children and young people have experienced physical or sexual abuse 50% are bereaved by the age of 8 14% have experienced 3 or more ACES The impact of domestic abuse is the most common reason for CP registration, followed in second place by parental mental health. 5000 of our children and young people live in houses where there is recognised mental health needs and 5% of our children live in houses where there are recognised drug misuse issues. When we considered these statistics alongside the fact that 27.6% of our children live in poverty, higher than the Greater Glasgow and Clyde and National averages, then we recognised that help which wrapped around a family, from a range of partners, was crucial in making any lasting improvement to their lives. West Dunbartonshire were successful in receiving funding of circa 130K in relation to supporting the implementation of a Bairnshouse . The current implementation plan is based on a hub and spoke model and joint discussion with Argyle and Bute and L division is considering a SLA to utilize developed premises in Helensburgh to adopt a partnership approach.
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Equipment has been purchased and internal refurbishment has taken place at the family space in Hartfield Dumbarton. The new funding awarded in April 2025 is to include the appointment support staff to support children and their families pre- and post SCIM ( Scottish Child Interview Model ) within the Bairnshouse provision. 2 Outline of any issues/risks and how these are being managed The Integrated Children’s service requires to have meaningful reportable measures and these measure are currently in DRAFT and have been uploaded to Pentanna in order to support reporting of activity and impact. Further sessions with chairs of the sub groups are in place and the actions and proposed measure have been allocated to each of the defined work stream. There is no resource to support the work of the Integrated plan, both in relation to co- ordination of the plan and no admin to support setting up and minuting of meetings. As a result the NURTURE Dig has not been able to meet since the last update was provided. 3 Outline of the main outputs expected before next meeting Partnership reporting on activities being reviewed in the partnership needs to evidence impact and a review of associated measures. Ongoing work to develop and evaluate the impact of the family Hub offer is taking place as is sector leading work in relation to brothers and sisters reporting and auditing activity through the work of the Promise. Children and Families social work services have launched a 5 year strategy and associated financial planning to support shifting the balance of care with planned reduction in expenditure from external care providers to redirect to increased intensive support for families in line with the Promise Principles. 4 What are your requirements of partners in the Community Planning Management Board to achieve the outcomes of the DIG? A commitment to support the work of integrated children’s services planning as a priority To develop clear measure aligned to the Integrated children’s service plan will be progressed to ensure the impact of our collective activity is understood 5 Please outline any good news story you wish to share
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