The proposed North Midlands Regional Adoption & Permanency Partnership is backed by the Department for Education and involves working with Shropshire Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Telford and Wrekin Council.
Children from Staffordshire will remain the responsibility of the county council, but the joint project will provide a wider range of prospective adopters and carers to find the right home.
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Shropshire Council has agreed to increase its provision of residential accommodation for children in its care, by investing in the purchase, adaptation and fit-out of up to three new properties in the county.
The proposal was approved by councillors at a meeting of full Council yesterday, 28 February 2019.
A new App giving foster carers in Staffordshire more say and the chance to monitor and update children’s school records is set to have a positive impact on their schooling.
Many local authorities already use the online electronic ePEP system which is used to monitor and review children’s performances at school. However, Staffordshire County Council are the first authority to allow foster carers to both view and edit records themselves which is giving them a greater say in decisions around their young person’s education.
Staffordshire County Council will bring partners and families together to improve services for children with special needs following a review.
A joint report by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission into the delivery of Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) in the county that is commissioned and delivered by the county council and schools with support of the Staffordshire NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), identified a number of areas to be improved.
We've added 10 new Be Aware updates following your suggestions:
Musculoskeletal ; Osteoporosis ; Nutrition and obesity ; Falls ; HR ; Research Methods ; Information Governance ; Bladder, bowel and pelvic healthcare ; Rheumatology ; Medicines and healthcare products regulatory agency (circulated email)
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As part of its Christmas campaign to highlight the urgent need for foster families, Staffordshire County Council’s fostering service has set out to bust some of the commonly held myths putting people off.
Titled ‘The 12 Myths of Fostering’, and building on the success of a previous campaign, a series of 12 short cartoons will air online in the run up to Christmas.
Staffordshire parents are claiming millions of hours of funded childcare for their three and four-year-olds.
Latest figures show more than 7.7 million hours a year of pre-school care are being claimed by nearly 6,800 children.
Plans to educate more special needs pupils closer to home are at the heart of a new plan under consultation.
Parents, carers and schools are taking part in a countywide consultation over the future of Staffordshire’s special educational needs and disability (SEND) strategy for children and young people aged 25 and under
Plans to deliver children’s centre services from seven new family hub bases across Shropshire were agreed by Shropshire Council’s Cabinet at its meeting on Wednesday 26 September 2018.
The decision means that services will be delivered from seven key buildings instead of the existing 26 buildings, namely:
The Centre – Oswestry
Sunflower House – Shrewsbury
Crowmoor Centre – Shrewsbury
Rockspring Centre – Ludlow
the Youth Centre – Bridgnorth
Raven House – Market Drayton
Plans to deliver children’s centres services from seven proposed new family hub bases across Shropshire will be considered by Shropshire Council’s Cabinet next week (26 September 2018). To see the report and appendices, click here.
Under the proposals, services will be delivered from seven key buildings instead of the existing 26 buildings, namely: The Centre – Oswestry; Sunflower House– Shrewsbury; Crowmoor Centre – Shrewsbury; Rockspring Centre – Ludlow; the Youth Centre in Bridgnorth; and a hub base in the Whitchurch area yet to be determined.
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The call out from Shropshire’s 0-25 SEND Board, which includes representatives from education, health and social care and voluntary organisations, is for local children and young people aged 0-25 with SEND, and their families, to complete the online survey
A reorganisation of Staffordshire’s children centres has delivered on its key promise of helping more vulnerable families.
New figures show the percentage of vulnerable children aged 0-to-five being helped in the county has increased over three years from 48 per cent to 76 per cent.
Plans to deliver children’s centres services from six new family hubs across Shropshire will go out to public consultation from 29 May to 12 July 2018, and people are being urged to have their say
Shropshire schools can now to sign up to a new initiative which aims to help schoolchildren and staff get fitter and healthier through the introduction of ‘daily miles’ or walking clubs.
Launched today (Thursday 1 February 2018) the Healthy Outdoors for Schools programme is provided by Shropshire Council’s outdoor partnerships service, which leads on rights of way, countryside parks and sites, and Walking for Health.
Shropshire Council is consulting on a new Early Help delivery model for children, young people and their families. The decision to consult was made by Cabinet on 17 January 2018.
Nationally there is a move to understand if Early Help is available for the most complex families early enough. Families in Shropshire tell us that they are having to meet with individual Early Help services, who deal with individual children within the family.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s public health department has a number of free programmes coming up that aim to help people to make healthier choices.
Active Families provides families with the opportunity to learn more about healthy eating, the importance of being active and the benefits of adopting a healthier lifestyle for the whole family. Active Family sessions will start on January 15 at schools in the central, south and north of the city.
Children’s services provided by Shropshire Council have been rated as ‘good’ overall by Government inspectors Ofsted, following a four-week inspection in September and October this year.
The room is part of the town centre library, just a few yards away from disabled car parking spaces, and is available to visitors of all ages with learning difficulties, physical impairments, or children under-five.
Multi-sensory rooms have been shown to help development of the senses, hand eye coordination, promote language development and encourage relaxation. The Stafford room includes fibre-optic wall carpet, an interactive bubble tube, music-creating hand wall, laser projector with pin spot and mirrorball, and an audio-visual touchscreen.
We’ve just heard that SSOTP will not be renewing their agreement with SSSFT LKS for library services for this financial year. Because of this we will be reviewing our Be Aware bulletins. Sadly we won’t be accepting any new sign-ups from SSOTP staff and will be withdrawing some of the physical healthcare bulletins that we…
The service, which has been commissioned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Staffordshire County Council and the Staffordshire Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, will tackle child sexual exploitation (CSE) and missing children through a range of early work with families and targeted support.
Shropshire parents of children aged between six months and 18 years are being offered the chance to complete for free a popular course that will help them to better understand their child.
PHE campaign aims to improve breastfeeding rates as around half the region’s mums don’t breastfeed 6-8 weeks after birth. Public Health England (PHE) has launched the Start4Life Breastfeeding Friend (BFF), an interactive chatbot tool to help guide new mums through their first weeks of breastfeeding.
Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit (MLCSU) has developed a series of lesson plans and teaching materials that will help 4- to 11-year-olds understand the importance of keeping warm, eating healthily and looking after themselves and others.
Staffordshire’s foster carers are taking centre-stage in the latest campaign to help find families for the county’s vulnerable children.
To meet the urgent need for more foster carers in Staffordshire, a further 60 families need to be found over the next year.
Now, carers from across Staffordshire have come out in force and bravely put themselves in front of the camera for the latest campaign. Their photos will be featured on posters, videos, billboards and social media calling on potential families to ‘Join Us!’
Hundreds of pupils are taking part in a major project to raise awareness of asthma by producing health information booklets for other schoolchildren.
Nine and 10-year-olds from five Stoke-on-Trent primaries have been researching and designing the newspaper-style flyers so their schools can use them as teaching resources.
Health experts also hope it will drive home the message to young asthma sufferers that they need to keep taking their medication during the six-week school break
Come and visit our first pop-up library at Severn Fields, Shrewsbury 19th July 11.00am-3.00pm. Join the library, borrow and return books, get help finding information and evidence, set up an Athens account, find out what the library can do for you and your team.
As part of Foster Care Fortnight, Staffordshire County Council’s fostering bus will be touring the county to encourage more foster families to come forward.
News from our partners Public Health England
Disability Matters is partnering with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) to promote the importance of inclusion and access for all disabled children and young people aged 0 – 25 years.
They are collecting evidence and case-studies from young people with disabilities, parent carers and those who work or volunteer with people with disabilities to highlight the many positive ways that people are:
working pro-actively with children and young people with disabilities
enabling inclusion
making services accessible.
As a pan-disability programme they are interested in examples that relate to all disabilities, including intellectual / learning disabilities, physical disabilities, complex needs and visual or hearing impairments.
Two £25 vouchers are up for grabs in the library’s ‘Making the Most of Information’ survey.
To take part, just visit http://goo.gl/AdN4ok by Friday 19th February.
Staffordshire families will be among the first in the country to be entitled to 30 hours of free childcare every week.
Three and four year olds already receive 15 hours’ free childcare to help prepare them for school, while making it easier for parents to work.
Now the Government is funding an expansion to 30 hours a week and has chosen Staffordshire as one of the pilot areas, because of the county council’s success in managing the scheme so far.
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