Introduction |
parents and carers | young
people | professionals |
ContactPoint |
CAF |
eCAF
Integrated working focuses on enabling and encouraging
professionals to work together and to adopt common processes to
deliver frontline services, coordinated and built around the needs
of children and young people.
Introduction
The Children Act 2004
The Children Act 2004 provides the underpinning for Every
Child Matters: Change for Children – the programme aimed at
transforming Children’s Services
Further information about the Children Act
2004
Every Child Matters
Every Child Matters is all about improving the life
chances of children and young people, reducing inequalities and
helping them achieve. The Every Child Matters green paper
identified the five outcomes that are most important to children
and young people:
- Be healthy: enjoying good physical and mental
health and living a healthy life style.
- Stay safe: being protected from harm and
abuse.
- Enjoy and achieve: getting the most out of
life and developing skills for adulthood
- Make a positive contribution: being involved
with community and society and not engaging in anti-social or
offending behaviour.
- Achieve economic well-being: not being
prevented by economic disadvantage from achieving their full
potential in life.
Every Child matters website
Integrated working in the City of London
The City of London is committed to integrating its systems and
processes so that the needs of children and families are met in a
more effective way. As part of delivering Every Child
Matters, the integrated working programme will introduce new
ways of working which will help to join up services and support
multi-agency intervention.
Parents and carers
When your child needs extra support, we want to find the best
way forward as soon as possible. The leaflet below explains a
new way of working together which puts your family at the heart of
decisions made about your child.
Download the leaflet - Welcome to a new way of
helping families (257kb)
Download the Bengali version - Welcome to a new
way of helping families (811kb)
Young people
Sometimes you may need extra help or support to sort out a
problem. You don’t need to feel alone. The leaflet below
explains a new way making sure you get the right help as soon as
possible.
Download the leaflet - Welcome to a new way of
helping children and young people (408kb)
Download the Bengali version - Welcome to a new
way of helping children and young people (678kb)
Professionals
I work with children and young people, does this affect
me?
Yes. If you work with children and young people you need to be
involved. Integrated working applies to staff across all
agencies, from nurseries and children’s centres, GPs and school
nurses, teachers and school staff, the police and youth services
and many more whose work involves children and young people.
What should I do next?
To develop your understanding of integrated working, take a look
at the links above which will provide you with information from the
national Every Child Matters website.
Download the Every
Child Matters flyer (80kb)
ContactPoint is a national tool that will enable practitioners
delivering services to children, young people and their families to
quickly verify the child or young person and contact other
professionals already involved.
ContactPoint is a national initiative; its development is driven
by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF). The
current timescale for rollout in the City of London is 2009.
ContactPoint is a key element of the 'Every Child Matters:
Change for Children' agenda to transform children's services by
supporting more effective prevention and early intervention. It
will support a range of tools and processes that have already been
developed including the Common Assessment
Framework and better information sharing.
Collectively these will help services to work together more
effectively on the front line to meet the needs of children, young
people and their families.
ContactPoint will cover all children and young people in England
up to the age of 18 (and between the age of 18 and 25 with the
young person’s permission). Its Regulations and Guidance fall
under Section 12 of The Children Act 2004.
ContactPoint will contain the following basic information:
- Name address and date of birth of the child or young
person
- Parents or carers contact details
- Educational setting (e.g. school)
- Primary medical practitioner (e.g. GP practice)
- Practitioners providing other services
- A lead professional for that child (if
appointed)
ContactPoint will not hold assessment, case information or
subjective observations about a child. It will not contain any
information about birth weight, exam results, or fruit and
vegetable consumption. Authorised practitioners in Children's
Services, including Education, Health, Social Care, Youth Offending
as well as the Police and some Voluntary and Independent Services
will have access to ContactPoint.
ContactPoint will not hold assessment, case information or
subjective observations about a child. It will not contain any
information about birth weight, exam results, or fruit and
vegetable consumption. Authorised practitioners in Children's
Services, including Education, Health, Social Care, Youth Offending
as well as the Police and some Voluntary and Independent Services
will have access to ContactPoint.
Anyone who has access to ContactPoint will have received
relevant training and have undergone appropriate security vetting,
including an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check.
In line with the Data Protection Act 1998, young people, parents
and carers will have a right to request access to information held
about them on ContactPoint. This will be done so through the
City of London’s process on
Subject Access Requests (SAR)
For further information on ContactPoint within the City of
London please contact Jim Marshall (ContactPoint Data
Administrator) -
Email
Two helpful documents are attached:
ContactPoint Fact Sheet (64k)
ContactPoint Questions and Answers
Sheet (296k)
CAF
The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a key part of
delivering frontline services that are integrated and focused
around the needs of children and young people. The CAF is a
standardised approach to conducting an assessment of a child's
additional needs and deciding how those needs should be met. It can
be used by practitioners across children's services in England.
The CAF will promote more effective, earlier identification of
additional needs, particularly in universal services. It is
intended to provide a simple process for a holistic assessment of a
child's needs and strengths, taking account of the role of parents,
carers and environmental factors on their development.
Practitioners will then be better placed to agree, with the child
and family, about what support is appropriate. The CAF will also
help to improve integrated working by promoting co-ordinated
service provision.
The City of London has successfully carried out its CAF Pilot,
evaluated the outcome and will soon be launching the full
implementation of the CAF project.
Checking if a CAF has been completed
If you work for another Local Authority and want to
check whether a professional working in the City of London has
already completed a CAF for a young person I am working with.
Please email the young person’s name and date of birth to:
CAF@cityoflondon.gov.uk or
call the Children’s Services administrator on 020 7332 3621. You
will receive a response within four working days.
eCAF
eCAF is the e-enablement of the CAF and it will allow a
practitioner to electronically create, store and share a CAF Form
securely. eCAF will give authorised, trained practitioners
from different sectors secure access to key information concerning
the assessment. This will allow them to plan, monitor and review a
co-ordinated approach to the delivery of the most appropriate
services.
Many local authorities have procured local systems to enable the
above. However, the government is currently developing a
national solution. After completing a detailed Business Case, it
was agreed that a single, national eCAF system, rather than a
number of local systems, represented the best option available. It
was clear that a national eCAF system would provide the greatest
benefits and allow practitioners to securely share information,
providing the appropriate consent has been obtained.
Access to the national eCAF system will only be granted to
authorised users who have undergone appropriate checks, including
those provided by the Criminal Records Bureau. Practitioners will
only be given access to the common assessment information of
children they are working with, and only with the informed,
explicit consent of the child or young person (or their parent /
carer where appropriate).
Security measures are a fundamental component of the national
eCAF system design:
- Access will only be granted to authorised users who have
undergone appropriate checks.
- Access will also be controlled by two forms of authentication:
a password and a onetime code generated by a security
token.