Mary Reid

With my 'lead member for Children and Young People's Services' hat on, I do have to serve on rather a lot of committees.  More and more of them involve agencies working together to provide services for children - council, Primary Care Trust, Kingston Hospital, police and voluntary sector - together with users of the services - young people and parents.  

Today I attended two of them, starting with the Health and Wellbeing Board. We heard about how the PCT is dealing with its financial problems. 

It is very odd that the Health service at regional and national level gives no priority at all to children, in spite of the Government policy enshrined in 'Every Child Matters'. As I have said before, this is one of the most humane reports to have come from any government since the 1944 Education Act. This is not just about the sharing of information about children at risk, though that is part of it, but is a vision for integrating all the public services used by children and families. So why does the Department of Health ignore it?

My next meeting was the Children and Young People's Partnership - a gathering of about 30 professionals who together are making it happen in Kingston. A lot of the joined-up services will be offered through Children's Centres and schools.

The Partnership has produced, for the first time, the Children and Young People's Plan for Kingston.  It will (hopefully) be adopted by the Council's Executive next Tuesday and later by the boards of the other agencies.

Then later in the year all the agencies will be jointly inspected under a new regime, called the Joint Annual Review.  The main question that will be asked is "How have things changed for the better for children in Kingston?" And they will ask children to tell them directly. 

The Plan is rather lengthy but summary versions, including one for children, will be published once it has been approved.