Group facilitator survey for Help shape the One West Northamptonshire Plan
Priority 5: Best Place to Grow up
A Child Friendly West Northants: a great place to grow up and raise a family, a place where children have the best start in life supported by good schools, strong communities, things to do.
Our child-friendly place aspiration is visible throughout this Plan and in the work we are doing to make West Northants the best place in the UK for children and young people to grow up in; to improve the homes and places in which children live and play; and to increase their overall health and wellbeing.
We want to make a difference to the lives of children and young people who live in West Northants, to have a positive impact on improving outcomes for all children, while recognising the need for outcomes to improve faster for children who are vulnerable or need extra support or intervention to achieve their best. Getting the best start in Life is fundamental to improving our children’s long-term life chances, and affords them the best opportunity to live long, full, healthy and enriched lives. We don’t want our children to fall out of education or fall behind.
Our new Child Friendly West Northants ambition is designed to support the best start in life for our children, a child centred approach that brings together health, education, public and voluntary sector partners, making every contact count and wrapping services around the child and family.
We will work together more collaboratively within our Local Area Partnerships (LAPs), making our support offer for families clear, easy to access and joined up. Supported by an effective use of data and joint teams we will be better able to prioritise support for children and families who need it, allowing crisis to be prevented.
We currently have a large number of children in care in comparison to other areas. Our Children’s Trust has made significant improvements to keeping more children safe from harm and improving the way we work together to try and keep families together. All partners have a shared responsibility to identify and meet the needs of all children and families, through effective support across the partnership, to enable children and young adults to thrive and be empowered to reach their full potential. Over the course of this Plan we will continue to work together to reduce the number of children coming into care and do more to ensure that our early help services and teams organised around the family, support them to live together well, or stay connected if we have to intervene.
Our number of children requiring support due to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has increased by over 40% since the creation of the Council in 2021. Our services have not been able to meet the challenges of this increased need for support and we are committed to an improvement journey which will provide support to children and their families sooner and deliver better outcomes. This improvement requires our SEND partnership to focus more on aspirations for children and to work in a far more coordinated way.
A 2023 Youth Peer Review confirmed that West Northants leaders understand that investment at an early point in the life of a young person will save money across the system including for health services, the Council, Social Care, Police, the justice system and schools. A Child Friendly West Northants will look to promote and advance joint working to achieve these outcomes.
Please view the proposed Priority 5 and suggested outcomes and shared development areas.