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In order to successfully deliver joined up services in Slough that respond to the needs of children, young people, their families and carers we need to develop an approach to planning and commissioning that integrates service delivery. Integrated working is about enabling and encouraging practitioners to work together and implement common processes. This will ensure that frontline services are coordinated and focus on the needs of the children and young people in Slough. The Slough Children's Trust Commissioning Strategy sets out an agreed set of standards for commissioning decisions and activities at all levels within Slough and a strategy for applying these standards across the Children's Trust partnership. It is designed to ensure the best possible use of resources to improve the outcomes for children and young people in Slough. Information Sharing refers to the way in which partner organisations protect and share personally sensitive information about the children and young people in Slough. As children's services become more integrated there is a growing need to develop guidelines that support professional and confidential information sharing and that protect and benefit children, young people and their families. A Lead Professional is responsible for ensuring that a child or young person receiving care and attention from more than one service or agency has a single practitioner or professional that is aware of the details and can coordinate service provision. ContactPoint is an online directory, based on government guidance, which will contain basic information about every child and young person in Slough and will be the quick way to find out who else is working with the same child or young person, thus making it easier to deliver more co-ordinated support. This online directory will be introduced in Slough in 2009 and will be available to staff who need to access it as part of their job. The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for children and young people is a nationally standardised approach to conducting an assessment of the needs of a child or young person and agreeing how those needs should be met. It provides a simple holistic assessment of a child's additional needs, enabling practitioners to identify and tackle problems before they become more serious. The CAF is intrinsically linked to the development of the role of the Lead Professional and the implementation of ContactPoint. Child Protection means protecting children and young people in Slough from abuse. This could be:
The Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) is designed to ensure that the principles and practice of safeguarding are applied to, and embedded in, all services that have dealings with children and young people.
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