what's new march 2010

NEETs: Early identification

Partners - make sure you have booked your places on this conference: Early Intervention: Preventing children and young people from becoming NEET. Manchester, March 17. The national strategy: Reducing the Number of Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training (2008) recognises that careful tracking and monitoring are needed to identify children and young people at risk of disengaging from education and becoming NEET, at an early stage. A multi-agency approach is essential to ensure that all young people leave school with the skills, confidence and motivation to progress to further education, training or employment.

Are you a champion for EIP?

Partners - Make sure you have booked a place on our practical regional research support seminars, designed for people who want to champion evidence-informed practice (EIP) across their agency. If you are one of those who want to gain a basic knowledge of how evidence-informed practice and research can help improve practice this might be just the thing for you. Contact your Link Officer if you'd like a place.

Re-inventing the wheel

Do you want an action plan for an evidence-informed strategy? Or an example of a research bulletin you could copy? Look in our Network Resource Bank for information on audit tools, steering groups for evidence-informed practice, research governance applications, or learning and development action plans, and much more. The documents in here have all been generated in our network by our Partner agencies and they are there to prevent you re-inventing the wheel and help you spread evidence-informed practice in your organisation.

Thresholds

Partners have chosen this topic for our next briefing in the Prompts series. If you have ideas about what you would like to see covered, and what you think the issues are in the light of the increase in referrals to child protection services, please contact susannah@rip.org.uk Also, if you have any examples of promising or emerging practice please let Susannah know.

Research and Policy Update

Highlights this month include:

• a study that aims to improve understanding of recurrent poverty
• details of newly commissioned research studies and work in progress, including a project intended to lead to the development of practice guidance on the effective fostering of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children
• a DCSF consultation on draft guidance on the transition to adulthood for looked after children
• and a consultation on draft public health guidance (developed jointly by NICE and SCIE) on improving the physical health, and emotional health and well-being of looked after children.

New!

We have two new Partner agencies, Norfolk County Council and Wokingham Borough Council, bringing the size of the network to 115; 84 local agencies in England, nine national agencies and all 22 Wales local authorities. Our staff complement has grown with the appointment of Dez Holmes as our Assistant Director - Partner Relations, a post that will lead and enhance our direct engagement with Partners. Dez is currently Programme Manager - Capacity Building, for our Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People's Services (C4EO) work and we are delighted that she will bring the energy and vigour that have been hallmarks of her work on C4EO to this post.

Just completed

We have just completed an evaluation of our work in Wales 2007-2010 (the Wales College) which has been submitted to the Heads of Children's Services in Wales. All of the 22 Welsh authorities have been members of our network since 2004.