How many secondry schools are in Nottingham?

Answer 1

Early Intervention City Programme BriefingThe purpose of an Early Intervention approach is to work in partnership to improve outcomes for children, young people, adults and families who are very likely to experience difficulties and to break the intergenerational cycle of problems in the long-term.

• Programme Vision
• City Definition
• Scope
• Partnership working
• Long-term benefit realisation
• The Programme five themes
• Programme Outcomes

This requires a longer-term shift to focusing on the causes rather than symptoms within cycles of challenge. Investment in prevention and early intervention will reduce the demand on specialist services, reducing costs in the long-term. The number of children, young people, adults and families in Nottingham with high needs is significant.

The Early Intervention Programme is funded by One Nottingham and led by the Children's Partnership, one of six strategic partnerships belonging to One Nottingham. In order for the programme to achieve the necessary impact and be sustainable, the commitment and participation of all partners across the city is essential.

Programme VisionOur early intervention services are innovative and accessible, enabling the best start in life for our children and young people, and empowering our families to provide strong parenting, resilience and ambition.

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City Definition'Our aim is to break the intergenerational nature of underachievement and deprivation in Nottingham by identifying at the earliest possible opportunity those children, young people, adults and families who are likely to experience difficulty and to intervene and empower people to transform their lives and their future children's lives.'

This can be achieved by:

• Focusing on tackling intergenerational issues
• Focusing on those activities that, if delivered, can reduce the number of specialist interventions
• Focusing on bringing partner resources together to make this happen
• Targeting work at those individuals or families who are very likely to have difficulties without effective support / intervention. (This is subtly different to prevention which is targeted at those individuals / families whomight have difficulties)
• Focusing on coherence for the children, young people and families within the delivery model
• Shifting resources to tackle the complex causes of problems, rather than just treating the symptoms

ScopeTo work with targeted children, young people, adults and families affected by intergenerational cycles of complex problems, to better understand the early intervention services/tools needed to improve positive outcomes.

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Early effective support

• Establish and blueprint a small number of critical, evidence-based, stage specific early interventions for Nottingham and make them sustainable
• Shift greater resource into prevention and early intervention and explore the cost and benefits of specific interventions
• Reduce the demand for specialist interventions
• Equip the workforce to think family and intervene early
• Identify children and young people at risk early

Support the target groups and empower them to:

Be strong, healthy families

• Reduce the number of children whose parents or siblings have offended, from offending
• Decrease the number of repeat incidents of domestic violence
• Reduce obesity/increase participation in activities and sport
• Improve mental health
• Provide the best start in life to children born to teenage parents

Be emotionally resilient and demonstrate maturity in decision-making

• Reduce alcohol/drug related anti-social behaviour incidents involving children and young people
• Reduce alcohol consumption levels amongst young people under 18
• Improve aspirations, resilience and life skills
• Reduce teenage pregnancy, multiple teenage pregnancies, anti-social behaviour and violence

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Access lifelong learning and economical activity

• Accelerate the improvement in attainment of children in care and increase social aspiration
• Accelerate the reduction of persistent absence across all City secondary schools

Partnership workingPartnership working and whole City ownership is a key principle underpinning the Early Intervention Programme. The Programme is supported by One Nottingham, the Local Strategic Partnership and its partners, and is championed by the City Council. Partnership working and the added value this can bring has significantly increased during the first phase of the Programme. This includes a unique and developing relationship with the University of Nottingham on evaluating Early Intervention projects and evidence base. This is also being achieved through linking PhD students with project leads to undertake focused pieces of work and providing a Chair for the Early Intervention Evidence Group.

All delivery projects are undertaken in collaboration with partners. A theme partnership takes responsibility for ownership, management of risk and opportunities for each project.

Nottingham is also partnered with Government through our Local Area Agreement (LAA) Demonstration Area for Early Intervention work and has supported the national focus through two international conferences bringing together expertise and key voices in the early intervention debate and national partner visits to Nottingham.This Demonstration Area work has increased opportunities and added value for the work in the City. Learning that results from the Demonstration Area Programme will be used to refine and improve delivery of our LAA as well as helping to shape and challenge Government thinking and models; exploring the tensions between short-term improvement targets and long-term investment to deliver intergenerational change.

The Children's Partnership Board has responsibility, on behalf of One Nottingham, for driving the Early Intervention Programme, but all theme partnerships have a role in implementing the programme.

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Long-term benefit realisationEarly Intervention and our Sustainable Community Strategy

Nottingham has spent the last two years working with partner organisations and local people, employers and businesses, community and voluntary and faith groups developing and finalising our Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS).

Our SCS sets the agenda for change for Nottingham over the next decade. It is a strategy for jobs and prosperity, for better neighbourhoods and for strong and aspiring families. Right at the heart of this vision - and this strategy - is a determination that over the next two decades we will fashion a new direction for Nottingham where accelerated wealth creation goes hand in hand with a decisive breaking of the cycle of intergenerational poverty through early intervention, so that more of our children grow up to benefit from the City's wealth and with higher aspirations.

In 2030, Nottingham must not only be wealthier, but fairer. The true test of whether we have succeeded will be how many of our children grow up to achieve more than their parents. These are big aspirations. We will not achieve them by 'muddling through' or by sticking to conventions. We will need to be radical in our analysis of what we must do, bold in our willingness to act and not afraid to be different.

Our Early Intervention Programme underpins many of the key drivers in our developing SCS action programmes to deliver change in Nottingham over the next decade. We will build on our pioneering early intervention work to help to break the cycle of intergenerational deprivation in Nottingham.

An evaluation framework for the SCS will be developed during 2009. This will be informed by and encompass the Early Intervention learning and evaluation workstream.

Please click here to view the Early Intervention Programme's Strategic Work Flow [22kb]

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The Programme is structured around five themes:

• Governance - aligning priorities and decision-making
• Projects - trialing new work or re-engineered services to meet needs
• Finance - cost-benefit analysis of services and gradually shifting resource to preventative services
• Learning and Evaluation - being robust about what does and does not work and strengthening the links between research and practice
• Knowledge Management - understanding need and creating a hypothesis of what work will have the greatest impact

Please click here to view the Early Intervention projects under the five Programme strands [66kb]

Programme Outcomes:

• Break the intergenerational cycle of deprivation and challenges in Nottingham
• Close the performance gap within the City in terms of key outcome indicators for children, young people, adults and families
• Close the performance gap in terms of key outcome indicators with similar cities in England
• Develop a methodology and approach that allows the gradual switching of resource towards prevention and early intervention alongside working out new ways of funding
• Link closely to key national policies, maximising opportunities for Nottingham to champion initiatives working to promote early intervention

As a result of its approach, Nottingham was selected as one of 12 national Local Area Agreement Demonstration Areas. Any learning from the National Programme will be used to refine and improve Nottingham's LAA and help to shape and challenge Government thinking and models.