Field Value Title Barnsley In Depth Children & Young People's ...

Barnsley in Depth Children’s and Young People’s Report – 2008/09 Information18 receive the sponsored childminding service and 72 have short breaks orday care on a residential basis. The numbers of children receiving shortbreaks and the type of provision is increasing due to additional investmentfrom the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme.5.3.5 Common Assessment FrameworkThe Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a central part of theGovernment’s plan to make sure that different services work together tosupport children and young people by:• Making sure that children and young people who have ‘additionalneeds’ are identified as early as possible;• Reducing the number of assessments children and young people mightneed to undergo;• Improving the quality of assessments across all services for childrenand young people;• Supporting any referrals between different services that are necessaryabout children and young people.The Common Assessment Framework is also becoming embedded inpractice and the number of Common Assessments completed on youngpeople is 566 for 2008-09, which demonstrates a continuing growth overprevious years (374 in 2007/8 and 159 in 2006/7). All newborns in Barnsleyhave a pre CAF assessment by midwife. 356 staff across the borough weretrained during 2008/9 in completion of the assessments and this notablyincludes staff from adult services. Again this demonstrates advances onprevious years (470 in 2007/8 and 218 in 2006/7).The growth in the use of CAF increases the assurance that young people andtheir families are directed to the appropriate prevention agencies and sourcesof support, advice and guidance, and this is reflected in a reduction ofreferrals to social care. The “Team Around the Child” process ensures theinvolvement of all relevant agencies in a holistic manner.5.4 Disabled Children’s ServiceThe Disabled Children's Service includes the Disabled Children’s Social WorkTeam, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Speech and LanguageTherapists. In addition, there are two residential short break units, Keresforthand Summerwell.The service supports children and young people with a learning or physicaldisability, sensory impairment and children with an autistic spectrumcondition.At any time, the Disabled Children's Social Work Team work withapproximately 200 children from across the Borough providing social worksupport. They work closely with other agencies and services. The team- 61 -