About the Barnsley Children, Young People and Families Trust
In Barnsley, we want everyone to start their life well, have the opportunity to learn, develop new skills, achieve their personal potential and have a good life. This means everything from a quality place to call home, good physical and mental wellbeing, access to the best possible local facilities, and a sense of self-worth through diverse education and secure employment opportunities. Read more about Barnsley 2030.
The Children and Young People’s Trust brings together partners from across health, social care, criminal justice, safeguarding, education, and the community and voluntary sector. This is in line with the duties contained in the Children’s Act 2004 for local agencies to cooperate and work with us to improve outcomes for people from pre-birth to 25 years of age. By working together we have already laid solid foundation a system that is based on early help, with improved access to services including mental health services; and a stronger coordinated approach for the children and families who need our help most.
How we help
The last couple of years have been marked by the global pandemic and we know that the impact on children, young people and families has been significant. This next period will also bring challenges, including the impact of the cost of living crisis on people and businesses, ongoing health inequalities, pressure on public sector budgets and workforce shortages.
The children’s workforce is our strongest asset and we will continue to support the sector to champion inclusivity, innovation and collaboration to make Barnsley the place of possibilities.
Trust executive group (TEG)
The TEG is a small group of the wider trust. It's chaired by our Executive Director for Children's Services and meets quarterly to make key decisions about how to deliver more 'joined up' services for families. The TEG is responsible for developing and delivering our Children and Young People’s Plan (CYP Plan) through strategic collaboration and a system wide approach to ensure that we maximise opportunities to improve outcomes for Children, young people and families.
Children and Young People's Plan 2023 to 2026
Our Children and Young People’s Plan sets out what we plan to do. It reflects our ambition to help children, young people and families to achieve their goals.
The Purpose of the Children and Young People's Plan
The purpose of this plan is to set out the Trusts 8 ambitions and identified priorities to contribute to the vision set out in Barnsley 2030, the borough’s long term plan.
These 8 ambitions are the Trusts commitments to the children, young people, parents, carers, staff and volunteers that make up our communities, that we will continue to work together to improve outcomes.
Voice of Children and Young People
Sharing information and involving children, young people and families in what we do and how we do it is key to improving outcomes. This is why as a Trust we are committed to ensuring we:
- Make sure information is accessible and jargon free
- Include everyone, and we listen and learn from our staff and communities
- Use age appropriate and creative ways to engage children and young people.
- Keep it simple and be honest about what you can influence
- Value equality and the diversity of local communities
- Are open and transparent with what we know and what we have done and why
For the families we work with we will work hard to involve you as much as possible, building on your strengths to shaping support plans and approaches that are best for you.
We ensure that Children and young people have the chance to influence their services. We work with young people from our Youth Council and align priorities to ‘Make Your Mark’ and ‘What matters to me, now’ (from the Director of Public Health Annual Report 2021). The importance of family, home, friendship and belonging came out strong, as did being active, outdoor space and the environment. Now more than ever young people told us that they valued having fun, being creative and enjoying experiences, holidays and celebrations.
Take a look at our videos below:
Ambition 1 - Children and young people and their families lead healthy and happy lives.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To provide Families with the Know How – so they can find the information they need to look after themselves and make the most of opportunities and services available.
- To provide opportunities to build resilience – so that our children, young people and their families can connect, have fun and thrive together.
- To embed our Early Help Approach – so that children, young people and their families are supported on a whole range of social, health and educational issues, as soon as problems emerge or re-emerge, to reduce inequalities.
- To strengthen our education, health and care partnerships – so that our systems and services, informed by the voice of children, young people and families, work seamless together.
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Ambition 2 - Children and young people are safe and protected from all types of harm.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To learn from national and local reviews to deliver safer outcomes for children and young people
- To keep children and young people safe inside home – by addressing domestic abuse, parental substance misuse, parental mental health and child neglect.
- To keep children and young people safe outside home – by tackling bullying, online harm, stalking and harassment, child exploitation.
- To intervene swiftly when children need help and protection, with high quality interventions to improve outcomes and reduce harm.
- To offer young people alternatives to crime and anti-social behaviour to divert young people away from criminal justice system.
- To help children, young people and families stay together. When this is not possible we will develop new models of accommodation through the strengthening of our commissioning arrangements, in order to place children locally.
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Ambition 3 - Children and young people get a good education, are ambitious and able to reach their potential.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To champion world class education opportunities for all CYPF, ensuring that we meet the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
- To secure high quality provision, widen local opportunities and promote equalities.
- To support families to provide an enriching home learning environment.
- To help young people aim high by championing high quality careers education and guidance that raises their aspirations, skills, qualifications, and aptitudes so that they fulfil their full potential.
- To provide access to high quality cultural, sporting and social opportunities and expand horizons and international experiences.
- To support every young person to be digitally and financially literate.
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Ambition 4 - Children and young people are ready for work and are able to gain and progress in work.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To strengthen the links between the borough’s employers and learning providers to help young people understand more about the world of work.
- To promote and encourage lifelong learning by enhancing post-16 and post-19 education, volunteering, employment, and training provision.
- To improve employment opportunities for our young people that are care leavers and those who have additional needs.
- To promote inclusion and provide support to young people at risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employments or training).
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Ambition 5 - All providers of children and family services are valued and supported to thrive.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To develop and grow the Children and Young People’s Provider Network.
- To increase the level of funding brought into Barnsley to build the children and family sector.
- To grow, support and shape the sector to deliver service integration and meet workforce development needs.
- To develop a stronger digital offer to promote all our children, young people and family services.
Progress
We'll update our progress here
Ambition 6 - Barnsley is a child, young person and family friendly place in which to live, work and visit.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To support young people to develop a sense of pride and place.
- To embed the interests and needs of children, young people and families into Housing, Regeneration and Investment plans to maximise the impact of developments and positively contribute to outcomes.
- To work with children, young people and families to make our urban and local town centre be safe and welcoming places as well as ensuring we have a wide mix of facilities and amenities available for CYP and families.
- To promote and increase opportunities and access to Barnsley’s art, sport, music, culture and heritage offer.
- To influence and support a safe, reliable and accessible transport network.
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Ambition 7 - To help protect our place and planet for future generations.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To promote initiatives and project across all partners, that contribution to the borough’s ambition to become net Zero Carbon by 2045.
- To engage children, young people and their families to improve knowledge and understanding of climate change and to take action to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Progress
We'll update our progress here
Ambition 8 - For children, young people and families to be proud and active where they live.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To influence and support the development of our parks, open and green spaces so children, young people and families can enjoy public outdoor spaces.
- To influence, support and promote active travel programmes across the borough so that cycling and walking become part of everyday life.
- To support initiatives for developing community capacity and promoting community wealth building.
- To work with the voluntary and community sector and support social action.
Progress
We'll update our progress here
Ambition 9 - The Trust will support the system to achieve more and better outcomes.
The priorities for this ambition are:
- To embed the Voice of stakeholders into all aspects of service development
- To improve partnership data and intelligence gathering, and analysis to support all our delivery groups
- To increase capacity and develop the workforce to deliver a whole systems approach
- To identify barriers and challenges that hinders progress of delivery groups
- To develop improved ways to communicate across the trust to reduce duplication
Progress
We'll update our progress here.
Useful links
- Barnsley Safeguarding Children Partnership
- Health and Wellbeing Board
- Health and Wellbeing Strategy
- Barnsley Place Health and Care Strategy (in development)
- Early Help Strategy 2022-2027
- Barnsley Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2026
- Send Strategy 2022 - 2025
- Autism Strategy (in development)
- Safer Barnsley Partnership Plan
- Safer Barnsley Partnership Annual Report 2022-23
- Barnsley School Alliance Education Improvement Strategy-2022-2025
- Employment and Skills Strategy - More and better jobs
- MORE AND BETTER JOBS 2021-2024
- Barnsley Transport Strategy
- Barnsley Zero Carbon Sustainable Energy Plan
- Families Information Service
- Local offer for children with SEND
- Barnsley Cultural Strategy (in development)
