This afternoon I attended the Leeds Children's Trust Board meeting at Temple Moor High School...

It was great to be at one of our successful and improving schools which has been transformed by our 'Building Schools for the Future' programme and everyone at the meeting agreed that the learning environment looks fantastic! The Leeds Children's Trust Board is the strategic body responsible for setting the vision and the priorities for the Children and Young People's Plan which will drive all our work for children, young people and families. The meeting today looked at the developing blueprint for the new Children's Services arrangements with a presentation by my colleague Ken Morton. The blueprint builds on the work that we have been doing over the last five years to build extended services arrangements within clusters across the city. It continues to build well-being and child protection teams around schools and Children's Centres connected to area teams working with looked-after children and children with complex needs. These teams around the child and the family must powerfully connect with the universal offer to ensure that every child in Leeds has a key worker and has the support, resources and encourgement they need to achieve their potential. We need to continue to work to refine and develop the models and the structural arrangements to ensure that everychild and every young person is happy, healthy, safe and increasingly successful... whatever it takes!
Chris