Children's and Adults' Services

Introduction

"I have overall responsibility for the strategic direction and planning of Children’s and Adults’ Services. I will work with my fellow Lead Members, Cllr Stroude and Cllr Simmons, to deliver our agenda for Children’s Services, and with Cllr Bentley to deliver our agenda for Adult Social Care.

Children's Services

We will continue to make sure that the Council provides strong and clear leadership for the local community to help improve outcomes for children and young people across all of the five key areas identified by children and young people as important and enshrined in the 2004 Children Act: staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a contribution and economic well-being.

The new Children's Services Department was judged in the Annual Performance Assessment for 2004/2005 as consistently delivering above minimum requirements and having excellent overall capacity to improve. The Children’s Trust arrangements in East Sussex have got off to a good start, with a wide range of partners in the statutory and voluntary sectors working together to ensure that services are organised around children and young peoples’ needs. I am pleased that children and young people themselves, as well as some parents and carers, have been involved in identifying priorities and actions in the new Children and Young People’s Plan. These strategic developments are already having a beneficial effect on joining up the delivery of front line services to achieve better results for children, young people and families.

I believe we are well placed to deliver integrated services, and to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people across all agencies.

Adult Social Care

It is important that the Council delivers clear and strong leadership to help develop services for older people and adults that need our support. The Government have recently published a White Paper entitled ‘Our Health, our Care and Our Say’ which puts Adult Social Care at the heart of our local community’s efforts to ensure people receive the services that they need. I am committed to improving partnership working and more effective integration services with health, housing, voluntary and independent sectors. The focus of all our work must however remain on better outcomes for the people that use our services and their carers.

The policies we have pursued have enabled improvements to services and this has been acknowledged by our inspectors. I believe we need to build on this step forward and continue to develop and improve services that promote rehabilitation and support people in their own homes and local communities.”
Councillor Keith Glazier