An Early Intervention Panel has been established which meets weekly to co-ordinate responses to urgent cases. The panel is multi-agency and includes representatives from Social Services, Education and Health. Panel members are able to allocate support services immediately to children and families in crisis. This ability to respond quickly is contributing to well-managed reductions in the number of children coming into care.

The purpose of the Early Intervention Panel is as follows:

• To ensure that imaginative, comprehensive and effective family support packages are offered to families where children are at risk of accommodation
• To ensure the full exploration of alternatives to accommodation by the Local Authority
• To ensure where children are accommodated that cost-effective quality placements are achieved
• To ensure, following the accommodation of a child(ren) that effective re-unification plans are in place and regularly reviewed.

The Panel addresses three areas:

• How will the accommodation of the children better meet their needs, what alternatives are being considered and what family support packages can be offered to help?
• Where accommodation is agreed, matching the children to the placement of choice which can meet their assessed needs
• Agreeing re-unification plans, timescales and review.

The Early Intervention Panel (EIP) is linked to the Children's Support Panel. This is a Children's Fund panel which focuses on children aged 8-13 deemed to be at risk of social exclusion. This panel therefore deals with a lower level of need than the EIP.

The Panel has been running successfully for approximately 18 months. Staff find it supportive, and it promotes multi-agency planning and best practice.

There has been a Children's Services Joint Commissioning Group for the past 18 months involving Education, Social Services, South Tyneside Primary Care Trust (PCT) and South Tyneside Health Care Trust. This has focused primarily on out-of borough residential placements and on establishing resources to return children to South Tyneside. The overall numbers placed outside the Authority has reduced from 26 to 11.

The savings from these placements have been channelled into the development of fostering services, expanding the psychology service for looked after children and increasing expenditure on the in-house residential units to enable improved working with young people with challenging behaviour who would previously have been looked after outside of South Tyneside.

Pooling the budgets for this group has been identified as a quick win and will be a priority for the new Children's Trust.

Funding protocols with Education and the PCT have been developed. This has helped the PCT in particular to calculate the likely budget implications for this year. It is estimated that this will be between £200-300k. There will be corresponding savings from the social services budget. Part of this will be used to jointly fund, (on a three way basis) a children's commissioning officer and a contracting officer. Both these post holders will assist with service development in the future. This will include jointly developing domiciliary and respite contracts and services for children with disabilities as well as independent fostering and reducing the number of residential placements.

In 2001 Kent County Council Social Services and South West Kent Primary Care Trust joined together to identify alternative solutions for older people who were admitted to nursing and residential homes in the Tunbridge Wells area.

The driver for change was the high volume of elderly people who were admitted to homes in this area. The County Council had identified this as a prime part of the Public Service Agreement target (PSA).

The initial 'think tank' brought together a wide range of people from local health organisations, different departments within Kent County Council and service users. The group identified a potential way forward and applied for funding through the Promoting Independence grant. The team were successful in their bid to develop a service which would prevent 42 service users in one year from entering nursing or residential care in the Tunbridge Wells locality.

Two managers within the Tunbridge Wells area from Health and Social Services undertook a joint lead to establish the team, develop the skill-mix of the staff group, identify training requirements, cost the proposals, develop outcome measures and introduce patient feedback mechanisms. The service commenced in Tunbridge Wells at the end of January 2002, and by April was delivering such excellent results that it was extended to the northern end of the Primary Care Trust and now covers the whole geographical area of the Primary Care Trust.

This example was highlighted as good practice in the Joint Review Report on Social Services in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The Children's Partnership Planning Group agreed to collate information for 22 groups of children according to three main headings:

• Numbers and needs
• Services and spending
• The effectiveness of services.

Individual agencies were assigned responsibility for collecting the data and all agencies were expected to submit detailed reports for all groups of children according to a common format. These reports provided the basis for determining the key objectives and targets set out in the Children's Services Plan.

Following an inspection of local authority services and voluntary sector working relationships in seven local authorities, the SSI published the above report. This includes a chapter on promoting good practice which lists some key questions "to help councils, social services and the voluntary sector as they reflect on, and revise or confirm the aims and objectives of their local arrangements." The key questions are set out as five checklists:

• Towards a Common Cause
• Encouraging and Supporting the Voluntary Sector
• Consultation
• Funding the Voluntary Sector
• Measuring Effectiveness.

The section on action needed on improving funding arrangements with the voluntary sector identified the following issues:

• Improved co-operation and consistency in funding the voluntary sector across local council departments and other agencies is needed.
• Local councils and their service departments, together with the voluntary sector, should formulate a funding code of practice based on a Best Value approach and respect for the sector's independence.

The code should include:

• Procedures that are consistent with the principles of good regulation and accountability for public money
• Processes to ensure fair access by having a well-publicised application process
• Ways to support the voluntary sector's infrastructure
• Specified funding mechanisms that fit the task and circumstances in which that task is being carried out
• Funding criteria that are explicit
• Requirements that decisions are clear and fed back to organisations
• Joint approaches to monitoring and evaluating services.

London Borough of Newham Social Services Department has developed a Market Management Strategy that enables it to advantageously intervene in the market in partnership with Health Agencies and the independent sector. In the implementation of this strategy the Department has been successful in attracting external regeneration funding from Central Government and Europe through the SRB and the ESF programmes.

The Market Management Strategy takes account of the profile of the community, which is the most diverse in the country - over 60% are from black and ethnic minority groups with approximately 100 languages in common use in the borough. Newham has predominantly a small business economy, with 75% of the businesses being defined as small to medium sized enterprises, of which 40% are black and ethnic minority businesses. There is also a thriving voluntary sector, with almost 1,000 voluntary, community and faith groups, almost 75% of which are black and ethnic minority agencies. Newham's health economy includes a primary care trust, an acute trust and a mental health trust, who all work in partnership to implement the strategy.

Best Practice Examples/Projects implemented under the SRB and ESF funding streams that have been beneficial in stabilising and developing the external social care market:-
1. The Newham NVQ Consortium
Newham is the first in London and one of only two in the country to launch an NVQ training Consortium, and by working in partnership with the voluntary and independent sector, the consortium has attracted a substantial amount of ESF money. The aim of the Newham NVQ Training Consortium is to assist independent social care provider organisations in Newham to meet the new NCSC standards for qualifications for social care staff.

The Consortium works on a co-operative basis, through a Steering Group and Terms of Reference, whereby the organisations who are members of the Consortium work together to provide and commission training for their staff.
Approximately 200 care sector workers have been trained over the lifetime of the project - 34 for the trainer/assessor qualifications, the rest for NVQ Level 2 in care.

2. The Dekh Bhall Project, managed through a local Asian voluntary sector provider, is concerned with promoting training and employment opportunities for Asian people in the social care field, thus assisting social care providers working in Newham to provide more effective care to Newham's service users of Asian ethnicity. This project has been funded through the European Social Fund, SRB Green Street and Newham Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.

3. The First Line Supported Employment Service, funded through the European Social Fund, supports adults with learning difficulties to access employment, offering them training courses, support in obtaining employment and advice for employees

4. ESF funded Supported Employment Project for People with Mental Health Support Needs - Newham SSD has been the lead agency, working in conjunction with East London & City Mental Health Trust and voluntary sector providers of services for people with mental health support needs.

5. The Provider Development Project, funded by the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) Fit for Work programmes, has promoted business opportunities for small and medium size enterprises to compete effectively for contracts from Health and Social Services agencies. This has resulted in specific initiatives such as the Meals in the Home Brokerage whereby the Project negotiated with a main provider of meals to award sub contracts for the provision of Asian and African and African/ Caribbean meals to local providers (one from the voluntary sector and one from the private sector). The subcontracts are valued at £50,000 per year and the potential for these local providers to expand their outlets is also planned as they have been invited to assist in meeting the demand for culturally appropriate meals from other boroughs.

6. Newham Advocacy Project, also funded through the SRB Fit for Work Programme, has developed advocacy standards and training in the borough, including an advocacy qualification with the University of East London. It has also set up the East London Advocacy Consortium, a self-regulatory body for the development and maintenance of advocacy standards, which consists of the full range of advocacy providers in Newham.

Benefits

The range of partnership projects funded via the SRB and ESF streams that have

• Increased employment of local residents
• Improved the culturally appropriateness of services
• Improved the health and well being of service users
• Generated new business growth, including social enterprise growth, where specific gaps were identified
• Enabled the independent sector providers to meet the new NCSC standards
• Provided the Department with a wider market to purchase from
• Enabled the sharing of skills and experiences