Lewisham Children & Young People’s Strategic Partnership (CYPSP) is a multi-agency partnership. It aims to improve the lives and life chances of children, young people and their families in Lewisham through the delivery of its Children & Young People’s Plan and Every Child Matters outcomes.

All agencies within our partnership share a single vision:

Together with families, we will improve the lives and life chances of the children and young people of Lewisham.

Our vision is underpinned by three shared values:

• We will put children and young people first every time
• Together with families, we will have the highest ambition for all our children and young people
• We will make a positive difference to the lives of children and young people

The CYPSP has a top-level Board (CYPSPB) whose purpose is to provide leadership and direction across agencies that deliver services to children, young people and their families in the borough.

Two major Boards, the Children and Young People’s Joint Commissioning Group and the Lewisham Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) report into the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership Board.  Other multi-agency groups are established and removed as required. 

The Joint Commissioning Group (JCG) sits below the CYPSPB and has responsibility for bringing together resources across the partnership and to ensure that these are aligned to deliver efficient and effective services, designed to improve outcomes.

The LSCB holds the partnership to account for its safeguarding practices.

A number of other groups are integral to the aims of the CYPSP and therefore form part of its infrastructure:

• Young Mayor’s Structure
• Voluntary and Community Sector Children and Young People’s Forum
• Schools Forum Funding Group 

As part of the infrastructure of the Partnership, a number of working groups are in place to deliver against priorities in the Children and Young People’s Plan. These are time limited groups that are reviewed annually.

• Early Intervention Board
• 14-19 Strategic Forum
• Healthy Lives, Healthy Weight Group
• Healthy Child Programme Board
• SEND Board
• Primary and Secondary Strategic Groupers

The Board is one of the six thematic partnerships of Lewisham’s Strategic Partnership (LSP) and its members may work jointly with the LSP, particularly to address areas of work that fall under the LSP, but which also have an impact on the outcomes of children and young people.

As a thematic partnership of the LSP, these terms of reference are in addition to the LSP terms of reference.
The Children & Young People’s Strategic Partnership will give leadership and direction across agencies delivering services to children, young people and their families in Lewisham.
The CYPSP will have responsibility for:

• Understanding, and acting on, the needs of all the children, young people and families in the area
• Knowing how to meet those needs, for instance by bringing together the right organisations and people or pooling or aligning resources
• Making sure those working in front line services, including children’s centres, schools GP’s and community health teams, are receiving the support they need to help children and families
• Being accountable to local families and communities for what is being achieved
• Acting to put children’s needs before organisational structures

It will do this by:

• Agreement of local priorities based on needs analysis;
• Development, implementation and monitoring of the Children & Young People’s Plan;
• Work with the Health and Wellbeing Board to ensure public health priorities are being met
• Provide exception reports to the LSP on areas where performance is causing concern,
• Co-ordination and overview of services for children and young people in Lewisham including the work of the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and Joint Commissioning Group (JCG) and other working groups;
• Alignment, integration and joint resourcing, where appropriate, of services for vulnerable children and young people;
• Links to other governance and planning forums;
• Monitoring and scrutiny of targets, objectives and outcomes;
• Partnership and relationship development;
• Governance arrangements including joint governance for larger projects;
• Section 75 agreements and Section 10 agreements where appropriate;
• Winning hearts and minds and communicating back to agencies, services and teams;
• Provide advice and recommendations to Local Authority Mayor and Cabinet, Borough BSU and GP Consortia and Trust Boards on Planning and Commissioning issues.
• Arbitration in any dispute about a service or an Agreement (including in relation to financial and budgetary matters) and in so far as is possible, resolution of that dispute.

• Frequency of meetings: minimum of 3 times a year with one conference a year to engage the wider community.
• The CYPSPB is chaired by the member for Children & Young People. Membership of the Board is executive level managers.

The CYPSP receives, at each meeting, a Performance Monitoring Dashboard, highlighting areas of good and poor performance and areas for action. The CYPSPB monitors the work of Working Groups against these targets, and has a programme to ‘call in’ in-depth reports as appropriate.

• Achievement in delivering on the relevant sustainable communities strategy priority outcomes