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.

The purpose of the Partnership is to provide leadership and direction across agencies that deliver services to children, young people and their families in the borough. A number of other groups are integral to the aims of the Partnership and therefore form part of its infrastructure. These are listed below.

• Lewisham Safeguarding Children Board
• Joint Commissioning Group
• Young Mayor’s Structure
• Voluntary and Community Sector Children and Young People’s Forum
• Headteachers Strategic Primary and Secondary Forums
• 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:

• Children Centres and Extended Services
• Child Poverty
• Emotional Wellbeing
• Healthy weight/Healthy lifestyles
• Disability multi-agency group
• Integrated Youth Support Service
• 14-19 Strategy
• Parenting Board

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 part of its work the CYPSP is responsible for overseeing the impact of the Local Area Agreement indicators, including monitoring their progress against agreed targets, and evaluating the impact of outcomes for 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:

• Agreement of local priorities based on needs analysis;
• Development, implementation and monitoring of the Children & Young People’s Plan;
• Oversight of the Local Area Agreement, to include monitoring progress towards achieving targets, and evaluating impact on outcomes for children and young people
• 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 31 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, PCT Professional Executive Committees 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
• Achievement of LAA targets.