As you may be aware, Powys County Council and it's partners have been approved as Pathfinders in the Early Years Integration Transformation Programme. The Programme aims to support delivery of the Welsh Government’s commitment to develop a more joined-up, responsive Early Year’s system (covering the period of life from pre-birth to the end of the Foundation Phase (0-7)), putting the unique needs of each child at its heart. An initial and important task is to build a comprehensive picture of Early Years provision across the County, helping partners identify areas of good practice, gaps in provision and areas for improvement.
Practice Solutions, a national research company which supports improvement and development across the health and social care sector in Wales, has been commissioned to support this exercise. We need your help in providing us with information on your service, so we get a detailed picture of what is currently being provided. It would be helpful to have as much of the following information as you have available:
- The name of your service
- How long you’ve been operating
- How you are funded and the level of funding you receive
- Who commissions your service
- Your sector (Local Authority, NHS or third sector)
- The type of service you provide and whether it is Universal, Enhanced or Targeted
- Your target age group
- Whether you provide services in one part of several areas in the County, or across the whole of Powys
- Whether people are referred to your service and how this happens in practice
- Whether you charge for your service and how much it costs
- How many people you help and whether there is a waiting list for your services
- Any information you have on the quality of your service and outcomes delivered for people you help
We recognise that you won’t have the capacity to spend lots of time in gathering this information, and so we would ask that you provide us what you can and send us existing documentation rather than trying to pull out specific data. Possible sources of the information we are looking for might include:
- Publicity and service information leaflets
- Service Level Agreements and Contracts with your commissioning organisations
- Formal monitoring reports to your funders or other bodies
- Report cards
- Performance monitoring and review documents including levels of use and the number of people you help, referral pathways, outcomes, waiting times and numbers of people on your waiting list
- How you monitor your performance (paper-based, spreadsheet or online database)
Please can you respond as soon as possible and by the end of Friday 25 February. You can email information directly to me at martyn(at)practicesolutions-ltd.co.uk.
A steering group with representatives from all parts of the sector has been established to oversee the Pathfinder work and we will use this as a means of engaging with as many of you as we can as the work progresses, thus ensuring we reflect as wide a range of views and experiences as possible. More information on this will follow shortly. The steering group will also be involved in signing off any information on current services before it is included in the report from the mapping exercise.
A steering group with representatives from all parts of the sector has been established to oversee the Pathfinder work and we will use this as a means of engaging with as many of you as we can as the work progresses, thus ensuring we reflect as wide a range of views and experiences as possible. More information on this will follow shortly. The steering group will also be involved in signing off any information on current services before it is included in the report from the mapping exercise.
If you have any questions at all regarding this work, please do not hesitate to contact me or Jess Sharma, Strategic Commissioning Manager, at jess.sharma(at)powys.gov.uk.
