One of the things I really enjoy about my post is the extent of joint working with colleagues from health, police, voluntary sector, children’s social work and other organisations and groups with a common interest in improving services to children and families. This form of joint working can be characterised as “integrated service delivery”
Yet integrated service delivery leads [...]
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As Head of Education I had a very clear and unambiguous role, i.e. I was responsible for everything which came under the banner of education of children and young people from 3-18 years of age. In my new role as Acting Director of Education and Children’s Services I have a much wider remit which includes the oversight [...]
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Over the last few weeks I’ve been continuing to exploring the concept of school based management.
Some authorities in Scotland have implemented the concept of Learning Communities based around the secondary school and the local primary schools, Glasgow runs New Learning Communities, Falkirk has Integrated learning communities and South Lanarkshire has Learning Communities.
Each of these schemes has very [...]
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Posted in Children's Services, Communication, Conferences, Corporate, Early Intervention, Early Years, Integrated Children's Services, LAAC, Leadership Dilemmas, Parental Involvement, Partnerships, Public Services on May 6th, 2008 1 Comment »
We held a very successful “Corporate Parenting” Conference today at the Marine Hotel, North Berwick. .
Adam Ingram MSP , Minister for Children and Early Years gave a well informed and committed keynote address and emphasised the need for us to collectively address the needs of Looked After and Accommodated Children and to focus upon the improving [...]
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I’ve become a parent again!!!!
One of the most exciting aspects of my new job is that I intend to take on the role of Education Champion for Looked After and Accommodated Children in East Lothian. The reality of the educational outcomes of this group of children in Scotland is is quite shameful:
The attendance of children [...]
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I was invited to a COPS meeting this afternoon. No they hadn’t eventually caught up with me! COPS is a an acronym for Co-ordinators of Pupil Support.
This group meets up five times a year to share practice and highlight common areas of concern. I was invited to take part in a discussion about the role [...]
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I came across this interesting model of children’s services at yesterday’s conference.
Christine Davies talked us through the development of Integrated Children’s and Young People’s Services in Telford and Wrekin.
Certainly worth a read.
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One of the responsibilities I have - in fact which I volunteered for - is to co-ordinate the East Lothian Integrated Children’s Services Plan.
Now that the schools are off I can turn my mind to this although we’ve been involved in preliminary work for the last couple of months. One of our goals is to try to [...]
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A teacher said to me last week that we (in education) seem to have to play, more and more, the role of parents as well as educators. I had to point out to this person that that is exactly what we have to do - especially for some of the most vulnerable children in our communities.
One of the [...]
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At the Musselburgh Cluster meeting today we discussed our strategy for supporting the lowest attaining 20% of students in East Lothian.
We had a very stimulating debate about this issue and a number of questions emerged:
1. Is there a difference between the lowest attaining and those with the lowest ability?
We thought there was - it is possible [...]
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