ENGAGING WITH AND SHAPING SLOUGH'S CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Overview

Slough Borough Council's Children's services including Slough Children First would like to hear from you about how best we can work with local organisations, and community, faith and voluntary groups representing and supporting families and their children in Slough.

The council is proposing a one-day Summit meeting with two main aims:

1. To offer a space for the community,voluntary and  faith leaders, who support and/or represent Slough's many different communities of children, young people and their  families and to meet officers delivering services for children and families to learn what each does and has to offer; and
2. To discuss the best way to involve representatives of the many and diverse children and family communities in the design, improvement and development of services going forwards.

The Council would like to invite leaders, supporters and representatives of groups or organisations that represent families and children in Slough to a one-day summit where there would be:

• a 'market place' where you could learn more about the different services available to children and their families; and
• opportunities to discuss how you (as a group that can represent the views of children and their families) would like to shape and engagement framwork that captures the views, voices and experiences of children, young people and their families in relevant and meaningful ways to inform the improvement, design and delivery of childrens services going forwards.

As a first step, the council would like to ask you a few questions about what you think about its proposal for a one-day summit and how you think your community/faith group or voluntary organisation could represent the views of children and their families going forwards.

Data Protection

This questionnaire and the information we collect will be used for the purposes of evidence-based decision making on Slough Borough Council’s future focus, approach and priorities. We are committed to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK General Data Protection Regulations. By continuing to complete this questionnaire and submitting your responses, you are consenting to us processing this data.

This will be used to make decisions in a public forum and the results will be published online and anonymous data may be accessed by third parties to validate the results of the survey.

We will only retain the data collected for as long as is necessary and, after the period determined by our Data Protection Officer, this data will be destroyed in accordance with our IT and Information Security Procedures.

Please refer to our data privacy notice at Privacy notices – Slough Borough Council  for further details on how we protect your privacy.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please email DataProtectionOfficer@slough.gov.uk

Why your views matter

The views and experiences of children and their families, especially of those who  come into direct contact with the Council, must inform the improvement of our services and the design, development and roll out of new services delivering better outcomes for children, young people and families on Slough - a key corporate priority for Slough Borough Council.

We know that conversations about this have already started with some groups/communities, however, we need to broaden these discussions to fully reflect the diversity of families and children across multiple communities in the borough and ensure that, going forwards, a wide range of voices will be heard, through their service and support providers, representatives, leaders and advocates.

SBC, and its children's services in particular, is therefore keen to hear from you if you provide support and services to or act as a representative, leader or advocate of children, young people and their families in:

• communities of place  (e.g. Children and families living in a particular ward),
• communities that share an interest (e.g. Young people playing a particular sport), and
• communties of association (e.g. children & familles of a particular faith or children & families with a specific cultural identity).

We want to hear your thoughts as to how best we can communicate and actively engage with you, in your role as a support providers, community leader, representative or advocate.  We want to understand how to begin the conversation in the short term and ultimately to ensure that the views and experiences of children and families can shape the services and support they recieve in the future.

What happens next

We will listen to your views and, depending on your response, we will either:

• Proceed with plans for a summit event, to which you will be invited; or
• Re-think our plans and contact you with an alternative apporach in due course.