Transforming Children's Services

Work is now going on to put in place improvements to services for children, young people and their families, following the Transforming Children’s Services review. In March 2009, the Council approved the review recommendations, which are now being taken forward by teams who will be introducing the improvements through the following projects.

Updates on progress with the projects will be posted here regularly.

Background information on Transforming Children’s Services is available. It includes the original reports and recommendations.

Schools services

This project is re-structuring schools services provided to all children and young people from age three to 18. The main improvements include:

putting in place shared headships to enable the removal of class commitments for all primary headteachers
setting up six learning communities to allow cross sector working
establishing 54 Principal Teacher posts in primary schools, with management time to work within and across the six learning communities
giving secondary school head teachers the flexibility to decide their senior and middle management structures.

The aim of this project is to ensure the effective delivery of Curriculum for Excellence, the most radical education reform in Scotland for a generation. It is being taken forward by Acting Head of Secondary Schools and Pupil Support, Jackie Swanston, and Acting Head of Primary and Early Years, Yvonne McCracken.

Integrated children’s services

Some children need additional care and support at school because of a disability or learning difficulty such as autism, dyspraxia, or Down’s Syndrome. They may have a minor temporary condition, for example, a speech impediment or a physical condition such as Cystic Fibrosis. Services in schools for children with additional needs are currently provided by the Education Department. Services for children and families who need care and support outside school are provided by the Social Work Department.

The new Integrated Children’s Services comes into effect next week on 10 August. It brings together Social Work services for children and Additional Support Needs services currently provided by Education and Lifelong Learning. The immediate changes are to the staffing structures, and work has been going on over the last few months to move staff into the new service. More information.

Transforming community services

Three pieces of work are now getting under way:

A review of the community services estate (which includes libraries, museums, community centres, halls and sports centres) will lead to recommendations about each facility - whether it should retained ‘as is’ or moved, or if it could co-locate other services within the building.
A customer survey will be undertaken to find out uses the services, how satisfied they are and what they expect from the services, both now and in the future. The results will be used to make sure the redesigned services satisfy future public need and expectations.
In the main piece of work – organisational redesign – different service groupings and structures will be tested to find the best service for the people of the Borders.

At the end of this work an assessment will be made about whether community services should remain as part of the Council or be transferred out as a not for profit trust.