Focus on Engagement

6. Focus on Engagement

6.1 The Board and Partnerships are committed to engaging with children, young people and families, and with adults with care and support needs, in the planning and delivery of their work in North Yorkshire.

6.2 There is an explicit commitment to incorporate these views and perspectives in a meaningful way into the Partnerships’ and Board’s overarching Business and Delivery Plans, so as it is not tokenistic, to improve outcomes and life chances for children & young people, and for adults with care and support needs, in the county.

6.3 Engagement Objectives

• Provide a range of opportunities to allow children & young people and adults with care and support needs to express their views. They should also be provided with the support required to empower them to do this confidently;

• Provide a range of opportunities where children & young people and adults with care and support needs can express their views safely in a supportive environment;

• Listen to children & young people, and to adults with care and support needs to hear, value and respect their views and;

• Provide opportunities where the impact of their views and the progress of the work of the SCP, CSP and SAB can be fed back to children & young people, and to adults with care and support needs.

6.4 SCP Engagement

In order to practically and effectively deliver against these objectives the SCP will have a representative who engages with North Yorkshire Youth Voice and North Yorkshire Youth Commission members to consult and co-produce with children and young people on the work SCP is already delivering, planning to deliver and to seek their views on how SCP can meet children and young people’s safeguarding needs.

6.5 CSP Engagement

NYCSP consults closely with a variety of partners to ensure that there is ef- fective delivery of its objectives. For example, the Hate Crime Working Group (subgroup of the CSP) engages with NY Youth Commission members and North Yorkshire Youth to ensure projects and campaigns are delivered with a young person’s focus such as ‘Wake Up Call’. Whilst also it works closely with the Learning Disability Partnership and its self advocates around the further development of ‘North Yorkshire Safe Places’.

In commissioning Domestic Abuse Services, the Domestic Abuse Joint Com- missioning Group (subgroup of the Domestic Abuse Joint Coordinating Group) have actively engaged with Domestic Abuse service users and will continue to do this as and when needed.

Local Prevent groups will provide appropriate opportunities with local engagement of communities, for example through community cohesion events such as ‘Great Get Together’, supported closely by the North Yorkshire County Council Community Cohesion team.

6.6 SAB Engagement

An Engagement project will be undertaken by the SAB and this will include working in particular with the Learning Disability Partnership Board, the wider community, older peoples forums and care homes as well as providers and those who work and volunteer in adult social care to look at how the SAB can strengthen its engagement arrangements.

It will also focus on the information people want from us and most importantly how they want to hear from us.

We will also ask those we engage with to give feedback on our existing suite and methods of communication and will use this feedback to inform how we communicate with people.

We will look to develop surveys and questionnaires with our partners at Healthwatch to include questions around safeguarding and explore more qualitative methods to feedback to adults where changes have been made following engagement with them.

We will look at establishing a Peer Review Group to get assurance that mechanisms for learning and review are changing practice

The feedback from this engagement project will be fed back into this Communications & engagement strategy.