Agenda item

York’s early years partnership, the Early Years Improvement Board, is entering into a 3 – 5 year innovation collaboration with Nesta, led by City of York Council. The aim of this partnership is to work across the early years system to find ways in which to address the inequalities that exist in our communities and start from the earliest years of children’s lives.

In order to maximise this opportunity this paper is asking the Health and Wellbeing Board - who hold collective responsibility for improving outcomes in the early years - to consider how they can best support the partnership with a particular focus on governance arrangements in relation to the Early Years Improvement Board.

York’s early years partnership, the Early Years Improvement Board, was entering into a 3 – 5 year innovation collaboration with Nesta, led by City of York Council. The aim of this partnership was to work across the early years system to find ways in which to address the inequalities that exist in our communities and start from the earliest years of children’s lives.

In order to maximise this opportunity the Board received a paper which asked them to consider how they can best support the partnership with a particular focus on governance arrangements in relation to the Early Years Improvement Board. The Head of Education Support Services and the Social Mobility Project Manager were in attendance to present the report and respond to questions.

Key points raised during the presentation of the report included:

·        Headline outcomes in York for early years aged children (those aged 0-5) were broadly positive, however the inequality gap between children was large in the first years of their lives.

·        Lifelong consequences of poor outcomes in early years were well documented, e.g. the Good Level of Development gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children in York was the largest in the country in 2017, and had remained persistently large. It was thought likely that the Coivd-19 pandemic would exacerbate this.

·        Nesta were an innovation organisation set up by a National Lottery endowment, with a focus on improving outcomes for early years children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Nesta provided significant additional capacity and some funding to the partnership.

·        A trial partnership with Nesta had been undertaken over 4 months to test compatibility and deliver a small project together.

·        There were 4 options listed in the report which officers recommended the Board accept in order to maximise the effectiveness of the partnership opportunity. These were:

i.             Strengthening governance of early years partnership arrangements.

ii.            Clarifying the early years outcomes that sit underneath the strategic ambitions of the Health and Wellbeing Board strategy around starting and growing well.

iii.          Championing the importance of early years as a shared priority for all.

iv.          Commissioning an early years specific Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA).

·        The first option was recommended by the Early Years Peer Review, which was carried out in October 2020. The proposal was for a clear line of accountability from the Early Years Improvement Board to the Health and Wellbeing Board, with the suggestion that the reports would be received at least twice yearly.

·        The second option on outcomes referred to the period after the expiration of the current Health and Wellbeing Board strategy in 2022. Nutrition, immunisation, maternal mental health and speech and language were suggested as key priorities relating to early years for the next stage of the strategy.

·        As a priority for the Health and Wellbeing Board, the third option was about how to translate the championing of the importance of early year’s into partner’s organisational priorities. It was also about challenging the perception that early years was only the responsibility of education or health services and encouraging a broad view of early child development and the wider determinants which affect it.

·        The fourth option was to collate data from various early years partners in order to encourage development of integrated working, identify what the Local Partnership’s priorities ought to be and to understand the impact of their work. Finally there was to be a shift from reporting on service delivery to specifically on outcomes.

Key points raised by Board members included:

·        Officers had gained a great amount of insight on how best to help people to access the support they need for early years from the workshops undertaken.

·        The way of working outlined in the report was transferrable to other areas, e.g. barriers to access to the Healthy Start scheme, childhood immunisation and screening programmes.

·        There was scope to include NHS partners, including primary care, as having a key role in this issue.

·        The JSNA process had been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Population Hub had re-started work on it, with the work programme and timescale due to come to the Health and Wellbeing Board in future meetings.

·        Links between the Early Years Improvement Board, the Health and Wellbeing Board and the new children’s partnership needed to be developed further, since the new partnership’s agenda, membership etc. had not yet been finalised.

·        The project addressed a need for an organised system of family learning where parents are given help in learning how to transmit language, information and concepts to their children, especially to help those children at a lower Good Level of Development. However, it was unlikely that there would be recognisable results in 3-5 years.

·        There were large issues of affordability of childcare nationally and in York, and there needed to be more work to investigate what the main barriers to accessing child care were, and how this could be addressed.

·        Parents of young children (particularly mothers) were more likely to experience mental ill-health due to living conditions throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

·        The alignment of children’s welfare with the JSNA was one of the key priorities of the York Healthcare Collaborative this year. It was important to improve the channels of communication to prevent duplication of work in this field.

·        The biggest challenge G.P.s had been facing during the lockdowns had been the impact on maternal and children’s mental health, with a large increase in behavioural problems reported in primary care.

·        Affordability was particularly difficult as it had been exacerbated by Covid-19 with providers of childcare struggling to remain viable. Providers had been reliant on statutory funding for places for 2, 3 and 4 year-olds and they had not been able to charge for additional services/consumables. Providers also faced an issue in that wages were rising fast in other sectors, making it more difficult to recruit and retain staff without raising wages and passing on the cost to parents.

·        There was a free, fully funded early education entitlement for eligible 2 year-olds, of which uptake was around 90% in York, compared to 65% nationally. The work with Nesta provided an opportunity to discuss the positive of the scheme with those parents who had not enrolled their children.

Resolved:

i.             That the Health and Wellbeing Board agree to adopt all four options presented.

Reason: The recommendations are low risk with potential for significant gain on outcomes for children and their families. To not do so presents risks to the potential impact of the opportunity.