Issue - meetings

Education and Young People’s Services Cabinet Committee is asked to note the report, consider and endorse decisions by, or make recommendations to, the Cabinet Member for Education and Health Reform to ensure

1.      The HeadStart Kent programme is implemented in line with the requirements of the Big Lottery Grant Agreement and as set out in the report.

2.      The necessary procurement exercises be undertaken for goods and services required to deliver the programme.   

3.      Authority is delegated to the Corporate Director of Education and Young People's Services to award the necessary contracts for HeadStart Kent to providers selected through the procurement process and to award the HeadStart Kent grants to selected schools to deliver the HeadStart Programme in accordance with the Big Lottery Grant Agreement.

1.    Mr Gough and Mr Leeson reported on the HeadStart Programme in Kent and explained that the main focus of the programme relates to resilience, tackling emotional mental health and emotional wellbeing issues particularly for those aged 10-16. Mr Leeson referred to the importance of the commissioning of Child Adolescent Mental Health Services and the development of the Education Health Needs service which supported schools to support children with emotional difficulties; and the work that had been carried out with public health to ensure mental health and emotional wellbeing were a much stronger feature of the work school nurses do. Kent had received £10 million through the lottery fund to carry out the HeadStart work which has been introduced following pilot work. The programme is going to play a very significant part in building up the capacity of schools to support children with those needs with the additional resources received.

2.    Stuart Collins, Interim Director of Early Help and Preventative Services, confirmed that the programme had been delivered in collaboration with schools and was a co-designed programme with children and young people. It was essential that the programme was perceived as part of the wider emotional health and wellbeing pathway and was aligned to the work that had been carried out previously. Mr Collins also said it was important that the programme was sustainable, accessible and embedded in schools.

3.    RESOLVED – That the HeadStart Kent programme is implemented in line with the requirements of the Big Lottery Grant Agreement and as set out in the report.

(i)     The necessary procurement exercises undertaken for goods and services required to deliver the programme.

(ii)    Authority is delegated to the Corporate Director of Education and Young People's Services to award the necessary contracts for HeadStart Kent to justify providers selected through the procurement process and to award the HeadStart Kent grants to selected schools to deliver the HeadStart Programme in accordance with the Big Lottery Grant Agreement.