BRIDGES - Supporting Better Futures for Children, Young People and Families in Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland

Background

In late 2002, Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Councils made a successful bid to the Department for Education and Skills to become a Local Authority 'Trailblazer' in developing best practice in 'Information Sharing and Assessment' in Children's Services. Part of the expectations around delivery of this work included the setting up of a comprehensive web based service directory to promote the awareness of services to children, young people and families and support practitioners in sign posting families. The service directory web presence, which features the brand 'Bridges' is not obviously associated with a particular authority or agency, and has received positive comments from many quarters.

Bridges will

Quite simply, the ambition for the service directory, is that children, young people, their parents and carers and practitioners in the children's workforce should have access to high quality information regarding services. The aim of providing this information is to

•  ensure that timely service provision is available in keeping with a principle of preventative working
•  support integrated working with clear information about Universal and Specialist Targeted service provision
•  provide service users with accessible, credible, reliable and authoritative information, which is focussed on the needs of children and families and not on the needs of the institutions organisations and providers of services
•  let people know what is provided where, by whom, how to access it, what needs the service is intended to meet, contact and referral arrangements are
•  provide children and families with information which supports them in making informed choices from a range of mixed economy providers
•  provide information within an ethical framework
•  enables users to clarify their needs which might be met by a range of service provision type