Residents First

Delivering better value for children

Budget Council speech by Cllr Helen Binmore, the Cabinet Member for Children's Services

Mayor, those on the other side of the Chamber always measure success on the amount of money you spend on things. The more the better!

This administration is however rightly concerned with the quality of services and ensuring value for money. We understand the difference between outputs and outcomes, which is why over the past 6 years we have

• been able to consistently cut (or freeze) council tax,
• reduce the massive debt burden,
• deliver a balanced budget, and
• importantly deliver more, better quality services for less.

In Education:

Happy holidays with more for less

Sixty more spaces on courses, events and workshops over the holidays will be available to young people living in Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) after the borough’s council struck a new deal.

It also means that, from April, H&F Council will provide 115 more hours of activities for 11-18 year-olds through dance classes, art projects, drama schemes and sports sessions, even though it will cost £3,000 less than the previous year.

The 2,000 places, at a cost of £189,000, will be available at classes, clubs and schemes over 50 days in the 11 weeks of school holidays between April and next March (2013).

New contracts have been signed by four local providers –  Let Me Play, a company based in H&F, will run sport, fitness and well-being sessions; The Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith will provide music and performing arts classes while neighbouring borough Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has been awarded the art and fashion contract.

Tri-borough councils join forces to speed up care proceedings in national pilot

The three tri-borough London councils of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea are set to shine the spotlight on children’s care proceedings in a groundbreaking national pilot to speed up the family court process.

The new Care Proceedings Pilot will be launched on 1 April and is a national first, acting as a litmus test for what could be rolled out across the country.

The pilot involves a new ‘pact’ between the three local authorities and judges within the family court system to speed up proceedings. In particular, this pact will try to achieve the target set out in the recent Family Justice Review for children to have their need for a permanent plan resolved by the court within six months.

Hurlingham and Chelsea School pleased as punch with Mayor’s sporting grant

A local secondary school, with a solid history of promoting boxing, is set to expand their sporting facilities following a cash injection from the Mayor’s Sports Legacy programme.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, recently announced £1m of funding to boost a host of sporting facilities at clubs, playing fields and recreation grounds across London, of which £90,000 has been allocated to Hurlingham and Chelsea School.

The money has been earmarked for 20 different projects and is the latest to be awarded from the Mayor’s £15.5m Sports Legacy Fund, which with match funding and private sector investment now stands at over £30m.

After working hard to build strong links to boxing within the school and local community, Hurlingham and Chelsea’s business manager Ian Illett, said the welcome funding boost will enable the school to further enhance their planned refurbishments.

Fulham College and studio school revealed

A Fulham school federation will open one of the first of the new ‘studio schools’ in London next September (2012), in a structural overhaul consigning poor results to history.

Fulham Enterprise Studio will be a mixed-sex school for 14-19-year-olds, and will be based on an adjacent site to Henry Compton School, which will become known as ‘Fulham Boys’ School next
September.

At the same time, the current Federation of Fulham Cross Girls’ School and Henry Compton Boys’ School will go by the new name of Fulham College, incorporating all three schools.

Studio schools, a new concept in education and designed for 14-19-year-olds of all abilities, look and feel more like a business than a school, with a longer working day and year-round opening. They are small mainstream schools for about 300 students, that teach the national curriculum and deliver the same key qualifications as traditional schools, in an innovative way that combines academic and vocational qualifications with real work experience.

Primary schools standards best in country

Primary schools in Hammersmith & Fulham are the best in the country, according to a new league table published by the Department of Education.

The borough is one of only two authorities in the country - and the only inner city London borough - where all pupils in primary schools are meeting key educational targets and no schools are falling ‘below the floor’. The other borough achieving this is Havering.

A school is deemed ‘below the floor’ where fewer than 60 per cent of pupils achieve the basic standard of level four in both English and mathematics combined by the time they leave school, and fewer pupils than average make the expected levels of progress between Key Stage One (at six or seven years old) and key stage two (aged 10 or 11) in English and in maths.

The best performing schools in the borough were Miles Coverdale and the Roman Catholic schools of Good Shepherd, Pope John, St Augustine’s and St Mary’s, where 100% of pupils got level four or higher in maths and English. The most improved school was St Mary’s, up 31% on last year’s results.

Borough chosen as Youth Innovation Zone

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) has been chosen by the Government as one of four new Youth Innovation Zones across the country.

Designed to develop creative approaches to youth services, the zones are a corner stone of the Government’s new vision for young people and youth services, Positive for Youth, published today.

The Government wants local authorities to give young people a bigger voice in local decision-making and holding councils to account and to build stronger partnerships with voluntary organisations and local
businesses, to develop opportunities for young people in their local communities.

H&F’s ground-breaking Youth Commissioners Programme is just one of the reasons it has been picked. Young people go out and monitor all youth provision, interviewing young people and workers and providing feedback on the quality of services.  They also commission services for young people, writing and evaluating service specifications.

“Hammersmith & Fulham is keen to involve local people in innovating and exploring better ways to provide services and that absolutely includes young people,” says Cabinet Member for Children’s services, Cllr Helen Binmore.

H&F children in residential care down from 50 to 20

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is backing a national charity’s calls to recruit new families for foster children.

The Fostering Network this week (December 20) announced that at least 8,750 new foster families need to be found across the UK in the next year to avoid a crisis in foster care in 2012.

In Hammersmith, at least 20 new carers are needed every year to make sure children in the council’s care can be looked after in a loving family environment. Since April 2010, more than 400 people have contacted the council about becoming a carer, but H&F still needs more people to step forward. Carers come from a variety of backgrounds and all walks of life – carers must be over 23-years-old, but can be single, in a couple, live in or out of the borough, and be of any race or sexual orientation.

Councillor Helen Binmore, cabinet member for children’s services, said:

Tudor Rose opened by Leader

The brand new £1 million children’s and community centre on the Fulham Court Estate has been officially opened by Council Leader, Stephen Greenhalgh.

The Tudor Rose has replaced a crumbling 20-year-old prefab building and combines a ground-floor children’s centre for families with children under five and a first-floor community centre which is able to host everything from youth groups to healthy eating classes.

The children’s centre at the Tudor Rose is run by the Pre School Learning Alliance who will also run four other centres in the borough.

Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh said:

New lease of life for Masbro gym

Residents visiting the Masbro Centre gym in Hammersmith can expect to get a little bit more out of their exercise routine after brand new workout equipment was unveiled last week.

The newly improved gym received the final touches to its upgrade in time for its official opening by Cllr Helen Binmore, Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council cabinet member for Children’s Services.

Cllr Binmore said:

“Compared with other councils, H&F has one of the largest voluntary sector budgets in the country and we greatly value the work these organisations do. It is no longer feasible, however, for voluntary organisations to rely on the council for all of their funding.

"With this upgrade, the gym is now a great little facility for all those who use the Masbro Centre, especially new mums and dads using the Children's Centre. It is a great example of an organisation bringing in additional funding to benefit the local community.

"The team at the Masbro Centre should be congratulated on this fantastic achievement. I’m sure that many people will enjoy using this lovely facility."