A literature review for integrated planning for improved outcomes for children and families.

Abstract

Increasingly, policy makers and service managers, planners and practitioners are encouraged, and often mandated, to work together to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. The momentum towards formally integrating the work of numerous interrelated agencies emerges from a couple of areas: the publication of strategy documents in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland relating to children and young people which serve to underpin the development of services in this policy area; and the increasing promotion and acceptance of policy provision underpinned by a 'child-rights' discourse and the 'whole-child' perspective.However, in moving towards integrated service planning and delivery, a number of questions arise: Where has the child rights agenda come from and what does it involve? What does it actually mean to integrate service planning and provision, and why do it? Who should participate in such activities? What is an outcome and is it possible to tell if it is being achieved? The main purpose of this literature review is to provide a sound basis for the attached model for integrated planning and commissioning of services for children and families. In doing so it provides an opportunity to explore the foregoing questions. The structure of the literature review is as follows. Section 2 begins by detailing the changing context in which children and young people are perceived by society as a whole. The emergence of a rights-based approach, as underlined most convincingly by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), is critical to understanding hanging attitudes to children and young people. The following section, 3.1, discusses he adoption of an outcomes-focused approach before detailing the variety of different outcomes identified in selected jurisdictions. Section 3.2 explores the use of outcomes in terms of accountability. How we measure outcomes is discussed in section 3.3. section 3.4 presents a discussion of the development of indicators in this process. In articular, attention is paid to the development of suitable measures of outcome attainment. Section 4 discusses the concepts and processes involved in integrated planning and integrated commissioning. The participation of children, young people, adults and the wider community in identifying outcomes and planning services is considered in section 5, and a selection of methods to involve such groups identified. Finally, section 6 concludes the review by re-emphasising key points which serve to frame the model.