Supporting Herefordshire's children's workforce

Herefordshire People's Services Directorate is committed to making the lives of children and young people in the county better. 

The Directorate, the Children and Young People's Partnership Forum and other partners are working hard to make sure that the services we deliver meet the identified needs of families in our communities. We are also striving to deliver more of these services in the local areas where our children and young people live. 

Through partnership working we endeavour to make the very best of our resources, to drive up quality, reduce duplication and ensure value for money.

The links to the left and below will give you more information about further support for families, children and young people through their education, social care and through our other services.

The Directorate is managed through three service areas and most of our teams work at sites across the county to effectively meet the needs of our localities while central services are based at the Blackfriars Offices in Hereford.

In responding to the challenges of the huge agenda that is facing children's services it is vital that we maintain and improve our excellent workforce, developing their skills so that they can meet all the demands made of them. Developing and delivering a local integrated workforce strategy is essential for the successful delivery of the Herefordshire Children and Young People's Plan and improving the services we offer children, young people and families.  Our Workforce Development strategy is outlined in the Children's Workforce Development page.

In coordinating services for children and young people, it is important that the Directorate constantly measures and evaluates the effectiveness of our work in addition to ensuring that we are meeting the government's requirements.  As with all Children's Services departments across the country, we are subject to regular inspections from OFSTED which measure our performance against a range of targets.  More information about our performance and our consistently good results from inspections please see the Accountability and Performance page.

Within our Children's Plan, Herefordshire Council has identified key targets based on the needs of children and young people across our county.  More information about this can be found by visiting the Children's Plan webpage.

Supporting the concept that every child matters, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is used across the country to assist practitioners working with children, young people and families to work together and to assess needs in order to help access the most useful services.  You can find out more about the Common Assessment Framework and how it is being used in Herefordshire on the CAF pages.

The Every Child Matters in Herefordshire Survey 2009

During 2009 Herefordshire Council commissioned a survey of its children and young people to find out first hand what they think of their health and well-being in our County and to help the Children's Trust, Children and Young People's Directorate and partner agencies to assess priorities and commission services.  Approximately 6500 pupils took part in 23 primary schools and 10 secondary schools in Herefordshire with a further 500 young people who completed the online survey.  The summary report is available to download below.