a)     

The delivery of the transitions for adulthood project was a fundamental project in the One Children’s Services programme with the intention to help children and families at the earliest sign of need and to provide support ranging from advice through to specialist intervention;

b)     

It aimed to, in collaboration with all key Plymouth partners, to build on the existing transitions offer to develop a network of services, processes and interactions that were able to understand and predict the need and respond together to help children, young people and families at the earliest opportunity;

c)     

Plymouth’s vision which was co-produced with young people was that all children and young people in Plymouth would have their voices heard and have the right support and ambitious opportunities for their futures;

d)     

A multi-agency project board was operating since October 2024 with six key priorities with individual work streams;

e)     

It was important to work hard for those transitions, starting at an earlier stage to ensure it was as smooth as possible for each individual person;

f)      

The project was essential and was going towards ensuring that Plymouth was enabling its young people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives when they were reaching adulthood;

g)     

Children and Adult services needed to work more collaboratively to ensure that young people could easily access the right support and advice at the right stages in their lives in order to prepare for adulthood and to live as independently as possible;

h)     

Significant progress had been made and Cabinet were committed to ensuring that the project made a positive difference in delivering a better future for Plymouth young people;

i)      

At an LGA peer review in January 2025, Plymouth’s direction for transitions was recognised positively.

j)      

Plymouth was strengthening its universal offer for all families in the city;

k)     

It had been announced that Plymouth would be given a fourth year of government funding on top of the three years funding that had already been allocated to deliver the family hubs programme;

l)      

Members were requested to help people understand within their communities what offers were in place as the offer was good, but not enough families or children were accessing those universal provisions;

m)   

Work stream six: Universal advice and guidance was behind schedule due to not having the right support in place to move the work forward. Work as part of that project would look to ensure advice and guidance for children, young people and families was accessible to all;

n)     

The transitions work took into account all factors in the families lives and was person centred to ensure that there was not an oversaturation of support which could overwhelm;

o)     

The work aimed to resolve issues of silo working of agencies and the work was already seeing positive results in Children’s services and Adult services working together;

p)     

The Project Board, coupled with the six work streams provided the cabinet members with reassurance that silo working in the transition space would become a thing of the past;

q)     

Plymouth was aspirational for its care leavers and where those young people had aspirations and interests to go to University, they were supported through the Care Leavers team as well as the Virtual School team. It was acknowledged that the gap between Care Experienced young people and the national average attending university, the gap was too far apart and there were well made plans to address those issues;

r)     

Care Leavers were eligible for additional financial support from the Council in accessing university and they were provided support through their Personal Advisors to ensure they were accessing everything available to them;

s)      

Care Leavers were treated as a priority group by both the universities they attended as well as the Council;

t)      

The Skills Launchpad had a dedicated worker that worked with Care Leavers if it was their intention to go onto university. Having that dedicated worker had already provided good positive results;

u)     

The Plymouth Safeguarding Partnership had four priorities, one of which was to evaluate and improve the way in which Plymouth helped children that experienced domestic abuse. Staff were being better trained and had a range of tools and resources available to them.