Useful documents

Common Assessment Framework
The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is a national programme aimed at improving early assessment of children and young peoples' needs. CAF is a process to enable practitioners to help gather and understand information about the needs and strengths of a child and plan effective future intervention.

Talking Trusts
The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCYVS) and the National Council for Childcare Organisations (NCCO) and Community Matters have produced some key recommendations on how each Children's Trust across the country should be engaging and working with the VCI sector in their areas.

The aim of these recommendations are designed to inform the discussions and the practice of Children's Trust engagement with the VCI sector. Please look in the useful documents at the bottom of this page to see how we have worked with GRID members to put together a three year action plan to ensure we meet all the recommendations set out in the document.

Full Circle
As part of their contract with the Children's Trust each VCI organisation is expected to be able to show that they have involved service users, children, young people and/or families in the evaluation of their service. The way in which they use this information to improve the service should be displayed in each setting.

A number of providers have their own method of doing this, but in recognition that some providers do not, we have provided the Full Circle feedback form which has been designed for you to use with children, young people and families. You can find the Full Circle feedback form and guidance document in the more information section of this page.

Derbyshire Voluntary, Community and Independent Sector Roadshow Events
Under the Children Act 2004, the local authority and their relevant partners have a duty to make long term arrangements to promote co-operation to improve the well being of children and young people.  Statutory guidance on interagency co-operation makes it clear that VCI organisations should be involved at every level of Children's Trusts.  This includes the involvement of the VCI sector in planning, commissioning and service delivery. 

Please see the report in documents and attachments on Derbyshire VCI Sector Roadshow Events.

Glossary of Terms
In the more information section of this page you can view a glossary of terms relating to the VCI sector.

The documents in the more information section is available in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can download the PDF software for free if it isn't available on your computer. Download Adobe Reader (opens in a new window) or visit our PDF information page.