Needs Assessment and Content of Pathway Plans for Relevant and Former Relevant Young People

1.

Health and Development

• Use of primary healthcare services;
• Arrangements for the young person's medical and dental care;
• Use of primary healthcare services;
• Arrangements so that young person understands the actions they can take to maintain a healthy lifestyle;
• Opportunities to enjoy and achieve and take part in positive leisure activities.

2.

Education, Training and Employment

• Statement of the young person's aspirations and career ambitions and actions and support to achieve this;
• Access to careers advice;
• Education objectives and support – continue to use the young person's Personal Education Plan;
• Arrangements to support the child in further education and/or higher education;
• Support to enable suitably qualified children to enter apprenticeships, make applications to university or gain necessary qualifications;
• Arrangements for work experience, career mentoring or pathways into employment etc.

3.

Emotional and Behavioural Development

• How the authority will assist the young person to develop self-esteem and maintain positive attachments;
• Does the young person display self esteem, resilience and confidence;
• Assessment of their capacity to empathise with others, reason and take appropriate responsibility for their own actions;
• Capacity to make attachments and appropriate relationships; show appropriate emotion; adapt to change, manage stress and show self control and appropriate self awareness.

4.

Identity

• How the authority intends to meet any of the child's needs arising from their ethnicity, religious persuasion, sexual orientation;
• How does the young person understand their identity stemming from being a child in care and a care leaver;
• How the authority will assist the young person to obtain key documents linked to confirming their age and identity.

5.

Family and Social Relationships

• Assessment of the young person's relationship with their parents and wider family;
• Contact with family – carried across from care plan;
• Young person's relationship with peers, friendship network and significant adults. Strategy to improve any negative features of these relationships;
• How all these relationships will contribute to the young person making a successful transition to adulthood and how they will assist with integration into the community that they identify with.

6.

Practical and other skills necessary for independent living

• The young person is adequately prepared with the full range of practical skills they will need to manage the next planned move towards greater independence;
• The young person is adequately prepared for taking greater responsibility as they are expected to manage more independently.

7.

Financial Arrangements

• Assessment of care leaver's financial needs and their financial capability. Does the young person have a bank account, national insurance number, and appreciate the value of regular saving etc. Do they have access to financial support and adequate income to meet necessary expenses?
• Pathway plan must include a statement of how the authority proposes to maintain a relevant young person, the arrangements in place for the child to receive financial support and contingency plans;
• Statement of financial assistance to be provided to a former relevant young person.

8.

(Suitability of ) Accommodation

• An assessment of the quality of accommodation where the young person is living / any accommodation under consideration for them to live in;
• How far is this suitable to the full range of the young person's needs?
• What steps might need to be taken to improve it? (Schedule 2 of the Care Leavers Regulations).