Purpose
16-17 years transitions forum (individuals)
Part one of the 16-17 years transitions forum (individuals) is to identify and implement professional practices and planning solutions to support young people with complex needs, regardless of their living situation when all other escalation processes have been unsuccessful.
Part two of the 16-17 years transitions forum is to quality assure the transition journey of individuals.
Lessons learnt meeting around transitions
The objective of this meeting is to:
- Draw together the qualitative data from the complex individual situations, the quality assurance work, feedback from young people and their parents and carers, and learning from SARs, SIRs, or other lessons learnt or review work undertaken.
- Draw together quantitative data across different services.
- To bring together the learning and identify actions for improvement.
- To monitor implementation and impacts.
The overall purpose to facilitate a smoother transition into adult services for individuals and groups of young people.
To achieve this, we need to work together as statutory services – Children’s Social Care, Education, Adult Social Care, and Health. This systemic approach aims to align the efforts of Devon County Council (DCC) across children’s and adult social care and partners, to achieve as smooth a transition as possible for this critical age group.
Outcomes
Part one 16-17 years transitions forum – escalation
a. The correct commissioning or case management pathway is clearly understood and agreed.
b. Provision is in lace by 18, or soon after the young person’s 18th birthday
c. Agreeing a risk management plan
d. Unlock barriers
e. Resolve Commissioning issues
Part two 16-17 years transitions forum – quality assurance
a. To quality assure the partnership working and support the person receives from age 11 to 25 as they prepare for adulthood and transition from children’s services supporting them to adult services.
b. To identify areas for improvement
c. To identify areas where the partnership working is working well
d. To identify groups of young people who are experiencing an inequality of access or experience.
Lessons learnt meeting around transitions
a. To listen to feedback from young people, their parents and carers, and staff from all partner agencies.
b. To have a record of learning and actions taken that relate to partnership working between children and adult statutory service when engaging with young people aged between 11 and 25 and their parents or carers.
c. To evidence improvements in the journey for all young people and their parents or carers.
d. To evidence improvements in the journey for young people with protected characteristics and those who are experiencing an inequality of access.
Stakeholders
- Young people
- Parents and carers
- Children’s Social Care – Operational (Disabled Children Service, Children in Care, Corporate parenting)
- Children’s Social Care – Commissioning
- Childrens Social Care – Providers (Childrens homes, foster carer)
- Adult Social Care – Operational (Transitions Adult Social Care team, Specialist Placement Team, Locality Community Health and Social Care Teams)
- Adult Social Care – Commissioning
- Adult Social Care – Providers (Short term intervention support, enabling, supported living, residential care)
- Education – Operational (SEND team, Careers advice, Employment skills)
- Education – strategic commissioners
- Education – Providers (Special Schools, Mainstream Schools with EHCP, Independent Special Schools, Employment hubs, Learn Devon)
- Childrens Health – Operational (Children and Families Health Devon)
- Childrens Health – Commissioning (ICB Women and Children)
- Childrens Health – Providers (Tier 4 secure adolescent units, Paediatric departments)
- Adult health – Operational (Continuing Health Care Team, Devon Partnership Trust)
- Adult Health – Commissioning (ICB, LDAP)
- Adult Health – Providers (Devon Partnership Trust, Acute hospitals, hospice care, prisons)
Background
The 16-17 year groups have been chosen as these are the most important period in a young person’s life where their future path beyond 18 years is being discussed in more detail to support successful transitions into adulthood.
The timelines for the move from children’s to adult social care support, children’s to adults health support and from education to the young person earning an income are not always planned to ensure that the young person and their carers are able to feel in control and are not overwhelmed by the rate of change that they are expected to manage.
The groups of young people currently identified as most likely to need effective joint working from social care, education and health are:
- Young people in special maintained schools.
- Young people with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) in mainstream schools.
- Young people in independent special schools and colleges.
- Young people in care where the local authority has ongoing care leaver responsibilities.
- Young people in hospitals
Focus
The 16-17 transitions forum will review the case progress for an individual when other routes have been exhausted and solutions have not been found.
In this instance the forum will focus specifically on:
- Ensuring legal frameworks are followed.
- Identification of options
- Individualised planning being in place.
- Earlier identification of potential issues in the transition process and identification those responsible for resolving.
- Bringing partners together to gain a better understanding.
Out of scope of the meeting is:
- Detailed care planning for each individual.
- Decision making of which option will be most suitable for the person.
- Implementation of individual-specific interventions.
The 16-17 transitions forum will only discuss a young person within the identified groups below if requested to by the chairs of the meetings or leads within the services already established to manage the transition process.
- Care Experienced Young people – Creative Solutions meeting
- Children in Care (CiC) – Pathway / Transition Panel.
- NEETS – Inclusion
- Young Offenders – Youth Justice services
- Young People in Maintained schools – Maintain schools forum
- Young Carers – Devon Carers
When quality assuring the 16-17 transitions forum will review the person’s journey for either an individual or a small group of young people identified as having similar characteristics.
In this instance the forum will focus on:
- The person’s journey from the perspective of education, health and social care.
- If known, the person’s journey from the perspective of the young person and or their parent or carer
- Ensuring that legal duties are met
- Ensuring that the young person is setting the direction of the plan.
- Individualised planning is in place that draws together education, health and social care support.
- Ensuring that problem solving and decision making is as close to the individual as possible.
Out of scope
- Quality assurance of a specific service around their duties under their main act.
Lessons learnt meeting around transitions will draw together the learning from a range of situations and data sources, both qualitative and quantitative, to inform improvements and developmental work both within service delivery and partnership working.
The meeting will focus on:
- Triangulating of qualitative and quantitative data
- Identification of learning from the data
- Identification of actions that services either individually or in partnership agree to take.
- Monitoring of actions completed
- Monitoring of impacts of actions undertaken.
Out of scope
- Improvement action plans being implemented by individual services.
Groups of 16-17 year olds
For young people in special maintained schools – Education will be developing an implementation plan to look at transitions from special schools and independent special schools.
For young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in mainstream schools and young people in independent special schools and colleges, the following process will be followed.
Step 1: Production and Communication of Criteria
Individuals
- Objective: Establish and disseminate criteria for identifying young people who may face barriers during the transition.
- Responsible parties: 16-17 transitions forum
- Actions:
- Identify the criteria, including trigger factors such as being placed out of county, self-harming behaviour, harming others, one-to-one care, and potential carer breakdown, anyone whose transition you are worried about.
- Communicate the work and criteria to all relevant teams (TASC, SPT, Education, Children in Care, SEND).
Quality assurance
- Objective: Establish and disseminate criteria for identifying young people who the forum wishes to quality assure
- Responsible parties: 16-17 transitions forum
- Actions:
- Identify the group or area of work that the forum wish to quality assure each month
- Communicate the above to all relevant teams (TASC, SPT, Education, Children in Care, SEND).
Step 2: Identification of individuals
Individuals
- Objective: Identify young people who meet the criteria using an MD Form and the services or professionals who need to be invited to the forum meeting.
- Responsible parties: All relevant teams (TASC, SPT, Education, Care Leavers, SEND)
- Actions:
- Each team reviews their group to identify individuals who meet the established criteria.
- Complete and submit an MS Form for each identified individual.
- The individual’s personal information will be shared with the attendees of the forum to enable them to look on their own systems.
Quality assurance
- Objective: Identify young people who meet the criteria using an MD Form.
- Responsible parties: Relevant teams (TASC, SPT, Education, Care Leavers, SEND)
- Actions:
- A team or manager will be asked to identify between 1 and 3 people who are relevant for the area to be quality assured.
- Complete and submit an MS Form.
- The individual’s personal information will be shared with the attendees of the forum to enable them to look on their own systems.
Step 3: Data Collection and Analysis
Individuals
- Objective: Collect and analyse data from the submitted forms.
- Responsible parties: Lessons learnt meeting
- Actions:
- Gather data from all submitted MS Forms.
- Analyse the data to identify common issues and prioritise cases.
Quality assurance
- Objective: Collect and analyse data from the quality assurance forms.
- Responsible parties: Lessons learnt meeting
- Actions:
- Gather data from all submitted MS Forms
- Analyse the data to identify common issues and prioritise cases
Step 4: Case Discussion Meetings
Individuals
- Objective: Discuss individual cases to plan for transitions.
- Responsible parties: Transition Planning Team
- Actions:
- Schedule and conduct meetings based on the age of the young people (starting with those closest to 18 years old) or by geographic location.
- Discuss potential barriers and necessary support for each case -specifically:
- Ensuring legal frameworks are followed and
- Transition/Pathway plans are in place.
- Early identification of potential issues in the transition process.
- Communication of the outcome for the young person and their family / carers.
Quality assurance
- Objective: Discuss individual cases to plan for transitions.
- Responsible parties: Service leads
- Actions:
- Discuss the person’s journey, what has worked well and what would be even better if.
- Look at the person’s feedback and how they felt if it is available.
- Identify learning points to take to the Lessons learnt meaning.
Forms
Terms of reference last reviewed June 2025