Children’s and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Update on the existing Children In Our Care beeZ card Cllr Damian Talbot Executive Member Martin Eden Director Culture Leisure and Young People portfolio

Achievements so far…… As reported to Committee in November last year good progress has already been made including: Improved communication between Children’s Services and Culture, Leisure, Sport and Young People departments. This means:- Issuing more Children In Our Care (CIOC) with beeZ cards Independent Review Officers more awareness of the beeZ cards Better information transfer to improve the speed for issuing beeZ cards Increased the number of ‘gold’ beeZ card subscriptions from 14 to 176 that’s 4% to 50% of the 350 CIOC within Blackburn with Darwen FAQ sheets to all Leisure Centres and discussions at Reception meetings to raise aware amongst front line staff

Branding In conversation with Young People the term ‘gold beeZ card’ didn’t mean anything and the card wasn’t physically gold! They wanted their offer to be different from others available but they didn’t want the card to look any different to avoid discrimination and labelling The beeZ team considered this and have proposed that the term gold beez be changed to the ‘Be Active’ membership. The words Be Active are already on the beeZ card

Marketing A draft leaflet is currently out to consultation with a number of groups through YPS Their feedback will inform the final version

Foster Carers The Corporate Parenting Specialist Advisory Group requested that, in additional to the re:fresh offer, an extension to the CIOC beeZ card scheme was explored to cover Foster Carers. There are currently 100 foster households in the borough with 175 foster carers In addition there are 26 foster households in boroughs bordering Blackburn with Darwen (Hyndburn, Ribble Valley & Bolton). To encourage healthy activity and facilitate use of leisure facilities it has been suggested that beeZ cards with Be Active Memberships need to be issued to carers including an additional plus 1. This would then enable foster children (with their own Be Active membership card), their foster carers and carers own children to attend together. The cost implications of 200 Be Active memberships and annual usage for foster carers needs further detailed work.

Summary Significant improvements have already been achieved through improved communication between the two departments which have increased access to leisure activities for young people/ CIOC. Feedback will be welcomed from the YPS consultation with YP groups and listened to and a final leaflet design will be agreed and distributed. Public Health colleagues have indicated their support and a potential resource to extend the criteria of the Be Active memberships to cover Foster Carers. Further conversations are now required to secure this resource. A full report will be presented to April’s Scrutiny meeting