Please click here to download the updated Cluster Co-ordinator Contact Directory [PDF, 340KB].

Dudley Children and Young People's Plan 2009 [PDF, 492KB] is now available to download.

The Retreat Cafe is a new Community Cafe. The outreach service from the cafe offers healthy cooking sessions for young people. To find out more download the information sheet. [PDF, 18.5KB]

If you go to the link [271KB] for the January edition of the Safer [the Newsletter of Dudley Safeguarding Children Board] there is some excellent guidance on Safer Working Practices for Adults Who Work with Children and Young People. The guidance is written in clear and concise way, is jargon free and has useful information for all voluntary and community organisations. This guidance would be a useful addition to your organisations child protection policy. If you do need any support in updating or developing your organisations child protection policy please contact Arnie or Kevin.

Dudley CVS has received funding from the Children's Workforce Development Council to develop a workforce quality mark for voluntary and community organisations working with children and young people. We would like to involve all voluntary and community organisations as much as possible in this project.

To help in the first stage in the consultation process Dudley CVS has produced a short discussion document [PDF, 439KB] that gives some background to the project and an outline on future proposals.

If you require a paper copy or have any comments, thoughts or questions please contact Arnie by email or on 01384 267424.

In addition, Dudley CVS has also been successful in accessing a small amount of funding from the Children's Workforce Development Council to provide training to support the workforce development of voluntary and community organisations. There is only a very limited amount of funding and we want to focus on training to meet your needs. From your organisation's perspective is there any specific training which would benefit your organisations and/or your paid staff and volunteers?

Suggestions so far have included: equal opportunities, diversity, health and safety, supervision, recruitment, Hear by Right (involving children and young people), child protection, dealing with confrontation and risk assessment.

If you have any suggestions please contact Arnie.

Dudley MBC and Dudley CVS have worked in partnership to produce an information sheet [PDF,136KB] on Every Child Matters. The sheet explains some of the reasoning behind Every Child Matters and details the next steps.

G:up brings together voluntary organisations from the children, young people, families and play sectors to develop the West Midlands as a region that respects and acts upon the needs, interests and aspirations of children and young people, and the voluntary and community organisations that work with them.

For further information and details of the next Learning Cluster meeting download their information sheet. [213KB]