Welcome to Cumbria County Council’s Children’s Services Children’ Services are responsible for a wide range of services for children, young people, their families and schools in Cumbria including education for all ages, social care, youth support, early help, children’s centres, the youth offending service, special educational needs and children with disabilities. 

There are currently over 112,000 children and young people aged 0-19 in Cumbria.  These children and their families are our key ‘customers’.  All our services are geared towards championing children and young people and improving outcomes for them and their families by ensuring they receive swift and timely access to the services they need. 

Our ambition for children and young people as reflected in our council plan is that –

We want Cumbria to be a great place to be a child and grow up in; a place of opportunity where young people are able to live happy and productive lives; a place where young people will want to live and work in the future.

As a Directorate we have four values that inform everything we do

• We put the child first
• We take responsibility
• We value, respect and take care of ourselves and each other
• We work best in partnership

Our Directorate consists of three key functional areas

• Children and Families - This service area includes early intervention and targeted support for children and families; child protection, safeguarding, fostering and adoption services, and services for children looked after.
• Partnership and Prevention – This service area encompasses the strategic planning, commissioning, performance, quality assurance, workforce development and youth offending service.  
• Schools and Learning – This service area includes all services directly connected with meeting statutory duties in ensuring fair admissions, providing support for SEN and permanently excluded pupils and championing educational excellence in all schools through its school improvement function.

You can find out more about each of these areas by following the links to the left.  In addition, there are quick links to Frequency Used Pages and signposting pages for key groups including parent and children and young people.  We hope that you’ll find these pages useful, but if you have any ideas for how we can improve them please contact us.

Key documents

Title	Size
Children and Young People's Plan 2011-13	2174k
Children's Services Directorate Workforce Strategy 2011-2014	110k
Children's Services' - Jargon Buster	444k
Childrens Services - Risk Management Framework	51k
Childrens Services Directorate Service Plan 2012-13	782k
Children's Services Plan on a Page 2012-13	179k
CS Young Carers Strategy	89k

Useful links

• Directgov
• The Department for Education
• Ofsted
• ChildLine
• WotsOn4U.com
• Cumbria Sure Start Childrens Centres
• Family Information Directory
• Statutory duties of local authorities