The Grove Is On Fire

What On Earth Is A CAF?

Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Once upon a time, in a country ruled over by a good and wise queen, someone realised that lots of children and young people were involved with lots of different youth projects, schools, and social service departments, but those youth projects, schools, and social service departments weren't doing a very good job of talking to each other about the young person, and when they did talk to each other they used a different language, with funny words in it that no-one else understood. Words like "threshold", "empowerment", and "integrated support across the continuum of needs and services". Sometimes the youth projects, schools, and social service departments didn't even know the child they were working with was involved with other youth projects, schools, and social service departments! It was all a bit silly. So this someone decided that a new way of working should be created, where, if people needed help working with a certain child, they could find out who else was working with the child, and they could all speak the same language. And the new way of working that this someone created was called the Common Assessment Framework or CAF for short. And this someone who created it? They had a name too, and their name was the Department for Education and Skills, but they soon passed the role over to the Children's Workforce Development Council because they had other things to do.

At least, that's my way of explaining what this magical beast known as the Common Assessment Framework is. This is how the CWDC says it:

"The CAF is a shared assessment tool for use across all children's services and all local areas in England. It aims to help early identification of need and promote co-ordinated service provision."

Which clearly isn't as fun or helpful as my way of defining it. Essentially it's a tool to try and make everyone speak the same language and work together to help a child who has needs that aren't being met and what it boils down to in practice, is a form, a flowchart¹, and an agreement to share information, all of which can be explained in this handy example below. But before we get to that handy example, why on earth do you need to know this? Well, if you're involved in any youth or children's work that also involves government services (like say a school) or the larger of the voluntary services (like say London Youth) this is the way they're going to have to go when trying to get other agencies to work with children they know. The CWDC says "every practitioner working with children, young people and families should understand the Government outcomes for all children, and know about the CAF or how to complete on themselves" which again, clearly isn't as easy to understand as my way of explaining it. Didn't I say that I was getting to a handy example?

Your name is Dwayne. You have a child who is called Dwayne Jnr and he's 13 years old. Dwayne Jnr isn't possessed with any criminal tendencies, but he does have a particular lack of respect for his teachers and an inability to do long division. This can mostly be blamed on your laissez-faire parenting skills which somehow you self-justify as 'empowering'. But enough about you. Dwayne Jnr's form tutor Derek decides that Dwayne has un-met needs that Derek can't meet on his own. Derek needs more help, so, with the consent of Dwayne Jnr and Dwayne (that's you remember) he checks whether someone has already done a CAF form, and if not fills one in. This CAF form details everything of note in Dwayne Jnr's life at the minute. At the end of this form Derek decides, with both of you, what needs to change and how you're going to do it. One of these things is for Dwayne Jnr to stop being so rude in class, another is for you to stop being such a poor parent. He also writes down a list of other agencies you all would like to see involved. One of those is YouthBuzZ, a youth project that teaches kids to silently hum whenever they get angry with their teachers. This form is then sent off to those other agencies with a request to meet and form a team around Dwayne Jnr and also sent off to the local borough CAF officer. All those people then meet about Dwayne Jnr and say how they can help Dwayne Jnr. If you or Dwayne Jnr have problems during this then you just contact the lead professional, who is assigned by the team. That could be Derek or someone from another agency, like the senior youth worker at YouthBuzZ. He sorts everything out for you and your son. They work together, your son becomes a fittier, happier, and more productive child and you become a better parent. Success is achieved and if all continues to go to plan the team disbands knowing that their work is done.

From the perspective of YouthBuzZ, it'll look something like this. You get a CAF form and a request to meet around the child to offer him some provision. If you can, you say "yes, we'd love to". You having a meeting with Derek and whoever else is invited, state when you can offer to help Dwayne Jnr and let the lead professional inform Dwayne Jnr of this. At some point Dwayne Jnr starts accessing your service. You keep in touch with the lead professional and meet with everyone to review Dwayne Jnr's case every now and again. At some point you realise Dwayne's needs are being met, so the team disbands and the meetings stop, but you continue to support Dwayne as long as he needs it.

So you see, one form, one model of practice, and one agreement to share information. You can see the form for yourself at the every child matters website but ideally you'll never seen one in paper, they'll all be done online and it'd get sent off to all the relevant people via e-mail, thereby reducing faff. The form should only be filled in once, by anyone ever, after that it's stored with the CAF administrator and by contacting them you can find out whether or not a CAF form already exists and if it does exist you can find out who is working with the child already. You won't be able to see the CAF form though until the lead professional invites you to see it. Soon² they'll be an electronic system called Contactpoint³ which'll store basic data for every child in the country, including whether or not they have a CAF form, which if you're authorised you can look up the concerned child on directly and find out who is the lead professional. At the moment though, it's all being done by local boroughs, so if your child lives in Cornwall, you'd check them via the local Cornwall CAF administrator (who'd obviously have to know who you are first).

And that, is essentially it. If you want to do the filling in a CAF form part of the process yourself you'll need to be trained up by your local borough, but now if you receive one, you'll know what to do with it hopefully. Or when you're talking with your youth work friends you won't be so clueless about it all.

¹ Form and Flowchart are two of the four main elements of Hip-Hop. FACT.

² Soon as in "we're a government backed major IT project" not soon as in "soon".

³ Which is driving privacy lovers crazy, and which might be illegal under the new Human rights bill (but everything else seems illegal too under that bill so we can probably ignore it)

Youth Ministry As Manipulation

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Seen bouncing around the internet at the moment are a series of posts by Darren at Digital Orthodoxy about youth ministry and manipulation. It's worth reading back through them but the one I think summarises the rest the best is Manipulative Youth Ministries 3.0 (and where all the quotes below are from). It's quite easy to read the various posts and think "oh my word, he's clearly wrong on the whole point of Jesus coming" and therefore dismiss it out of hand, but I found that as I've re-read what Darren's written I've found I agree with where I think he's coming from even if I really don't like the direction he's going to. His criticism does have a certain validity to it, so not wanting to ignore the assessment of our location just because the suggested future directions are towards a sharp cliff edge, here is a response.

His starting place is that any manipulation in youth ministry is a bad thing. Then he has two points, the first one is all ministry that has intentionality is manipulation (which is effectively all ministry); the second point is that the incarnation shows us another model. I have issues with those two point's but his basis is valid. This is how he words it:

It's not best practice to be manipulative, it just isn't, no matter how important you think your mission is, or the need to reach out to young people in order to turn them to faith."

I recognise there is a debate to be had there, but I'm just going to step out and agree with that as a statement; I think it holds up with the Bible, but I'm not going to explore that here and now because it's his two main points that I want to deal with.

So the first point Darren makes, any ministry that has any intentionality attached to it is manipulative, which, as every ministry pretty much has intention behind it, is every ministry. That's a fairly stunning statement to make but that's what he is saying:

Let's face it, the very second that we put an outcome to a relationship we're being manipulative. When we decide that we're in relationship with this bunch of young people in order to help them stop participating in graffiti, or when we enter into relationship with a kid with ADHD with the idea that they may become better behaved, or when we minister with a bunch of teens who are children of our congregation in order to see them become christian leaders. It's the addition of that third place that is manipulative.

What the argument seems to be here is this: You're making a relationship with a young person, but you're not doing it for the sake of the relationship, you're doing it for the sake of some other reason. This therefore is manipulative; you're lying about the relationship.

I don't think this is fair, or right. It presents itself in a "She's All That"¹ model. The relationship exists solely for some sneaky purpose and then can be cast away when the mission is done. Obviously in some ministry this is the case, but I hope no-one is arguing that that's a particularly awesome model. But what if instead the basis for the relationship is love, and any intention for that relationship is driven out of a love for that person, then surely that's not manipulation? To use one of the examples above, if I love this kid with ADHD then I will want to see them be better behaved, because that'll make them happier and it'll make my joy for them grow. Now this presupposes that we love those who we enter into relationship with first so our intentions for them arise out of that love, the problem with this is that we frequently, as youth workers, enter into a relationship with young people that starts with us being given a job description and a few days latter actually meeting them. But then we have to preach to ourselves that Christ has called us to love these young people, and we have to try and get our head and our hearts around the practicalities of loving them.

So, that's where I stake my first disagreement. You can be intentional inside of a relationship with a young person and not be manipulative. Heck, I'd take it a step further and say you can be persuasive inside of a relationship with a young person, as long as you're honest with them. I don't think you can say to a young person, "because I love you my intention is for you to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believe in it, but I'm not going to try to persuade you it's true because I don't want to unduly influence you" without being a patronising moron.

The second point, and my second disagreement comes over what exactly the incarnation teaches us about how we should do youth ministry. Now, a slight aside is going to follow before we get to what Darren has to say. Incarnational youth ministry is one of my pet bug-bears² and has been for some time. This is what I wrote in an essay in 2005 on the subject:

If you've got hundreds of young people coming along to an after school club but you aren't getting them anywhere near Christ then what you need is either firm faith that you're "sowing the seeds" for the imminent revival that will magically convert them all or, if you're not a Pentecostal³, some way of making your work valid so you can feel like you're doing something valuable for the Kingdom of God. Enter incarnational youth ministry. The incarnational model of youth work ministry states that Christian youth work... brings a unique value to youth work in that Christian youth workers represent Christ to the young people, somehow acting almost as sacraments, communicating the presence of God to the young people through their presence.

In short, the incarnational model of youth ministry attempts evangelism by osmosis. This is destined to fail unless you redefine what it means to succeed in evangelism (alas, a task that has been done very frequently lately). Darren's model, which we're about to see, is just another explosion of the incarnational model of youth ministry and a wondering of how it can be repaired.

So this is what he has to say:

And my wondering continues towards my theology of Youth Ministry, and my understanding of a truly incarnational model, one that takes seriously the ministry that Jesus lived out and demonstrated.

The incarnational model that we're being sold in missional circles is one that says something like "find a group of people that you have a heart for, and become a part of that community, entering into it, living within it, being someone who moves intentionally into it so as to bring them to Christ".

And the issue I have with the model is that intention, that there's still a reason for the ministry, behind the relationship and many still try to figure out their success and failure against that reason or purpose, (has teh community become more inviting, have they become christian, have they asked me about God, have they become less at risk?).

And a paragraph later:

You see, as far as my reading of the scripture goes is that God just wanted to be with us so much that he put flesh on and joined our lives. There wasn't really a reason to the incarnation, no ulterior motive except for the beauty and the needing of that relationship. God loved, God came.

As I've already mentioned and as Darren pre-empts in the next paragraph, the conservative evangelicals (or even the not-so conservative evangelicals) reading this are going to say "uh, I think you've forgotten Salvation there". And they'd be right. God loved, God came, God died, God saved. Yes God loves us so much that He wants to be in relationship with us, after all, look at the Garden of Eden pre-fall. There is God walking with Adam. But when Christ comes down He doesn't just come to hang out with people, He comes to save them so that they can be with Him in heaven. They will be His people and He will be their God. I don't want to labour this point, because in a sense, if you disagree on it, there is only so far any communication about how we do ministry can go, but this is the quote Jesus opens his ministry with in Luke's Gospel.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus has intentionality, He comes to proclaim good news, to recover sight, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. He has a mission. He comes to save. And I don't want to practice a ministry model where I undermine that God needed to die for me and I don't follow in His example.

¹ You know, High School Chick Flick in which Freddie Prinze Jr. decides to try and woo Rachael Leigh Cook to win a bet, and then he falls in love with her and they live happily after some bumpy paths ever after? No?

² Like an Ewok but less marketable. Also rubbish at killing Stormtroopers.

³ I'd like to think I've matured enough that if I wrote this today I'd remove the cheap stab at Pentecostalism, not least because I'm a firm believer that revivals happen. But the point that sometimes we excuse the lack of results as "sowing the seeds" for later, and that that excuse is just that, still stands.

Yet Again More How Many Youth Workers Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb

Monday, 23 March 2009

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Broken? The lightbulb isn't broken. Keep trying it for another four or five years, I'm sure you'll get results

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) You know once there was a lightbulb who wasn't a lightbulb, but the lightbulb, but some people thought he was just a lightbulb, but they were wrong. And that lightbulb was Jesus and he wants you all to not start smoking. I mean turn to him in repentance.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) One, but someone else is going to have to mind the office while they run out to the lighting shop down the road, because now the light's gone they've finally got an excuse to buy a new cool lightbulb which'll help make the youth centre that much cooler, and consequentially finally get those young people to turn to Christ.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) One, but it might be sometime before they realise it's broken, because hide and seek in the dark is integral to telling the story of John the Baptist and it's not like they're not turning on the light because they're dragging out the game because they haven't planned the bible study properly.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to hold the pool table they're standing on still.

Q) How many youth leaders does it take to change a lightbulb?
A) Schcuhshbby shbunniesh!

(for the previous entries in bad lightbulb jokes see here)

Hymns Ancient and Modern

Friday, 13 March 2009

As a Reformed Calvinistic Indie-Rock kid who is incredibly stuck up about music, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the Page CXVI project a group of people who've decided to make good, solid, glorious hymns accessible and modern and for a while release them free on the internet. People seem to be describing it as indie-rock, which is fine, but a bit broad. For reference these things are hitting somewhere between Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie, it's the North West USA indie that didn't embrace grunge. Couple of points:

First of all, it is very well done. As said, I'm a music snob, I like to not like things, yet this is very very good. I've been listening to it all day and am more impressed as it goes on. So much of it could be absolutely awful, as so much of Christian music re-hashing old songs is. But they seem to have understood that these songs are good because their depth of theology should move people to tears and so that's what the songs try to do. And they're good.

Second of all, I'm not sure it always works for corporate worship. The problem with having a sing-a-long to popular music is that it's not very sing-a-long-able to. Lots of modern music has made an art out of subsuming the lyrics into the rest of the music, which is often very technical. Singing along to their version of In Christ Alone is nigh on impossible and other ones often don't fair better. This isn't a criticism of the music, it's just a point, the further you go towards an ease of singing the plainer you make the vocal part which often destroys the fun of the song. But that's also a strength of this music, you can't sing along at church, but it means you will sing along on your iPod. And the words will sink into your heart and stay there and that's a good thing. Better than having "You can't mistake my biology (the way that we talk, the way that we walk)" in your head all day. Not that that has happened to me.

So, if you're thinking "oh more worship music" then you're wrong. If you're thinking "I'd like some more good Christian music to listen to on my iPod every now and again" then you're in luck.

Also, ten points for impossibly obscure The Magicians Nephew reference in the band title (though, I can't for a minute imagine that any editions used Roman Numerals, or that anyone would get it without it being subtly pointed out on the website).

IPhone

Thursday, 12 March 2009

So, I've just picked up an iPhone, the previous phone having been dramatically taken out by a rogue charger. It's as good and as frustrating as everyone makes out. Here's how I've used it for Christian gospel ministry so far:

• have written some prayer points on the notes app.
• have checked champions league scores when out for pizza with young people.
• uh...

So, not revolutionary, but still. It is shiny.

How To Drive A Minibus Legally

Monday, 9 March 2009

If you're looking into how to learn to drive a minibus, then that article is here

This has been the bane of my life these last few years. Actually finding how to drive a minibus is one of those great sisyphean tasks, just when you're finally convinced you've worked out how legally you can drive one and when you've done the last proof-read through of your notes, you find that you've understood the rules wrong and have to go back to square one and start again. That said, I think I've finally cracked it. I should be clear that this isn't legal advice, but hopefully a helpful way to understand the Department for Transport's Guidelines On Incidental Driving Of Minibuses and other associated rules. Here then, is how you can drive a minibus in the UK legally.

What Can I Drive Already?

First though, two bits of preamble: A minibus is defined as a vehicle between 10 and 17 seats (including the driver) and under 3.5 tonnes unladen (or 4.25 tonnes if you've got disability access features installed like a lift). Any minibus sold in this country for the last five (at least) years fits in these categories. This is a legal definition, so if you buy a minibus it will be one of these. This is the only type of vehicle we're dealing with in this article. If it's bigger than that then it's a regular bus. If it's smaller than that it's a car. You should learn to drive one of those before you drive a minibus.

The second bit of preamble is understanding your driving licence. If you're unsure what you can drive, this is how you find out. If you get your driving licence photocard out of your wallet (or wherever you keep it), you'll notice on the back there is a table and in each row there is a letter and a picture of a vehicle. As you might guess, these are different things you can drive. Each category is represented by a letter, Motorbikes are category A, cars B, lorries C, and buses D (fkp are farm animals, mopeds, and other random things). Occasionally you'll see a number 1 after certain categories, this generally indicates you can drive only some types of vehicle in the category. So if you have D licence (for every kind of bus), you can drive D1 vehicles (minibuses only), if you hold a C licence (for every kind of lorries) you can drive C1 vehicles (the smaller type of lorries). You can see the exact rules, including all the obscurer codes over here.

The other thing you need to know about driving licence categories is the codes that can be applied to categories. All the categories on my licence below have a 01 code, which means I need to wear my glasses to drive and the 122 code means I need to pass my CBT test before I can drive a moped. The one I don't have, but is important and you may well have is code 101 next to my D1 licence. Code 101 means you can't drive for hire or reward. That'll be explained below, but for now it's worth finding out if you have any D or D1 category at all, and if so whether you have a 101 code next to it. The final thing to point out on licences, only some data appears on your photocard, your paper licence has all the data on it, including any extra provisional categories (mine has a full D provisional that's not displayed here).

What Licence Lets Me Drive A Minibus?

With that out of the way here are three ways you can drive a minibus:

If you hold a full D or D1 category on your licence (which can only be achieved if you've actually taken a test to gain the D or D1 licence) you can drive anyone in a minibus for any purpose you want and you and the company or charity you work for can receive payment for it.

If you have a D1 (101) licence (which you will if you passed your regular car practical driving test before 1 January 1997) you can drive a minibus under certain conditions. The 101 means not for hire or reward, this means you can do everything a D1 licence holder does including driving the minibus for your own social purposes, but the business or charity or organisation you are driving for cannot make any money from it, even indirectly. This means you can't drive on this licence if you ask young people to pay £5 for fuel costs for the trip or if they pay a total of £70 for the residential weekend and that includes minibus transport. You can take donations under this licence, but only if they are actual donations not those kind of donations that people ask for but really aren't that optional.

To give a worked example, if you were to charge young people ten pounds each to get taken to the cinema and see a £8 film, you'd be gaining hire and reward and so couldn't do it on this licence. If you charged young people £8 upfront and took them to the cinema, you'd still be doing it for hire and reward as you're gaining the money so this still wouldn't be allowed. Theoretically you could get away with taking young people to the cinema if you drove them for no money and then they all paid for themselves at the cinema and didn't give you any money, but even then you'd be on the edge of legality and your insurance company might decide to quibble on it. I'd recommend not doing this, especially as there is a much simpler solution to this in a moment.

If you don't have any sort of D1 licence (which is you if passed your regular car practical driving test on or after 1 January 1997 and haven't upgraded it since) then you can drive a minibus under very limited conditions. These are those conditions; if it is for non-commercial, social purposes, if you are over 21, if you have passed your car test for more than 2 years, if you are driving as a volunteer, and if it is not for hire and reward, then you can drive a minibus. Hire and reward is defined as above, and being a volunteer means you need to be a volunteer, you can't just pretend that you're doing your job in your own free time and so it's technically volunteering. Neither the police nor your insurance company will buy that. (This can get confusing, say you're employed as a youth worker at a church and occasionally drive the minibus to help out the old people on a Saturday, something you do as a volunteer and church member, not as the paid youth worker. If it's outside of your job description and your definitely not being paid to do it, then you might be okay, but you must have something written down saying you're doing it as a volunteer and you must get written confirmation from your insurance company that they're fine with it.)

Permits

Now these rules are obviously quite restrictive, after all, it means no-one can drive the minibus for any money unless they passed their test before 1997 and seeing as the average church youth worker hadn't passed their GCSEs before 1997 you're probably low on volunteers who can drive it. There is good news though (other than having a good excuse to get older people involved in your youth work). There is a special sort of permit that allows charities and community groups to drive a minibus for the benefit of its members and service groups and take money for doing this. In effect this permit cancels the reward or hire clause on people's licences.

The permit is called a Minibus Permit (a section 19 permit) and it entitles you to make a charge for the people who use and benefit from your service. You can only get a permit if you are organisation involved with education, religion, social welfare, recreation or other activities of benefit to the community and you are not operating to make a profit. Obviously this applies to all charities and most community groups. You get one of these licences by ringing up the VOSA on 0300 123 9000 or by e-mailing permits@vosa.gov.uk. These permits last for five years at least and I think only cost a nominal fee of £10 or something (we've got one, but I can't remember how much they charged us). They are very simple to get, ours came within a week of sending the very simple form off.

The permit is for an organisation, so it allows people to drive the minibus who couldn't normally drive it only if they're driving it for the organisations benefit. This means if your minibus is occasionally lent out to other charities they will either need to be using it for the benefit of your organisation and it's beneficiaries or they'll need their own permit. Charities can also apply for multiple permits if they have more than one bus. The permit itself is a little tax-disc shaped bit of paper that you should keep behind your tax-disc on the bus so it is there for inspection.

Insurance

The last thing to worry about is insurance. It's all very well being able to drive a minibus under your licence, but if you're not insured you can't drive it anyway. As with any driving in the UK if you're driving without insurance you'll get between 3 and 8 points on your licence, potentially be outright disqualified, and fined up to £5,000. Most charity minibus insurance companies go through the same broker and so all offer similar deals. Most will insure for broader use than you'll be licensed for, so generally, if you can drive it on your licence, your insurance will cover this. The best thing to do is read over your policy and if you have any concerns ring them up and get them to confirm the specific situation. If your insurance company have said verbally (or better yet through writing) that a situation is okay, then they are legally obliged to cover you for it. So if you ask them if a 19 year old with a full D1 is insured on the bus and they say yes on the phone, then they legally have to cover you if that 19 year old crashes the bus.

Driving With Trailers

If you want to drive a minibus with a trailer you need at least a D1+E licence. The +E on a licence indicates you can drive in that category with a trailer. If you passed your test before 1997 you probably have a D1+E (101) on your licence in which case you can tow a trailer for the same purposes as you can drive a minibus, but I am honestly not sure if a minibus permit extends to cover these, there is nothing in the guidelines making it clear.

h4.Schools

I have no idea, they come under slightly different rules for reward and hire when it comes to driving things, so I wouldn't want to speculate. Talk to your Local Authority I guess.

Grand Summary
If you have a minibus that is used for charitable or community permits, get yourself a section 19 minibus permit. Ensure all your drivers are driving for the correct reason with the correct licence. If that means going through every single person's licence who drives on your minibus then that's what you need to do. If you have any paid staff (even part-time) who passed their test after 1996 driving the minibus then they need to stop driving the minibus until they take a pass a D1 driving test. If that means you have no drivers, then so be it. You can learn how to get a D1 licence on this accompanying article

As Someone Younger

Tuesday, 3 March 2009

Just picked up my old NIV pocket bible that I had when I was in school as I'm preaching on Friday night and can't do it from the ESV that I now carry around. Turned in it for the first time in years to (spoiler alert!) 1 Peter 3:8-22 which is the passage I'm preaching on, specifically verse 15 which starts "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." There is a little star next to it that I've written in, with a related footnote at the bottom that reads "most important thing". The last question I wrote down as I prepared the talk was "is that passage really the summary of the key point in all of 1 Peter"? It turns out that my 17 year old self is, in the important respects, as capable to handle the Bible as I am now.