Transcript

and care leader of the committee. The first items of business are to appoint a chair and vice chair of the committee for the municipal year. It should be noted that the committee's terms of reference state that the chair should be the statutory lead member for children's services which is currently Councillor Carol Bullman. Please can I ask for that nomination for chair. Councillor Beaman. I vote for that nomination. I vote for Councillor Bullman, thank you. And is that seconded? Thank you. All in favour? Thank you, that's carried. And are there any nominations for vice chair? Councillor Beaman. I vote for Councillor Saunders. And is that seconded? And all in favour? Thank you. In the absence of the chair I'll hand over to the vice chair for this meeting. Thanks very much everybody and welcome to the meeting. So going on to the agenda, any apologies for absence? Thank you chair. We have apologies from Councillor Carol Bullman and Councillor Dawn Clark. Thank you very much. Any declarations of interest? Minutes of the previous meeting. Any comments in terms of accuracy? Can I state that then when we're all in favour of approving them? Thank you. So on to the body of the report. The first item on the agenda is update from the shadow committee which is a verbal update. Thank you very much. Sorry, you're just muting yourself with your toes and spoke. Thanks, Sally. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sally Britton and I attend every committee on behalf of our care leave that we share an update of what their world is. Their lived experiences, what life is like for them. Next slide please. So just as a bit of an overview, we do offer check-off projects and smoke activities and activity dates for our care for children and care leavers but we do have a same-care project called My Voice, which is where our care for children can attend, have their babies here, be involved in wider participation projects, influence decisions that affect them. But also we throw a lot of life skills, preparation, travel according to the activities that we offer. So the shadow committee happened one week before every main committee happened and it ended last week and spoke to our group about access to a wider provision outside of care for children and services. Young people spoke about their views about that and the reason I'm here today is that we know that there are a lot more children and young people that we work with and receive services and support in Cheshire Beach so I will speak on behalf of them. Next slide please. So our recent activities, so I did prepare this presentation for the last committee which was postponed but I didn't want to miss out on the valuable information that we'd gathered. Our team and our children and young people that we worked with actually had a really positive experience from speaking about their views to our spread of inspectors and so we supported young people to create written pieces, drawing, artworks, boutique recordings and even more shared with the inspectors that came to Cheshire Beach in February and also we supported young people to prepare and to be part of a focus group to speak to inspectors as well. There were some really beautiful comments about relationships with social workers. One young person said I love my social worker which was just amazing to hear but also similarly young people were able to talk about their experiences that could have been better as well and as I talk a little bit about that later on, she also supported Draw Insight to offer a focus group with a service as well as their care leader cafe and group and fell in love with young people that were willing to speak to officers about their experiences too. Next slide please. So yeah, Morgan, our new apprentice, was also involved in speaking to inspectors and also shared his experiences in a both recorded interview and I just wanted to share how amazing it's been to have a young person in my team that's excellent by experience but also is delivering our activities too. Loads of young people curious about, wow, who supports some of these offers, work experiences and partnerships. So that's really probably the next slide please. So we've had activity days for our Careful Children focused on preparing for adulthood and in February and Easter we've also had a make after one as well and we have been looking at what could be included in our community care guide if that could be shaped and developed. Next slide please. And also planning for the Star Awards, the Animal Star Celebration Day. Sorry I've been around for a while but still calling it Star Awards, Star Celebration Day. So we've been looking at themes with young people and the potential activities that could be offered. So for anybody that wasn't at the Animal Star Celebration Day last year at Macclesfield, at four, it's amazing for adults to come together and quality of their time to celebrate the achievements of our Careful Children. This year's Star Celebration Day will be on Sunday the 24th on the calendar at Sandbatch Town Hall. So we're in the process of developing a communications pattern for that. I hope I haven't said it too soon but it is super exciting and Sandbatch Town Hall have been really supportive and taken their corporate patterns into activity very seriously by offering them like things you can produce to create for the family in Mexico. So the Community Care Guide, some of our young people, we've got some things that I'd like to share, some good things. The Community Care Guide doesn't exist, it's good for all ages, it doesn't explain things. However, one person who has been involved in the project has said that they would probably like a little bit more explanation of what's happening when you go into care. So we've also came out with our young people and at the book we have a little bit of a portfolio and selection of recommendations from our young people. We've got a long look at working with some of our managers across Careful Services to shape the needs coming into the Care Guide or if you know it, if you are. Next slide please. So a beautiful project that I've been involved in over the last 12 months. So in my team, the participation team have worked closely with Thawinsight and some care experience people that access Thawinsight, alongside my treasure without abuse, my CCUA and the domestic abuse service at Thawinsight. So we have been developing, as part of the domestic abuse strategy, a domestic violence strategy, developing a training resource aimed at equipping professionals who work with care for children and care experience young people with the right skills to support those facing domestic abuse. So our young people said rather than giving us more professionals in our lives, equip the ones that we already trust and work with with the skills to support us. So yes, care experience young people have used other experience and they've shared some really powerful messages that's going to be included in the training, so we're looking to deliver with young people the first pilot training session. So if you can go to the next slide, it can show some of the messages for young people. So these working groups with these young people have been probably one of my favourite over the last 12 months. Our young people are so brave, but also what's really different is that we've seen their junior year over the last 12 months, so some of the young people accessing the particular projects and being a part of it have had children of their own in the last 12 months, and it's been great to see their confidence grown through developing this training. So some of the young people have said hear me, see me, talk to me, domestic abuse isn't just about physical violence, make sure that our professionals are trauma informed, detachment trained, so one question can I have support anonymously so I can avoid the risk of having my children being taken away. See me as a person, take the time to get to know me, judge me, be patient if you can. There's a lot of focus about the non-judgmental approach to this training as one of the key messages. So we are looking to see whether that training hopefully will join us on there or in September. So what we're trying to do is match it with some of the papers and write them. So education, employment and training, I believe is on its agenda, hopefully it's still so much included with today's theme, but young people have said it's good to have interventions if needed as I missed over school, but I don't get into it now. So much positive feedback from the School of Education, Employment and Training from our Careful Children who really value the support of virtual schools and services. A good provision session to get you ready for exams. There's been discussions about bullying, but still a lot of people have got to report that some of our Careful Children would like a little bit of extra support when being bullied and make others feel more confident when they are sharing their experiences with kids or speaking it out. Next, with education, employment and training, we've quickly got an apprentice in our team who will be leading our Careful Children in how we propose. So it was really nice to hear some of our young people talk about foster carers recognising one thing as well and also talking family time as well, obviously siblings, that they don't live with anymore in their public home. Next slide please. And health. Our Careful Children said that they have good regular deficits and GP check-ups. One among the medical leaders said that they'd like to see male mental health groups as there aren't many. Mental health groups, the care leavers would be good and the mental and pure insight to help with the jobs around the house and my well-being. So since I created this I just wanted to add on some things that are upcoming which I'm quite excited about. I've been working with Belinda who leads on the Fosterly panel for Cheshire East and some characters and people involved in training and the development of the Fosterly panel in September. So the Fosterly panel can have a look and understand what other people would like from their foster carers and what kind of foster carers they would like. And also we are launching as part of the Care and Reform, a monthly cooking and food session for Carers. Thank you very much Annie, that was really useful and obviously it was a challenging time with Ofsted etc as well which we're coming up to later. I've got one question before I hand it over to other members. One of the care leavers was talking about it would be good to have a male mental health hub and I just wondered, do you know what the rationale was that? Was it because he felt embarrassed to speak about things that were emotional to him in front of young women and girls? I just wondered if we could explore what was going on there and is it something that you're taking on and exploring in the future to have that provision. Thank you. So that was, that feedback was given as part of the care leaver survey. So we are about to start developing and pulling together some focus groups of carer experiencing people so that we can look at the results of the care leaver survey to form some recommendations and ideas that could go forward to our decision makers and perhaps coming in as well. So that we haven't yet explored this, it's been a long and a long and interesting course in the care leaver survey but we will search in it and we explore mental health and wellbeing of care leavers during those focus weeks so that we can ask some people what they would like. And I suspect that some of this might tie into the care leaver process. Right, thank you. Just picking up on Councillor Saunders' comment there, you're linking with other male mental health groups like MENTAL, Andy's Man Club, I don't know if they have a younger care call, but they're in Macclesfield, they've worked with both them groups quite closely and they're absolutely fantastic. And the age range they get is sort of from 18 to 80 if you like, but it might be where that could be a nice hive of mentors and the same with your cooking facilities and your life skills is going into the community, I can only speak from Macclesfield because that's where I live and I represent people in here. We've got a community cafe, there's craze on the council platoons, there's lots of things that are already in place because we're talking about not working in silos and seeing what else is there is to spread our wings a little bit more and get people, young people, a leading care to get into their communities and to integrate a little bit more. And just to thank you for the report, the other thing I was going to ask, while I've got the microphone, is it would be good if I've done the trauma informed training and a little bit of attachment, but it might be where some committee members doing that as well as the people on the foster care, because it does give you a real insight into the type of children that work and the reasons why they're so traumatised and how that affects their behaviours and I'm not going to speak for ages because it goes on right through the life and then why they end up in a bit of a mess as they get older. So, I think that would be really good training. Before I hand over to Councillor Holland I would actually echo that because I think anything, any training that we can have that better informs us in terms of what we can then contribute to, you know, the Careful Children's Service I think can only be good so I would absolutely endorse what you just said. Councillor Holland. Yes, thank you, Chair. I just wondered if we do ask if there's a gender specification that an individual would wish to speak to, because we've assumed that this is a male wanting to speak to a male, but it could be completely different and it might be due to a trust issue. So I just wondered if we've given that opportunity to state, is it available? Because that feedback was given in an anonymous survey, if I was to receive that feedback face-to-face from a child or a young person I would explore that with them and sign goes into the appropriate service, perhaps look at the level of the role as well, or if I didn't hear the answer I would speak to them, if it were available. The reason I ask is because it could be quite easily a young lady who has been maybe bullied and might not trust another female, you just don't know what the circumstances are, so I think we just have to be open, that's why I raised it. That's a really good point. Thank you. Councillor Hayes. Thank you, Chair. Obviously, since the time of the last meeting, I've just been grateful to understand if and how that's being shared directly with these young people and what things that's being gathered from them, because ultimately these are people most impacted by the outcome of that inspection process and I'm grateful to understand how that's been managed. And particularly how it's been managed sensitively because lots of the report will talk about circumstances that they may be able to reflect in their own lives and experiences. Would it be helpful if I assisted there, Annie, because it's a really good point, Councillor Hayes, thank you for making it and we were really, I hope, thoughtful about the fact that when this report was published, it talked about some inadequacies, significant inadequacy in our offer to our care leaders. And actually, we needed to talk directly to them about that and to be frank, we needed to apologise and so we have put an open letter on the local offer and PAs have got access to that as well for those young people who aren't accessing the local offer. It's a go-to place and we know that there's work for us to do around that but there is an open letter which is clear that we recognise and hear that the shortcomings are not good enough and that we seek to improve those at pace and we apologise to those young people who have been affected by any of those shortcomings. But there is much more for us to do now in terms of that ongoing participation, understanding the voice of our young people, some really powerful messages that Annie has been able to share through that survey. And it's all well and good, isn't it, hearing the voice, but it's a so what that matters, so I think some of the activity that stems from the survey that Annie's described is really critical and the critical that you hear about hearing committee for your residents and our young people and in our role as corporate parents, that we are seeking to listen but actually more importantly do something about it. So in this report we'll look for that information to come through more regularly to this committee. Yeah, thank you for the comment rather than question, thank you for the report Annie, I've got the 24th of November date, no I didn't enjoy the event last year in Applesfield Town Hall, but I was going to raise the same point that Councillor Haynes raised, it's clear that the report would undermine the confidence of the young people who are the recipients of the survey so we do need to talk to them about it. And listen to their views obviously because they can tell us how they want to improve, so I think it should be used as an opportunity to continue the communication so that there is understanding on both sides really but whilst being open about the inadequacies that are there. Thanks for the report Annie, it's a peer group meeting that obviously helped create links between the different attendees which are important and might help them quite establish their minds. How many children, according to the school card there's about 533 children in care, how many children attend the Star Celebration events and is there any barriers to their attendance that we can have with Transport Costco? This Star Celebration event, so over 100 children and young people attended last year, every casual child or young person was invited to the event and that was electronically through their carers, but also we invited their trusted adult social workers, common service workers, youth workers, whoever else, to also speak to them about it and get them excited for it and get them there really. We try to move the venue each year for different areas of classrooms so that it will accommodate distance tables, get to see them if that makes sense. So yes we're quite careful to make sure that it's inclusive as possible, it was a great day last year. Also alongside that we invite professionals and carers to also nominate and say what's special about their children and young people, what they've achieved over the last 12 months as well, to make sure that every child or young person is given a bespoke certificate and award that they were able to achieve back then. Just trying to make sure they're hard to get ones are really picked up, that's the essence of it really. So we do our best to recruit and offer that opportunity to children and young people, some will naturally choose to not attend but we still make sure that their achievements are recognised through getting a certificate to them even if they don't attend through their social worker or another trusted adult in their life. Thank you. Thank you very much. If there's no other questions, thank you very much on behalf of all of us for the report. The report is just for noting today, there's no decisions to be made on it so we'll move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the Ofsted inspection findings. I thought I'd just state at the beginning of this before we go on to questions in debate and after we've had any presentation, that for many of us we've actually already received and scrutinised this. And the reason I'm saying it is for those members who weren't at the Children and Families Committee, please believe us that we did spend two hours debating and scrutinising it. So if we're not asking as many questions, that's the reason why and I just felt that, you know, we all really participated and I want you to feel assured that we gave it the scrutiny it deserves. So, would it be you Deborah? Over to Deborah, thank you. Thank you chair and thank you for the points in terms of previous presentation. However, whilst this did go to Children and Families Committee, given the shortcomings that were identified within this inspection with regards to those young people who sit under this committee, it felt highly appropriate to bring it to this committee too for consideration. I don't intend to go through the report, but I do want to just reiterate the point that I made in relation to my response to the previous question around communication. The inspection findings were extremely disappointing. They were extremely disappointing for the service, but most importantly they were extremely disappointing for the services that we provide to our children and in particular those young people who are defined as care leavers. Our care should never end and it seems for some young people it was found, our care was found to be wanting and we are both disappointed but more importantly extremely apologetic to those young people. And we are determined to improve our services in such a way that our care leavers and all of our young people are engaged in that improvement, understand that we will improve and they actually experience an improvement. So we are determined and we have a developing action plan. Members of the committee, including members of this committee and the Children and Families Committee have been invited to a member workshop to look at our improvement plan to support us in the development and provide challenge to that plan to deliver those improvements at pace. I think probably, if that's okay Chair, because it is a full report and obviously the report from Ofstead is available for everybody, I might perhaps open up for questions. Thank you. Councillor Haynes. Thank you Chair, whilst I'm a member of the Children and Families Committee, I was unfortunately not able to be here so I asked my questions in the experience of not having heard what may have gone before, so if things happen, come on elsewhere please do, just redirect me. I actually start with being grateful, which sounds quite absurd given the topic we were talking about. I do have a gratefulness for the way in which we apologise. I respect that that's hard because nobody I don't believe has ever worked to or intended for this video. But also the way in which we are approaching it with honesty about what needs to change in improvement forms and I think with those two key foundations that does give me a confidence about the journey that we have embarked on. I wonder, it relates partially to paragraph 18 of the report, it's a broader question really about how well the areas that this inspection has identified needed improvement were reflected within our own self-evaluation pre-inspection, what did we know before? Paragraph 46 concerns me slightly, it's a paragraph about finance and it talks about improvement journeys and a particular focus on care leaves and I'm under no illusion that that is the prime area of focus given the inadequate judgements, but I think we need to be very conscious that the other areas of that inspection were not good. And therefore, I'm of the opinion that improvement journeys will require improvement to good will also have some capacity pressures and needless to say in some ways, but given the council's finances being so tight, I do wonder whether the improvement plan that the director talks about will have costs associated and will start to provide a view towards corporate plans and strategies moving forward because that's going to be essential. I think that's everything for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hayes and thank you for your comments. So, what did we know beforehand and what did we tell the inspectors they would find? You'll see a line in the report that, I can't quote it, but it refers to the fact that other than the care leavers, we understood ourselves better than we have done before. Something like that and apologies, I'm not quoting it directly. And that up until care leavers, they were giving us a clear indication that we did understand ourselves, particularly around consistency. What we said is you'll find some really good practice and they found some really good practice. But what they didn't find is that practice spread right across the system. So there were pockets of excellence, pockets of really good practice, but that wasn't sufficiently spread across the system. So that issue around consistency was understood and was described to the inspectors prior to their delving further into their inspection regime. But it's still not good enough that we know most of our service, but not all of it. And so we are working really hard to understand a) how that was the case and b) to ensure that doesn't happen again and is part of our improvement plan going forward in terms of scrutiny. We're also looking at how we can support all of the system's corporate parents to have a role in that quality assurance activity and are working with the LGA to look at how they can support us to develop that corporate parenting as everybody's business. Obviously you understand that here in this committee, but spreading that beyond this committee. Then in terms of finance, it's such an important point and we've been working at pace to look at how we can, what the indicative costs would be to deliver on this improvement plan. And we are working up a more costed version of the improvement plan, which will be part of the plan that you will get to see and scrutinise. Because whilst again, we were pleased to note, because it has been part of our improvement journey, that the inspectors identified that capacity wasn't an issue within this inspection. In fact, they reflected that cases were felt to be manageable. Undoubtedly, some of the improvement activity requires a really dedicated focus and we want to enable our workforce to do that. So there will likely, there are already some, I think I mentioned this at committee earlier on in the month, are we in the same month? Yes, same month, that we had already put in some additional personal advisors into the care leader's team. Two additional at the moment, because of the work that we're doing around our 21 plus care leavers, where that service was found to be more of an opt in than an opt out service. We've had contact with the 209 young people who were in that cohort and I think I'm going to, I hope I don't quote this round, but I think it's 187 said they want some form of a service. So you can see that adds capacity requirements to our system. So we are going through that at the moment and we'll hope to have a more clearer picture as we bring this matter through through the committee processes about finances. Did you have a follow up question? If that's okay, I think it could be paragraph 15, the inspection report that the director was referring to, which reads the local authority self evaluation now recognises most of the strengths and areas for improvement. And whilst it's good to know yourself, I suppose my feedback from a governance and corporate parenting perspective is I don't count myself in that sentence. I didn't know whether it was inadequate, requires improvement, good or better. And actually our scorecard gives us hard data and statistics, which started to demonstrate an improving picture. And then the inspectors come in and very clearly turn that on its head slightly. So my feedback constructively around moving forward is how we have an oversight of that self evaluation so that there is that absolute shared organisational clarity, not just in terms of numbers of children, time limiters of X, Y, Z, but rather in terms of we now believe we are best. Thank you Councillor Hayes and absolutely, absolutely agree. Our data was demonstrating improvements. You're absolutely correcting your analysis of that. And in fact, in terms of suitable accommodation, we are significantly reporting significantly better data than our statistical neighbours and the regional national averages. And that gave us some cause for optimism, but it only tells part of the story and it is the quality and what is happening for the 5% who aren't in the seat of suitable accommodation that needs to exercise our minds, all of our minds, both officers and members more significantly. To that end, we are reviewing the frontline visits programme. It's still ongoing. I know there's been some questions about that, but we would like to bring to this and the Children and Families Committee a proposal to enhance and develop that to enable you to have a more of a line of sight into quality of practice as opposed to data. Now, except that's quite an onerous task and we need to work up a programme that's both realistic, doable, but also that you've got all the tools and the skills that you would need. So we are working on that over the next couple of months to bring forward to committee because I think the very point you make that as a committee, you didn't have a line of sight into that area is really important. So, yes, we've picked that one up. Thanks, Councillor Hayes. Councillor Bennett-Wake. Thank you. I don't wish to repeat myself and the Children and Families Committee meeting, but we discussed that 5% that were in unsuitable accommodation was not good enough and I absolutely agree with that. But locally, I know there's quite a few councils around the table to have peaks and plains meeting an area this year. And even peaks and plains have got a waiting list of 12,237. Each house has got 184 bids on it, which is up from last year. Again, I get lots of case work about people being given no-fault evictions and that's really hard, we have to recognise that. I know it's really important that officers scrutinise, but we also need to look at the bigger picture of the housing crisis. I think it's really important that, again, as councillors, we do have that overview about what's going on. It's not just statistics on a page. It's young people who've gone through the care system and I know that, nationally, there's about a third of people who are homeless have come through the care system in one way or another and that's the bigger picture. I could tell you a story about why that happened. I could write a book on it. I'm not going to waste your time doing that now, but I think looking at the bigger picture of what needs to change is more than we can do in this committee. It needs collaborative work and, say, for example, I didn't just navigate my computer and not my notebook, which I'm trying, but there'll be lots of other people involved in a communication plan, I think on point 39 on page 50. Will that include social housing providers, job centres that give support for caregivers? We can move this into meeting someone. It's kind of a realm of a situation that I just think we need to look at the bigger picture and not work in silos and work with other providers and help one another. Thank you. Do you want to answer the question? Thank you. Thank you, Carla. In relation to housing, it's really important when we're thinking about our young people who are 18 plus. Where do they live? Ideally, they live with their foster carer who's been looking after them for a period of time and they stay put with that foster carer. That's the ideal for our young people. But for some young people, they leave home at 18, go off to university and, again, what's our offer for them? How can we make sure that they've got somewhere to come back to that's suitable, that is nurturing and is supporting them in their time away from university? But we also have a cohort of young people who are ready for independence, want to live independently, want to try out living independently. But we all know that from children and young people who we know in our own families and in our own lives, sometimes trying out doesn't work so well and you need to come back and try again. And that happens for our young people in particular, especially where they've experienced loss and rejection, experienced some of the adverse childhood experiences that you've described and who haven't had all the opportunities that many young people do. So finding the right accommodation that allows, that understands that, that enables them to make mistakes but come back and be welcomed again, that they can, that we can resolve and restore harm when harm's done and move on to accommodation is difficult. In particular we've got scarcity of accommodation. We are, I'm looking at the report and trying to find the mention of it, we are stepping up a corporate parenting working group that will be multi agency and partners and providers will be part of that corporate parenting working group to enable us to have, because partners don't sit around this table here do they, but that will be the table where they will sit around and be both supported to deliver, to understand what we need but also challenged when that's not available. But that's going to be really critical to our development of this programme is that corporate parenting working group. And I know that the effects constituted of a number of members of this and the Children and Families Committee, along with the partners and other officers. I think just to add to Debra's point there and picking up in some of the, about the consultation and communication, that corporate parenting working group will have representatives from our young people. So, our experts by experience essentially who will be able to, when we're looking at recruitment, I think your point about not just a select few, it's how we gather the views and represent those across the board really so, you know, a young person who has experienced homelessness, it's really important that they have the opportunity of sort of sharing their views to that corporate parenting working group so when we, when we do go out for recruitment they are going to be paid roles. One of the criteria that we will look for is, is that your person's ability to communicate with a range of people including those who perhaps not been as fortunate as themselves to be able to represent their views at that working group. Thanks very much. I think all of us realise that this report was very, very disappointing. My colleague, Councillor Hayes has alluded to the fact that all areas needed improvement. However, I mean, I think the corporate parenting working group is a really good idea, a really good step forward, it is cross party and it is going to have all the stakeholders around that table. So that's a really good thing. The other positive thing that we've heard today is about the reviewing of the frontline visits. And so we have more insights into practice as I've said on many an occasion, the more training that we have the more informed we have the better job that we do. The only other thing that I would ask is, we're all corporate parents on this council, and I am not particularly confident that many of our colleagues who don't sit on these two committees have had any training whatsoever. So I would really urge if we can get that out there because it's all about business it's not just people who sat around this table. This report is just for noting, because we did have a good go at it last time so I hope those who weren't there last time can accept that. Okay, so if we move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the Children and Care Annual Report. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay, my name is Rebecca Jones, I'm the Deputy Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children and Children in Care. My role spans across both Cheshire East and Cheshire West. I'm here today on behalf of Nicole Wichley to present the report. So this is the Children in Care Annual Report from 2022 through to 2023. I've been advised just to give a brief overview of the report and to take some questions. Is that okay? Yes, thank you very much. Okay, so I'm hoping that you've all had time to go through the report but I'll kind of very briefly touch on some of the key points as we go through. I do have a benefit to page 36 of the documents that have been provided today is to kind of stress this is the first Children in Care Annual Report that was produced and created as the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB was established on the 1st of July, 2022. And the purpose of the report was to ensure that these collective online ICB places, which provide an overview of progress of the challenges in supporting and improving the health of our young people and children and within all of our nine areas. For the purpose of today I will just stick to the areas that are key to Cheshire East. And as we go through there is a number of points in relation to ask to treat kind of responsibilities and also about kind of terminology and use of language throughout the report. What is key is that the main focus is needing help and care needs to buy from people. It's a clear focus on access to services, effective commissioning, delivery through providers, a coordinated care approach and partnership working with our colleagues within Social Care and the local and poverty. There is detail with regards to the ICB portion in relation to initial and review health assessments, and that goes into a lot of detail that is broken down into subset areas. It details the priorities for 2022 through to 2023, and that could be located on page 38. And as we go through to the kind of end of the report details the ICB system oversight process. So this is a series of structured diagrams that we included, as well as the accountability structure for the ICB and that takes into consideration all of the nine places. As we go further down onto page 41, there's a detail there in relation to both the national and the local profile of our children in care, and to be able to place comparatives, as well as the detail for each of our ICB in those areas. As we go to page 42, the details with regard to treasury's commissioning arrangements, so that's in relation to our initial health assessments, as well as our review health assessments and the associated health activity. Sorry, I'm just trying to keep up. As we go further on to the report, it then gets split down to different subsets of the development areas across the ICB in place, at the bottom of page 44. The details with regards to treasury's updates, and about the streamlining of the IHA process to improve the timeliness of the return of completed reports, as well as the promotion of the annual dental checks across, in relation to the NHS England Dentistry scheme. There's quite a lot of detail in relation to the other areas that are included within that. It acknowledges the challenges that are faced both from a regional and national perspective, with a specific focus on sufficiency in placements, increasing complexity of cases, and lack of placements within the secure estate, tier 4 mental health services and specialist therapeutic provisions, compliance with statutory time scales for initial health assessments, and also the time of review health assessments, which has been a challenge for children specifically placed out of our local authority areas. There's detail in relation to our local performance figures, and these obviously go back through to the end of quarter 4 within 2023, and as well as the details with the review health assessments as well. There's some information on page 49, section number 10, with regards to the contribution of our designated doctors in care, and how they contribute to the function of the health provision of our children and young people, as well as their contribution towards our services and developments across our various specialities. And the key areas of focus are detailed on page 50, to look at the initial review health assessments, to place focus on key performance indicators, to focus on the care leave convert, standardised care leave that offer across the ICB, to look at the NHSE data collection, and to support the dental pathway pilot programme, and to further consider standardisation of terminology in care, for example the use of language such as care experience. So with regard to the conclusion, it provides a summary of the progress of work with children and children in care since the formation of the ICB. This obviously is an ongoing piece of work which continues across all nine places. I think it's key to note that there has been the reformation of the children in care networks across the nine places to bring designated professionals together to share learning as well as things that are working well. And the information within the report demonstrates the ongoing continued commissioning arrangements that are in place, and to ensure that this work continues to work in our partners to ensure that the developments services are in place for our children in care and care leaveers. So that's the end of the report. I'd like to take any questions. Chancellor Hayes. Thank you Chair. You might have felt that I was light on questions to the opposite agenda but actually it ties back in at different points if that's okay with you. One of my long standing frustrations is this report is nearly 12 months out of debt by the time it's been received today, and realistically that's too late to have any kind of influence on an improvement journey. I'd raise the question about whether the ICB is committed to working at pace in partnership with this authority to secure the rapid improvements that have been identified, because they're moving on paragraph 22 of the inspection report references the challenges to initial and review timescales and the emotional support waiting lists, and I'd be grateful to understand the ICB review on this and the broader inspection article. But also, because so much time has passed since this report was live, section 7.4b of the report from the ICB is actually in contrast to what we see on our scorecard today. So you talk about dental checks being a potential area of success or to celebrate, whereas completion of dental checks and STQs are actually an area of defined weakness within our scorecard. And that's the point I'm trying to get to. If we don't have the right information at the right time, and we are relatively limited on the information we receive from ICB, it's very difficult to try and do an improvement journey with one hand tied behind your back. Thank you, Jen. Thank you very much. Do you want to comment on that, Rebecca? Yes, no, of course. Thank you for your comments there, Councillor Hayes. With regards to the delay of the report, unfortunately I've been asked to come with you to leave today, but I can definitely take that point back to Nicola, which we do ask for her to provide that as an update to yourselves. With regards to the other ongoing workstreams, there is a current report that will be under development that will be brought back to this report to be presented. I think that we've done quite a lot of work in relation to IHAs and RA chains. And I know that we are challenged due to a number of issues in relation to ensuring that our IHAs and RA chains are timely. We do struggle due to children either misappointment or placement moves, or due to children being placed out of area. Those are our main areas where we meet a number of challenges. We are undertaking pieces of work collectively with all of our partners to look at our emotional health and wellbeing offer alongside our SDQ processes. And we've got a number of groups going to be working together to try and unpick that further and see how we can progress. Councillor Haynes, a follow-up? Thank you. More a comment. I'm by no means letting this authority off the hook. I think we've been very clear about the disappointment that we face. But fundamentally, the bar's got to raise across all such departments to ensure that consistent and sustainable improvement. And I wonder whether, in going back to Nicola and Rebecca, you could also discuss whether there could be more regular representation at these meetings. Because realistically, if you weren't here today and I was talking about dental checks and SDQs and the downturn in performance, that's not entirely somebody who has responsibilities. And therefore very difficult to hold those people to account. And I think we've just got to be really conscious that there's no point of Cheshire East Council potentially developing an action plan or an improvement plan which sets the pace which other departments can't keep with. Everybody's got to move at a similarly rapid pace here. And I entirely respect the capacity challenges you talk about. I'm sure we face them ourselves in a different way. But nonetheless, I think we're all on the same page that children require improved services and they require those improved services rapidly. We've recently done a piece of work in relation to a data cleanse of the information that was received for the Dentistry scheme. We know that there's been an increase from 43% to 73%, but we do need to really understand and then secure a permanent solution to ensure this data is accurate. And that it can be produced readily. I think we've done a lot of work in relation to our local area. I suppose promoting the dental scheme as well as revisiting and refreshing our partners with regards to kind of pathways, et cetera. And also ensuring that our care is having today guidance as well. But I will absolutely take your points back to you and then we'll be back from there. Thank you. Anne-Marie's going to comment. I was just going to come in with some updated figures, but we've just heard those which hopefully will show that it's going in the right direction. But there's still a lot of work to do. I also wanted to add that in terms of officers responsibility, whilst obviously health sticks with the ICB, as corporate parents, we have a responsibility to ensure that our children do access those services. I think one of the things that we've recently actioned is that the dentist checks, for example, is part of our weekly performance scrutiny with the team so that we're making sure the information is up to date and recorded clearly. That helps in two ways. One, hopefully it improves our data and shows a more accurate picture. But two, it also shows where there are areas of need and we can target support to those carers who are struggling to get their child a dentist, et cetera. Councillor Hollings. Yes, thank you, Chair. And I think throughout, ever since I've been on this committee, the dentist, well, IHI Dentistry as well, has just been a thing that's run a theme throughout every single meeting. And it is so important, because my fear is that these children will be identified because of their dentures, you know, their issues with their teeth, as care, coming from a careful background, and that's totally not right. I know we understand nationally there's a problem with the NHS dentists throughout the country, but I think we need to think outside the box here and see how we can do it differently. Do dentists, can we employ a dentist in our own to go into the schools? Can we do something differently? Because the last thing is that they shouldn't be getting, or shouldn't be not to be able to accessing dentistry for sure. So I don't know, but maybe we can think of doing it a bit differently. Or even going to dentists and saying, can each week you designate a slot for care for children? And we do it as a tertiary's council. That aside, I've got some questions which, just to understand it a little bit better, so the Grapon 48, I think it's page 47, sorry, so I'm looking at Cheshire East, CICOLAs in quarter three is 100%, and Cheshire East is 20%. So can somebody just explain that a little bit further to me, because that's a massive disparity. And so just so I understand it correctly, what we're looking at in that graph. Apologies if it's written somewhere. Rebecca, if you could answer that one, please. Yes, apologies. The sound quality is quite poor, so I couldn't quite hear what the answer you were referencing. Page 47, only because I was half closest to the speaker. It was about initial health assessments and disparity given that CICOLAs in Cheshire West quarter three was 100%, and then Cheshire East over 20% was a question about why there was such a stark disparity. So when you look at the data in relation to our children placed in our area, from out of area, the numbers are extremely small, and sometimes what we come across is that we have children and people that have multiple placement moves before they arrive in our area, and then they become settled. So, unfortunately, it then will reach the 20 day timeline, and for those assessments to be completed, and we would have to pull the data to be able to clearly understand that for that specific cohort. And, but with regards to my experience of working with the initial health assessment dashboard, that is usually the area of concern that we come against. So does that answer your question? Sorry. Thank you, Rebecca. It sort of does, but I still think that Cheshire West will have those same complications as we experience as well. So it doesn't really explain it thoroughly, really, but thank you. Any other questions, Charles? I wondered if anyone could clarify how many NHS centres there are in Cheshire East, and how long the waiting lists are, and if children, careful children, do have a priority, which can hold the basic suggestions. Rebecca, are you able to take that one? Did you hear that? Yes, so I heard that. So if you've asked the number of dentists, so you'll be aware of the NHSE dental scheme that's been up and running for the last number of years. That is still running, and we have a number of dentists that have been allocated. From our perspective in ICB, we would receive any escalations from the local authority or from the community provider health teams, whereby there was concerns that a child or young person was unable to access dental care. And within the time period, reporting nuclear directly, there have been no escalations in relation to that. So I think we've got to be clear with the data in relation to, is it access to a dentist, or is that human person all willing to attend? And we need to try and break that information further and further. Do you want to follow up on that? Yeah, thank you. It didn't quite answer my question. I just know there's a national shortage of dentists, and what you seem to be saying is that children just won't go to the dentist, and I know how that feels. Sorry, that wasn't my response. It was with regards to there are dentists that are allocated as part of the NHSE scheme, and there are spaces available. We've had no escalations or recent notices saying that we are struggling to ensure that our children will be accommodated. OK, thank you. Councillor Hays. I think herein lies the problem I was trying to get to the nub of at the beginning. The data is giving us a really clear picture that there are problems, so regardless of whether the case has been escalated or not, 53% in quarter three tells me that 47%, we need to understand them. It's not just one or two children here, it's 47% of these children. And I think this is where we possibly need to reframe our role as corporate parents more as parents. If I didn't want to go to the dentist, would my mother force me to go to the dentist? Yes, she would. Similarly, if there wasn't an NHS dentist appointment available, and she could afford to take me to an alternative, would she? Yes, I'm sure she'd try. And it feels as if we're sat waving the white flag on these children and saying, oh we're really sorry, we can't, or not yet, or come again three weeks next Tuesday. And actually, I'm supposed to be here, we're supposed to be here as any responsible parent, and I believe any responsible parent will be banging the drum and getting those children appointments within a better time than us. And I'm not sure that's entirely what I'm hearing at the moment. Rebecca, is there anything else you need to add to that? Okay members, this is for noting, but I think there's a number of things that have come up really. Those of us who've been on this committee for a number of years, we know that this comes up all the time about dentistry. It's been, I don't want to use the term running sore, but it's been a cause for disappointment, shall I say, to all of us. And the other area was also the health assessments, which we were also, for many years, quite slow on the uptake. Now, Councillor Holland, Councillor Bennett-Wake have kind of alluded to, can we start thinking outside the box? Is there another way of doing it? I know that there's work streams being set up in light of the Oxford report. Is this something that one of those work streams could explore? Because I think that would then come back and hopefully we could make progress. Because, with respect, Rebecca, we have discussed this a few times before, as you well know. But thank you very much for your contribution. I don't think there's anything else we need to add. Thank you. And, as I say, this is just for noting, so we've noted and scrutinised it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And the next item on the agenda is the Fostering Service Annual Report. And that is Shemina Sadiq from Teams. Thank you. Thank you, Shemina. Thank you, Chair. I'm Shemina Sadiq. I'm the Fostering Service Manager, and I have oversight of the Support and Supervision Team Recruitment Assessment and the Friends and Family Connected Service. I presume everybody's had an opportunity to read the report, so I'll just share some highlights, if that's okay? That's perfectly fine. Thank you very much. Okay. So, in the financial year 2022/2023, we had 237 initial inquiries, and that led to 44 initial visits, which converted - I have to apologise, there is an error on that report. It says three approvals, which should be five approvals. So that's the conversion rate of 5%. If you compare the data for the previous two years, that is significantly low, but there was contributing factors in terms of changes in leadership. There was the crisis of Ukraine, so we lost a lot of potential Fostering households who became Ukraine hosts for families, and during that financial year, we didn't have a marketing officer. So, I just wanted to give you sort of that rationale of contributing factors, why it was low, and nationally, if you compare to other local authorities, there was also a reduction in findings of a group of foster carers, and I think that coming out of COVID made a significant contribution towards that as well. So, we had a total of 286 foster carers registered with Cheshire East, 162 of those were mainstream foster carers, and 124 were friends and family carers. In that year, we did have a total of 44 resignations, and 14 of those were mainstream foster carers, which resulted in a loss of 19 placements, and 30 of those were connected carers. Just in terms of our connected friends and family service, there has been a strong reliance on using families to place our children, and that really reflects the shortage of foster carers that we have. So, in that particular year, we had 139 referrals, which out of those 139 referrals, we completed 116 liabilities and temporary regulation 24 assessments, and that resulted in 46 approvals. Yes, that's a highlight of the report. Thank you very much. I'll open it to questions. Councillor Hayes. Thank you, Chair. Without wishing to sound like we're open record, receiving a report to March 23 isn't necessarily conducive to this committee, not just being able to provide support, challenge and accountability, but also in terms of being able to influence change. We're now, and we're two months into a current budget year, if this report was outlining significant areas of potential future expenditure, we're then stuck for another 10 months. But I appreciate that's not the fault of usually, but I do think it's something which needs that consideration. I wonder whether we prioritise enquiries and we seem to benefit from quite a significant number of enquiries through events, which I actually think is really positive. Those people are potentially turning up specifically with the purpose of enquiring about that, rather than maybe passively seeing something on Facebook and sending a message or whatever that might be, and whether we prioritise because the conversion rate appears very low. Tied into the questions I raised earlier with the Director about, as a former Prime Minister put it, statistics and lies, I find it really useful to have some comparison within this report so that we can see the Cheshire East position, but we can also see our statistical and national average position, because otherwise I'm sticking my finger in the wind, I'm not sure that it's good, bad or indifferent, and actually as part of an arbiter of quality for this provision, that weakens my ability to be able to provide that constructive challenge and accountability. It was concerning to read that there were challenges in obtaining care for children's social workers at annual reviews, and I'm fearful of how that must also reflect upon those children, a bit like a mum or a dad not turning up at parents even in an org write somewhere, but actually probably with higher stakes at play. And then there's talk about introducing, or the benefits of introducing, a third mockingbird scheme to the benefit of the north of the borough. I just wondered whether any progress has been made since this time, whether that features any corporate budget plans to be able to expedite, given the success it appears to have yielded elsewhere. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much. Shemina, are you able to take on those questions, please? Yes, so in regards to the mockingbird third consolation, we have secured DMV funding, and we have successfully interviewed a third pub carer, and we're hoping that third consolation is up and running by beginning of September 2024. Thanks. Thanks very much. I'd like to allude to what Councillor Hayes just said about not having the data from our statistical neighbours in terms of the foster carers, because like many areas, the shortage of foster carers has been something that we've discussed a lot on this committee. Do we know, I know you've expressed the fact that nationally there are challenges, but is there any local authority, which if you like is bucking the trend, that we could learn from in terms of bringing, you know, their experiences, their expertise here at all? Oh, Andrea, did you want to come in? Yes. Yes, so I think, so it's my third week in Keswick, so bear with me, but I think in relationship to fostering, of course it is a national challenge in terms of recruitment of foster carers, but there are local authorities where, for example, in my previous authority, and it will require us to really look at the offer that we have for foster carers and whether we think we've got it about like, it is a very competitive market, and whether we think we've got it about like in terms of how we recruit and we take. So I'm not sure in terms of what we're doing at the moment, in terms of the details of how we retain the ones that we've got, whether the ones that have left us that we would have rather pepped, and whether we need to do some more work with them. So I'm not saying we're not doing anything, I'm saying that I would want to be reviewing that with the head of service, over fostering, and with the support of Debuts. Just make sure we've got it about like in terms of how we might recruit, because there are things you can do, it's challenging, but there are things you can do to make it more attractive. And just picking up on a point earlier around family carers, so whilst we want to recruit more foster carers, where it is appropriate for children to retain family and collective carers, that is quite often better for them. So I think what's happening in Chester East at the moment is there's lots of work around special partnership orders and kinship assessments, which usually can be made at extending families, that's better. So the balance, getting the balance right between supporting families to look after their own children, but having a good range of foster carers to support children. But some of those are more complex children that can otherwise be in residential care, stepping them out of residential into foster care, if that can manage that need, something that we can start to consider moving forward. I hope that's helpful. Thank you very much. Councillor Bennett-Waite. Yeah, I'm just looking at the graph on page 63, looking at the age range of our foster carers seems to replicate our aging population in Chester East, the majority of our foster carers seem to be over 50. And the next thing is a woman in her fifties, and that's as far as we're going to go. It's tiring looking after children, you know, and I've also got residents who have retired from fostering their mamma in the seventies, so you go on and do a grand job for many years. Is that recruiting younger people, what are the incentives for doing that really? So I just wanted to add in terms of the comparative data that you're talking about. So we we've gone into foster for collaboration with seven other local authorities, and we have the official launch in May this year. And obviously, there's eight local authorities and we are collecting monthly data to compare in terms of the number of inquiries that are coming to each local authority and what the conversion rates are. But in addition to that, I think I can for the next report include the data from the northwest local authorities and if that would be beneficial to that would be thank you very much. Thank you. I've got I've got one question and it's about the targeted recruitment to find homes for young people who are in residential settings who want to live in the family and to find homes for young people who may otherwise go into a residential setting. And it's got here not achieved. And this action will be pulled forward to 23, 24. And then underneath the draft policies being completed, but this needs to be costed alongside an analysis of the demand for this service. I wondered if you could expand on that because being someone who is not professional in this area, I'd have thought most people would want to live in a family setting rather than a residential setting. I think there's a place for each. So every child has obviously got their own needs and fostering families is not always the right place for a child. And, based on their needs, and not every child does want to live in a fostering household and sometimes there needs to be additional therapeutic input before they can do with the fostering family. As one of the targeted recruitment, we are looking to recruit salaried foster carers, which is one of our targets to recruit five salaried foster carers who are currently in residential placements so it's stepped down from residential to a fostering placement with that support that they would need so they could live in a fostering family. Deborah, I think you wanted to come in then. Thank you chair and thank you Shemina and it's really important that this committee understands that for every child has a care plan and the care plan needs to determine what that plan for the child is for their permanence, where they need to live whilst they're in our care and that plan needs to determine that permanence plan at four months. For most children, living in a family setting is the desired outcome for most children but as Shemina said there are a small number for whom residential settings, group living or even individual living in a group setting environment is the safest and the best care plan for a period of time. But it's highly unlikely that we will have many children with a care plan for permanence in a residential setting so that exiting out of residential, that stepping down as Shemina described is really important that we explore further. We've got a target for five salaried carers, actually I think we may wish to be more ambitious than that and we do intend to bring a paper to committee to describe in detail both the costs and benefits because it will be an invest to save option. So we will be bringing a fuller paper as it is, Chair, both myself and the interim director have been in this discussion only this week. I keep saying this week and it is only Tuesday, a lot has happened. I think it was only yesterday. So I'm pleased that you've raised that, it is an ambition for us to go deeper and further and at pace because what you're seeing is not pace and I own that, I hear that and that's a really critical area for us. We will hopefully, I can't remember when the next of these committees is, I don't think it'll be the next one but it will be the one after that, bring a paper for your consideration. Thanks very much for that. Councillor Hayes. Sorry I missed one out, it's only a very short question though. The report talks about the panel being assisted by the interim panel advisor Richard Watts. Could somebody confirm whether we now have a substantive proposal for panel advisor please? Shemina do you want to take that one? Yes, so we've got a permanent panel advisor in post, it came into post September 2023. Thank you. Well thanks very much Shemina for that and for your contribution. Members this is for noting only, so no decision making to be made on this. So if we go on to the next item on the agenda is the virtual school headteacher annual report. So hand over to you Laura, thank you very much. Thank you Chair. So I'm here to present the virtual school headteacher report which details progress throughout academic year 2023. I hope you all had an opportunity to read through, I know it's quite a lengthy report with it covering the whole of the academic year. The request for today is a completed note of the annual report. During 22-23 virtual school continued to support all cardboard children and high levers of the agency, filling our duty to promote the education of children. I've picked out a couple of key highlighting points. There is an overarching requirement at the front of the headteacher report which talks about some of the highlighted points around our data, assessment and information for our children. So attendance continues to be static at around 92% between 92 and 94, which although is positive, we recognise that we need to ensure that we're supported to improve attendance for all children. And there's still a number of children with attendance that is not good enough and that we need to ensure that we are removing any barriers and understanding what they are to improve the attendance for all of our children. We've developed a new internal meeting each fortnight which myself and Annemarie support as part of that alongside both teams and that is purely around attendance so that we can track children. So we are tracking children's attendance daily and receiving daily attendance from all of our schools and settings so that we can actually really start to support the 'and so what' part of that, not just collecting the data but how can we support to actually ensure that we're improving and supporting where we can. We have not had any permanent exclusions for a number of years across our character of children, which is again a real positive. Our number of fixed term exclusions in primary again has continued to decrease but our number of fixed term exclusions within secondary continues to be a challenge, which is no different nationally. But again we recognise that we need to do more around that and we are working with our colleagues and partners, our alternative provisions within the local area to make sure that we've got the right early intervention and support in place. I've included data highlights from last summer from formal exams within the report. Again, although lots of our children achieved well, we recognise that there is still a gap in comparison to their peers and all of the children. There is a lot of data and information in comparison to cared for children across the Northwest and nationally but we recognise that there is still a gap against all children. This is going to be a key focus for us as part of our improvement plan, working with our school improvement team on some of those key areas over the next 12 months. This is aligning with our disadvantage focus area across the local authority. We've been working across the partnership to develop our improvement plan following our Oxford inspection and have developed key focus areas around education to ensure we are further strengthening our support to close the gap to be in line with peers and all of the children. Ensuring that we're working across the partnership to better prepare our children for adulthood and independence. So I'm happy to take any questions and hopefully I've picked up enough highlight points. Thank you. Councillor Hayes. Thank you, Jen. This is one such example where I can't quite correlate what this report says versus what officers are telling me. So this report appears to suggest that children's outcomes, whilst lower than national averages for the average child, are either in line or above national. Oxford Paragraph 24 says outcomes of children and care alone. I can't correspond to the two there. If I can just go forward a little bit. It talks particularly about the challenge of transition between primary and secondary and the impact upon attendance and I'd be really grateful given that breaches to our headteacher partnerships. So it's somewhere between ECAP and GISH. How we're working particularly on that work stream because that's really significant and once lost very difficult to read around. And then my other question/idea is whether the virtual school has a governing body. I know lots of other authorities have introduced a governing body for virtual schools, which means separate to this committee but to provide that much more dedicated focus upon the educational outcomes and attainment of these children, which is another layer of insight and possibly a better forum for me to ask some of the questions I've just asked. Sorry, apologies members. We're vying for the opportunity to come in on those questions, so I'm going to let my virtual school head come in and then I may make some additional comments. Thank you. Thank you. So yes, in regard to a couple of those key areas, yes we do have a governing board and we do have members as part of that governing board, so we do be in line and exactly the same as a school governing board would. We have a clerk for our governors, we cover the same, so we've been established probably for about 18 months around that and we've got across the partnership, we have members on that, so yes we do. Again we took that away from some of those good practice that we work on across the more flexible groups. Educational outcomes, as part of that comment from inspection to our report, it is around that we are above in regards of cared for children. So when we do our comparison data to cared for children, we are either in line or just above in all of those areas. What the reference to is is compared to all of the children. So our outcomes are not as good as all of the children in Cheshire East and that is where it may be referenced around that is that we need to make sure that we are clearly creating that data dashboard and information about the comparison of our cared for children to all of the children within the local authority. That's where the synergy is because you said exactly as I would have said, but actually I think you make the point really well, Councillor Hayes, and it has been made earlier, we should, I think from Councillor Holland in terms of being ambitious for our children in terms of their dental treatment, we should be comparing ourselves with all other children, not cared for population and obviously it really urged us to be more ambitious for our children and we took that as a very, very helpful challenge and are locating our data analysis much more now. Hopefully going forward you'll see more of that. We've got to be ambitious for our young people and we've got to have high expectations for them so that we can support as we would our own children. Obviously, we've also got to be mindful of their particular and specific needs and recognise some of the challenges that they have to overcome, but our job is to support them to overcome those challenges to access the education they need to have good long term outcomes. So we've taken that challenge seriously and I'm grateful for committee's attention to that point. It is about how we can be as ambitious as possible for our cared for young people. Councillor Gilman. Am I reading this correctly that of three children that were at university who got a 2-1 and one went first? So I think we need to be really careful that whilst we are very ambitious for all of our children that we don't miss the fact that some of these children are performing amazingly. Together first is a huge achievement for anyone given least of all a child that is cared for and I think we do need to be really careful that we don't miss that and that we acknowledge that and also acknowledge what we have done as a council to enable that child to do that and I think that's really important. I think quite rightly that needs celebrating. Laura do you want to come in? Absolutely crucial that we do recognise the achievement of our young people across the board. We do recognise as part of that we do link through to that annual celebration event. Also as part of that we do have increasing numbers of our young people going on to university. We are linking through with providers such as Higher Horizons to do some work on our aspirations and supporting our children to actually go and visit universities across the board. We have done that for about 12 months. We have also had some of our care leavers who have now finished university or within that they have actually come and presented in front of our schools and settings so rather than me doing that in our last couple of events that they had they have actually come and presented about how it's felt, what supported them, what did they need to really help shape that with our schools and settings alongside us rather than me presenting which I think has been really powerful to have them come and visit us. Yeah and I think that's all brilliant but we mustn't allow the Austin reports to detract from that person's personality. It's massive. I agree. Councillor Bennett-Wake. I'm just going to add here what Councillor Gildon has just said is that for children who have gone through the care system for whatever reason that is a massive achievement and I don't think we need to be, well I personally don't think we should be looking at the distance travelled these children make because it's absolutely massive. When you work with children who have not had the best start in life just coming into school, just taking the hood off is enough but to actually get a face that is absolutely phenomenal. I can never say that word but I don't know sometimes I feel like we get drawn into comparing apples with pears or whatever the analogy is that we do need to be ambitious but we can't compare someone who's come from a secure background, there's everything that they need, the love, the care, the finance if necessary, the place to live. To a child who has had to be taken away from their bare parents and looked after by a council or somebody else, another family member or whatever, the impact that has on them which is why quite rightly you say that training is so important to understand that distance travelled is enormous and we mustn't be excited about that, I quite agree with you on that. Councillor Hayes. Yeah, I absolutely take on board what you're saying and agree. I think it's about how we as the family celebrate those in the most timely and appropriate ways because whilst the star celebration is one such occasion, if I graduate in May or June it's probably a little bit lost by the time I'm potentially in my first job in November and that's not to say that it shouldn't happen but I think we've got to look at this more through the lens of their peers. If their non-care experienced peers are going to have a dinner with somebody because they've got that degree or they are, I don't know what it is, I didn't go to university, I've never experienced that myself, the point is it's about timely response and also being mindful that it could be the completion of an apprenticeship or it could be getting an apprenticeship, it could be a whole range of things but my personal view is the best way to try and look at it is through the lens of those young people because one of the things I'm always conscious of as well is not doing to, you know, we might say oh come for drinks on the lawn at Tatton with the Chief Executive and then I'd be like no thanks, how boring, with no disrespect to the Chief Executive. But the point being, I think that's maybe a missing piece of the jigsaw when it comes to participation, we're not necessarily understanding in very honest terms, this is what I want. You know, there was a time a long time ago where I was the lead member of Children's Services and I wanted to send a birthday card to each of our children in the care system at the time and there was lots of debate around the benefits and disbenefits of that and it came down to me saying ok, go and ask this group of young people and as it happened they said it's not something we're really interested in so don't bother, save my handwriting. But the point is, what don't they get the opportunity to say actually I'd really like it if, and it can't be the council's organised form, you know, T.N. Snacks with the Mayor, T.N. Snacks with whoever, it needs to be on their terms and I think on that basis we should be proceeding around that element specifically. Thank you Councillor Hayes and I think these are absolutely splendid suggestions. If I may, can we take away some of these ideas? Of course lots of these young people will have celebrations even with their birth families, with their foster families, with those who've loved and cared for them in the way that we would with our own children. But there is a point there about how do we celebrate the successes as well as focus on the areas for improvement. I guess, if I'm completely honest, I have asked my service to really focus on the areas we need to improve, not to disregard where we're making successes. But I want to flip the coin because for too long we've focused on where we've done well and actually that hasn't served us well. So the imperative for us is to improve for all of our kids and young people and that is the challenge I've posed to the wider service. But I really like your ideas and we'll take away and come back with some ideas in our next report if that's ok? I don't necessarily feel the need to see them. I just think it's useful sometimes to challenge the status quo. Thanks very much for those comments Deborah, I think they're very well said. Councillor Hollands. Yes, thank you Jack. I echo everything that everyone has said before me and in particular what Councillor Hayes was saying. I currently have two children at university and trust me, I know what they ask for and I think we should be thinking again outside the box. Concert tickets, a meal with family is great but what about, I'm not quite sure if they've been completely in our care in these circumstances with the university degrees of the two and the first but if they were, even more so, so let's reward, if we're acting as corporate parents as we would our own children, we would be being asked. I want to go to Taylor Swift tomorrow night, I want to go here. But that's what we've got to do, we've got to go and ask them what is it you would expect and they might be a bit beyond the realms of our very legal pockets currently. However it is something that we've got to think about because we should be treating them the same, we might not be able to offer that but we should be treating them the same. As you say, as Jill has mentioned, a 2/1 and a first is magnificent, it really is. Trust me, my daughter got a 2/1. The effort to get to that is unbelievable, constantly on the phone, constantly reassurance, it's unbelievable. I think we should reward it and we should congratulate the opportunity. Thank you very much members and also thank you very much Laura, I think all of us would agree that was a really interesting report. Sorry, can I just go back on two points very quickly, I'm just conscious I have to answer a couple of key things. So, Councillor Haynes raised around attendance, I just wanted to confirm I do attend Keisha and ECAF alongside colleagues, so Sally Ashworth has a service around attendance, where we are really, I suppose as part of that attendance factor. So that whole we are linked in and joined working alongside each other and are attending those spaces, so I just wanted to confirm that part and also wanted to offer as part of that that I can support my expert attachment and trauma training across if needed. We do do that with our schools and settings, virtual school we do provide, as part of that working with our EP and other colleagues, so I'm happy to take that outside of here for an action, if that would be helpful. I think all of us would thank you for that, thank you very much. This report is for noting, so if we move on to the next item on the agenda, which is review of the terms of reference. Is that for you? I think it's a paper, sorry, Councillor Haynes, sorry. I don't think it's changed significantly, my only question was going to be about whether there needed to be some element of a governance framework around some of the additional working parties, groups etc that we talked about earlier on in this meeting, just to ensure there is that reciprocal enforcement arrangement, because whilst I entirely respect that there is a need for those working parties to be a fast driving vehicle for changing progress, the pen still sits with this committee and with the elected members corporately, and thus I didn't know whether terms of reference need to reflect that in a different way, but that was my own contribution. Thank you, Councillor Haynes, and if I may, Chair, I would suggest, unless there is a constitutional reason for us needing to do, make final agreement today, I think there is some more work to be done to ensure that there is the alignment, synergy, but absolutely clarity around the sovereignty, if you like, of this board, committee. So what you do is come back with it once it's been refreshed, because obviously we've got the working group, there's work streams, etc, okay. Sorry, Councillor Haynes. Just thought of something, can I suggest something? You know like when we were saying about the concepts and something like that, because that is what young people do and do engage in, we don't necessarily have to pay for it, we can actually go to these venues and these providers and say look, we've got this, it would be a great story as well, and to say that they have their corporate responsibility, would you dedicate so many tickets per year, especially to young children. So we just need to think differently about it. Of course, the public see that we've spent 400 quid on a ticket for one. But I mean, let's face it, how many have we got? Three? It's nothing really, but I think we need to look at it from a different perspective. Sorry, it just sort of came into my mind. I think it's a really good point, and I think it's something we will take away and look at how we can get sponsorship for some elements. We are already doing that in terms of our celebration event, we're looking at how we can cover that in a more efficient way, but still have a fabulous event. But also I think we need to be recognising that for some young people who simply attend school when they didn't attend school, that means celebrating too. So it's just the small steps and the big steps, and not sort of privileging one over the other, but recognising celebrations and achievements should be marked. But the impact of that on other children when they see that one of their peers has gone to whatever it may be, a council or something that they would like to go to, that would have such a massive impact on the aspirations of those children. A quick point. Really quickly, I know when I lived in Noam's Lake, my daughter was doing GCSEs, she used to have a one project, and it was to get one grade higher, and there used to be rewards, but it was with smaller concerts, smaller rewards, and that worked really well, it wasn't that expensive, and a lot of local theatres and groups got involved. If you don't ask, you don't get them without it. Okay, so moving on, we've got the final item on the agenda, which is the Care for Children and Care Leavers Scorecard. Is this you? Sorry, Anne-Marie. Over to Anne-Marie, thank you. In line with other sort of discussions today, the members will note that the scorecard is significantly out of date, it relates to quarter three, which is actually the period which ends at the end of December. Hence, the accompanying report doesn't particularly focus on that because that data is now six months old, and I and Andrea, who's the new interim director, felt that it was more appropriate, really, to focus on our journey post Ofsted. And so the accompanying report, which I hope everybody has read, sort of just discusses really, in brief, some of the work that's been undertaken, or proposed work that's undertaken to address some of our improvement work, really. I wanted to say that one of my actions going forward from today will be to work with the colleagues in business intelligence to make sure that the scorecard reports are more timely, because I think I recognise the importance, really, of members having the opportunity to sort of scrutinise that. I also think that the work around frontline visits will supplement the information in terms of data, because as we talked about earlier in this committee, the data was strong. What we need to understand is the quality of practice, really, and I think some of those frontline visits will enhance you as members to understand the lived experiences of our children and young people, and ultimately that's what this is about, really. Many of the areas that are covered in the accompanying report have already been discussed within other reports, particularly the reports that Deborah has presented, but I open it up for any questions, really. Councillor Hayes. Not a question for saying I'm going to sound like a broken record if I've not already done so. I find the principle of being accountable for something without the levers to influence or improve said thing quite difficult. If I was a dentist, I could say, Goodness, 53% in time, I tell you what, send them to my surgery on Friday and we'll make that 75%. We as the authority are ultimately accountable, as you talked about earlier, Omri, for the entirety of the scorecard, but I find things like 4.2 and 4.3 quite difficult. And I know Rebecca's still there and I'm not expecting any further debate or discussion on it, but I think there needs to be more regular opportunities for health partners to have their papers here, and I don't wish to duplicate governance with what the ICB sees. But I think it's really important that we see it too, because we're being held to account for this, we are the corporate parent of these children, and actually I've got very limited levers of influence or control over whether these children are or aren't getting SDQs and dental checks within the right time or not. And it ties back into, as you've referenced Omri, the agility of the system, having been on improvement journeys primarily in smaller organisations, the improvement journey itself is often not the problem, it's the governance arrangements keeping pace with the improvement journey to ensure consistency. And I'm really concerned as an overarching point today that we could work at great pace, but if we don't keep that pace with it, there'll be an uncertainty and a disparity as to whether that pace can be sustained, whether those improvements can be recognised. And I think I've not got the answer, unfortunately, but I think it needs a bit of a critical eye as we work on that improvement plan as to how we can move forward in the most timely manner. I'm not asking for things a week after it's been published, for example, but 12 months after it's been published seems a long time. But also without, and it's a point I've raised that either these or children promised me this previously, without it becoming either duplicated or overburdensome and taking officers away from my responsibility of actually delivering the improvement rather than talking about delivering the improvement. Did you want to comment on that one? Hopefully to reassure you, even whilst this committee has been sort of operational, there's been some communication with colleagues within the ICB to talk about exactly this really. So it's not just the ICB, it's also the fostering report. It's making sure that across the board our reports are more timely and offer you as members the opportunity to scrutinise in a way that's most meaningful really. Data that's six months old isn't any use to anybody really. It shows the history essentially really. So that has been duly noted and I think we will at pace, as Deborah says, take that forward and make some amendments in terms of how we look to present that. That may be that we ask for regular attendance by colleagues from ICB, the fostering service, so that we have a more regular update even if it's not the full report but there's something there for members to be able to scrutinise. Councillor Posner. Yes, I mentioned this in the Children and Families Committee. How confident are we that this scorecard actually reflects, we've all just been talking about the whole committee, the voice of the children within the system, also getting ourselves to that operating. Is any of this actually being, is it relevant, is it getting us along the journey quicker or is it just because, I don't know the answer to that and I don't know what will help us but it might be looking at it holistically and finding out what will make us better. What really matters here because some of the things on here I look at and I'm not convinced that it will make a difference and we should be overly concerned to be putting it on the scorecard but that's in your capable hands I'm sure. I understand what you're saying Councillor Posner and for background, I guess, the scorecard is made up of data that we are statutorily required to submit in returns to the government on an annual basis and the majority of our scorecard is made up of that data. We do add to it some localised data that we can find some benchmarking material to assist but it is primarily the statutory returns. Does data in itself make a difference? We know that our data in many areas is as good as good or outstanding local authorities so it's on its own, it's not sufficient so it has to be that end diagram of data and quality evidence that may be auditing, that may be spending time with the child, that may be spending time looking and understanding the child's story. in different ways that helps us understand whether this is good enough. So yeah, on itself it's not good enough, it doesn't help you. What I think we can do more of is to develop the reporting on the back of the data to add some of that quality information so I think that we don't tell you enough about quality assurance, we don't tell you enough about auditing activities. And for example I spent the afternoon with the Care Leaders team a couple of weeks ago, I looked at the stories for two young people, I heard about the input from the PAs, the personal advisors, I heard about a young person who was invited, some of you have heard the story, invited to Christmas dinner with that PA and there was something there that was about qualitative activity. I didn't look at the numbers but what I heard was about a relationship that was making a difference, this was a young man who was in an apprenticeship who at times struggled and phoned up the PA and said heck what am I going to do now and she was able to advise. So we do need to give you some of that qualitative information but that isn't just about telling you the good stuff because we can pick out some superb and that's those deep pockets of great practice that we've seen but those pockets need to spread and infect our system. So we need to tell you about where it's not good enough and where those young people are sitting in accommodation that isn't meeting their needs so that you understand that in a richer and more transparent way. So I think that we will commit to make sure that our report sits with the data because the data is important because we can really number crunch and look to make those improvements and look at those margins and those percentages who aren't having their needs met more specifically and we can get into the child level data once we know who those 5% are. So I think that can be our commitment to you and then I hear that you support us developing the frontline visiting program and we'll be able to use that as well. So it's about triangulating all the data sets that we've got to be richer and more transparent. Yeah, I recently went on a frontline visit with Councillor Bailey and that's why sometimes when I look at the facts and figures and actually talk to the people that are frontline they don't correlate at all but I'm preaching to the converter that everybody appreciates that percentage does not rely on what goes on and the hard work that's put in by the teams. Andrew, I think you wanted to come in at one point. OK, thank you. I don't want you to think I was ignoring you. Thank you. Councillor Bennett-Wake. Yeah, I just want to say to say maybe we didn't do that quite right, we made a mistake on that journey of how we approved it and I think that would really, because I'm not a figures type of person, tables type of person, I love those case stories in your report and that's what makes a really big difference to me. Even getting the young people or the PAs to come and tell us a story or video and make their own story and I'm giving you more work to do but I think it just makes it more accessible and to understand the difficulties. Thank you. Councillor Hayes. I think it's also about using us as elected members as a resource, particularly through frontline visits so whilst you might not have an afternoon every term to go and do what you just described around spending an afternoon hearing it directly, or actually we could, and it's an incredibly rich data source and similarly, I appreciate I sit here and some people might sigh and think oh here he goes again. I'd rather you hear the question from me than from somebody outside who we've shipped up by and naturally it provides me with that reassurance that we do know what's going on here, there is that clarity around where we're at and also where we need to be. And I think it's just about, I talked earlier about raising the bar across the whole system and that includes us as elected members as well. Okay, thank you, thank you very much. That was for noting and providing scrutiny and I think again I think we've, I think this Ofsted report to be honest has focused our minds on not only the improvements that we need to make but also on us as members on what contribution we can make and I certainly think we've come up with some good ideas today, which hopefully we can then work on together and collaboratively. Thank you. Laura. Sorry Chair, I was just going to take this opportunity if possible. Our care forum and care leavers, Venturi and Carpeting have got an event on Thursday. They're raising money as part of the sponsorship for the homeless. They decided to do that as a community event. It's our Venturi and Carpeting programme for artists who are meeting with people at the Lylesdale Centre from 8 to 8 in group row and any support, I'm sure they would be absolutely appreciative of that. George. That raises a really useful point actually. So two administrations ago I used to sit on the fire authority and what the fire authority is incredibly good at is inviting you to everything with no great expectation that you'll always turn on. But one of the most powerful things they used to invite us to was the Prince's Trust graduation programmes and aligned to using members as resources, those such things but not just exclusively those things. The worst we can say is no. Thank you very much. That draws the meeting to an end. Thanks everybody for coming. Thank you very much.