Childrenâs Services & Education Scrutiny Board - Tuesday 21st May 2024 6.00 pm
May 21, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
As this is the first meeting of the new municipal year, we're going to start the agenda with the election of the chairman. Do we have any other nominations, please? No. No other nominations? OK. Thank you for that and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of the new members. This is a challenging committee because this is the number one priority for the council. I guess that, an economic stability, maybe go hand in hand, but it is certainly up there on a very short list of really high priority items and historically we've been able to, I think, add some value over the last couple of years by asking questions and on occasions making recommendations. So that is our key role and generally we try and work as a team and sort of idea of the between us. So my first thing to do is to ask for nominations for the vice chairman position and if I could have nominations, please. Could I nominate David Cole, please? Thank you. Do we have a seconder? Thank you. Do we have any other nominations? I know David Cole is willing to accept the position and he does offer his apologies for the time, but that's the next item on the agenda. OK. So David is elected as vice chairman. Apologies, please. Apologies received from Councillor Colle, Councillor McCarthy is there as a substitute. We also have Councillor Wilson joining us online tonight, although I'm not sure if she's logged in yet, so we'll keep a look out for her when she joins. I've had late apologies and asked to give them from Councillor GROOM. Yes, I think Ben suffers from work-related challenges on occasions, doesn't it? Yes. Trying to save our water supplies I think. Oh, yes. Yes, you're not Alison. Thank you, Councillor. Do we have any decorations of pecuniary or conflicting interest? Councillor Colle, just to say that I sit on the board of governors at Salihal College until the end of this. Thank you. Any others? No. Thank you for that. Minutes of the last meeting, now some of us were there and some of us weren't. Seems like a long time ago now, March. Are we content with the minutes? Councillor KA. Thank you. We discussed the family hubs and the opening times during the minutes. I've just checked on the Councillors, sorry, the evergreen hub and it still says still to open on the website. Is that in fact the case? Councillor Hamilton. It's part of my way, it's open because I visited the Smith Road one last week and I was informed it was open. I know an officer who does know Ruth. Yes, so there's a phased opening going on at the moment, so we will be keeping the website update as things go live. We've got some sites open, some where the work's still been completed but we'll make sure that we circulate the up-to-date details as they're coming through. Councillor KA, were you saying that the website is actually saying it's not open at? Councillor interjecting. All right. So I think there's just a little task to take away if you could. Councillor Roff. I wasn't there but I have picked up two errors. It shows that I read them just saying. On page 11, page 7 of those minutes in the very bottom section, I think it should be September 23 in the third sentence, third line. Councillor KA focused an alternative provision and it's a bit above. Yes, unless we're reading into the future, yes, we're all spotted. And then page 13, you've got that. Yeah, page 13, section 9, second paragraph, quarterly basis, not basis. Sorry, I'm turning into my mother. We're all spotted. Everybody now content with a minute. Yes, thank you. Questions and deputations, do we have any, this evening? I'm done with each other. Right, so we now move to the first substantive item on the agenda and I'm extremely pleased to welcome Councillor Grintel, who has a reputation for making things happen. And I hope that this will be a very productive period of time as we move into, let's say, the second phase of the program for the enhancement of children's services. Councillor Grintel, if you could, I know you've only been in post-free, very, very short period of time, but if you could give us some overview of what your thinking is and the key purpose of that is, is there anything that we missed on the work program that we should be looking at? And if you have any views on our work program, we'd like to hear those when we get to that page on the agenda. Thank you. Well, thank you, Chair, and thank you for the compliment. I hope I live up to your high standards of children, of these children's scrutiny board. So I'm really pleased to be here and thank you for inviting me this evening. I guess it would be fair to say that children's have gone, are going on a big improvement journey and we've started that improvement journey and we can see it. We're under a lot of scrutiny, regular monitoring, so that's happening. And I hope that you can see from the most recent Austin reports that that improvement is evident. So that improvement plan is firstly key priority, ensuring that we've got quality and consistency in our social work practice. So in terms of priorities, obviously we've got the child protection side and then we've got the education side. So we do the monitoring visits and we are very open and honest and we can see where we need to make improvements, but we have plans for those. Some of the work, I think, it's all children's services big priority. So I'm not going to say that anything is a bigger priority than another, but yes, getting our front door right is always going to be first and foremost. So those families and children coming into service, we have to make sure that we have a timely response and we're responding in the right way. So that education service, so you've already mentioned family hubs, that is absolutely key and key to us getting the service right. Our emergency duty team, they need to respond in the right way out of ours to make sure we're doing that. You'll have seen in previous, well last year, I took on the corporate parenting approach, I want to develop that. We want to look at the community parenting. So you've all heard the old saying it takes a village to raise a child. We're all involved in this. It's not one person's responsibility. Solihull has a collective responsibility about how we look, raise and look after our children. So we get that right, hopefully they get that right into adulthood. And I know that's probably a wide sweeping statement to make, but we've got to get the basics right. Placements, getting the right placements for children, I had, as you've said, I've only been in post for a week, I had the pleasure of firstly visiting, well the three things, let me tell you three things and then they're vital to the improvement journey. Met the, met some of our children's teams, people that are at the front line, really, really good experience. We've got experience staff who really care. People say don't care, but they do and I could see it when I met them. So we have to ensure that they are supported. I then went on to visit, oh no, started with the opening, looking at our first children's home, that was great. And that's one thing, another priority, we've got to, we've got three that we want to open. The first one is almost ready, just waiting for the offstead visit. And then I went on to meet foster carers who have fostered for 44 years. Now that takes a lot and that is something that's really good and I could see in them what I'd want, I want to share that knowledge with everybody. So if we can find more foster carers, that's another priority too. Meeting and talking to our children last, when was it now? Probably January I met with our Rovos team and the children. So understanding and hearing the voice of children, that has got to be a priority too. Hearing what they are saying about the services that they receive. So then we go on to the education side of things, looking at that whole youth offending service, education of vulnerable children, send transformation program, our specialist provision, you've all heard that we've just had the acknowledgement and the confirmation that we're getting the funding for another 150 plays school. That is brilliant and that's huge for us. So making sure that is nailed down, we know where the site is. So that will be in development. Yeah and as I say our special educational needs, transformation, programme, making sure our children with special education needs are assessed in a timely way and then we find the right places for them to be schooled. I think one I haven't put on the list of those children that are homeschooled. That might be an area that wants to take a better look at and understand that we've got eyes on the children who are learning at home and are they to the right standard. But that is an extra off the cuff addition. As you can see I've got pages and pages of what I could talk about. There's a lot to do, there's a lot for us to do and to look at. And underpinning all of that is ensuring that we have the funding to do it all. And I'd like us to have a money tree at the end of the road but we haven't. So we have to do that within a financial envelope but we deliver the best services that we can. That's a run through of a lot of priorities and I guess but it is obviously on the safeguarding side and the education side. I continue to work with house colleagues because we've got a whole health side of things we're working in partnership. We don't do this alone. So I'll leave it there chair. You may have questions but happy to help with the work plan when we get to it. Thank you chair. I should declare with it I'm on foster care. And I'd be interested to know what we're doing to find new foster care. We take every opportunity really to find foster carers. We've had a big push on this but we wherever there's an event going on the foster care team are out there. So you've probably seen them in touchwood. You've probably seen them at events whether it's Dorridge Day or I don't know Shirley Park, there's a festival, there's a summer fest. They're going to be at summer fest. Anywhere that we are coming into contact with our residents to promote fostering and ultimately adoption we hope if that's the right thing for people. So we take every opportunity that we can. Actually when I was talking to the foster, the couple that had fostered for 44 years, I want them to share their experience and show people how rewarding it can be. They went on to adopt three of the children that they had with them over the years. Hopefully the young person that is with them right now will also stay with them. So they're planning to retire. So I think they've got a lot to give and a lot to share. So if we can help people share that, we will. I also want to look at if we can become a foster friendly borough and I've challenged the health service to find a foster friendly policy as big employers, what can they do for their staff. So we have lots of ways of reaching people but to try and encourage people to do it. Colleagues might want to add anything I've missed. Just to add to that, last year we ran a specific initiative working with a firm to really promote fostering in the social media as well. So in addition to all the things that have already been mentioned and we're actually quite successful. I think we recruited nine additional families last year which is significant increase to what we've done in previous years. So a good start really that we want to continue to build on. Before I move on Councillor HAMMOND, a point of clarification, you will come out to community events with a, I think that's probably something Councillors should note because we all have community events and if they are willing, the organisers, then we can contact you and see whether there's a fit. Right, thank you. Councillor HAMMOND. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Grensall. Did I, I don't know whether I heard it completely when you said about the new school which obviously we've all heard about the New Sands School for 150 places. Did you say you had a sight in mind? We do, yes. We choose, I think it's common knowledge, isn't it, is it common knowledge? Sansu Si in Shirley. Thank you. And can I just vote you on when you mentioned a letter from a letter of education, I think it's important that we look at that again as a scrutiny board? Yes. Can you hold that thought for when we get to that item on the agenda because we will be looking for additional things, so that's valuable, thank you. Any other questions, Councillors? I have one. I don't know how many people have read the latest review of the Arthur case, which was something that was commissioned by this authority to try and get underneath what actually happened and see if there's any learning points. If you haven't read, Jennifer, we just did make sure that everybody has a copy. It is an incredible, simple read, and it's incredibly well done. I just want to make the link in there to your, the first thing that you mentioned was social work practice. At some point, can we have some explanation of how you're going to get there of improving that practice? This is, I suspect, like pushing rocks up hills in the Sisyphus way. It is a never-ending task, but is that something that you can explain to the board in a fairly simple way, is it working in our work program for us to understand? Yes, if I could just pick it up and then perhaps that can feed into the work plan discussion. So, the improvement plan that we often talk about really is based on the learning of both the national review that looked at Arthur's story, and I'll sort of add a little bit about this review at the end. But also, we then had, of course, the offset inspection, and we had the JTA inspection. So, there were a lot of messages around what needed to improve, and as you know, we have a very significant improvement plan, which is both around addressing the quality of our processes and our governance, and that we feel we've made a lot of progress on already, but in parallel with that really improving the quality of practice. And what we can see, what we, the messages we're getting back from our monitoring visit is that we're making good progress on that. So, that by no means means that we're there. It is a continuous work in progress, and it's about social workers' understanding and having the right tools to do the job, our approach to restorative practice, which gives them an approach to practice, where the effectiveness is evidence quite well, good supervision, so that social workers can reflect on what they do, and good management systems, and that includes the KIM report, so that's our data information along with a whole range of audits that really dig very regularly into the quality of practice. So, the whole, if you like, the whole sort of improvement infrastructure is all about picking up those messages and improving the quality of practice, and then, of course, very specifically in terms of the national review and the messages that are in the unique report. We've completely remodeled the way the MASH works, which was some of the criticisms around agencies working in isolation. They're very much now work as a team. Some elected members have had a chance to visit the MASH to see that in action and really see different agencies talk about what that looks like in practice. Our partnerships are now very strong, and so is our safeguarding partnerships, and those were some of the things that really have already started are very much progressing. Now, we've obviously looked at the messages from this review, and they very much match the messages from the national review, but I think give us some additional opportunities to revisit some practice issues, and if I can just mention a few so that people get a bit of a feel of what we've already got in train as a result. So, there is a section there that looks at, in which case, social workers should or should not physically examine children in some of those visits and whether how far that should go and what the guidance should be. We think there's more to be done on guidance around that, but also around guidance around using medical, using medical examination and the experts rather than social workers making judgments around medical issues. A lot of our practice standards, I think we can reinforce using the learning from this review and also the whole issue around doing even more around management oversight, particularly at the point where perhaps families no longer wish to cooperate or don't want our support. In many ways, quite within their rights to say they don't want the support because of the statutory timescale may not have been reached, but actually that decision to make a risk assessment of can we safely close this case, or can we not take it into account all of the circumstances. It's something we want to look at again. We think we've made a lot of progress on. And linked to that, it's also consistently reinforcing the need to triangulate for our staff, so never to rely on just one source of information, but always look across and particularly then the wider family. So I think the themes from the report that has come out recently, as you say, it was the Chief Executive who decided that he really wanted to understand local practice and for that reason commissioned the independent report. I think we can, to an extent, be reassured that a lot of those changes have already been made, but it helps us just to revisit and recheck some of the key issues. Thank you. And if members haven't read it, I would suggest that you do. The impression I got two years ago was that the social workers, either interface workers, had missed loads of stuff. This report is actually nowhere near as simple as that, and actual fact that it kind of says they did the right thing. It was other failings that it resulted in the missed opportunity. Of course, it's the parents who were responsible. They did the deed, not the social workers, not Sally Hull, not the police, but our role as a council, of course, is to do our best to stop these things ever escalating that far. But it is a lot easier to understand this report than the national one. And I can now understand how the social workers missed there were bruises on the back, because this actually shows you why they missed them. And I don't think anybody would have seen them. And I find it really interesting. So some of the messages are really quite interesting. Sorry, Councilor Long. Thank you, Chair. It's not to do with that. It's really coming back to Councilor Grinson. Firstly, thank you for the summary. I'm new to this board. That was a really helpful list of issues that are key to this area. I just wanted to touch on one. You mentioned the send transformation program and also home schooling issues. There's clearly people waiting for the send assessment. And as you say, to speed up that process or get things done in a timely conclusive manner is really important. But how do we, to what extent or how do we manage those that are waiting in that process? And I guess this is where the sort of home schooling comes in, to what extent we understand how many of those that are getting homeschooled is because they've not been able to stay in school and get forced out. Yeah, it is. And I suppose if some of the children are also still in school, it's having that working relationship with the schools that they are attending or should be attending. So it's building up that picture. But I said, the only reason I added in the bit about home schooling is because those numbers would have gone up through the pandemic. So it's really assessing where the children are right now and make sure that we are doing that. And if we can help get children back to school in a supported environment. And if that works for the child, for the family, it's the right environment to be back in mainstream school. If not, then they're assessed for other provision. And it's, yeah, getting those assessments done in a timely way. We are getting those waiting lists down. They're coming down. So I think that is improving. Councillor? Councillor interjecting. Back on the colour education angle, in terms of school relationships and school inclusion, what's currently taking place to help schools support increased school inclusion, particularly those children you are, perhaps waiting for a HCP who are, perhaps on the cusp of another tending, what are we going to place at the moment around support of that left-around offer for inclusion? Or that might be for Ruth or Fabiette? Happy to pick someone up. So again, coming back to the work programme, it might be helpful to go through the whole STEM transformation programme because that will pick up a number of the issues that members have raised. I think school inclusion is a really, really important priority. And obviously, we're working very closely with headteachers and those of you that are on the school forum. We'll see some of that in action. But I think the key thing is supporting, we are seeing high levels of need, high levels of need being managed in school. So actually, making sure that schools are equipped to manage that. And we've got children what we say in the right place, at the right time. But part of the work that's being done through that STEM improvement, the transformation programme is around can we skill up schools so that they're able to routinely manage things alongside the best of them. So we know some schools are incredibly good at doing it, others perhaps less so. So we're part of a programme called delivering better value and part of that is putting resource in so that we can be scaling up the schools and working with them so that they are able to manage more of those children. But may well be something we want to look at that whole programme in detail over the course of the year. You just add on to that reason for May. But will that also include that input of the health offers or particularly access to therapy, access to mental health support as well as that kind of public health up around offer as well? Good to add into that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So one thing again, some members will be aware of this others won't. We have put in place the Sun Transformation Board. It's just multi-agency so that includes senior leadership from the ICB, from education, Soli or Parent Care Forum, as well as the Council and what that's really intended to do is make sure that we've got that multi-agency response in place and obviously health waiting times. We know it's very challenging across the country, it's very challenging locally. So in our last meeting we were looking at what are the detailed steps that can be put in place both to manage the waiting list but also we don't refer to waiting well. I know some areas do but support whilst waiting. So again there is an offer in place to support children and families while they're waiting but a lot more work to be done to both manage the waiting list but also make sure that we are unable to intervene early and we're working with Health to do that. I've taken a note of the Sen transformation program and put it down for, I think we probably need to include it in our work plan. I don't think it's there in the same way as it was being talked about just now. There's quite a lot of, yeah. Any other questions on this section at the moment before we move on to effectively the measures of the matter and the progress to date? Because I think if we go through that then we'll have all the information we need to actually finalise the work program for the year. Move on. Be able, would you like to present the report? Actually by the way this is so much easier to read. I don't know if everybody else thinks that who was here last year is this is so much easier to read. Thank you very much for that. I used to be on this board years and years ago in our back and then I asked repeatedly if there was any chance at all of a glossary at the back of the report because you use acronyms all the time that normal lay people like me who don't work in education, having to clue what you're talking about. There's one page where I actually highlighted it because I didn't understand the entire section because it was all acronyms. So either on each page or at the back so that we actually understand what it is you're trying to tell us would be really helpful. Thank you. Okay I think that's a fair comment and I think sometimes we forget. So point well made and we'll take that away. What I was going to say is I'm quite aware that there will be some new members who might not have seen this sort of report and some members who are very familiar with it. So what we've already said is we will offer some sessions for elected members just to go through the background in a little bit more detail because what we're proposing to do with this report is that you will see it every time we have a meeting but at some meetings we will spend time actually going through it in a bit more detail and at other times it would be really for you to ask questions or to raise issues with us just to make sure it doesn't dominate every meeting and you then don't get a chance to have a focus on some of the other matters. So what I'm proposing to do is I'm proposing to give you some headlines from this report but as I say there will be an opportunity to have a more detailed briefing about why are we using these measures and what do they actually mean. What I do on the first page, first proper page, second page of the presentation is just to draw your attention to some of the key things that I think are worthy of highlighting from the data because of course there is a lot of information in each of the slides and then each of the slides looks through the journey of the child. So really from the start of children first contacting safeguarding and children in care services and then their journey through the system all the way to becoming children who are looked after and some of the key measures. Why? We think this particular measure is important. What are the trends? So what does this month figure tell you and how would we interpret that and then if there is either a drop in performance or an unusual spike or something that seems different from what we would be expecting, what are we actually doing about it and that's our approach to each of these slides. So if you look at the executive summary what this presentation or this performance report tries to do is trying to pick indicators that are really about compliance but could be also seen as proxy indicators for something a bit more than that. They start to give us a window into practice and that's why they're chosen. There were some dips in performance in the December and January data and what we're finding is that that has been brought back up to sort of roughly where we want performance to be on most of the data. There are two areas where we had concerns and they are picked up in the next two bullet points and of course the first one already has this acronym ICPCs. That is the abbreviation for initial child protection conferences. So it's the time between an investigation taking place because somebody raises a concern about the safety of a child and the multi-agency meeting taking place that really looks at does this child need to be protected through a child protection plan? There is a standard for the time that should take. It should take 15 days. If it's outside of that time then we have concerns around does the child potentially remain unprotected for too long? So that's an important measure. That had dropped but it has significantly improved again and we're really focusing off that area of work to make sure that all of the parts of the process are in place to make that happen because it's not just about do we have chairs for the conference and do we have the right space to have the conference. It's also about do the teams who carry out the investigation quickly make a decision on whether we need a conference if they make the decision do they have the right process in place to notify and are those notifications processed quickly. So there are a number it might seem straightforward but there are a number of components of that and when we do work on particular indicators it tends to be looking at each of the different components to see whether one or the other gets in the way of making it happen and then really addressing those. So that's what happened in this particular case where the issues seem to be with getting the notifications to the chairs in a timely way. Re-referrals are important to us because it suggests that we close the case but the concerns weren't sufficiently addressed and actually led to a professional usually a professional or a family member contacting us again to re-refer a child into the service. So when we saw that re-referral spiked a couple of months ago we really started to look at why that is and we've done a focused piece of work and we can report back on that at a future meeting around why we think re-referrals have gone up and what we're doing about it. So what this month's report tells you that they've started to come down again but they're not at the level where we want them to be. So with as with any of this data it just allows us to ask questions, it doesn't have the answers, it tells us to go away and do some more work so so we understand what's happening. The next bullet point is around our children in care numbers, the numbers of children we have in care, you can compare ourselves with other local authorities by using a per 10,000 ratio so that you're comparing like with like, you're basically looking at the number per 10,000. We also look at total numbers in in Solihull. Our numbers per 10,000 are much higher than you would expect them to be and then that they need to be. So a lot of our work is to look at our children in care figures to make sure that the right children who could leave care are unable to leave care so that they can either be adopted or if they're already living at home under a care order we go back to the court to discharge those care orders because we only want children in care who need to be in care and those children who no longer need to be in care shouldn't have the intrusion of local authority intervention so we should enable them to safely exit care. We also look at children coming into care and whether they really need to come into care and Councillor Grinsell was already talking about the edge of care service we now have so we can help family in crisis rather than a child having to come into care in a crisis we can we can help families in those situations so we can either make a proper plan if that child really needs to come into care or we can help the family over the crisis to learn to come the situation and to be assured that actually that child can be safely parented within that family. So those numbers what you will see is that our plan is to get closer to where we should be in terms of the West Midlands average and our numbers are slowly coming down from a high of 580 back in November and finally the point I wanted to draw your attention to from the figures in front of you is the issue of our workforce and workload. Workloads really important because if workloads of our social workers are too high then they're not able to do the job properly so we we monitor workload really closely to ensure that that it is stable which is the case and that's what one of the slides shows that it's broadly stable. We still have more agency staff than we would like to because recruitment of social workers of experienced social workers is extremely challenging it's a very very competitive market and it is quite difficult to recruit experienced social workers so our approach to workforce has been very much the grow our own approach we offer significant numbers of posts to newly qualified social workers every year who we support very intensely through their first year and then offer further developments through years two and three so they can become the experienced workforce of the future and we then backfill with agency staff to make sure that their their workload is significantly lower than somebody who would have an experience who has the experience to manage the normal workload. Those are the key messages from these figures and I would suggest that perhaps at a future meeting when when people have had the chance to to perhaps go to the briefing if you don't yet really fully understand the indicators perhaps do that first and then just answer questions today but I can be guided by what members of the committee want me to do in terms of any further detail of any of the slides. One of the things that I've having said that I do want to mention is on slide page 26 of the pack which is headed quality assurance it's probably one of the indicators that gives more of an insight into what the quality of practice is like excellent point well made so what what that says in if you took all of those acronyms out is that every single manager within children services has been put through the practice leaders development program the last two well the last session the last cohort actually has their session next week and that's the DCS that's me the AD's that's the assistant directors and the heads of service and but yes we have really put a lot of acronyms in there but one of the measures we took to really ensure that our managers have the right training and the right skills given how important it is that our staff get the right oversight and supervision is for every single manager in the in the authority to have the opportunity to go on this nationally recognized program which is called the practice leader development program that and that that was we managed to get funding for that for from the department for education because it was considered to be a really important part of the our improvement journey what the what that graph shows you and on the left is the result of our well the grades that we're found in our audits so every other month well within a two-month period every senior manager from from team manager upwards so team managers heads of service assistant director and the director undertook a case file audit which is a very detailed audit about how the case was conducted how the case was supervised whether the plans are robust whether the interventions making a difference it includes a direct conversation with a social worker it includes a direct conversation with a parent or with a child if we can if we can persuade the child to talk to us and that we bring all of that together and then as the order to make a judgment whether we think if an offset inspector looked at this would they grade the case as inadequate requires improvement good or outstanding and what you can see in those graphs is that the over the year the gradings and what you can see in the latest February March audit is that the the number of inadequate audits in in in this in this batch of audits has reduced certainly from when you look back at some of the the initial audits last year that the the the line for the requires improvement audit is has the majority of cases 58 and we have about as many good cases as we have inadequate cases now as we move forward what we would want to see is the green bar to start to come up more good audits and the red bar to go right down so that we have very few inadequate audits and the requires improvement audit in time to be lower than the then the good audit so this is this is really giving a bit of an overview of what practice looks like in our view and in the service at the moment so perhaps I'll pause and and just take any questions or any more detailed observations also thank you and firstly I think it's really clear to say there's a steady improvement and I think both here in the report and also in the recent one to visit the roster I think it's really good to seem down to leadership and and shoot hard work from the staff um clock questions if I may um on the placements um slide emergency placements how many of those are they at the moment in the system and what arrangements do you have in terms of prior decision making for the registered placements and again on on that slide as well um the fostering clearly an increase do we have a target around what the ambition is to increase foster placements um so the question on the next one um care levers who are in appropriate education, employment and training and note there's a there's an issue potentially on the recording of the status of that child's education and permanent training is there any connection around um being in touch with those care levers and there's that's a problem um back again to quality assurance slides and again it's good to see that we'd gradually increase I'm sure it will increase over time around the percentages we don't actually have the numbers undertaken so we say it's 20 with 21 percent of 10 or 100 and I'm sure that'll be really useful to have both of those figures if we may in in future um and the final question is this is clearly a very helpful set of improvement measures but we don't have the improvement plan I'm sure it's a crossover to the improvement plan targets in the year but it would be good to understand out of here what are in the improvement plan and also can we request a copy to give any people like me a couple of people but will be really helpful to try track I'll stop there so I hope I have remembered on recorded all your questions correctly and I might have to just um draw on the expertise of some of my colleagues behind me for the detail um unregistered placements we we we usually have between four and six I think at the moment we have four yes um they are very closely monitored on a weekly basis um I think two of those children actually when they turn 16 those will become legal placements and they're very settled so we may not for all of them wish to move those children but where we think that the arrangements are unsatisfactory or their younger children we're very proactive in ensuring that we find the right placements for them and there is a whole um we have a commissioning team who absolutely proactive in contacting hundreds of providers when we when we need placements to um to see what's on offer and and whether we can find a good match and of course now that our own children's homes are opening that is another option for us if it's the right thing for for those children in terms of the fostering um target um our target was I believe nine which we achieved or it might have been slightly lower um last year because it was a new initiative for us we worked with bright sparks to um to achieve this um I don't know what the target is for this year but I would expect a similar um target as we had for last year but we can confirm that unless colleagues know what the target is for this year so last year it was um nine we actually um approved nine families it could take the 12th place so someone was saying um some of our families could take more than one child and it's two I believe it could be the first part of this period okay um care levers Carol um Carol is covering for Rachel hence um some of some of the me deferring to her for some of the detail thank you um for um councilors who don't know me I'm carried out on the assistant director for improvement for children services and so the each question was one that we had at the last meeting we had um which I can't remember which month it was March um we do know um that we're under representing the number of children that we've currently got in employment education training you're quite right with your question um which was about we have a recording issue um so what we're doing is a bespoke piece of focused work within that particular area which is our um children looked after and care experience area in order to make sure that the data is correct so happy to bring that at the next focus meeting or indeed um once we know the dates for when people would like to come and have a more detailed discussion about the data and how we collect it I'm happy to discuss it there okay um the file audit I believe it's 40 we do every month I shouldn't have tried should I um so they they're they're not massive numbers but it's the it's making sure that we're using um the sort of team manager upwards to actually get some consistency in in in the judgment and also get good compliance um on completing the audits and we can we can absolutely put that in the text along with the um looking at the use of the acronyms um could I just come in there so we have 30 audits that we're reporting on here but we also have a schedule all over the whole year to respond to anything that we see that comes out of the actually the audits um so for example we've just done a deep dive around strategy meetings which aren't held in the front door so if we see something that comes out from our auditing then we do bespoke so there's a separate schedule um and we do an overview of all the audits we do in each area of practice so from the front door into safeguarding and support into our children looked after they also do remote sampling on a monthly basis so it's a whole system approach again more than happy to describe some of that in more detail um if people wish so in terms of the improvement plan we do as you as you said have a very detailed improvement plan and we're happy to circulate that to to member so um we'll do that through Gemma so so you've got the latest iteration of our improvement plan and what might be helpful is what we what we usually do when we've got this as the the main topic for discussion at a screw to your meeting we also provide an update on pro on keep a progress against key improvement projects so it would probably be useful for you to have those two documents together and then we can have the the full discussion i think i've covered it thank you council wilson welcome and i think you have a question yes thank you thank you thank you for the for the report um again it really and it gives me a good understanding of what is happening and do you have a particular question about cases and allocation of cases so um i understand from what you said and thought we know that recruiting and entertaining experienced social workers of the challenge how then do you allocate cases in terms of or in relation to the complexity of each case so is it a presume they don't you know presume they don't come in order of complexity so if one comes tomorrow how do you ensure that the right experience can then be matched to the complexity of the case given that they will already have a case load and they you might have a new member of staff or an agent team member of staff available how do you manage that particular situation so as as you've said and as we've discussed um we have our own we we have our own permanent staff and we have agency staff what we do is we ensure that the um we have the right number of agency staff and they they are the staff who are experienced so we obviously the newly qualified staff are permanently employed with us as we developing them so we have a weekly um panel where if if a team feels that their case loads are getting unmanageable and they need an additional member of agency staff they can they can ask for permission to recruit an additional member of agency staff to make sure that the the case loads are always at the right level and when managers allocate cases obviously the the to ensure that um the complexity of the case matches the experience of the the the member of staff is the key consideration so you wouldn't allocate a very complex um uh case to a newly qualified member of staff unless you might sometimes jointly allocate so that newly qualified member of staff would get the experience from jointly working with an experienced member of staff okay is it my am I correct in understanding that people register for their as um like their official social work registration on the beginning of their training and they they may be qualified it may take them if they did a part turn offs at another role you know four years to qualify and therefore they might be newly qualified after four years of registration is that possibly the case i'm just trying to work out what what's the definition of somebody who is experienced um okay so uh you can you can only become a registered social worker once you've completed your training your placements um and you've basically passed all the academic and practical work that's required um and that's when you when you register with with social work England you then allow to call yourself a social work and then you can be allocated work as a qualified social worker um there is it that it's it's not a sort of definition a hard and fast definition around when when do you become an experienced social worker what we try to do with our newly qualified staff is is give them a range of experience to make sure that you know they've they've seen the journey of the child they've had opportunities to do different parts of the um the child's journey and as they're gathering that experience they've they continue to build on it uh so so i would say that most of our experienced social workers would have at least two or three years experience and certainly be passed there then newly qualified um you know they're they're sort of initial two or three years supported as newly qualified staff that's very much thank you thank you chevin um the office said that uh uh highlights too much variability in the quality of children's review minutes and plans i'm wondering whether these minutes and plans are very much free-formed documents at the discretion of the casework or whether they are structured forms which require specific issues to be addressed and generally how you're going to address this particular point in the letter now as this comes under carol i think i will let her answer she'll probably cringe otherwise thank you council okay um we've done a lot of work with our children's record systems so we have an electronic system it's called um LCS and on it we've um reviewed all of the forms so there is a a specific form with some guidelines down the side around um ensuring that all the plans that our managers and IROs do our outcome focus IROs means independent reviewing officers our outcome focus meaning that it looks at all of the outcomes that we want our children to achieve um the variability is because when they've looked back and when offset came in they quite rightly looked back in children's records to see how focused those plans were and whether you could see the impact of those plans on children's lives and because some of them weren't um specific enough and therefore couldn't be measured in a really detailed way then obviously there's variability um what we're doing about it um what we we're running currently um some outcome focused planning workshops for all managers and our reviewing officers as well um the particular area that we're focused on here was the independent reviewing officers and they chair the reviews of children's plans who are in care and also the reviews of children plans who want a child protection plan but it was the children in care plans that they felt was specific enough um so we are doing some detailed work we have all permanent staff in that service which is great news and some of them have known their children for some time um which is also good news and stability for those um for those children um and we're working with those reviewing officers to make sure that they all reach the standard that we would expect them to and so there's um an improvement focus around that area i hope that explains your it's good enough response for your question i was just wondering whether i was coming across a new piece of software here this is uh different from liquid logic is it no it's a form that's been put into liquid logic um liquid logic is the client record system that um in the west middle and seven of us use seven local authorities don't use it so it is probably the most popular nationally now but you get when you get it it's a vanilla framework and then you add in your own forms um so that you make sure because different local authority areas have different approaches to doing this and you will have heard us talk here before about how our new approach which is around our value values of historical practice etc so that's the flavor that's the the values that are behind our forms so it's not new software it's new forms cage hello sorry i'm crainsey i've got two questions if that's okay um one was around the assessments and obviously um you've highlighted around the children's disability team and the 16 plus team yourself um i just wondered what the headlines were there and how that was going to begin to be addressed um and also um this is possibly my lack of knowledge but i noted with regard to visit timeliness that um all visits are being kind of classed as good levels child in need sort of sitting around the 78 percent mark i thought that was quite low but is that accepted accepted as good let's start with the um assessments if you see on so we're on page 20 aren't we of that pack and you were seeing the bottom left hand corner with differentiating between the different teams now the 16 plus team um they only did three so they got two out of timescales and one in timescales clearly those two that's not acceptable um but actually they're very small numbers now the one that we've done a further deep dive on is the children with disabilities team now for some of those children in that service um they are offered um additional payments in order to maintain those children at home whether it be direct payments whether it be support packages whether it be rice spike care and so they need an updated assessment on an annual basis um to make sure that their needs are still being met by the package of support that we're getting that we're giving them now unfortunately the system isn't um able to differentiate between those assessments and the time frame for that and the time frames for the other assessments that are undertaken within the service so we're doing some work behind the scenes which will um improve that overall figure for us so we know why that's too low having said that there are still some areas as you can see that we need to do we need to improve but a benchmark for us across the west Midlands is around the 80 percent that's seen as um the benchmark the other question you asked was around children in need visits and were we satisfied that they were around the 80 percent mark no um they should be higher than that they are actually coming within the five percent tolerance um but we are working and focused on improving this we would like it to be more in the mid-80s percent Peter thank you very much Chair and I'm very curious as to you know on the high level the executive summary is there any link between the last bullet second last bullet point children in care figures and workforce and workload figures in terms of kind of a line of inquiry around the most experienced workers work with those um children new people who are in our most costly packages um the the most high cost residential placements or trauma disability and whether there's any data that shows that putting those young people placed with social workers who have the long-term experience get gets the better outcomes as opposed to say agency workers where well they they're less experienced they're less committed to the organization and does that lead to um worse worse results and whether in your file audits there's anything coming through about the you know the economic element to this because obviously child in care residential placements and children with disability they would have thought would be the most high cost placements and so whether taking an economic angle could lead to better outcomes and better staff retention so that link between those last two bullet points as a line of inquiry may not have the answer obviously clearly but just in quieting you know have you thought about that I'll start and then perhaps um others might want to might want to add to that so um in terms of high cost placements um not all of the um the sort of highest cost placements are around children with disabilities it's often children where there is an element of deprivation of their liberty because of their behavior or emotional containment required um that we find the hardest to um to identify the right placement and then um they they they they tend to be the highest cost placement um in terms of our agency staff um it's just a fact of life that particularly in in in this part of the improvement journey you're still likely to be building your own workforce so um but having said that what um offset inspectors tellers is they find our stuff to be really committed knowing their children very well and and they don't see a difference in quality in terms of agency staff or permanent staff and of course our supervision and monitoring we wouldn't want to keep on agency staff who less than committed or where we have some concerns about their quality um and the final thing I would perhaps say is that we wouldn't change social workers just because a child enters a different type of placement because the the relationship is what achieves the change and what achieve so so we would want if that social worker then needs additional supervision or support or perhaps a co-worker we can look at that but where we can we we try and provide stability for the child because that's the best chance to actually help them to step down from from from some of those very high cost placements any further questions I have one request that when you do your briefing sessions for um I I would like it to be all members because there's frankly stuff I don't know that I don't know and that always worries me can we include within that the organization structure down to a fairly low level so people understand it's taken me two years to understand what the organization each bit of the organization does and I'm sure I could have learned that a lot quicker um and it's that process flow that the organization is attempting to address with the children that actually go through it now some bits of it aren't in the process flow there's not all children for example end up in the I can't remember the name the bit the judicial piece I'm sorry I can't remember I hope hopefully very few do but a lot of children are on a on a route and if we can stop them earlier in that process which I know is what you're trying to do there are some key points and if you could explain that I think people find it a lot easier and to understand the role of what assistant team managers do team manager to heads of service do I think people will find that very helpful um it is I think it is and might actually help the acronyms as well thank you we're comfortable with the report apart from the fact that needs a glossary of terms and I agree it how CLA where on earth that children in care ends up with CLA I don't know you saw I don't I understand it is one of those there is there is there a piece of history that says we don't like calling it children in care anymore it's informed about what the children want to be called and the children's preference is children looked after so we've agreed that we would use that terminology thank you so it's the work plan for this coming year variable we've got one piece of work that's spanned the two years which was looking at attraction retention of social workers the skill social workers within the service and I think we had a report a partial report on that and we have a final session for is it June or something yeah September is it yeah but we we had need to set some dates for that but I think we said we come back in June because we were going to allow the HR person who's I'm sorry I can't remember her name sorry Andrea yes to come back she was going to do some work and then come back and and inform that I'm not sure whether we have still got all the same people on that committee that were on it before is it has anybody changed Jane can you remember I think Steph was on it a frame and so she's no longer here I think everybody else I think is still here so yeah it's reconvening the task and finish with it them to make a final recommendation and then that to come back to the scrutiny board in September so if one of the co-opted independent members would like to join that we have a vacancy on it so you don't have to say now right thank you so I assume everybody's read the work plan and for some people it'll make more sense than others I guess Councilor Wilson I'm sorry thank you Councilor yeah I just have had it when you were looking down just the question occurred to me about co-opted members and if there was somebody that we wanted to put forward as a possible co-opted member what's the process is there a process how does that work so at the moment there are two vacancies one is a parent governor which we will have to go out to governor services and ask them to start doing a trawl to try and find anybody who's interested in taking that position up if there is more than one person that will involve an election which the elections team will have to then run that will be done by a postal in relation to Steph's position I don't know Councilor do you want to introduce our colleague at the back who is proposed as a representative from the parent carers voice Tracy would you like to introduce yourself I think you joined us for previous meeting didn't you yes I think in answer to Councillor Wilson's question if she's got somebody in mind please email jama and we'll look at it thank you any other questions before we move on to the work plan go ahead please please start okay thank you Chair so that isn't just there um a couple of suggestions comments that might be already included but I don't know under the under the detail um firstly um kind of what the thoughts ideas about getting the voice of the child into scrutiny but as a more global catch up one really would be really quite powerful to think about is that something which is possible to do either in a particular time of year or to the topic would be really good to actually have directly voice influence of the giant unperson at screw to me um second would be um is there something kind of more global about sufficiency so we've heard about um the new um the sand places coming up we've also heard pleasures on placements all over but there's something more global about the whole system around education sufficiency early year sufficiency send sufficiency as a whole system supposed to snap shots um thirdly perhaps a bit more left field but i'm just thinking about that preventative agenda um is there any scope look at some key adult issues that affect children farmers and think of domestic violence mental health substance use and those are counsel wide response possible around early help and intervention there might be something there and then finally um again a number of bundle around electrical and education children's out there educational and missing education that also might be something to do together as a single slot as well in the future has anybody got any comments on those or questions councillor gethan you seem to be hesitating that there's probably a couple of points i can respond on if it helps um voice of the child um obviously we've got over us our voice our service they are um involved in the corporate parenting side so we are planning a takeover board and all sorts of things with them but it could be something that you could bring in but i want to the other thing i want to say so that's one side um and i don't know young carers when i was first in your position as a member of scrutiny one of my and and this i still remember vividly um was young carers and we had a row of young carers all sitting here and they all shared their experience and i do remember i think councillor McCarthy was there as well um and it was it was a really really good meeting so it could be the voice of the young carer that you might want to hear but and you know they are experts by experience they go through um caring for others and there were a quite young you know range of ages so that was one thing um the domestic abuse side of things probably covered in other boards so it's probably on the adults and also um soli soli hall um uh safeguard in part the partnership safety partnership that would probably be covered there but i don't know if there's any topics you'd want to cover and you sometimes you have joint scrutiny with adults and children so i think you used to do that in sort of january time don't you have a joint board but it could be any time if you want to delve into that topic yeah just coming back on that so the adults in public health board does cover some of those obviously some of the public health ones are all aged so for example substance misuse there's quite a lot of new investment coming in including targeted work with children young people so there may be some topics we do want to kind of select and look out as a uh as joint scrutiny that otherwise we'll go through that board so is that clear now what we're going to so there was we're going to ask some young carers to come is that sorry no this is what i'm asking is that what we want to do go forward i suggest um it might well be obviously want to go away and get some ideas together around how we might enter the room um i think i think you can care either with a really powerful message but of other areas that might also be equally strong to bring into the room or it might well be on a regular basis particularly as an inquiry or small in-depth conversation how does that become a standard way that we operate as a scrutiny to make sure we always have that influence of both the childhood and room as well yes there is there is the potential overlap with a corporate printing board and and and need to think that through but the other alternative would be for a small group of members from here to to go to the young people's meeting rather than the other way around and test some of those messages and bring them back which might be more fun for the young people certainly less daunting thank you chair i'm going to make a suggestion that we've as part of the future work around the participation strategies coming here in september and that'd be an opportunity to bring the voice to children from a variety of different settings not just our children looked after so again because this is a quite a dry environment for children and young people we can have the opportunity to hear their views on a number of different topics and then maybe that'd be the springboard for other information you might require any other thoughts gants okay thank you chair i did raise this subject before that i i'm still fascinated by the idea that only about half of our care levers of finding themselves in education or employment or training and i just wondered whether we could look in more detail as to what's help and obstacles lie in the way of our levers to because obviously the transition from childhood to adult is absolutely crucial as a start for for the rest of your life really and so i feel that that transition is so important to whether they take the right road or the wrong road sorry i'm being advised that other groups are looking at this but i'm not convinced um i just sorry what i want to understand you have this is a very specific thing about care levers and it is only about care levers and it's what happens to them as they leave at 16 18 and that that threshold to adulthood that it is that specific thing you want to understand what's happening to them as they grow into life in general yeah is this page 25 of the pack which gives us the data on it where we're consistently below the west midlands and other averages and i i just want to understand why that figure is so low and whether the things that we could do that would make it better carol is this the area that you thought we might have some data issues on that's correct so if you could enable us to bring back the data in at the next meeting because obviously we refresh the kim on a monthly basis and then look what further work you might require at that point chairman if it helps i'll also check with the economic development to manage growth scrutiny board their task and finish group and see whether there's anything specific they've done that's going to be reporting back to the main board i think if not next week i think it may be um the july meeting um so it could be picked up there as well i'll double check thank you council wilson were you was your hand still up or did you have another question i have another question thank you chair um so a few questions so one that was about um deputations and questions i feel like i should know what the process is but i think following on from councilor fips question about how to include member of the public and all children i'd be it beautiful if i just somebody could tell me a bit how how that is how if somebody does feel like they're ready and would be useful to give a deputation and or ask a question how do i go about enabling that to happen and then also um also the leisure and community board and surprisingly domestic violence also occurs as i just thought i'd say that in terms of the work plan um i just thought that was great it's not in there and then maybe the same transformation plan i wanted to look at the diagnoses uh people waiting especially in terms of neurodiverse diagnoses you know how how we could speed that process up seems to just take a few years and that's a long time for for children um and i think i made last year about the feasibility of um of new same schools given that our task and finish group the parents um overwhelmingly said that they wanted more provision more and better maybe within mainstream settings so um i just wanted to just look at the feasibility um studies for um new same schools that are proposed whether they yeah whether they're really meeting and answering the needs and requests of our of our parents and and the children um and maybe within the same transformation plan again does that we'll be able to look at the um assessment timelines kind of as raised before about that disability team would that fit within there to look at that data again once it's revisited and then in the september retention recruitment task and finish group is it useful possible to put in there like something to do with something like 360 degree feedback for social workers and right in terms of cases that are coming to me there are different people who deal with case the social workers as as desired and the i think it a comprehensive feedback from all of those who deal with and it doesn't necessarily have to be that personal i guess which give me an understanding of what a resident might be bringing to me i don't know whether it's possible there and then again under the next item these study whole parent parent voice forum is it worth there adding the of us as well i know that's the children rather than the parents um but but looking at that again as before looking at the child's voice then november where it says virtual school and the next item update education inclusion service is it there where we can look at the home school is raised by um poulter halton yeah and they finally is it at all within i'd just remit or decide remit that we would be able to look at the quality of like the calf-cast services as it supports our children and all marico is that just just the wrong place to look at that that was a long list bietta um right there we go so so uh calf-casts are the guardians and they work to to the courts um we have no authority over them um they are um regulate well they they are inspected through offset so i don't think we can we can take that anywhere unless there is a specific angle for our own children in terms of um the the sort of the quality um of our social workers like every other employee of the council their subject to the personal development reviews and they get treated in the same way they also have to every year to to maintain their registration they have to evidence um they're learning to to and and evidence that they can continue to meet the standards required to be social workers so that's just a little bit of background um around that that sort of feedback that our staff are getting and how we develop them yes i think the recruitment retention task force was very much focused on exactly those two items um i think there was some discussion at one point about 360 degree appraisal and i think we decided that that probably was either not in our remit or far too complicated um at this moment in time um so i think we need to keep that focus down on what we originally agreed to do otherwise we'll just end up with mission creep um yeah i think Sarah you were next thank you um chair i'm just mindful that um the send transformation plan is coming to the next board meeting on the third of july and i know that a number of councillors around the table are governors and i just want to really encourage you to um find out from your head teachers in your in your wards what they think about send so that when um when our officers are talking to us we've got some um we're able to triangulate what they're saying with what the lived experience is in schools so that we can then um look at where where where that matches and where they've perhaps worked to be done i saw nodding on that and i think we have a number of councillors who sit on governing boards and there is actually a meeting thursday of this week of these schools for them is there yeah and i think the issue is raised there on a very regular basis from what i can see i'm not sure who was next i was just going to suggest that that request is relayed to governor coal um it's not hit tonight but it's heard of none various councilor fips thank you chair clearly we had a long list on paper before we came today we included about added extra things onto a possible list as well would it be worth thinking about how we prioritised this it was meaningful to the wide ground the officers work exceptionally hard to bring the stuff that we don't even have the time to look at properly um and what's the criteria for bringing it forward and surely this is about i was currently functioning those key wicked issues that key challenges key issues that we're concerned about or what we need to have a little bit more kind of deep dive together so i would really plead for could we have some prioritisation with some really clear criteria so have some really good meaningful conversations here i think that's a good idea i'd like to get to the end of this session where we've got a list and hopefully our officers will be able to tell us what it is we might have added to the list and then we can actually work out how many additional items actually are there because if you take send transformation and if i listen to council wilson what she just wanted to make sure was that certain things would be covered and i think the answer to that question was yes but i think we've actually have one or two additional suggestions as well um has anybody got anything extra they'd like to go on the work program council gather it's nothing extra it's something that we've obviously already covered tonight with regards to elective home education um whenever um home education is brought up i always feel that there's negative connotations around it um so if that is something that we are going to focus on um i'd like to first of all point out that a parent has a right to electively home educate their child um there has been a report that's come out this month um safeguarding children in elective home education um and that does state um if i read from the report that most children who are home educated have happy and safe lives but a small minority do not so i know that we do worry about um verbal children and the safe gives them the children because they're not going into schools so they're not seen all the time um but it'd be interesting to know here within solly hall how many of those children do we consider at risk do we think that we have a higher number at risk than anywhere else in the country and if so why um but then we also need to look on the flip side of that where do we have the right provision for these children why why are parents electively home educating is it because they really want to is it because we don't have a provision and therefore they're forced is it because a school has turned around and said we can't meet need so again off roll not allowed i know but that does happen um and i just feel that when we do look at it we need to look at all angles and we need to ensure that instead of having negativity for elective home education what we do is we also look at a way where we can actually help these families and help the parents and not just say you've decided to home educate you're on your own because therefore how if you want to have sight of children and you're telling the parents well you've decided to do that that is it you've got to decide what you want to do there so i really think that it's not going to be an easy case of that's just something on the agenda i think there's a lot of things around elective home education that needs to be considered before we sit in a room to discuss thank you Ruth were you thinking of commenting on that so no yes sir i just wanted to to make a very brief comment because we we we think that um we we agreed in principle we would have um up to three topics at a meeting just to bear that in mind because i think the the bit about prioritizing is well made we want to make sure that when we have a discussion we bring you the right depth of information yeah just as a follow on i think you mentioned this chair i think the send improvement discussion will be a really important one because i know a number of the comments that council wilson raised i think will be covered they may not be covered in sufficient depth but i think it should give a flavor than to the committee of we want a bit more information on that and what i would say is the when we share it there is a equivalent of the key measures that sits alongside that's the some of the issues that a number of people have raised around will how are we doing with processing our ehcp some of those performance issues will come out through that discussion as well so it then might help you know finalize what might need to be looked at later on in the in the year indeed um officers have just suggested that for home education we might do a task and finish group where you can be a bit more relaxed and a bit less focused in order to get find out what the real issues are if indeed there are any issues because we don't know that what we know is a number of people do this we don't know whether it's growing going going down we don't know what support people need we don't know why they do it and that and getting some questions might be the a useful thing to do and where i am is i i know some children who have been are in home education and it's perfectly satisfactory that i i never crossed my mind mind it was bad um i'm sure there's bad in everything in in all life and so i'm sure a few it's it's a risk but we can ask the officers that question if we think it's worthwhile asking the question so people comfortable that we don't have that as a main agenda item but maybe we actually just set up a task and finish group just to look at and basically kick it around to see if there's anything there yes, Councillor Hamilton. I prefer it to come to scrutiny rather than a task and finish group at this stage i think it's very much a profile of the water cross borough because i mean i've got a lot of children now who are not in full-time education they're on receipt of two hours a day and they parents don't particularly want to have to try and work an autistic child for two hours a day there's no alternative at the moment there's no other place for them so i think i understand exactly what you're saying Councillor Getham about elective home education when i was in the 60s it was a certain group of people who badly could offer their children a better opportunity than a school and and maybe they didn't quite like you did it but i think we're looking at a very different situation that we've got now which has come about because some schools aren't able to cope or have already told the parents you'll need to find somewhere better so it's a but i had envisaged that discussion that we raised actually taking place at our next i think what you're discussing there, Councillor Hamilton, is very different to what elective home education is if those children are only on two hours a day are they still in a provision in which case they are not EHE they are still in under a school so again what is it we want to look at do we want to look at elective home education are we looking at provision not being able to meet need it's very different it has come to the board before i've got all the documentation so i'm very happy we'll all hopefully maybe look back over what was discussed the last time we went into great detail then so it is all out there on your iPad and electronically there is we're in a different world at the moment with this situation and you know it's very complicated when i don't want to because these parents are struggling very hard to struggle with this situation i wouldn't say any more. Councillor Fipps can i just very quickly reply and say that it's possibly in the wording so we're talking about non-anactive and elective home education i think they're being home educated but they haven't actually elected it's actually the interest of honourable so you know i think i understand i've already said exactly where you're coming from but i think they're confettiing the two issues and i do think we have a duty and a responsibility to look at what's actually happening in the borough and to look at the progress whether it's upward trajectory or a downward trajectory whichever one it is and what are we going to do to try and run with this situation most children want and parents want their children to go back into school related for the the month that's got a child being educated for two hours a day can never work so yeah i think as we say there's elective home education and then the ease where and the schools just cannot meet need of the children and then what are we doing to help those children and those families and i've been there where i haven't been able to work because i've had to work around trying to pick a child up halfway through the day or they've only gone in for a short period of time so i have been that parent and i will say i am that parent that home educators because again um can't meet need so um i see from both parts i really really do um i understand the parents that are struggling but then i also am part of several home education groups where it's home education at home schooling and it is a case of um they feel that they are doing what's best for their child so i think it's two very different um things to look at and and as i did say before you know how many are forced in term education how many um you know it's it's a part time table you know it's a very big issue and i think sometimes they get very confused we got a send transformation plan thing if this issue is not covered in that transformation plan then we as a group will ensure it's covered because i think the point that you raise is important but we don't know it's not covered because we don't know what the plan is so my suggestion is we wait till the next meeting find out what the plan is and if you can ensure that it is either covered because you got it covered or you declare we haven't got it covered that would be helpful and if we can help you with if it's not fully covered with that then we would love to but i think there is a separate issue about elective i'm going to call it home education why people doing it is there enough support and all those kind of things but we don't really know what the questions are which is why we thought we might do a task and finish group to kick it around is that right yeah does that cover where you are right that's good Kate yeah i was just gonna sign that point if you look at page 33 the briefing paper briefing requested arm number two i think some of the elements around non-elective home education will probably come out of that discussion just to link that in. Councillor Hamilton if you look at the very last page page 33 there is going to be a meeting which includes Kate steps replacement i guess oh step wanted to be involved in it anyway and the officers to look at exclusions would you like to be involved in that yeah sorry it's the point two yes was that a yes or no would you like to be included in that discussion point two sorry it's not exclusions it's about people who we fail to provide sufficient funding and they can't be met in it can't be met in mainstream provision unless they get additional funding is that the issue that you were talking about I think that's it's not just one issue so so the question comes back is Kate and Steph we're going to meet with the the senior team that is responsible for this do you wish to be involved in that or are we happy you happy that's left to Steph and Kate and then get a report back to this meeting I think we'll just leave it then with Kate and Steph did we did we say that we were going to look at edge of care and leaving care plans because we talked about those or we had to give us a briefing on it did we want more in depth on that or were we happy that we just picked that up at the regular updates on the the performance indices it might be worth us bringing the next iteration to see whether that answers the question if if it does come here there is probably an overlap with the corporate parenting board so in that case the the scrutiny board might ask for an update from the work on the corporate parenting board just to make sure there's no duplication I'm comfortable with that I mean it is obviously one of those it's that one of the big cost drivers is we've got too many children in care and that is how quickly how easy is it from to end up in there where we can prevent it and how quickly can we get them out which was the ex-relation that we were given and if we could reduce those level to our statistical neighbors then it would be better for the children but would leave resources free to spend on other things which would be good so yes I think we'll take that recommendation we'd produce a paper and tell us what basically the corporate parenting board are doing it so do we know what additional items we're adding to what do you think officers we think we've agreed to add if anything something on global sufficiency yeah that was on education yes can you clarify a little more so Ruth and her team have got my suggestion was looking at the whole sufficiency do we have in the education places in the right in the right areas at the right time in the right phases really is primary secondary special was that about have we got enough places in the borough for say primary education given the number of children we've got because we did do that or is this about the specialist bits the sufficient so we have send children with these needs it's not having a send school but my understanding is each send school tends to be specialist on a particular activity or need with within that you might kind of focus what looking at areas of spend children not being able to attend a school place rather than the overall people place planning it was could we do something different plate around our overall provision mainstream and are we planning this specialist provision in a way which meets the needs of the children to present it so we're very much from a send point of view and a placement review around that specialist provision and could have done differently in early years primary secondary etc so again just going back to the sun transformation plan to is there is an element of that i don't think it will entirely capture what you said but there is an element on that around increasing specialist and alternative provision capacity so that's one of the key things within the sun transformation program i don't think it will quite go as far as you are suggesting that but again it might be worth seeing whether that's given you the kind of level of detail you need and if not then what else would sit on top i really happy with suggestion i think it's a really good place it could be new to scrutiny and to the council if we have that first read and then if we needed any further we can come back again with you members the work plan you've got in front of you is not a tablet of stone so throughout the whole of this municipal year we can look to move things around and things if you get the report that Ruth's just been talking about and you feel there is something that hasn't been covered in enough depth that can be raised and again you have to prioritize because the idea was that you had two substantive reports for each meeting so you do have to bear that in mind but this work plan isn't going to be agreed as a final work plan tonight it can be tapped on to the agenda for each board meeting so you can review it and if you want to change things around you've got that option i think council fix your content with let's see what we're getting and if that's not sufficient we'll ask for some more information but hopefully it will cover most but if it doesn't you'll come here thank you i think the work plan is therefore chair yes just on on the send transformation plan and we're talking to my head teachers and and the Sencos issues about you know reflecting on report writing and the quality of reports and graduated responses and then the push back sometimes that we're getting from local authority health um it's quite an adversarial system and i came across a research in Kensington and Chelsea the by bear Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster where they they looked at the digital footpath in terms of reports and now the whole approach to echps and it did transform outcomes so i'm just highlighting that to DCS and and the ADs just to see if we could look at best practice i've said it before what is the best practice across the borough north south in terms of send in that collaboration between very effective schools and effective responses from local authority colleagues so it's not adversarial it's more collaborative but i was really impressed by the Kensington and Chelsea model and I shared it with yourself i and i we did it to officers yeah good so i just think the real rich fruits there it's a it's a good borough i started i'm i suppose you worked with 35 years ago so um and i think there'll be good lessons just tap into that council will send and thank you um i just wondering if you know the date for the next of us meeting and all and there's a list of other items under meeting dates is it possible to put in the other dates and also again just remind me of the process for deputations and questions to screen to the board can you remind the board again for the process for the deputations and questions and i think you've just said yes you can put in the overstates we find the overstates just picking up on the councilor's next point about questions and deputations any member of the public who lives in the borough can make a request to make a deputation or ask a question they have to give 24 hours notice so if it was for today's meeting it would have been by noon yesterday they have to email us with the topic of the deputation and if it's a petition roughly outline what the title of the petition is if it's a question the full question if we're talking about inviting or encouraging children to attend or young people we would need to give that some consideration in a public meeting which is live stream so if you're thinking about that please can you contact us earlier so we can discuss that with you in relation just on that point about involving the young person's voice it's been raised it was raised last year so it's nothing new but what we need to do i think is talk to officers about how we can achieve that in the best possible way not only for you to get what you need but obviously to make it as comfortable as possible for the young people to engage with you so this forum may not be that yes and again i know some members have said that their skill sets don't lend themselves to go to talk to younger people other members of the board it does so it's a question of getting the right people to go and have these conversations in the right setting so again bear with us we can talk to the officers we can talk to our boss we can talk to young carers groups and see how we achieve that my understanding was be able to agree to take that away and come back with some suggestions i think did i read that right yeah we can do that thank you is that every is that everything i'm not sure we've agreed to change the work then i think we've added some um flesh to some of the topics that we want covered and we've decided i think that we will listen to what the officers said on a number of issues and then if we want to develop it further we'll add things to the work plan later in the year if i got that right does have we missed anything that we should sorry Allison i thought there were things that we'd added i didn't write them down but i thought there was stuff there that was slightly different but i take on board what jane says about how these are a moving feast and um certainly my previous experience this board is that there's discussion about where you want to put things when you want to do it etc so it all sort itself out of sure the minutes will reference the items points raised and you can look at those at the next meeting yes we just double check when the minutes come out if we have indeed missed anything right any further points our next meeting is on the it's at the third of july isn't it and that is going to pair complaints and the send transformation plan as the two big issues
Transcript
As this is the first meeting of the new municipal year, we're going to start the agenda with the election of the chairman. Do we have any other nominations, please? No. No other nominations? OK. Thank you for that and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of the new members. This is a challenging committee because this is the number one priority for the council. I guess that, an economic stability, maybe go hand in hand, but it is certainly up there on a very short list of really high priority items and historically we've been able to, I think, add some value over the last couple of years by asking questions and on occasions making recommendations. So that is our key role and generally we try and work as a team and sort of idea of the between us. So my first thing to do is to ask for nominations for the vice chairman position and if I could have nominations, please. Could I nominate David Cole, please? Thank you. Do we have a seconder? Thank you. Do we have any other nominations? I know David Cole is willing to accept the position and he does offer his apologies for the time, but that's the next item on the agenda. OK. So David is elected as vice chairman. Apologies, please. Apologies received from Councillor Colle, Councillor McCarthy is there as a substitute. We also have Councillor Wilson joining us online tonight, although I'm not sure if she's logged in yet, so we'll keep a look out for her when she joins. I've had late apologies and asked to give them from Councillor GROOM. Yes, I think Ben suffers from work-related challenges on occasions, doesn't it? Yes. Trying to save our water supplies I think. Oh, yes. Yes, you're not Alison. Thank you, Councillor. Do we have any decorations of pecuniary or conflicting interest? Councillor Colle, just to say that I sit on the board of governors at Salihal College until the end of this. Thank you. Any others? No. Thank you for that. Minutes of the last meeting, now some of us were there and some of us weren't. Seems like a long time ago now, March. Are we content with the minutes? Councillor KA. Thank you. We discussed the family hubs and the opening times during the minutes. I've just checked on the Councillors, sorry, the evergreen hub and it still says still to open on the website. Is that in fact the case? Councillor Hamilton. It's part of my way, it's open because I visited the Smith Road one last week and I was informed it was open. I know an officer who does know Ruth. Yes, so there's a phased opening going on at the moment, so we will be keeping the website update as things go live. We've got some sites open, some where the work's still been completed but we'll make sure that we circulate the up-to-date details as they're coming through. Councillor KA, were you saying that the website is actually saying it's not open at? Councillor interjecting. All right. So I think there's just a little task to take away if you could. Councillor Roff. I wasn't there but I have picked up two errors. It shows that I read them just saying. On page 11, page 7 of those minutes in the very bottom section, I think it should be September 23 in the third sentence, third line. Councillor KA focused an alternative provision and it's a bit above. Yes, unless we're reading into the future, yes, we're all spotted. And then page 13, you've got that. Yeah, page 13, section 9, second paragraph, quarterly basis, not basis. Sorry, I'm turning into my mother. We're all spotted. Everybody now content with a minute. Yes, thank you. Questions and deputations, do we have any, this evening? I'm done with each other. Right, so we now move to the first substantive item on the agenda and I'm extremely pleased to welcome Councillor Grintel, who has a reputation for making things happen. And I hope that this will be a very productive period of time as we move into, let's say, the second phase of the program for the enhancement of children's services. Councillor Grintel, if you could, I know you've only been in post-free, very, very short period of time, but if you could give us some overview of what your thinking is and the key purpose of that is, is there anything that we missed on the work program that we should be looking at? And if you have any views on our work program, we'd like to hear those when we get to that page on the agenda. Thank you. Well, thank you, Chair, and thank you for the compliment. I hope I live up to your high standards of children, of these children's scrutiny board. So I'm really pleased to be here and thank you for inviting me this evening. I guess it would be fair to say that children's have gone, are going on a big improvement journey and we've started that improvement journey and we can see it. We're under a lot of scrutiny, regular monitoring, so that's happening. And I hope that you can see from the most recent Austin reports that that improvement is evident. So that improvement plan is firstly key priority, ensuring that we've got quality and consistency in our social work practice. So in terms of priorities, obviously we've got the child protection side and then we've got the education side. So we do the monitoring visits and we are very open and honest and we can see where we need to make improvements, but we have plans for those. Some of the work, I think, it's all children's services big priority. So I'm not going to say that anything is a bigger priority than another, but yes, getting our front door right is always going to be first and foremost. So those families and children coming into service, we have to make sure that we have a timely response and we're responding in the right way. So that education service, so you've already mentioned family hubs, that is absolutely key and key to us getting the service right. Our emergency duty team, they need to respond in the right way out of ours to make sure we're doing that. You'll have seen in previous, well last year, I took on the corporate parenting approach, I want to develop that. We want to look at the community parenting. So you've all heard the old saying it takes a village to raise a child. We're all involved in this. It's not one person's responsibility. Solihull has a collective responsibility about how we look, raise and look after our children. So we get that right, hopefully they get that right into adulthood. And I know that's probably a wide sweeping statement to make, but we've got to get the basics right. Placements, getting the right placements for children, I had, as you've said, I've only been in post for a week, I had the pleasure of firstly visiting, well the three things, let me tell you three things and then they're vital to the improvement journey. Met the, met some of our children's teams, people that are at the front line, really, really good experience. We've got experience staff who really care. People say don't care, but they do and I could see it when I met them. So we have to ensure that they are supported. I then went on to visit, oh no, started with the opening, looking at our first children's home, that was great. And that's one thing, another priority, we've got to, we've got three that we want to open. The first one is almost ready, just waiting for the offstead visit. And then I went on to meet foster carers who have fostered for 44 years. Now that takes a lot and that is something that's really good and I could see in them what I'd want, I want to share that knowledge with everybody. So if we can find more foster carers, that's another priority too. Meeting and talking to our children last, when was it now? Probably January I met with our Rovos team and the children. So understanding and hearing the voice of children, that has got to be a priority too. Hearing what they are saying about the services that they receive. So then we go on to the education side of things, looking at that whole youth offending service, education of vulnerable children, send transformation program, our specialist provision, you've all heard that we've just had the acknowledgement and the confirmation that we're getting the funding for another 150 plays school. That is brilliant and that's huge for us. So making sure that is nailed down, we know where the site is. So that will be in development. Yeah and as I say our special educational needs, transformation, programme, making sure our children with special education needs are assessed in a timely way and then we find the right places for them to be schooled. I think one I haven't put on the list of those children that are homeschooled. That might be an area that wants to take a better look at and understand that we've got eyes on the children who are learning at home and are they to the right standard. But that is an extra off the cuff addition. As you can see I've got pages and pages of what I could talk about. There's a lot to do, there's a lot for us to do and to look at. And underpinning all of that is ensuring that we have the funding to do it all. And I'd like us to have a money tree at the end of the road but we haven't. So we have to do that within a financial envelope but we deliver the best services that we can. That's a run through of a lot of priorities and I guess but it is obviously on the safeguarding side and the education side. I continue to work with house colleagues because we've got a whole health side of things we're working in partnership. We don't do this alone. So I'll leave it there chair. You may have questions but happy to help with the work plan when we get to it. Thank you chair. I should declare with it I'm on foster care. And I'd be interested to know what we're doing to find new foster care. We take every opportunity really to find foster carers. We've had a big push on this but we wherever there's an event going on the foster care team are out there. So you've probably seen them in touchwood. You've probably seen them at events whether it's Dorridge Day or I don't know Shirley Park, there's a festival, there's a summer fest. They're going to be at summer fest. Anywhere that we are coming into contact with our residents to promote fostering and ultimately adoption we hope if that's the right thing for people. So we take every opportunity that we can. Actually when I was talking to the foster, the couple that had fostered for 44 years, I want them to share their experience and show people how rewarding it can be. They went on to adopt three of the children that they had with them over the years. Hopefully the young person that is with them right now will also stay with them. So they're planning to retire. So I think they've got a lot to give and a lot to share. So if we can help people share that, we will. I also want to look at if we can become a foster friendly borough and I've challenged the health service to find a foster friendly policy as big employers, what can they do for their staff. So we have lots of ways of reaching people but to try and encourage people to do it. Colleagues might want to add anything I've missed. Just to add to that, last year we ran a specific initiative working with a firm to really promote fostering in the social media as well. So in addition to all the things that have already been mentioned and we're actually quite successful. I think we recruited nine additional families last year which is significant increase to what we've done in previous years. So a good start really that we want to continue to build on. Before I move on Councillor HAMMOND, a point of clarification, you will come out to community events with a, I think that's probably something Councillors should note because we all have community events and if they are willing, the organisers, then we can contact you and see whether there's a fit. Right, thank you. Councillor HAMMOND. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Grensall. Did I, I don't know whether I heard it completely when you said about the new school which obviously we've all heard about the New Sands School for 150 places. Did you say you had a sight in mind? We do, yes. We choose, I think it's common knowledge, isn't it, is it common knowledge? Sansu Si in Shirley. Thank you. And can I just vote you on when you mentioned a letter from a letter of education, I think it's important that we look at that again as a scrutiny board? Yes. Can you hold that thought for when we get to that item on the agenda because we will be looking for additional things, so that's valuable, thank you. Any other questions, Councillors? I have one. I don't know how many people have read the latest review of the Arthur case, which was something that was commissioned by this authority to try and get underneath what actually happened and see if there's any learning points. If you haven't read, Jennifer, we just did make sure that everybody has a copy. It is an incredible, simple read, and it's incredibly well done. I just want to make the link in there to your, the first thing that you mentioned was social work practice. At some point, can we have some explanation of how you're going to get there of improving that practice? This is, I suspect, like pushing rocks up hills in the Sisyphus way. It is a never-ending task, but is that something that you can explain to the board in a fairly simple way, is it working in our work program for us to understand? Yes, if I could just pick it up and then perhaps that can feed into the work plan discussion. So, the improvement plan that we often talk about really is based on the learning of both the national review that looked at Arthur's story, and I'll sort of add a little bit about this review at the end. But also, we then had, of course, the offset inspection, and we had the JTA inspection. So, there were a lot of messages around what needed to improve, and as you know, we have a very significant improvement plan, which is both around addressing the quality of our processes and our governance, and that we feel we've made a lot of progress on already, but in parallel with that really improving the quality of practice. And what we can see, what we, the messages we're getting back from our monitoring visit is that we're making good progress on that. So, that by no means means that we're there. It is a continuous work in progress, and it's about social workers' understanding and having the right tools to do the job, our approach to restorative practice, which gives them an approach to practice, where the effectiveness is evidence quite well, good supervision, so that social workers can reflect on what they do, and good management systems, and that includes the KIM report, so that's our data information along with a whole range of audits that really dig very regularly into the quality of practice. So, the whole, if you like, the whole sort of improvement infrastructure is all about picking up those messages and improving the quality of practice, and then, of course, very specifically in terms of the national review and the messages that are in the unique report. We've completely remodeled the way the MASH works, which was some of the criticisms around agencies working in isolation. They're very much now work as a team. Some elected members have had a chance to visit the MASH to see that in action and really see different agencies talk about what that looks like in practice. Our partnerships are now very strong, and so is our safeguarding partnerships, and those were some of the things that really have already started are very much progressing. Now, we've obviously looked at the messages from this review, and they very much match the messages from the national review, but I think give us some additional opportunities to revisit some practice issues, and if I can just mention a few so that people get a bit of a feel of what we've already got in train as a result. So, there is a section there that looks at, in which case, social workers should or should not physically examine children in some of those visits and whether how far that should go and what the guidance should be. We think there's more to be done on guidance around that, but also around guidance around using medical, using medical examination and the experts rather than social workers making judgments around medical issues. A lot of our practice standards, I think we can reinforce using the learning from this review and also the whole issue around doing even more around management oversight, particularly at the point where perhaps families no longer wish to cooperate or don't want our support. In many ways, quite within their rights to say they don't want the support because of the statutory timescale may not have been reached, but actually that decision to make a risk assessment of can we safely close this case, or can we not take it into account all of the circumstances. It's something we want to look at again. We think we've made a lot of progress on. And linked to that, it's also consistently reinforcing the need to triangulate for our staff, so never to rely on just one source of information, but always look across and particularly then the wider family. So I think the themes from the report that has come out recently, as you say, it was the Chief Executive who decided that he really wanted to understand local practice and for that reason commissioned the independent report. I think we can, to an extent, be reassured that a lot of those changes have already been made, but it helps us just to revisit and recheck some of the key issues. Thank you. And if members haven't read it, I would suggest that you do. The impression I got two years ago was that the social workers, either interface workers, had missed loads of stuff. This report is actually nowhere near as simple as that, and actual fact that it kind of says they did the right thing. It was other failings that it resulted in the missed opportunity. Of course, it's the parents who were responsible. They did the deed, not the social workers, not Sally Hull, not the police, but our role as a council, of course, is to do our best to stop these things ever escalating that far. But it is a lot easier to understand this report than the national one. And I can now understand how the social workers missed there were bruises on the back, because this actually shows you why they missed them. And I don't think anybody would have seen them. And I find it really interesting. So some of the messages are really quite interesting. Sorry, Councilor Long. Thank you, Chair. It's not to do with that. It's really coming back to Councilor Grinson. Firstly, thank you for the summary. I'm new to this board. That was a really helpful list of issues that are key to this area. I just wanted to touch on one. You mentioned the send transformation program and also home schooling issues. There's clearly people waiting for the send assessment. And as you say, to speed up that process or get things done in a timely conclusive manner is really important. But how do we, to what extent or how do we manage those that are waiting in that process? And I guess this is where the sort of home schooling comes in, to what extent we understand how many of those that are getting homeschooled is because they've not been able to stay in school and get forced out. Yeah, it is. And I suppose if some of the children are also still in school, it's having that working relationship with the schools that they are attending or should be attending. So it's building up that picture. But I said, the only reason I added in the bit about home schooling is because those numbers would have gone up through the pandemic. So it's really assessing where the children are right now and make sure that we are doing that. And if we can help get children back to school in a supported environment. And if that works for the child, for the family, it's the right environment to be back in mainstream school. If not, then they're assessed for other provision. And it's, yeah, getting those assessments done in a timely way. We are getting those waiting lists down. They're coming down. So I think that is improving. Councillor? Councillor interjecting. Back on the colour education angle, in terms of school relationships and school inclusion, what's currently taking place to help schools support increased school inclusion, particularly those children you are, perhaps waiting for a HCP who are, perhaps on the cusp of another tending, what are we going to place at the moment around support of that left-around offer for inclusion? Or that might be for Ruth or Fabiette? Happy to pick someone up. So again, coming back to the work programme, it might be helpful to go through the whole STEM transformation programme because that will pick up a number of the issues that members have raised. I think school inclusion is a really, really important priority. And obviously, we're working very closely with headteachers and those of you that are on the school forum. We'll see some of that in action. But I think the key thing is supporting, we are seeing high levels of need, high levels of need being managed in school. So actually, making sure that schools are equipped to manage that. And we've got children what we say in the right place, at the right time. But part of the work that's being done through that STEM improvement, the transformation programme is around can we skill up schools so that they're able to routinely manage things alongside the best of them. So we know some schools are incredibly good at doing it, others perhaps less so. So we're part of a programme called delivering better value and part of that is putting resource in so that we can be scaling up the schools and working with them so that they are able to manage more of those children. But may well be something we want to look at that whole programme in detail over the course of the year. You just add on to that reason for May. But will that also include that input of the health offers or particularly access to therapy, access to mental health support as well as that kind of public health up around offer as well? Good to add into that conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So one thing again, some members will be aware of this others won't. We have put in place the Sun Transformation Board. It's just multi-agency so that includes senior leadership from the ICB, from education, Soli or Parent Care Forum, as well as the Council and what that's really intended to do is make sure that we've got that multi-agency response in place and obviously health waiting times. We know it's very challenging across the country, it's very challenging locally. So in our last meeting we were looking at what are the detailed steps that can be put in place both to manage the waiting list but also we don't refer to waiting well. I know some areas do but support whilst waiting. So again there is an offer in place to support children and families while they're waiting but a lot more work to be done to both manage the waiting list but also make sure that we are unable to intervene early and we're working with Health to do that. I've taken a note of the Sen transformation program and put it down for, I think we probably need to include it in our work plan. I don't think it's there in the same way as it was being talked about just now. There's quite a lot of, yeah. Any other questions on this section at the moment before we move on to effectively the measures of the matter and the progress to date? Because I think if we go through that then we'll have all the information we need to actually finalise the work program for the year. Move on. Be able, would you like to present the report? Actually by the way this is so much easier to read. I don't know if everybody else thinks that who was here last year is this is so much easier to read. Thank you very much for that. I used to be on this board years and years ago in our back and then I asked repeatedly if there was any chance at all of a glossary at the back of the report because you use acronyms all the time that normal lay people like me who don't work in education, having to clue what you're talking about. There's one page where I actually highlighted it because I didn't understand the entire section because it was all acronyms. So either on each page or at the back so that we actually understand what it is you're trying to tell us would be really helpful. Thank you. Okay I think that's a fair comment and I think sometimes we forget. So point well made and we'll take that away. What I was going to say is I'm quite aware that there will be some new members who might not have seen this sort of report and some members who are very familiar with it. So what we've already said is we will offer some sessions for elected members just to go through the background in a little bit more detail because what we're proposing to do with this report is that you will see it every time we have a meeting but at some meetings we will spend time actually going through it in a bit more detail and at other times it would be really for you to ask questions or to raise issues with us just to make sure it doesn't dominate every meeting and you then don't get a chance to have a focus on some of the other matters. So what I'm proposing to do is I'm proposing to give you some headlines from this report but as I say there will be an opportunity to have a more detailed briefing about why are we using these measures and what do they actually mean. What I do on the first page, first proper page, second page of the presentation is just to draw your attention to some of the key things that I think are worthy of highlighting from the data because of course there is a lot of information in each of the slides and then each of the slides looks through the journey of the child. So really from the start of children first contacting safeguarding and children in care services and then their journey through the system all the way to becoming children who are looked after and some of the key measures. Why? We think this particular measure is important. What are the trends? So what does this month figure tell you and how would we interpret that and then if there is either a drop in performance or an unusual spike or something that seems different from what we would be expecting, what are we actually doing about it and that's our approach to each of these slides. So if you look at the executive summary what this presentation or this performance report tries to do is trying to pick indicators that are really about compliance but could be also seen as proxy indicators for something a bit more than that. They start to give us a window into practice and that's why they're chosen. There were some dips in performance in the December and January data and what we're finding is that that has been brought back up to sort of roughly where we want performance to be on most of the data. There are two areas where we had concerns and they are picked up in the next two bullet points and of course the first one already has this acronym ICPCs. That is the abbreviation for initial child protection conferences. So it's the time between an investigation taking place because somebody raises a concern about the safety of a child and the multi-agency meeting taking place that really looks at does this child need to be protected through a child protection plan? There is a standard for the time that should take. It should take 15 days. If it's outside of that time then we have concerns around does the child potentially remain unprotected for too long? So that's an important measure. That had dropped but it has significantly improved again and we're really focusing off that area of work to make sure that all of the parts of the process are in place to make that happen because it's not just about do we have chairs for the conference and do we have the right space to have the conference. It's also about do the teams who carry out the investigation quickly make a decision on whether we need a conference if they make the decision do they have the right process in place to notify and are those notifications processed quickly. So there are a number it might seem straightforward but there are a number of components of that and when we do work on particular indicators it tends to be looking at each of the different components to see whether one or the other gets in the way of making it happen and then really addressing those. So that's what happened in this particular case where the issues seem to be with getting the notifications to the chairs in a timely way. Re-referrals are important to us because it suggests that we close the case but the concerns weren't sufficiently addressed and actually led to a professional usually a professional or a family member contacting us again to re-refer a child into the service. So when we saw that re-referral spiked a couple of months ago we really started to look at why that is and we've done a focused piece of work and we can report back on that at a future meeting around why we think re-referrals have gone up and what we're doing about it. So what this month's report tells you that they've started to come down again but they're not at the level where we want them to be. So with as with any of this data it just allows us to ask questions, it doesn't have the answers, it tells us to go away and do some more work so so we understand what's happening. The next bullet point is around our children in care numbers, the numbers of children we have in care, you can compare ourselves with other local authorities by using a per 10,000 ratio so that you're comparing like with like, you're basically looking at the number per 10,000. We also look at total numbers in in Solihull. Our numbers per 10,000 are much higher than you would expect them to be and then that they need to be. So a lot of our work is to look at our children in care figures to make sure that the right children who could leave care are unable to leave care so that they can either be adopted or if they're already living at home under a care order we go back to the court to discharge those care orders because we only want children in care who need to be in care and those children who no longer need to be in care shouldn't have the intrusion of local authority intervention so we should enable them to safely exit care. We also look at children coming into care and whether they really need to come into care and Councillor Grinsell was already talking about the edge of care service we now have so we can help family in crisis rather than a child having to come into care in a crisis we can we can help families in those situations so we can either make a proper plan if that child really needs to come into care or we can help the family over the crisis to learn to come the situation and to be assured that actually that child can be safely parented within that family. So those numbers what you will see is that our plan is to get closer to where we should be in terms of the West Midlands average and our numbers are slowly coming down from a high of 580 back in November and finally the point I wanted to draw your attention to from the figures in front of you is the issue of our workforce and workload. Workloads really important because if workloads of our social workers are too high then they're not able to do the job properly so we we monitor workload really closely to ensure that that it is stable which is the case and that's what one of the slides shows that it's broadly stable. We still have more agency staff than we would like to because recruitment of social workers of experienced social workers is extremely challenging it's a very very competitive market and it is quite difficult to recruit experienced social workers so our approach to workforce has been very much the grow our own approach we offer significant numbers of posts to newly qualified social workers every year who we support very intensely through their first year and then offer further developments through years two and three so they can become the experienced workforce of the future and we then backfill with agency staff to make sure that their their workload is significantly lower than somebody who would have an experience who has the experience to manage the normal workload. Those are the key messages from these figures and I would suggest that perhaps at a future meeting when when people have had the chance to to perhaps go to the briefing if you don't yet really fully understand the indicators perhaps do that first and then just answer questions today but I can be guided by what members of the committee want me to do in terms of any further detail of any of the slides. One of the things that I've having said that I do want to mention is on slide page 26 of the pack which is headed quality assurance it's probably one of the indicators that gives more of an insight into what the quality of practice is like excellent point well made so what what that says in if you took all of those acronyms out is that every single manager within children services has been put through the practice leaders development program the last two well the last session the last cohort actually has their session next week and that's the DCS that's me the AD's that's the assistant directors and the heads of service and but yes we have really put a lot of acronyms in there but one of the measures we took to really ensure that our managers have the right training and the right skills given how important it is that our staff get the right oversight and supervision is for every single manager in the in the authority to have the opportunity to go on this nationally recognized program which is called the practice leader development program that and that that was we managed to get funding for that for from the department for education because it was considered to be a really important part of the our improvement journey what the what that graph shows you and on the left is the result of our well the grades that we're found in our audits so every other month well within a two-month period every senior manager from from team manager upwards so team managers heads of service assistant director and the director undertook a case file audit which is a very detailed audit about how the case was conducted how the case was supervised whether the plans are robust whether the interventions making a difference it includes a direct conversation with a social worker it includes a direct conversation with a parent or with a child if we can if we can persuade the child to talk to us and that we bring all of that together and then as the order to make a judgment whether we think if an offset inspector looked at this would they grade the case as inadequate requires improvement good or outstanding and what you can see in those graphs is that the over the year the gradings and what you can see in the latest February March audit is that the the number of inadequate audits in in in this in this batch of audits has reduced certainly from when you look back at some of the the initial audits last year that the the the line for the requires improvement audit is has the majority of cases 58 and we have about as many good cases as we have inadequate cases now as we move forward what we would want to see is the green bar to start to come up more good audits and the red bar to go right down so that we have very few inadequate audits and the requires improvement audit in time to be lower than the then the good audit so this is this is really giving a bit of an overview of what practice looks like in our view and in the service at the moment so perhaps I'll pause and and just take any questions or any more detailed observations also thank you and firstly I think it's really clear to say there's a steady improvement and I think both here in the report and also in the recent one to visit the roster I think it's really good to seem down to leadership and and shoot hard work from the staff um clock questions if I may um on the placements um slide emergency placements how many of those are they at the moment in the system and what arrangements do you have in terms of prior decision making for the registered placements and again on on that slide as well um the fostering clearly an increase do we have a target around what the ambition is to increase foster placements um so the question on the next one um care levers who are in appropriate education, employment and training and note there's a there's an issue potentially on the recording of the status of that child's education and permanent training is there any connection around um being in touch with those care levers and there's that's a problem um back again to quality assurance slides and again it's good to see that we'd gradually increase I'm sure it will increase over time around the percentages we don't actually have the numbers undertaken so we say it's 20 with 21 percent of 10 or 100 and I'm sure that'll be really useful to have both of those figures if we may in in future um and the final question is this is clearly a very helpful set of improvement measures but we don't have the improvement plan I'm sure it's a crossover to the improvement plan targets in the year but it would be good to understand out of here what are in the improvement plan and also can we request a copy to give any people like me a couple of people but will be really helpful to try track I'll stop there so I hope I have remembered on recorded all your questions correctly and I might have to just um draw on the expertise of some of my colleagues behind me for the detail um unregistered placements we we we usually have between four and six I think at the moment we have four yes um they are very closely monitored on a weekly basis um I think two of those children actually when they turn 16 those will become legal placements and they're very settled so we may not for all of them wish to move those children but where we think that the arrangements are unsatisfactory or their younger children we're very proactive in ensuring that we find the right placements for them and there is a whole um we have a commissioning team who absolutely proactive in contacting hundreds of providers when we when we need placements to um to see what's on offer and and whether we can find a good match and of course now that our own children's homes are opening that is another option for us if it's the right thing for for those children in terms of the fostering um target um our target was I believe nine which we achieved or it might have been slightly lower um last year because it was a new initiative for us we worked with bright sparks to um to achieve this um I don't know what the target is for this year but I would expect a similar um target as we had for last year but we can confirm that unless colleagues know what the target is for this year so last year it was um nine we actually um approved nine families it could take the 12th place so someone was saying um some of our families could take more than one child and it's two I believe it could be the first part of this period okay um care levers Carol um Carol is covering for Rachel hence um some of some of the me deferring to her for some of the detail thank you um for um councilors who don't know me I'm carried out on the assistant director for improvement for children services and so the each question was one that we had at the last meeting we had um which I can't remember which month it was March um we do know um that we're under representing the number of children that we've currently got in employment education training you're quite right with your question um which was about we have a recording issue um so what we're doing is a bespoke piece of focused work within that particular area which is our um children looked after and care experience area in order to make sure that the data is correct so happy to bring that at the next focus meeting or indeed um once we know the dates for when people would like to come and have a more detailed discussion about the data and how we collect it I'm happy to discuss it there okay um the file audit I believe it's 40 we do every month I shouldn't have tried should I um so they they're they're not massive numbers but it's the it's making sure that we're using um the sort of team manager upwards to actually get some consistency in in in the judgment and also get good compliance um on completing the audits and we can we can absolutely put that in the text along with the um looking at the use of the acronyms um could I just come in there so we have 30 audits that we're reporting on here but we also have a schedule all over the whole year to respond to anything that we see that comes out of the actually the audits um so for example we've just done a deep dive around strategy meetings which aren't held in the front door so if we see something that comes out from our auditing then we do bespoke so there's a separate schedule um and we do an overview of all the audits we do in each area of practice so from the front door into safeguarding and support into our children looked after they also do remote sampling on a monthly basis so it's a whole system approach again more than happy to describe some of that in more detail um if people wish so in terms of the improvement plan we do as you as you said have a very detailed improvement plan and we're happy to circulate that to to member so um we'll do that through Gemma so so you've got the latest iteration of our improvement plan and what might be helpful is what we what we usually do when we've got this as the the main topic for discussion at a screw to your meeting we also provide an update on pro on keep a progress against key improvement projects so it would probably be useful for you to have those two documents together and then we can have the the full discussion i think i've covered it thank you council wilson welcome and i think you have a question yes thank you thank you thank you for the for the report um again it really and it gives me a good understanding of what is happening and do you have a particular question about cases and allocation of cases so um i understand from what you said and thought we know that recruiting and entertaining experienced social workers of the challenge how then do you allocate cases in terms of or in relation to the complexity of each case so is it a presume they don't you know presume they don't come in order of complexity so if one comes tomorrow how do you ensure that the right experience can then be matched to the complexity of the case given that they will already have a case load and they you might have a new member of staff or an agent team member of staff available how do you manage that particular situation so as as you've said and as we've discussed um we have our own we we have our own permanent staff and we have agency staff what we do is we ensure that the um we have the right number of agency staff and they they are the staff who are experienced so we obviously the newly qualified staff are permanently employed with us as we developing them so we have a weekly um panel where if if a team feels that their case loads are getting unmanageable and they need an additional member of agency staff they can they can ask for permission to recruit an additional member of agency staff to make sure that the the case loads are always at the right level and when managers allocate cases obviously the the to ensure that um the complexity of the case matches the experience of the the the member of staff is the key consideration so you wouldn't allocate a very complex um uh case to a newly qualified member of staff unless you might sometimes jointly allocate so that newly qualified member of staff would get the experience from jointly working with an experienced member of staff okay is it my am I correct in understanding that people register for their as um like their official social work registration on the beginning of their training and they they may be qualified it may take them if they did a part turn offs at another role you know four years to qualify and therefore they might be newly qualified after four years of registration is that possibly the case i'm just trying to work out what what's the definition of somebody who is experienced um okay so uh you can you can only become a registered social worker once you've completed your training your placements um and you've basically passed all the academic and practical work that's required um and that's when you when you register with with social work England you then allow to call yourself a social work and then you can be allocated work as a qualified social worker um there is it that it's it's not a sort of definition a hard and fast definition around when when do you become an experienced social worker what we try to do with our newly qualified staff is is give them a range of experience to make sure that you know they've they've seen the journey of the child they've had opportunities to do different parts of the um the child's journey and as they're gathering that experience they've they continue to build on it uh so so i would say that most of our experienced social workers would have at least two or three years experience and certainly be passed there then newly qualified um you know they're they're sort of initial two or three years supported as newly qualified staff that's very much thank you thank you chevin um the office said that uh uh highlights too much variability in the quality of children's review minutes and plans i'm wondering whether these minutes and plans are very much free-formed documents at the discretion of the casework or whether they are structured forms which require specific issues to be addressed and generally how you're going to address this particular point in the letter now as this comes under carol i think i will let her answer she'll probably cringe otherwise thank you council okay um we've done a lot of work with our children's record systems so we have an electronic system it's called um LCS and on it we've um reviewed all of the forms so there is a a specific form with some guidelines down the side around um ensuring that all the plans that our managers and IROs do our outcome focus IROs means independent reviewing officers our outcome focus meaning that it looks at all of the outcomes that we want our children to achieve um the variability is because when they've looked back and when offset came in they quite rightly looked back in children's records to see how focused those plans were and whether you could see the impact of those plans on children's lives and because some of them weren't um specific enough and therefore couldn't be measured in a really detailed way then obviously there's variability um what we're doing about it um what we we're running currently um some outcome focused planning workshops for all managers and our reviewing officers as well um the particular area that we're focused on here was the independent reviewing officers and they chair the reviews of children's plans who are in care and also the reviews of children plans who want a child protection plan but it was the children in care plans that they felt was specific enough um so we are doing some detailed work we have all permanent staff in that service which is great news and some of them have known their children for some time um which is also good news and stability for those um for those children um and we're working with those reviewing officers to make sure that they all reach the standard that we would expect them to and so there's um an improvement focus around that area i hope that explains your it's good enough response for your question i was just wondering whether i was coming across a new piece of software here this is uh different from liquid logic is it no it's a form that's been put into liquid logic um liquid logic is the client record system that um in the west middle and seven of us use seven local authorities don't use it so it is probably the most popular nationally now but you get when you get it it's a vanilla framework and then you add in your own forms um so that you make sure because different local authority areas have different approaches to doing this and you will have heard us talk here before about how our new approach which is around our value values of historical practice etc so that's the flavor that's the the values that are behind our forms so it's not new software it's new forms cage hello sorry i'm crainsey i've got two questions if that's okay um one was around the assessments and obviously um you've highlighted around the children's disability team and the 16 plus team yourself um i just wondered what the headlines were there and how that was going to begin to be addressed um and also um this is possibly my lack of knowledge but i noted with regard to visit timeliness that um all visits are being kind of classed as good levels child in need sort of sitting around the 78 percent mark i thought that was quite low but is that accepted accepted as good let's start with the um assessments if you see on so we're on page 20 aren't we of that pack and you were seeing the bottom left hand corner with differentiating between the different teams now the 16 plus team um they only did three so they got two out of timescales and one in timescales clearly those two that's not acceptable um but actually they're very small numbers now the one that we've done a further deep dive on is the children with disabilities team now for some of those children in that service um they are offered um additional payments in order to maintain those children at home whether it be direct payments whether it be support packages whether it be rice spike care and so they need an updated assessment on an annual basis um to make sure that their needs are still being met by the package of support that we're getting that we're giving them now unfortunately the system isn't um able to differentiate between those assessments and the time frame for that and the time frames for the other assessments that are undertaken within the service so we're doing some work behind the scenes which will um improve that overall figure for us so we know why that's too low having said that there are still some areas as you can see that we need to do we need to improve but a benchmark for us across the west Midlands is around the 80 percent that's seen as um the benchmark the other question you asked was around children in need visits and were we satisfied that they were around the 80 percent mark no um they should be higher than that they are actually coming within the five percent tolerance um but we are working and focused on improving this we would like it to be more in the mid-80s percent Peter thank you very much Chair and I'm very curious as to you know on the high level the executive summary is there any link between the last bullet second last bullet point children in care figures and workforce and workload figures in terms of kind of a line of inquiry around the most experienced workers work with those um children new people who are in our most costly packages um the the most high cost residential placements or trauma disability and whether there's any data that shows that putting those young people placed with social workers who have the long-term experience get gets the better outcomes as opposed to say agency workers where well they they're less experienced they're less committed to the organization and does that lead to um worse worse results and whether in your file audits there's anything coming through about the you know the economic element to this because obviously child in care residential placements and children with disability they would have thought would be the most high cost placements and so whether taking an economic angle could lead to better outcomes and better staff retention so that link between those last two bullet points as a line of inquiry may not have the answer obviously clearly but just in quieting you know have you thought about that I'll start and then perhaps um others might want to might want to add to that so um in terms of high cost placements um not all of the um the sort of highest cost placements are around children with disabilities it's often children where there is an element of deprivation of their liberty because of their behavior or emotional containment required um that we find the hardest to um to identify the right placement and then um they they they they tend to be the highest cost placement um in terms of our agency staff um it's just a fact of life that particularly in in in this part of the improvement journey you're still likely to be building your own workforce so um but having said that what um offset inspectors tellers is they find our stuff to be really committed knowing their children very well and and they don't see a difference in quality in terms of agency staff or permanent staff and of course our supervision and monitoring we wouldn't want to keep on agency staff who less than committed or where we have some concerns about their quality um and the final thing I would perhaps say is that we wouldn't change social workers just because a child enters a different type of placement because the the relationship is what achieves the change and what achieve so so we would want if that social worker then needs additional supervision or support or perhaps a co-worker we can look at that but where we can we we try and provide stability for the child because that's the best chance to actually help them to step down from from from some of those very high cost placements any further questions I have one request that when you do your briefing sessions for um I I would like it to be all members because there's frankly stuff I don't know that I don't know and that always worries me can we include within that the organization structure down to a fairly low level so people understand it's taken me two years to understand what the organization each bit of the organization does and I'm sure I could have learned that a lot quicker um and it's that process flow that the organization is attempting to address with the children that actually go through it now some bits of it aren't in the process flow there's not all children for example end up in the I can't remember the name the bit the judicial piece I'm sorry I can't remember I hope hopefully very few do but a lot of children are on a on a route and if we can stop them earlier in that process which I know is what you're trying to do there are some key points and if you could explain that I think people find it a lot easier and to understand the role of what assistant team managers do team manager to heads of service do I think people will find that very helpful um it is I think it is and might actually help the acronyms as well thank you we're comfortable with the report apart from the fact that needs a glossary of terms and I agree it how CLA where on earth that children in care ends up with CLA I don't know you saw I don't I understand it is one of those there is there is there a piece of history that says we don't like calling it children in care anymore it's informed about what the children want to be called and the children's preference is children looked after so we've agreed that we would use that terminology thank you so it's the work plan for this coming year variable we've got one piece of work that's spanned the two years which was looking at attraction retention of social workers the skill social workers within the service and I think we had a report a partial report on that and we have a final session for is it June or something yeah September is it yeah but we we had need to set some dates for that but I think we said we come back in June because we were going to allow the HR person who's I'm sorry I can't remember her name sorry Andrea yes to come back she was going to do some work and then come back and and inform that I'm not sure whether we have still got all the same people on that committee that were on it before is it has anybody changed Jane can you remember I think Steph was on it a frame and so she's no longer here I think everybody else I think is still here so yeah it's reconvening the task and finish with it them to make a final recommendation and then that to come back to the scrutiny board in September so if one of the co-opted independent members would like to join that we have a vacancy on it so you don't have to say now right thank you so I assume everybody's read the work plan and for some people it'll make more sense than others I guess Councilor Wilson I'm sorry thank you Councilor yeah I just have had it when you were looking down just the question occurred to me about co-opted members and if there was somebody that we wanted to put forward as a possible co-opted member what's the process is there a process how does that work so at the moment there are two vacancies one is a parent governor which we will have to go out to governor services and ask them to start doing a trawl to try and find anybody who's interested in taking that position up if there is more than one person that will involve an election which the elections team will have to then run that will be done by a postal in relation to Steph's position I don't know Councilor do you want to introduce our colleague at the back who is proposed as a representative from the parent carers voice Tracy would you like to introduce yourself I think you joined us for previous meeting didn't you yes I think in answer to Councillor Wilson's question if she's got somebody in mind please email jama and we'll look at it thank you any other questions before we move on to the work plan go ahead please please start okay thank you Chair so that isn't just there um a couple of suggestions comments that might be already included but I don't know under the under the detail um firstly um kind of what the thoughts ideas about getting the voice of the child into scrutiny but as a more global catch up one really would be really quite powerful to think about is that something which is possible to do either in a particular time of year or to the topic would be really good to actually have directly voice influence of the giant unperson at screw to me um second would be um is there something kind of more global about sufficiency so we've heard about um the new um the sand places coming up we've also heard pleasures on placements all over but there's something more global about the whole system around education sufficiency early year sufficiency send sufficiency as a whole system supposed to snap shots um thirdly perhaps a bit more left field but i'm just thinking about that preventative agenda um is there any scope look at some key adult issues that affect children farmers and think of domestic violence mental health substance use and those are counsel wide response possible around early help and intervention there might be something there and then finally um again a number of bundle around electrical and education children's out there educational and missing education that also might be something to do together as a single slot as well in the future has anybody got any comments on those or questions councillor gethan you seem to be hesitating that there's probably a couple of points i can respond on if it helps um voice of the child um obviously we've got over us our voice our service they are um involved in the corporate parenting side so we are planning a takeover board and all sorts of things with them but it could be something that you could bring in but i want to the other thing i want to say so that's one side um and i don't know young carers when i was first in your position as a member of scrutiny one of my and and this i still remember vividly um was young carers and we had a row of young carers all sitting here and they all shared their experience and i do remember i think councillor McCarthy was there as well um and it was it was a really really good meeting so it could be the voice of the young carer that you might want to hear but and you know they are experts by experience they go through um caring for others and there were a quite young you know range of ages so that was one thing um the domestic abuse side of things probably covered in other boards so it's probably on the adults and also um soli soli hall um uh safeguard in part the partnership safety partnership that would probably be covered there but i don't know if there's any topics you'd want to cover and you sometimes you have joint scrutiny with adults and children so i think you used to do that in sort of january time don't you have a joint board but it could be any time if you want to delve into that topic yeah just coming back on that so the adults in public health board does cover some of those obviously some of the public health ones are all aged so for example substance misuse there's quite a lot of new investment coming in including targeted work with children young people so there may be some topics we do want to kind of select and look out as a uh as joint scrutiny that otherwise we'll go through that board so is that clear now what we're going to so there was we're going to ask some young carers to come is that sorry no this is what i'm asking is that what we want to do go forward i suggest um it might well be obviously want to go away and get some ideas together around how we might enter the room um i think i think you can care either with a really powerful message but of other areas that might also be equally strong to bring into the room or it might well be on a regular basis particularly as an inquiry or small in-depth conversation how does that become a standard way that we operate as a scrutiny to make sure we always have that influence of both the childhood and room as well yes there is there is the potential overlap with a corporate printing board and and and need to think that through but the other alternative would be for a small group of members from here to to go to the young people's meeting rather than the other way around and test some of those messages and bring them back which might be more fun for the young people certainly less daunting thank you chair i'm going to make a suggestion that we've as part of the future work around the participation strategies coming here in september and that'd be an opportunity to bring the voice to children from a variety of different settings not just our children looked after so again because this is a quite a dry environment for children and young people we can have the opportunity to hear their views on a number of different topics and then maybe that'd be the springboard for other information you might require any other thoughts gants okay thank you chair i did raise this subject before that i i'm still fascinated by the idea that only about half of our care levers of finding themselves in education or employment or training and i just wondered whether we could look in more detail as to what's help and obstacles lie in the way of our levers to because obviously the transition from childhood to adult is absolutely crucial as a start for for the rest of your life really and so i feel that that transition is so important to whether they take the right road or the wrong road sorry i'm being advised that other groups are looking at this but i'm not convinced um i just sorry what i want to understand you have this is a very specific thing about care levers and it is only about care levers and it's what happens to them as they leave at 16 18 and that that threshold to adulthood that it is that specific thing you want to understand what's happening to them as they grow into life in general yeah is this page 25 of the pack which gives us the data on it where we're consistently below the west midlands and other averages and i i just want to understand why that figure is so low and whether the things that we could do that would make it better carol is this the area that you thought we might have some data issues on that's correct so if you could enable us to bring back the data in at the next meeting because obviously we refresh the kim on a monthly basis and then look what further work you might require at that point chairman if it helps i'll also check with the economic development to manage growth scrutiny board their task and finish group and see whether there's anything specific they've done that's going to be reporting back to the main board i think if not next week i think it may be um the july meeting um so it could be picked up there as well i'll double check thank you council wilson were you was your hand still up or did you have another question i have another question thank you chair um so a few questions so one that was about um deputations and questions i feel like i should know what the process is but i think following on from councilor fips question about how to include member of the public and all children i'd be it beautiful if i just somebody could tell me a bit how how that is how if somebody does feel like they're ready and would be useful to give a deputation and or ask a question how do i go about enabling that to happen and then also um also the leisure and community board and surprisingly domestic violence also occurs as i just thought i'd say that in terms of the work plan um i just thought that was great it's not in there and then maybe the same transformation plan i wanted to look at the diagnoses uh people waiting especially in terms of neurodiverse diagnoses you know how how we could speed that process up seems to just take a few years and that's a long time for for children um and i think i made last year about the feasibility of um of new same schools given that our task and finish group the parents um overwhelmingly said that they wanted more provision more and better maybe within mainstream settings so um i just wanted to just look at the feasibility um studies for um new same schools that are proposed whether they yeah whether they're really meeting and answering the needs and requests of our of our parents and and the children um and maybe within the same transformation plan again does that we'll be able to look at the um assessment timelines kind of as raised before about that disability team would that fit within there to look at that data again once it's revisited and then in the september retention recruitment task and finish group is it useful possible to put in there like something to do with something like 360 degree feedback for social workers and right in terms of cases that are coming to me there are different people who deal with case the social workers as as desired and the i think it a comprehensive feedback from all of those who deal with and it doesn't necessarily have to be that personal i guess which give me an understanding of what a resident might be bringing to me i don't know whether it's possible there and then again under the next item these study whole parent parent voice forum is it worth there adding the of us as well i know that's the children rather than the parents um but but looking at that again as before looking at the child's voice then november where it says virtual school and the next item update education inclusion service is it there where we can look at the home school is raised by um poulter halton yeah and they finally is it at all within i'd just remit or decide remit that we would be able to look at the quality of like the calf-cast services as it supports our children and all marico is that just just the wrong place to look at that that was a long list bietta um right there we go so so uh calf-casts are the guardians and they work to to the courts um we have no authority over them um they are um regulate well they they are inspected through offset so i don't think we can we can take that anywhere unless there is a specific angle for our own children in terms of um the the sort of the quality um of our social workers like every other employee of the council their subject to the personal development reviews and they get treated in the same way they also have to every year to to maintain their registration they have to evidence um they're learning to to and and evidence that they can continue to meet the standards required to be social workers so that's just a little bit of background um around that that sort of feedback that our staff are getting and how we develop them yes i think the recruitment retention task force was very much focused on exactly those two items um i think there was some discussion at one point about 360 degree appraisal and i think we decided that that probably was either not in our remit or far too complicated um at this moment in time um so i think we need to keep that focus down on what we originally agreed to do otherwise we'll just end up with mission creep um yeah i think Sarah you were next thank you um chair i'm just mindful that um the send transformation plan is coming to the next board meeting on the third of july and i know that a number of councillors around the table are governors and i just want to really encourage you to um find out from your head teachers in your in your wards what they think about send so that when um when our officers are talking to us we've got some um we're able to triangulate what they're saying with what the lived experience is in schools so that we can then um look at where where where that matches and where they've perhaps worked to be done i saw nodding on that and i think we have a number of councillors who sit on governing boards and there is actually a meeting thursday of this week of these schools for them is there yeah and i think the issue is raised there on a very regular basis from what i can see i'm not sure who was next i was just going to suggest that that request is relayed to governor coal um it's not hit tonight but it's heard of none various councilor fips thank you chair clearly we had a long list on paper before we came today we included about added extra things onto a possible list as well would it be worth thinking about how we prioritised this it was meaningful to the wide ground the officers work exceptionally hard to bring the stuff that we don't even have the time to look at properly um and what's the criteria for bringing it forward and surely this is about i was currently functioning those key wicked issues that key challenges key issues that we're concerned about or what we need to have a little bit more kind of deep dive together so i would really plead for could we have some prioritisation with some really clear criteria so have some really good meaningful conversations here i think that's a good idea i'd like to get to the end of this session where we've got a list and hopefully our officers will be able to tell us what it is we might have added to the list and then we can actually work out how many additional items actually are there because if you take send transformation and if i listen to council wilson what she just wanted to make sure was that certain things would be covered and i think the answer to that question was yes but i think we've actually have one or two additional suggestions as well um has anybody got anything extra they'd like to go on the work program council gather it's nothing extra it's something that we've obviously already covered tonight with regards to elective home education um whenever um home education is brought up i always feel that there's negative connotations around it um so if that is something that we are going to focus on um i'd like to first of all point out that a parent has a right to electively home educate their child um there has been a report that's come out this month um safeguarding children in elective home education um and that does state um if i read from the report that most children who are home educated have happy and safe lives but a small minority do not so i know that we do worry about um verbal children and the safe gives them the children because they're not going into schools so they're not seen all the time um but it'd be interesting to know here within solly hall how many of those children do we consider at risk do we think that we have a higher number at risk than anywhere else in the country and if so why um but then we also need to look on the flip side of that where do we have the right provision for these children why why are parents electively home educating is it because they really want to is it because we don't have a provision and therefore they're forced is it because a school has turned around and said we can't meet need so again off roll not allowed i know but that does happen um and i just feel that when we do look at it we need to look at all angles and we need to ensure that instead of having negativity for elective home education what we do is we also look at a way where we can actually help these families and help the parents and not just say you've decided to home educate you're on your own because therefore how if you want to have sight of children and you're telling the parents well you've decided to do that that is it you've got to decide what you want to do there so i really think that it's not going to be an easy case of that's just something on the agenda i think there's a lot of things around elective home education that needs to be considered before we sit in a room to discuss thank you Ruth were you thinking of commenting on that so no yes sir i just wanted to to make a very brief comment because we we we think that um we we agreed in principle we would have um up to three topics at a meeting just to bear that in mind because i think the the bit about prioritizing is well made we want to make sure that when we have a discussion we bring you the right depth of information yeah just as a follow on i think you mentioned this chair i think the send improvement discussion will be a really important one because i know a number of the comments that council wilson raised i think will be covered they may not be covered in sufficient depth but i think it should give a flavor than to the committee of we want a bit more information on that and what i would say is the when we share it there is a equivalent of the key measures that sits alongside that's the some of the issues that a number of people have raised around will how are we doing with processing our ehcp some of those performance issues will come out through that discussion as well so it then might help you know finalize what might need to be looked at later on in the in the year indeed um officers have just suggested that for home education we might do a task and finish group where you can be a bit more relaxed and a bit less focused in order to get find out what the real issues are if indeed there are any issues because we don't know that what we know is a number of people do this we don't know whether it's growing going going down we don't know what support people need we don't know why they do it and that and getting some questions might be the a useful thing to do and where i am is i i know some children who have been are in home education and it's perfectly satisfactory that i i never crossed my mind mind it was bad um i'm sure there's bad in everything in in all life and so i'm sure a few it's it's a risk but we can ask the officers that question if we think it's worthwhile asking the question so people comfortable that we don't have that as a main agenda item but maybe we actually just set up a task and finish group just to look at and basically kick it around to see if there's anything there yes, Councillor Hamilton. I prefer it to come to scrutiny rather than a task and finish group at this stage i think it's very much a profile of the water cross borough because i mean i've got a lot of children now who are not in full-time education they're on receipt of two hours a day and they parents don't particularly want to have to try and work an autistic child for two hours a day there's no alternative at the moment there's no other place for them so i think i understand exactly what you're saying Councillor Getham about elective home education when i was in the 60s it was a certain group of people who badly could offer their children a better opportunity than a school and and maybe they didn't quite like you did it but i think we're looking at a very different situation that we've got now which has come about because some schools aren't able to cope or have already told the parents you'll need to find somewhere better so it's a but i had envisaged that discussion that we raised actually taking place at our next i think what you're discussing there, Councillor Hamilton, is very different to what elective home education is if those children are only on two hours a day are they still in a provision in which case they are not EHE they are still in under a school so again what is it we want to look at do we want to look at elective home education are we looking at provision not being able to meet need it's very different it has come to the board before i've got all the documentation so i'm very happy we'll all hopefully maybe look back over what was discussed the last time we went into great detail then so it is all out there on your iPad and electronically there is we're in a different world at the moment with this situation and you know it's very complicated when i don't want to because these parents are struggling very hard to struggle with this situation i wouldn't say any more. Councillor Fipps can i just very quickly reply and say that it's possibly in the wording so we're talking about non-anactive and elective home education i think they're being home educated but they haven't actually elected it's actually the interest of honourable so you know i think i understand i've already said exactly where you're coming from but i think they're confettiing the two issues and i do think we have a duty and a responsibility to look at what's actually happening in the borough and to look at the progress whether it's upward trajectory or a downward trajectory whichever one it is and what are we going to do to try and run with this situation most children want and parents want their children to go back into school related for the the month that's got a child being educated for two hours a day can never work so yeah i think as we say there's elective home education and then the ease where and the schools just cannot meet need of the children and then what are we doing to help those children and those families and i've been there where i haven't been able to work because i've had to work around trying to pick a child up halfway through the day or they've only gone in for a short period of time so i have been that parent and i will say i am that parent that home educators because again um can't meet need so um i see from both parts i really really do um i understand the parents that are struggling but then i also am part of several home education groups where it's home education at home schooling and it is a case of um they feel that they are doing what's best for their child so i think it's two very different um things to look at and and as i did say before you know how many are forced in term education how many um you know it's it's a part time table you know it's a very big issue and i think sometimes they get very confused we got a send transformation plan thing if this issue is not covered in that transformation plan then we as a group will ensure it's covered because i think the point that you raise is important but we don't know it's not covered because we don't know what the plan is so my suggestion is we wait till the next meeting find out what the plan is and if you can ensure that it is either covered because you got it covered or you declare we haven't got it covered that would be helpful and if we can help you with if it's not fully covered with that then we would love to but i think there is a separate issue about elective i'm going to call it home education why people doing it is there enough support and all those kind of things but we don't really know what the questions are which is why we thought we might do a task and finish group to kick it around is that right yeah does that cover where you are right that's good Kate yeah i was just gonna sign that point if you look at page 33 the briefing paper briefing requested arm number two i think some of the elements around non-elective home education will probably come out of that discussion just to link that in. Councillor Hamilton if you look at the very last page page 33 there is going to be a meeting which includes Kate steps replacement i guess oh step wanted to be involved in it anyway and the officers to look at exclusions would you like to be involved in that yeah sorry it's the point two yes was that a yes or no would you like to be included in that discussion point two sorry it's not exclusions it's about people who we fail to provide sufficient funding and they can't be met in it can't be met in mainstream provision unless they get additional funding is that the issue that you were talking about I think that's it's not just one issue so so the question comes back is Kate and Steph we're going to meet with the the senior team that is responsible for this do you wish to be involved in that or are we happy you happy that's left to Steph and Kate and then get a report back to this meeting I think we'll just leave it then with Kate and Steph did we did we say that we were going to look at edge of care and leaving care plans because we talked about those or we had to give us a briefing on it did we want more in depth on that or were we happy that we just picked that up at the regular updates on the the performance indices it might be worth us bringing the next iteration to see whether that answers the question if if it does come here there is probably an overlap with the corporate parenting board so in that case the the scrutiny board might ask for an update from the work on the corporate parenting board just to make sure there's no duplication I'm comfortable with that I mean it is obviously one of those it's that one of the big cost drivers is we've got too many children in care and that is how quickly how easy is it from to end up in there where we can prevent it and how quickly can we get them out which was the ex-relation that we were given and if we could reduce those level to our statistical neighbors then it would be better for the children but would leave resources free to spend on other things which would be good so yes I think we'll take that recommendation we'd produce a paper and tell us what basically the corporate parenting board are doing it so do we know what additional items we're adding to what do you think officers we think we've agreed to add if anything something on global sufficiency yeah that was on education yes can you clarify a little more so Ruth and her team have got my suggestion was looking at the whole sufficiency do we have in the education places in the right in the right areas at the right time in the right phases really is primary secondary special was that about have we got enough places in the borough for say primary education given the number of children we've got because we did do that or is this about the specialist bits the sufficient so we have send children with these needs it's not having a send school but my understanding is each send school tends to be specialist on a particular activity or need with within that you might kind of focus what looking at areas of spend children not being able to attend a school place rather than the overall people place planning it was could we do something different plate around our overall provision mainstream and are we planning this specialist provision in a way which meets the needs of the children to present it so we're very much from a send point of view and a placement review around that specialist provision and could have done differently in early years primary secondary etc so again just going back to the sun transformation plan to is there is an element of that i don't think it will entirely capture what you said but there is an element on that around increasing specialist and alternative provision capacity so that's one of the key things within the sun transformation program i don't think it will quite go as far as you are suggesting that but again it might be worth seeing whether that's given you the kind of level of detail you need and if not then what else would sit on top i really happy with suggestion i think it's a really good place it could be new to scrutiny and to the council if we have that first read and then if we needed any further we can come back again with you members the work plan you've got in front of you is not a tablet of stone so throughout the whole of this municipal year we can look to move things around and things if you get the report that Ruth's just been talking about and you feel there is something that hasn't been covered in enough depth that can be raised and again you have to prioritize because the idea was that you had two substantive reports for each meeting so you do have to bear that in mind but this work plan isn't going to be agreed as a final work plan tonight it can be tapped on to the agenda for each board meeting so you can review it and if you want to change things around you've got that option i think council fix your content with let's see what we're getting and if that's not sufficient we'll ask for some more information but hopefully it will cover most but if it doesn't you'll come here thank you i think the work plan is therefore chair yes just on on the send transformation plan and we're talking to my head teachers and and the Sencos issues about you know reflecting on report writing and the quality of reports and graduated responses and then the push back sometimes that we're getting from local authority health um it's quite an adversarial system and i came across a research in Kensington and Chelsea the by bear Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster where they they looked at the digital footpath in terms of reports and now the whole approach to echps and it did transform outcomes so i'm just highlighting that to DCS and and the ADs just to see if we could look at best practice i've said it before what is the best practice across the borough north south in terms of send in that collaboration between very effective schools and effective responses from local authority colleagues so it's not adversarial it's more collaborative but i was really impressed by the Kensington and Chelsea model and I shared it with yourself i and i we did it to officers yeah good so i just think the real rich fruits there it's a it's a good borough i started i'm i suppose you worked with 35 years ago so um and i think there'll be good lessons just tap into that council will send and thank you um i just wondering if you know the date for the next of us meeting and all and there's a list of other items under meeting dates is it possible to put in the other dates and also again just remind me of the process for deputations and questions to screen to the board can you remind the board again for the process for the deputations and questions and i think you've just said yes you can put in the overstates we find the overstates just picking up on the councilor's next point about questions and deputations any member of the public who lives in the borough can make a request to make a deputation or ask a question they have to give 24 hours notice so if it was for today's meeting it would have been by noon yesterday they have to email us with the topic of the deputation and if it's a petition roughly outline what the title of the petition is if it's a question the full question if we're talking about inviting or encouraging children to attend or young people we would need to give that some consideration in a public meeting which is live stream so if you're thinking about that please can you contact us earlier so we can discuss that with you in relation just on that point about involving the young person's voice it's been raised it was raised last year so it's nothing new but what we need to do i think is talk to officers about how we can achieve that in the best possible way not only for you to get what you need but obviously to make it as comfortable as possible for the young people to engage with you so this forum may not be that yes and again i know some members have said that their skill sets don't lend themselves to go to talk to younger people other members of the board it does so it's a question of getting the right people to go and have these conversations in the right setting so again bear with us we can talk to the officers we can talk to our boss we can talk to young carers groups and see how we achieve that my understanding was be able to agree to take that away and come back with some suggestions i think did i read that right yeah we can do that thank you is that every is that everything i'm not sure we've agreed to change the work then i think we've added some um flesh to some of the topics that we want covered and we've decided i think that we will listen to what the officers said on a number of issues and then if we want to develop it further we'll add things to the work plan later in the year if i got that right does have we missed anything that we should sorry Allison i thought there were things that we'd added i didn't write them down but i thought there was stuff there that was slightly different but i take on board what jane says about how these are a moving feast and um certainly my previous experience this board is that there's discussion about where you want to put things when you want to do it etc so it all sort itself out of sure the minutes will reference the items points raised and you can look at those at the next meeting yes we just double check when the minutes come out if we have indeed missed anything right any further points our next meeting is on the it's at the third of july isn't it and that is going to pair complaints and the send transformation plan as the two big issues
Summary
The meeting began with the election of the chairman and vice chairman, with no other nominations, resulting in David Cole being elected as vice chairman. Apologies were received from several councillors, and there were no declarations of pecuniary or conflicting interest. The minutes of the last meeting were reviewed and approved with minor corrections. The main topics discussed included the enhancement of children's services, the SEND transformation program, and the recruitment and retention of social workers.
The enhancement of children's services was a significant focus. Councillor Grensall, newly in post, provided an overview of the improvement journey for children's services, emphasizing the importance of quality and consistency in social work practice. Key priorities included child protection, education, family hubs, emergency duty teams, corporate parenting, community parenting, and placements for children. Councillor Grensall highlighted the need for timely responses to families and children entering the service and the importance of hearing the voices of children. The council is working on opening new children's homes and recruiting more foster carers, with a goal of becoming a foster-friendly borough.
The SEND transformation program was another major topic. Councillor Grensall mentioned the recent funding approval for a new SEND school with 150 places at the Sans Souci site in Shirley. The program aims to ensure timely assessments for children with special educational needs and to find appropriate placements. The council is also focusing on supporting children who are homeschooled and ensuring they receive a proper education.
The recruitment and retention of social workers were discussed, with an emphasis on the importance of experienced social workers for managing complex cases. The council is addressing the variability in the quality of children's review minutes and plans by providing outcome-focused planning workshops for managers and reviewing officers. The performance report indicated improvements in various areas, including initial child protection conferences and re-referrals, but highlighted the need for further progress in reducing the number of children in care and improving workforce stability.
Other topics included the need for a glossary of terms in reports, the importance of involving the voice of the child in scrutiny, and the potential for joint scrutiny with other boards on issues such as domestic violence and mental health. The work plan for the year was discussed, with suggestions for prioritizing topics and ensuring meaningful discussions. The next meeting will focus on corporate parenting and the SEND transformation plan. The meeting began with the election of the chairman and vice chairman, with no other nominations, resulting in David Cole being elected as vice chairman. The meeting then proceeded to discuss various administrative matters, including apologies from absent members and declarations of interest.
The most significant topic discussed was the improvement of children's services, led by Councillor Grensall. She emphasized the ongoing improvement journey in children's services, highlighting the importance of quality and consistency in social work practice. Key priorities included child protection, education, family hubs, emergency duty teams, corporate parenting, community parenting, and placements for children. Councillor Grensall also mentioned the need for more foster carers and the importance of listening to children's voices.
Another important topic was the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) transformation program. Councillor Grensall discussed the need for timely assessments and the provision of appropriate educational placements for children with special needs. The council has received funding for an additional 150 places at a new SEND school, which will be located at Sans Souci in Shirley.
The meeting also covered the issue of elective home education, with a focus on understanding the reasons behind it and ensuring adequate support for families. It was suggested that a task and finish group be set up to explore this topic further.
The council's performance report was reviewed, highlighting key indicators such as initial child protection conferences, re-referrals, children in care numbers, and workforce and workload. The report showed improvements in some areas but identified ongoing challenges, particularly in reducing the number of children in care and addressing re-referrals.
The work plan for the year was discussed, with suggestions for additional topics, including the voice of the child, sufficiency of educational places, and the impact of adult issues on children. It was agreed that the SEND transformation plan would be reviewed in the next meeting to determine if further information was needed.
The meeting concluded with a reminder of the next meeting date and a discussion on the process for public deputations and questions.
Documents
- CSES SB Draft WP 2024 to 2025
- Agenda frontsheet 21st-May-2024 18.00 Childrens Services Education Scrutiny Board agenda
- March 24 reported April 24 - KIMs v0.5 - Copy
- CSES SB Draft WP 2024 to 2025
- Draft Minutes 5 March 2024
- Public reports pack 21st-May-2024 18.00 Childrens Services Education Scrutiny Board reports pack