Transcript

• Thank you so much, Emily. Sorry if that's like technical difficulties which have been resolved. So I'm Councillor Emma Marshall. I am the new chair. So I'm really excited today. And just to let you know a little bit about me for those who haven't worked with me before, my mum of four, two of my children have got SCMD. So I think I've got a fair amount of experience, I actually homeschooled my children too. So I've got a lot of experience with that end of it. And I'm also a governor of a preschool board in New York. So I'm hoping I can do this kind of justice. So bear with me today, it's the first time I'm also the chair of this meeting and I'll try and do the best I can. I also want to welcome Councillor Desmond as my vice chair. I'm really pleased to have him next to me. So we'll talk about the good team. We also have Councillor Clayton who has joined the committee. So thank you very much. Councillor Tissot also has been fortunate and he hasn't played it yet. And I also want to give thanks to Councillor Chambers who's the previous chairman who has handed it to me in a very good shape. Thank you very much. Councillor Ross who is vice chairman and Councillor Daisy for their contributions to this panel. I'd also like to welcome the CMR for education and the CMR for children and families. And congratulations both of you on your agreements. We're not going to go easy on you, don't think that. And also welcome to INHAL. We have got some, first of all to say meeting is being recorded and it will be up online. We have got some apologies. Thank you. We could go onto agenda item two which is the declaration of interest in the party. I understand that. And agenda item three is public participation which there is going on. So agenda item four, we'll go onto the confirmation of the minutes on the previous meeting. Now I have read this, I won't read it personally. It's just made it. Is everyone happy then? So this means we go onto our substantive item today which is agenda item 10 project efficiency. And in terms of this we have, can I just say this is going to be your last meeting this year? It's indeed, well it's my first meeting. It's not useful isn't it? But as a matter of fact, for everything you've done I've done. I'll just introduce, yeah thanks to the team for being here. So the work that we're just going to commence now hasn't started yet so this is the very early presentation of what we are going to do. What we have presented before is the context to this which is, I'm sure that all members will know, is the challenge that we have with solutions to fertility and placements. Our challenge is seated in, we want all children who need to be in care to have a family care experience. That's what a primary challenge is and we haven't got enough families to care for the children that are coming into the care system. We recognize that many of those children have got some very very challenging disability because of the abuse, the trauma, the separation that they experience and so we recognize that but what we still want is for those children to have a family care experience. Over the last two years we've seen a rise in the number of children under 12 who are only visibly facing residential care because we haven't been able to find a family carer and when we look at family care there are three options that we look at. One is that we always first look at a connected person to that child and that's a duty, that can't be ignored, we have to do that. So it's not that we just want to find anybody in the family we have a duty to go and see if there's anybody that's already knows that child that could look back to that child. If they can't be safe you can't provide them with a family. If there isn't anybody in the family willing to have their own and assessed as suitable then we look at mainstream, our own mainstream foster care. If we're not able to find anybody in our own mainstream foster care cohort of families we have to look at independent external doing families and we have seen a rise in the number of family members willing and able to support the children in their families which is great and we have a very good kinship connected persons offer of support and financial and payment that is equal to that of foster carers in Worcestershire so we promote that and that's working very well but we don't have enough of our own foster carers and our recruitment of foster carers has been lower than our loss of foster carers. The majority of foster carers that we're losing from the system are people in retirement they have been working in foster care for many years and I think that's the primary reason that we're losing them. There are other reasons, a range of reasons that we like. Some of them are de-legisted and that's initiated because of the issues or concerns with regards to their lovely care they're able to offer. So de-registration carers is a process of that so each year some carers might be got to that and each year some may just be fine. They don't want to do foster care anymore they're not retiring but they're just leaving foster care and some may move area and go and the foster carers in a more local area or move to an alternative employer rather than the Worcestershire children first but that's not the primary reason that we lose foster carers. So the reduction in foster carers overall is about the fact that we are losing more this side than on new coming into the system and it's also true that the children that are coming into the care of the local body is changing so we have less babies, we have less young easy children to care for and some of that is about the fact that we focus very strongly and have very good support in place for families when they're experiencing difficulties. So whenever we can we will prevent the care the need for children to come into the care system so we've a lot of support there and that works and that works well but when a child does each group care then we will receive care for their protection and their welfare and as I said we then automatically look to zero limited family. The secondary issue that comes with that is of course when you've got a very limited availability of a resource it becomes more and more and more expensive so children's placements as a cost and that's not just foster care it's residential foster care placement in their entirety has been a big financial cost to children's services within Worcestershire and internationally so for us to look at how we can both address some of those driving costs and also meet our aim and our value to value family care in our children's families we needed to look at what can we do differently what can we do to increase the number of foster carers that are coming into Worcestershire and support those that are here as well to care for some of our most complex children and we've got a range of projects that we're doing and one of them was the introduction of the specialist foster carer so the specialist foster carer is now can earn a thousand pounds a week for caring for a child who has some of these very additional challenging behaviors which are definitive or displaying sorry about the child through either through self-harm or violence of the primary reasons so we've been doing some recruitment and some conversions actually some of our foster carers to specialist foster carers and we're going to continue with that and and in power and how a value care approach that if we are applying to foster care where it's really looking at how can we maximize the skills of the foster carers that we've currently got with the needs of the children that we've got but also make sure that those works coming in again we identify those skills that they need and that's that's kind of this specific piece of work and so that's what the presentation will be about it is a short piece of work and that doesn't make it not in depth so Maria and the team are also going to just to give you an overview of what we're going to be doing over that next four months before we come back and report back in September and so it's quite an in-depth piece of work for a period of a few months and then we'll go to come back in November and report back on how successful it's been and whether or not there is more than for us to do to have a rather firm rollout or not Before we move on to the presentations do you have anything you want to say uh as a guide uh as it as it comes to us? No only that um I think Tim has given a very very comprehensive um analysis of the problems um but those problems uh which are obviously financial um are in almost in abeyance to the fact that we still look for what is in the best interests of the child before we do anything else and that is that's paramount um and so the valuing family care takes takes the precedent but of course also if it works out if we find all those foster carers that we're looking for then our own problems can be resolved in part of this. I'll pass it on for the presentation. Thanks, thanks for that, it's a great great and good morning to you all and just introduce ourselves I'm Dominic Laskin and as everyone said I lead our work on children's social care nationally I let my colleague be able to do so. I need a number of projects and I'll take this specifically and just to weigh on in power as a company so we are we are the largest consulting firm that's solely focused on local government uh we work across local government health and NHS adult social care uh and I would say sort of our work there is a focus on finding ways of improving outcomes for children and young people and individuals that can also reduce cost and this this work uh really fits with fits with that very well um if you come into the next slide Maria so just to touch on the focus of this of this work so we are supporting a phase of activity that runs until October uh and the impound team myself and the rest of the impound team will be working very closely with Maria and colleagues in support of the aim and objectives that Tina outlined. In terms of the scope of this activity we're focusing on two key areas so the first one is working with Maria's team to identify opportunities for more children in residential settings to transition to family investments, foster care as Tina described and midness a particular focus on on the better understanding and profiling the needs of children and young people and but also the confidence and capability of foster heroes to meet those needs and that's using our our value and care approach which is a proprietary methodology but also using strength-based approaches and practice and thinking to support that that matching and that support and the second strand of work again is working with Maria and her team around building on the existing strengths um to really further develop and strengthen and support your existing approach to foster care recruitment and retention and within that that draws on we've worked we've worked for over 20 years to support activity around foster care recruitment and retention and it draws on our on our what we call our family values approach which really focuses on the values of the prospective carers that we're targeting in terms of the messaging and in terms of how we reach prospective carers but also focuses on utilizing existing foster care networks and local targeted working out campaigns alongside some of the more some of the media and digital um approaches that you'd be familiar with um and the approach also uses a campaigning methodology so really focusing on capturing the impact of activity um and putting foster carers with the right tools and materials to actually get out and improve within their networks. Can you tell us the next slide, Maria? So as I mentioned the approach to to matching foster carers and children and young people draws on our value and care approach um and just just to describe this in a bit more detail so this is an approach to capturing the needs of children and young people which we've developed with a number of local authorities in recent years um and at the child level it captures the holistic needs of a child or young person and then allows us to track how those changes over time and then that information can be used to inform practice and commissioning um for example it can be part of pain finding it can be part of reviewing care and support for children and young people and in this instance in this instance it can be used to actually look at the needs of children and young people versus the confidence and skills of foster carers but at a cohort level and it also allows local authorities and partners to better understand and respond to the needs of children and young people so for example we've got the number of authorities to apply this to to us cohorts um sorry unaccompanied children and different age groups children in certain forms of provisions for example children in residential provision and in some authorities it's been applied across the whole care population so for a number of authorities it's been rolled out for all of those children who are looked after um and then we've worked with around 15 local authorities to use and apply volume care in different ways um in the last couple of years more focus has been on on fostering and the application that we've described in which Pemen touched on and I'm going to pass it over to Fiona just to talk a little bit more about actually how we're applying this to fostering. Thanks Tom, so it's great to like how family care can be applied within fostering and key focus of our support over the coming months um so family care can be applying to better support care and matching utilisation and placement stability by identifying the strengths and the disabilities of foster carers so it focuses on applying a strengths-based approach thinking about actually a lot of the skills and capabilities across 13 key domains and I'll go on to show you a view of what the the tool looks like but matching that to the needs of the children and young people. It developed through consultation with foster care and their social worker and that's a really core part of it so it's an approach and a tool but a tool that can be nine and can be used regularly to support the development of foster carers so it informs and supports matching um it informs and supports individual development uh areas and development programs and as a cohort level so within this first phase of um support we're looking at 40 to 50 foster care profiles and that's our aim we can start to think about actually where are the areas for development across that cohort so it can inform ongoing learning and development. We can move on to the next slide. So just to bring to mind what that looks like so here you've got a copy of a family care profile it has two lines on it so the pink line is the foster carers skills and capabilities and the purple line the inner line is the charging young person's needs. So what it enables us to do is create a picture of those needs and those strengths and understand how that foster carer can best support the young person. As I said there are 13 domains within that. Sitting behind this is the tool, the family care tool, it has a number of questions that a social worker would work through and in conversation with their foster carer in focusing on strengths and capabilities and to be able to create a visual representation and picture of those needs. Now it may be a case where there isn't a match between those two but it enables us to then identify where there might be areas for development and you can see this change over time as John talked about. The feedback that we've had where we've applied this in other areas and working with fostering teams and foster carers has highlighted how it's enabled the conversation between the foster carer and the social worker to focus on their strengths and capabilities and get to know one another and to think about those individual development plans. It also enables the foster carer to have that record and to focus on their strengths to celebrate their strengths as well and to think about their own development needs. So again just bring them back to life for more detail. So this is an example of impact from another area that we've been working with and so you can see here again the value profile that looks at the needs of the child and young person, the value made and the strengths of that foster carer. So this was a young person who was in a residential placement and through the completion of the planning and care tool with their social child social worker they were able to identify the opportunity for a step down from residential to fostering and then through the completion of planning and care tools for foster carers to be able to match the needs of the child and young person to the strengths and capabilities of the foster carer. So this did result in a step down and a match which has resulted in a financial saving of around 200k in their lives and so hopefully that brings to light what the family care tool looks and feels like but also the impact that can be achieved. Thank you Fiona and so we're very happy to take any questions. There are also some reports in the public domain that we can circulate which give a bit more information and background to some of this work if that's of interest. Yeah really interesting. Thank you. It's interesting you talk about one of the areas that you're in where you get the local government to do something like that. Could you tell us the last one of those that you read. How many extra families did you recruit foster parents because that's one of the key things I'll be talking about. You sign about your phone you say I just really want the background for all that sort of stuff. So I think if it's helpful I need to take that away but in terms of the numbers and stats and in relation to the process we've worked with I'd be very happy to come back on that and share that. It's interesting because as I said it depends on how much everybody is concerned. I was looking for some background information about where you work. Yeah I can say we're working with Telford and Regent at the moment also in the region we're also working with Warsaw in terms of this sort of work focus on fostering we've worked extensively with the likes of Norfolk and Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire and it's quite a broad kind of local authority but in terms of the specific information around impact and number of foster carers recruited etc I would need to come back to do that separately. Thank you very much. Yeah thanks that's really interesting. I suppose my concern is one of the teen areas that start but we are lacking foster carers so matching foster carers to children makes perfect sense but eventually we're going to run out of foster carers so as in how you you know it's like this is great but then you could be left with lots of foster carers yeah but then lots of children with no foster carer go to so I suppose it's coming back to how do we solve that problem not just getting more foster carers. So one part of the the work and support is around the matching the second part is absolutely focused on that recruitment of foster carers and within that recruitment thinking about the whole fostering journey so from the attracting new active lot of carers through the assessment process and then through to the matching and support ongoing. I think just to share with one local party that we recently worked with through that support looking at the recruitment but also through supporting the assessment process they saw a 73 increase in the number of foster carers recruited compared to the previous year. Tom I don't know if you want to talk about the family values in a bit more detail but it is around speaking about creatively how you attract and recruit new foster carers and some of that is around actually thinking about your foster carer network as an opportunity to bring others in so through word of mouth campaigns for example. Yeah I think just to echo that I touched on it previously I think building on the work that we're really doing and team are really doing in terms of that we have seen opportunities to really strengthen recruitment and also the conversion of inquiries through to approved foster carers and that is that is really that focus on on values through focus on utilising existing foster carers and their networks through using a really targeted and focused campaigns locally which target the sort of the sort of prospective foster carers that we're looking to reach and we have seen some significant impacts in other priorities as we already mentioned but as a clinic said we will we can share a bit more information on that as well. I'd like to ask a question if I've made it. I think we've been asked before I could see whichever that's what you want to commit now. So so it's not saying you know what we want the impact to do is to bring this to independence sweetening challenge added value to what we're already doing so when we introduced the specialist most of the parents last year we've already without using the tool and matched seven of our own foster carers to children who have either stepped down from residential or we have prevented the young children from going into residential world you know they would have gone to adventure before and and I'll let Kristy believe and realize they need their attitude then I make sure yes so so it's a problem where I'm not sound from the screen as it's from the boys coming in so um yes so the the three children that have been placed have actually stepped down residential basically it's just foster carers and it's saving up to say eight hundred thousand just for pre-children and the four patients have been made to an alternative to new entrances into residential care our average rest costs at the moment that would save them around say seven hundred thousand so just from seven children really the cheapest our would have been our spend in this now financially we're in 1.5 million and what we've done is we've focused first on growth of children under 20 but we're going into the adventure or army adventure we've still got more children in that cohort than we would like to move and if I can see back set down into family care um and we've then identified children who are between 12 and 15 and because we want them in family care as well just because they're 12, 13, 14, 15 they're still too old to be uh too young sorry to be in a residential setting but on a long-term permanent basis so we're trying to look at that cohort and that's the cohort we're particularly going to focus on within Power because as Dominique said what we know is that sometimes it's the confidence of the care rooms to care for for the children when they're exhibiting very self-harm behaviors and as well as violent behaviors and that's a frightening prospect to have a child that's got that level of meaning in your home and so it is about really emphasizing to those carers what skills they've got and giving them more confidence as well as then matching them to the children and the children don't become labeled as you know violent child or self-harm child but actually we understand what the behaviors are what the triggers are and really importantly how we manage those children's behaviors and if you match those two things the skill of the carer and the congregants to understand that these behaviors although they're very frightening to see on paper actually they can be managed that's when you've got the sweet spot in terms of being able to move so we've already started this work ourselves and saying we've already inspired the carers seven care rooms and maybe those children will be sent but we want to do more and that's when we've got in power there are two other pieces of work that you're going to be doing of which we've got to do a short overview that's really going to move in a second um with where we're going to be able to move and we've been marketing so we're getting a little bit of an overview of what that's done and then the plan is that when we come back in uh september i think it's it's true to know before you get your days on get most of the work together thank you my name chairman and good morning everyone um i want to comment first then a question if i can um i think it's a really really important and valuable exercise by um in power um absolutely get to understand the strategy and i think having that independent view will certainly add value to the current fosterers already in the system you know having sort of that skills matrix to you know identify and understand the skills of the fosterers and then identifying any weaknesses or areas where they need additional support understanding you know and uplifting their skills i think will certainly um add value um my question is on about recruitment because absolutely get the way we need to go to getting more fosterers in the system and retention is everything but it's just a bit of context really is how how do we compare in Worcester vis-a-vis our neighbours and and say the national trend as well in terms of i don't know what the scoring system is whether it's fosterers per 100 000 or what have you but there's got to be some some way of understanding the context of Worcester um because above against they were no different to our neighbours and then my final question to that is how does that financial package compare to other neighbours and maybe the national level and as Chris absolutely spot-on says getting the children out of the residential and into foster care a their own betterment but also the financial savings are huge is there any scope do we have scope flexibility whatever our financial packages and i don't know i'm not sure you'll do tell us how that compares if there's any scope to uplift that to make it more attractive because obviously the benefit of uplifting the savings will obviously outweigh those going to residential so if you have any scope then to uplift and make Worcestershire more attractive for foster okay so in terms of um the the comparative data we can get data on the numbers of inquiries that people made to become a foster carer the number of inquiries then that convert to those people but then you want to insert the assessment and then at the end of the assessment those that then get approved as foster carers they're the key statistical um APIs that we will be able to and previously we have done well over on par we have seen a change in that this year and that i think adds to your second point which is the financial package so we measure ourselves against the national uh very much in payment of charity that we're always in line with that last year i think it was time prior to them it could have been 18 months ago certainly last year um we increased our uh foster care payments for those carers who were caring for children who were aged 11 plus because we recognize that they were a particularly difficult group of children to place and and careful so all of our carers got a two percent uplift and those particular carers got an additional two percent uplift so they got a four percent uplift and so the last time we compared across the region and with our statistical neighbors and we were sort of on par and we have done that recently and we can see that actually it looks like in this financial year our statistical neighbors have risen even more so we're now not on par so whilst we are seeing um some good response from inquiry through inquiries going up we've seen we've done you know whole recruitment drive and our conversions to those wanting to be carers um has dropped slightly which is a concern it is important though that we understand why they haven't gone into the assessment and whether they and not assume that they have gone into an assessment because they have gone into the assessment with somebody else or they haven't gone into an assessment because once they understand the challenges and what they need to do actually they've said no we're not interested which is why the three KPIs are really important to understand together and Maria's doing some work now on our statistical neighbors and our regional statistical neighbors because they're the ones to compare them who are our geographical neighbors so we've got uh we complete with Gustshire and Herefordshire they're our geographic and Warwickshire they're our statistical they're our geographical neighbors Warwickshire are also our statistical neighbors so Maria's doing that work to just see where we compare on price but also where we compare on those three KPIs and that will bring back in September but we do know that this year we have seen a bit of a decrease in that now the conversion rate just an opportunity because our inquiries have gone up at the version where they have come down because a lot of people are interested but once they understand what the assessment process entails and I have to remind people that this is not a Worcestershire assessment project it is legislation and it is true to say it can feel like extremely intrusive legislation requirements to assess you but as you can understand we are giving these people very vulnerable children and um I think I said before oh no I didn't have a bit of data to then but you know it's it's it's a frightening thing to think about but I've worked in safeguarding for 35 years and I so it's always in my mind but you know it will attract people who are not coming into the severe healthcare for the best intentions and so we absolutely have to make sure we're doing proper assessments and equally if we're not honest about the children and the needs of these children all that happens is that we prove foster carers who then don't care for the children or it breaks down so it is an intense process it is intrusive um but it's important that we get it right so we're monitoring all the time and comparing you know we've done a regular advert we've seen risers that go all from radio adverts that's great but we need to then compare that to inquiries to conversion it's no the whole of Worcestershire going and then once they find out what happens so we're very clear on those cases but you're right after those questions and we keep monitoring that we know that we are not financially competitive following this year and the rises that other people have made so it will be a recommended effort that we'll be looking to come back to um um in some ways the part of the question is already been answered from notes into point of view but um just wondering how how different are we in our uh methods of recruitment and particularly retention from the independent uh fostering agencies that uh that are going on and um basically competing i suppose is the best word and i suppose um i mean i think we can give it i mean some of the work that the DFB did that was their focus reviewing what what's our approach and what have they seen in across all the other proposals and actually we came out very favorably in that we haven't had the report yet but maria if we go through the presentations and give you some headlines at that we are waiting to report but it was a very positive feedback in terms of the processes we do that said we are a local authority and we're not a private business and for private businesses they were profit makers of course they're going to invest a lot of money in their marketing a lot of money and um we have a finite budget yeah and so but looking at how we use that budget it is it's something that we are absolutely doing but in terms of our strategy our marketing um we have positive feedback in terms of things that we do i just think it's what they're worth bearing in mind bearing in mind what in power trying to do for us as a local authority yeah thank you i mean we are and it has been very good because we've been very clear and you know in terms of um we're not we're not working with impact with this short period of time to repeat what the DFA have just done you know we've got these two pieces of work um and we will be focusing on absolutely confidence skills matching identifying children matching them moving them that's the ultimate outcome and the second of that is increasing the number of parents that we can recruit and some of that will come out with the work that we've already been thinking about most of the time and we're going to ask for this the first for the next if that's okay we've had the next uh presentation and then that's okay it's okay just look at the the audience in the screen i have got one quick question which was at the medical course you're looking to try and get children as presidential what would you would you look at say for example a child got into a foster situation child's needs no longer match so we've got foster foster parents who in that map would be right out there because they've got all of these skills but now the child doesn't need all those skills would you then consider moving that child's free of that that high needs place well that's a really good question because um the simple answer is no because we have to be child first and so it is really important that when we've got children that are in family arrangements and they are settled and they are progressing really really well we can't go oh you're doing all right it's another family we don't do that it's different when we're looking at residential because if they're progressing from residential we know it is absolutely not in their interest to stay long-term in residential however good that residential is it's unless you've got a child with um disability identity particularly extreme disabilities and that residential setting cannot be met within a home environment and we would make what we would want to move those children into families so um but for children in residential uh we know that the outcomes for those children it's institutionalized within however good it is and so we want them back in families um but what that comes with is lots of anxiety around people particularly when those children are settled so we've got a 12 year old at the moment for example who is being a residential caregiver of two years and um he seemingly is very settled but he's 12 now you ask me do I want a 12 year old when he's 13 14 15 in residential no I don't because he might be settled now but the chances are he is going to be unsettled and certainly open to way more changes in his life that may have a negative impact when he gets to 13 14 15 because we can't control the other children that are going to be residing with him so we want him in a family his family are obviously anxious about that because they see him as very settled and wanted to stay in residential but they see that as the status quo so they're having to work with that um to try and engage and obviously that if he wants to be in person to you and 12 so you don't want to move to a family because his family don't want him to move to a family and so it's a very complex business but we would only move children primarily if we absolutely believe it's in their best interest so you're right for our specialist care as we've been clear that um we're not going to even reduce your money because the child do away with care once they start doing well or move them from real care we're committing to that permanency for as long as that child remains in that care i'm very pleased to hear that thank you but we have a quick question on this one i'm talking about it's kind of before but it talks about have i seen the last paragraph there and then it talks about the cost of uh residential placements not compared to posturing and chris mentioned in terms as well well i just wanted to to be clear that the money that that aside from resonators and posturing is that reinvesting their battle concerns is reinvesting back and so it's not reinvested in because it because we've got uh a significant thing so it goes into bringing down the overspend at the end of this year we have but i'm looking forward to hearing all about the vfe um project here so let's we're going to go slightly over on the side of it you're quite on that subject so i was about to say you haven't been to all these have you yeah so okay so just following up from we had our initial new page uh what we've done now is we arranged the uh in-car funding case that workshop so that our fostering social workers and our children's social workers all coming together and to meet with empower so they can go and talk to them about the money and to have conflicting their profiles that they've got parents and dogs and children too it involves those sets of football online blocking and sessions with empower the vast social work but conflicting their profiles and children they've had those opportunities to attend those sessions any questions that they they might about the profile that they're increasing and we aim to have all of the protocols by the end of june in power will then do their profiles and the analysis of that and that will take back to july and then we'll start to progress identify matches and what support our carers and our children are going to need and that will take place between 16th of july throughout august matching children during august and then moving children to new identifying placements from august through to december so that's been the timeline that we're we're working to uh in terms of the project next day so as we we did in we did engage with the postman program so the postman program is a new diagnostic service you support local charities and particularly in relation to improvement and approval and it's funded by the dmv so we made contact with them and will not be enough to get based on on that project and the aim is to provide that additional support to local authorities to help us boost cost care improvement and approvals and to facilitate the sharing of practice nationally so the uh possibility of going into lots of different local authorities so they they're able when they came to us to share best practices and ideas that was working in in other local authorities so they undertook a diagnostic and i was actually supposed to put a knife and of any role that would be for two days social workers managers and that's our adm so right through the the the cost of care journey and the program excel we we get a cost-effective advisor they work with us to examine our current processes we provide our data and and to identify those areas that we can improve on and that that support will last for 12 months and then in year two they will also continue to support us and including sharing the best practices so we have some initial feedback they're still waiting for the final report what they will do is they'll share an initial report with us and then we can look at that and review it and make any changes in in terms of that so the initial feedback was really positive we had a good feedback about our recruitment uh about the improvement process being set up and the staffing complement in relation to our recruitment club that we have a recruitment manager we also had a dedicated bso a social worker within that club and she's a real positive in that approach and was it consistent with me and she had to compare that to the local authorities she'd been to have been a positive for us uh she had she read through a number of our costing assessments she found those to be thorough and of good quality uh and gave some really good feedback from the assessments that she she read uh what she was saying is that our she she spoke to a number of our cost caregivers and also cost caregivers who were uh new to to our fostering service and we're just going through that assessment process or just been approved and what they were telling her is is that they had a really good uh recruitment journey uh they liked the fact that we uh are a costume community they they feed us then so i think one of the foster care it's certainly been part of the family uh and certainly call our community and they're possibly about that that was really well embedded into our recruitment uh approach cost care and so they were concentrating about their relationships with their social workers uh and that was a real strength uh in terms of that relationship they practice uh but about social workers regularly kept in touch and that's a service they knew what was going on in in the fostering service and and they had a good experience possibly but really positive about our fostering panel with earlier practice particularly our policy assurance uh in relation to panel and the role of our panel advisor and and again said that the practice that she saw here and was sort of the best that she's seen and felt that would be a strength to share with other local authorities and they did she did talk about we noticed that with the share ourselves we were experiencing similar challenges with local providers in terms of recruiting and so what we were facing and it wasn't something that really did look to what she was seeing in other local advantage and the vulnerability that she she shared with us thirdly uh was one around the size of our county and we found that great to our marks in activity and how we can get our message out of there uh to the different communities and how we can get different engaged with us and also recently our recruitment manager has gone on a return to me and we have a vacancy there uh so at that point she felt that was her ability for us uh but we have recently recruited for that post uh and positively the person we recruited was a ex-cosmic carer of our relationship so she was going to bring a lot of knowledge to that place so some really good feedback initially so we just waited for the final report and any recommendations we we were happy to take part in I'm going to give you kind of a little bit of the importance of providing our children with family care and family care placements and then and with social and we kind of recognize that there are some children who are stepping out from residential and will need that extra uh special care and that's where the special response to tackle comes from so we launched in November and last year uh the criteria is we're focusing on most children give our age five to eighteen but Athena uh talked about we have uh two co-censorship children that we're looking at those under 12 who are in residential care and those uh from do 15 age group and again obviously within our in relation to so just to give you some achievements in terms of the specialist hospital care so since our launch in November we've had 15 inquiries and eight of those were from seven from external inquiries we now have seven of our internal hospital carers who have been approved with special carers six of those carers had children placed with them and living very imminent during June and early July as Chris mentioned earlier on we've got three children who are just half of your step out of the care for children who are faced with special carers who are following residential care and in addition we have one different assessment one live inquiry as we speak we kind of call you have the floor and the reasons for those withdrawals are one of them was in treatment in families and the other one was the one of the carers have recently changed jobs and they wanted them to kind of check it down before they they moved on but uh we we will we've got agreement with them to retain their information and we will go back to them at night today so that's the kind of summary of where of where we are in terms of the specialist doctor care and I think that's the combat on that result of those positive news stories because but having that actually it's part it feels like part of the family it's really ensuring you want to know that you're not going to feel yeah and we obviously use all of that kind of thing part of our campaign so yeah and the other thing was is there ever a creative reward for firms so say it's a yeah there's a financial reward yes there is uh up to about about some panels so if they if you like a fair friend uh you will get to payment more 250 and if that person thing goes on to be assessed and approved we will get a further but your third time a couple of hopefully many of these questions and first in the DNP one mentioned the size of the county is an issue which is one thing what's the issue beside the county it's too big too small just geographically just geographically and what we're talking about with when she was here is uh we we are looking enough to have access to the bus uh so that double-decker bus where we can and we've been using that to to get further afield so within Worcestershire so we'll kind of drive the bus will drive out we'll have our sat on there we've got a couple of foster carers who will go on the bus as well we've got all of our banners and and trying to attract them it's not it's not to be better in with this and the other just found the whole kind of big power time scale so you said you can do these and kind of find the same but it was matched and then i'll take it and in that view it would be of somewhere else in the account how does it work in the future do we just now we've learned how to do this matching we can then just carry on ourselves in power mind goals is that how it works yeah okay fine yeah good thank you thank you thank you it's worked but when you're talking about the initial feedback that the uh we talked about each other if he is what he needed the feedback to say you need an extra manager or just um as well didn't we know that before before we we had those posts uh i think the challenge was when when uh cara came from from postulate to do to do the diagnostic uh we had just lost the manager who'd run off seriously uh so absolutely mean uh we got alternative provisions in place um but it was early days and and you could see there was it was different when alison aimsworth was here she was she was very much uh the recruitment manager and kind of managed that recruitment but without pointing to that time so he's kind of a different uh we're in a different stage now because we're now pointing to to that gap so when the uh when she comes back on the 17th the opposite should come back into post it yeah she works she manages it no no because we've got temporary but the only the feedback immediately was just to say this post has worked really well so make sure you do cover it while you go it's okay thank you yes can i just make a quick comment there madam jane this is this of course he's such a truly challenging year dealing with some of that but this morning i think has been such a positive morning um such a proactive approach and i i just congratulate our own team and the work they're doing we then uh and i for one i'm certainly looking forward to september and to hear the feedback that was you know it was so thank you all very much some of the words out of my mouth about your insight thank you there's no more questions you did agree the part this week the program to come back in september and we did that when we've been slightly delayed on starting the empowering work haven't we for the reason that we don't need to go into now and i just wonder whether september might be a little bit early given the timetable that we've shown them running because you could be back in the December and November meeting i think would be better because we're not going to have quite completed the work but it's going to be an injured bit whereas if in November we'll be able to give you the full outcome exactly extremely important the are we have got children in this in that's fine that's not important but only in some actions that you make sure it's a sustainable service um go to me as the next please all right um talking about that there's the advice in the place to get in the side so you're all going to be back so you're saying you know you may see the boys on that's about it okay so okay okay okay oh okay yeah okay yes so it is great brilliant thank you so much just to uh let the new callers know we are reporting um this meeting it will be up online after the starting live book but it will be getting them up um i am also and we've also got new on the panel but um the new confusing basically but we're all going to be able to get stuff right here um and so in terms of this item you just create a nice high school gifts okay what skills investments apparently assistant communities yeah um that type inspiring this year program and then you're wearing a boot measure thank you thank you okay so as i said i'm jude ditz and i work in people directorate and and i lead on skills and involvement and and are inspiring us to share program or our careers and enterprise continuing program is one of the strands that matt leads on within my team so if we're saying that when this first came about this agenda for the local authority this is actually a local enterprise partnership agenda so this is something that is contracted into the local enterprise partnership but as matt and i have always sat in the local authority since day one of being able to deliver this agenda i have a wide role in the local partnership and that i'm the director of skills so i don't have the needs of employers now and moving forward and of course future workforce and then but we're raised by somebody by young people in high schools and so quite clearly so um our role essentially we are not here and our role is not to give individuals within high schools careers advice that's not what our role is that is very much defined by the department for education as the school's responsibility our role is to provide advice to guide them around a structured framework that they implement and to resource that for them so to add resources into the mix to put on events to bring employers forward and to to some extent to quality assure work although as i say we don't do it we advise them we guide them they have a responsibility through offset and that is of more recent times and there also is a legislative which let me say that word element which is called being uh by the access data station that came in next this year that i'll explain in a bit so i'm not going to go through all the history but uh just to kind of say we've been doing this work since 2015 under its current format so working with the careers and enterprise company careers enterprise company is a um it's a separate organization that has a contract with the department of education that has embedded this agenda into the 38 years over the years essentially so um what this looks like is um so there's a framework and the framework is called the Gatsby benchmarks and there are eight strategy benchmarks and they focus on different elements so they look at things like does the school have a plan for careers education but then they also go right down to are they ensuring that the overwhelming majority of young people receive individualized advice and guidance as well as are they getting the number of employer encounters we would like them to have there is a direct correlation between the number of employment encounters at the end person receives and then likelihood of becoming not an education important training at the point of time so what we do is um we essentially when we started this work our kind of um way of embedding this was that the what the government wanted to do they wanted to have an employer advisor that worked with schools called an enterprise advisor and that individual would open up their network to that school in order to get more important characters that's how it started and that's what our reading it was it was about how do we bring employees into this mix how do we um get employees to be able to offer the kind of things that actually will be really useful so not the typical work experience that we will all remember let's go into a business environment let's make the team let's do both of it actually things that really make a difference in terms of um including any person to enter those industries that's where we started um and for the first few years that was pretty much what we had to do school didn't have to participate it was on a voluntary basis um but that's where we were and then things changed in 2017 because the department for education published its careers strategy hasn't been refreshed since then but it's worth saying it's going to be refreshed this summer and and in that what it says it defined the role of a school and said to a school you must and therefore that's when the officer he started coming in as well and so in 2017 we took a decision so what they wanted to do at that point is they wanted to implement a hub model and they wanted to implement that in a number of geographies across across the country we applied to be one of those geographies in all intents and purposes we have no right to get that work because actually what they were looking for is those areas that were mostly pride that really needed extra support to move this forward Worcestershire couldn't reincollect that case because although we have lots of areas of social mobility within the county we put that in a comparison to another geography the argument just wasn't there so what we decided to do is to do something completely different they were asking for 20 schools to join a hub to really like proactively do this work we thought okay what we're going to do and our model was we would put every school in it from day one so our model was we would go to special educational needs schools we would use our ap schools our people with failure units and the further education colleges and we would put every single one into hub from day one they only wanted 20 schools so we were going in with 42 so it's something quite different and we were successful and I think at the time they're thinking was okay we'll try all this because actually this is where we want to go we want full country coverage so actually if we see this of course an area it would be really interesting to us so that's where we went and when we started as well as we're saying in 2018 and 2018 when they did kind of all the data piece on this Worcestershire is in the bottom three all areas in terms of where it was it seemed as a real cold spot our work experience levels were really low and our county levels were really low and Worcestershire was in the bottom three after 38 areas and we then took this step further so actually because we had that two-tier three-tier system in some of our districts actually what we knew is that young people were there in Woodchapen and they were in middle school weren't getting the same experience and then the same careers journey that a young person in secondary school in Worcestershire was getting so we applied this in further money to test the middle school piece and further money to test the middle school piece and we were given a third hub so we then moved 21 further schools into our hub actually what that looks like now is it'll work in 62 educational establishments so we have full county coverage all 62 schools post year seven all the way up to year 13 really might be our involved in this and we work with them on a regular basis our kill checks were about 250,000 and the County Council match funds some of the fact and we have to do that so that they're passed a match from that and that's done through the County Council that we use on the board-based budget to match fund that um today where we are is that we still have enterprise advisors working our schools we have about 85 enterprise advisors and we have like 200 employers that we work with at any one time we do an annual exercise to look through our employees check this individual settings check it's still keen to work with us and we all the time we work with the Worcestershire growth hub to bring on new employees and so in terms of that mainstream role so the supporting role helping the schools to kind of implement that framework we also have a number of things that sit alongside that that we've done over and above that so we could have just done that that we've been more than happy just to do that but obviously we've done some additional pieces of work there are a number of those actually support Tina's area to support the children's piece we've been really keen to ensure that we support those young people with most disadvantage so one of those uh last year was that we looked at kind of the system around how we identify young people who are most at risk of becoming not in education employment and training the framework that we use for that is called the risk of the innovator haven't been updated English to share this is not abnormal it's kind of how it is everywhere hadn't been updated for about 15 years so the determinants that it was using were perhaps a little bit out of today and actually we were able to use not only have a fresh look at those determinants but working with schools working continuously able to really think about what are the different factors that ensure ensure that are likely to cause a young person to become needs and therefore how do we ensure that our schools target those young people to ensure they're giving them the most support that they can to know what it was and that that's been really successful schools have really welcomed that piece of work is an element to focus their limited resources um but also what's interesting about that that's been rolled out nationally based on where we support the work that was to share with them and other areas that are benefiting from that um was it done lots of other pieces of work um things like to instance working with a virtual school around their personal experience and sitting with the STEM team as well we're looking at how careers education our careers is talked about as part of those processes and not just education because education doesn't always lead to careers and then I suppose first of all you don't pick the right education choices it can limit where you go so we want to make sure these conversations are had and that they're added at an earlier point and we've also done a lot of work with those individuals within the schools who represent um young people in social care who represent young people with their needs to ensure that they understand the support they should be having from their school for those young people around careers education again it's also huge places they have hundreds of staff and actually you're assuming that the two talking that's not necessarily the case and we have a number of best practice boards that we have in place to support those um individuals uh then we have an events program so we run lots of different events but our I suppose our biggest event is our Worcestershire Skill Show so this is a skill show uh this year it's the first time we ran since 2020 um second one second one sorry that we ran since 2020 and it was a two-day event and over the two days we had 3,965 young people attend from 28 schools um and then um alongside that we work with the NEAP team to kind of the post-16 NEAP team to look at those young people who don't have destination in year 11 and those young people who are likely to fall off our kind of NEAP radar in year 13 to look at how we support them as well and how we work with the schools to ensure it's almost like a challenge role that they're saying what do you do to support these young people and I think this is probably the point to talk about the data so where are we now as I said we were in the bottom three but the great news is that we're in the top three and we consistently have been for um probably the last four years and we are recognized as the area that has traveled the most distance on this agenda um yeah no one's probably going to change that for a significant amount of time and I think more prevalently for me one of the most important factors is the work experience element um not going to say it's all perfect but essentially in years 10 and 12 last academic year 92 percent of all young people received an employer encounter so it's not just work experience it's an employer encounter it could be a number of different things from an employer going into a school from visiting to an employer premises events etc etc which equates to seven thousand and seventy young people receiving that support um and benchmarks were at six point five three that's not going to mean a lot to you but six point five three and today nationally the average of five point three so we're uh rising over and above that uh alongside that piece of work we have a number of i call the juice or pieces of the puzzle really that we um kind of put together to make this piece of work work um so we have foreign schools careers program we've taken that a little bit further this year so we've been doing primary school stem competition for about i'd say about seven years and alongside that we now have a number of other pieces of work to ensure that actually careers isn't something that's new to these young people when they transition into middle school but also if we can get quite a lot of data from understanding young people's aspirations in primary school in how we then put together our innovative resources and what we've entered when we move into that middle second viewpoint as well uh we're also doing a lot of work to influence the system so teacher encounters the journey and teachers typically that they um you know obviously the excitement of a teacher going to university and then go back to school they've never worked in the industry they don't understand that make those relationships completely foreign to them so actually we're doing a lot of work to get teachers back into those environments to talk to teachers about different pathways they can take moving forward and then um we do a lot of work with employers so you move down to a really great example of that children's work that holly embraced and wanting to do more to look at their future workforce wanting to work with schools uh so we work with employers that look at how that could look how they would make the best of the interventions that they're trying to embed and then we support them to get those into schools to work with their their school and as i said when it's good investment we also haven't done a lot of other programs and then kind of complement this program back into paper so i don't have to go over those um for us moving forward over the next 12 months where we are now it's a funny period of time obviously with potential election meaning um where we are at the moment is we have a new contract that comes in in um september august september and that's an 18-month contract that's quite a new thing for us you normally have 12-month contrast but i'm sure it's 19 months and but it is um and our focus is very much about it's beyond the benchmark so we will continue to do what we do we will do all the things we've just talked about but we're also going to take a real focus this year on looking at equality of interventions and ensuring that those interventions that we're getting the most out of them so we'll do things that we will support our employees to really understand the interactions that they're having how to make them have the greatest impact uh from what we know from what the country says and and again we will look at our own uh quality within our careers but also we're going to push our schools who've been doing this for quite a time now to actually look at are they are they implementing a similar program or actually are they taking it to the next step so there's a quality piece there and challenges in this agenda i mean you know i've said it a couple of times it's limited we have limited results so actually what we can do what schools can do is really really limited and you know they're very busy agenda in schools how much time this is given is often due to the question of that particular teacher who have some schools who talk to us who are really passionate about it and other schools and a lot of that obviously comes down to all the factors do it recognize time and money and policy being one of them and there is also a real lack of careers advisors within the uk generally so actually it's quite challenging to hold on to a good careers advisor and so that does mean that that will obviously impact on the program um and then you know talk about the financial constraints we we talk about skills and investment looking out often parts from a lot of sand and this is definitely one of the programs that is um in terms of what we are able to do with what we have and planning forward um but thank you that's a really positive um story um before the meeting we was all tremor listing about how easy it was when you were 13 to get a job some people didn't like the jobs but i i often get in and manage to see it on spot lineage and online find a local part-time job for my child um my job you know in 14 years old it's it's about is there any any space there to help people gain that kind of experience in a safe environment the problem is nowadays if you can't get a job in a shop you end up going to a store asking can we couldn't be long which perhaps isn't a safe environment so it's it's is there anything there to help our people if you want to have some actual experience get out for those little part-time jobs that they can do that's not something that we do and i would say that probably a whole other rectangle is the way and it couldn't happen um you know it's a real it's a real issue and a lot of young people that we see will have had we run a program for Christmas to churches and 16 to 24 year olds and we've got a new public team in church and opened but officially you see um and a lot of the young people that we see who are coming in your benefit have never worked because actually it's really hard to get a part-time job um you know you can get them in please at hospitality but even that now that's a real and a lot of challenges in terms of um availability of opportunities uh i think a lot of you you mentioned sort of retail a lot of the typical places where people have gone in and passed the jobs really hard to get through their recruitment process for young people and because of the way they've structured their recruitment processes and so yeah unfortunately not something that we do so maybe we work with the education business partnership to ensure that we support as much as possible to get work experience opportunities and i think that's something that's going to be on the agenda potentially moving forwards it has been talked about something that might come down our way uh but at the moment we don't have a role in that thank you at the um i was well of course around district 40 you get what i've gotten actually but because uh and i work for an employee for the 10 critical reviews and then she used to go around to schools and it's so frustrating not be able to speak to some of the teachers like it and you're right that didn't you get a good teacher and you don't push the uh and children in a certain direction another subject but different school will not and that was always the case and it came from some trust asking because nobody uh they were once all these awareness if you're going to go to university so because there are other things in there but then in 2019 i was the chairman of the university actually eventually served skilled ones and my art was um open like that because it was so partly to the change which had happened in in in the eight years which was very involved in it and but my question from this and you've mentioned it such like it's a little better it's about where did we go from there because how do we approach those schools the surgery is not so engaging with girls i do what we're doing to to the people some of those youngsters will end up in this it's and which is a shame you know because it just want a different opportunity or a different pathway something's a good challenge yeah so in january 2020 government introduced the new provider access legislation and it is basically the main mandatory now that schools must open their doors to trained providers university policies etc to ensure that young people are made aware of all of the career choices and transition choices available to them whereas in the past what we are going to pick any storm in particular but in the past there's elements of we were learning from our six four because that's the group we'd like to take this young people to go to so we're in a position now where this legislation is supporting the fact that young people are in a better position to make a more informed choice of the relevant pathways that are available to them it's only one element of the change that's come in it will support schools to make sure because it's a mandated element they'll be assessed on the bios they're doing inspections but what will also happen is there's a big worthy phrase that's changed and it has gone from all overwhelming majority to all so now it's a mandatory requirement that every young person gets those encounters and meets those people whereas before it was overwhelming majority and that's a massive shift in language and change within the system as well so that will see a massive influence moving forward we're still very much in the first academic year with that being delivered and some schools are finding it challenging you know some schools are still at the point where they're all overwhelming majority rather than all but they're certainly working towards that and one of the interesting things with that is that books in legislation and provider can essentially put in a formal complaint to the degree that school won't let them in so what then happens is we would have to investigate that to rationalize why that might be there are some reasons that that we can justify but if there is no reason and rationale then essentially the government will suppose take that school to some through some form of a legal process and we don't know the outcome so everyone's kind of waiting on the tension for that to happen because it will happen at some point and i think it will be really interesting to see what the government does um in terms of any measures that it takes against that school thank you just tell me just an addition to that this this is it it's never done so you've got you've always got a place for children before we've got a place for teachers so i think it demonstrates the need for the longevity of the program and the work and so forth because there is always that churn and and the the this you know the school show has been hearing a number of yearism but it's always needed and to take this second one that you made um we do within our funding stream so again things have changed so um prior to Brexit and the when we had European social funds which we've had up until December last year in this county we had funds that would enable us to do specific programs that targeted young people who would likely be needs with extra interventions in schools unfortunately the new UK show prosperity doesn't allow that because it's not about it it's a vital for my final difference which is the open of a 15-year-old plus it's a 16-year-old plus therefore you can't intervene in year 11 but we what they're trying to do is kind of put some money through the agreement to create something to support that and we have a program where we tell you 67 young people from the 38 schools in the year level where we do some specific targeting work for those but the reality is that you know we used to get 100,000 pounds to do some of this work it's out of 15,000 so it's no amount what we're able to do within the back of our mechanism than the actual thing that's within the contract of doing we won't be able to do it so what you're saying is that we've got to lobby out of it increasingly thank you and i think it they weren't aware of it is what i would say um but i mean um i'm going to say that the conversation you made there was so many opportunity for my current conversations about careers in classrooms because when when you're learning a subject knowing why it's important to learn it's often quite good for a young person you know mass i don't like mass i don't really like it but when they say actually well we think you will need mass when it used to be donated well you've got to have a calculator like it on time well show them but it's there um but knowing why you should learn it because actually it's going to help you in these kind of careers so all that conversation you're having with teachers to help that training of how can you inspire people to really go the old conversation yes this is one of the benchmarks one of the benchmarks is about how do you embed careers into curriculum and it focuses on some specific areas mass is one of them and doesn't say it's national university day today so that does happen and that is one of the benchmarks it is one of the harder ones to implement it's worth saying and we are doing a lot we really recognize the role of the teacher as a trusted adult particularly in some of our young people that are most often talented they will really see that teacher as always their parent figure and their guide and their advisor and you know the ultimate the issue is that or make the expression that when you go to that in person then i say oh mrs i'm sure i'd really like to do an apprenticeship and mrs marshall goes because she doesn't know anything about apprenticeships then actually i like that one or do you want to be a thing because that's that basic expression that you make that's what i've read from that but actually it's just a lack of understanding but that's why the teaching encounter program is so important we're piloting that this um this term um we're going to cover so we're covering uh we give a small pot money from the careers and enterprise company to pilot a teacher encounter program and it's covering two streams effectively which is slt members or curriculum leads from seven schools offering two teachers from each school so we'll have 14 teachers in total that will participate in that teacher encounter program the basis behind that is that they will come out of school for the day and they will go and visit a local employer who we have worked with to set up almost a almost a work experience with the teachers during that work experience model they will learn about the industry sector that directly links to the curriculum subject they're shaping and so for example if it was a math teacher we're going to look at an engineering company you can see that if it was a key teacher we've got an international research department club we're going to do you know there's a direct synergy between their curriculum subject and what they're leading on and the employer but throughout that day they'll learn more about the organization they'll learn more about the HR recruitment reach they'll look at the entry groups as well so whether it's apprenticeships internships what skills and qualifications they're looking for young people to hold at those entry level roles they'll get hands-on practical experience so you may well be actually getting out into the door or handling the machine and showing where those math skills are used when they're setting up and so what our hope is that we really aspire this bank for teachers to go back into school to actually let's embed careers more within the curriculum it will give us that opportunity for a teacher to be standing up in front of the class and actually talk about their own experience of the workplace while they're supporting their young people to actually use that knowledge and understanding exactly what you said about the fact that why am i near to use maths in the workplace well here's a prime example of why you should the second stream is a piece of work that we've been doing now for this academic year which is focusing on training future so we've created a link with Worcester Uni and what will happen is we've actually created a voluntary module with them that's all about careers and surprisingly 26 of these training teachers have taken it up it's the second highest take up on their voluntary models modules that they've got and what it's done is it's given them an early understanding of the entire careers landscape it's given them all of the knowledge they need to know as early as possible on why they should be embedding careers within the curriculum our thoughts around that is let's not allow a teacher to become institutionalized and get in the habit of not including careers in their curriculum whereas if we're targeting training teachers it means it becomes second nature to them so every new cohort year and year that enters our schools now will have that knowledge have that understanding and realize the importance of delivering careers in the curriculum and it's been very very successful we've had our own count today where one of our local employers and Zach posted the 26 teachers and they in tours they've had talks from specialists other employers and some of the feedback we've had has been brilliant but they'll also now be taking that teacher encounter themselves as part of this teacher encounter program those 26 will have an individualized work placement of their own now that they will go out into the workplace and gain that practical knowledge based on the curriculum subjects they will be teaching. University also embedded that into the wider program so those people are also doing a piece reflecting that to the rest of the cohort as well so again we're hoping that you know we might be taking 26 of the cohort but actually by doing this it will reflect in by cohort and I think the real positive of this is that if a young person understands why it's doing that why why they're doing that why they're you know if that's part of their end goal because they need to get into the TCS season because they want to go into the friendship and math is a huge part of that actually what the schools see is a link to attendance improvement but they're also linked to results improvements it's quite clear that when a young person knows they have to go through school it's going to be that much more important. Yeah if you come and come the bottom that's obviously it's going to be training teachers to do a lot of career side of things but one of the challenges got a couple questions in your challenges so one that we mentioned is obviously lack of careers findings and to look up a is that about 70 it's like 21 to 35 pounds for someone with a probably a post-graduate qualification is it pretty low so I mean maybe by teaching a lot of teachers to do a lot of careers in a way you kind of maybe negated their needs and how first how do we help get more career advisors and how many schools just don't have every day's advice or do some schools share them how that works it's a mixed model isn't it some someone have their own and some will buy it in as a service and some will maths will share across across the trust there are some gaps in the county where you know either we need to need or the collision will support them on interview because again it might be in their interest to support schools that careers advisor might advise about going to a D route and so yeah it is an issue we have careers advisors that we employ ourselves and we work on our 16 to 24 fees and we have them within our city students as well so if we need to then we can kind of move those into into the schools it's not really a solution I you know at this point we can always talk about what won't buy and whether that that would be a good solution to have a bank career advisor within the local authority I'm not sure that that's necessarily the right solution because I do think there's a lot about the locality of the school and what's around that school and what that individual have as intelligence it's really helpful to move those young people forward but yes it's an issue the other thing that we are doing is that we know enterprise partnership has a program called boot camps which is about accelerating people into careers and we are exploring whether we can offer a boot camp in the information advice and guidance and in order to fill some of this and I think there's a mismatch because the government expects an information advice office to have a degree in IEG but actually because it's a level six qualification it's talking about the management they're not doing a management job so it's a bit of a mismatch you often find that people do that it's meant transition quite quickly into careers leader roles or into other roles the other issue is that the careers leader role in the school so every school has to have a careers leader as part of their senior leadership team it's not a it's not the same as deputy headship so a lot of people will use it as a stepping stone into a deputy headship when we use a careers leader has a signal if you're going to impact you've got someone new but instead of three or more over again quite often um and this year we have 20 in place so in the last two years we've had 20 this september alone we had nine careers leaders change quite a bit so the careers leaders don't just look to get my cv to do this but I'm actually not but there's also this difference in certain schools and how they implement the careers leader role yeah some schools like judy's mentioned that we do has a head that perhaps really embraces the whole agenda we'll have it as a standalone role so the careers leader then can work full-time on the careers agenda and you'll see their programs right uh brilliant you've got others that will have it as part of a deputy headship role when they're also the leaders safeguarding transitions heads of city it's it's like i did perfect i'll tell them to an existing role and and that's what you find like judy's mentioned that you get that because it is then just respect and it's done so yeah i think you're all better well there is a push nationally to try to kind of you know make this more of a specific profession and a role so great leaders have a trade they have to go through specific training to be a careers leader and they would like that to be recognized by the D&D as a sort of you know similar to a headship in a school as a position um but as yet don't know when the news actually comes out we know a little bit about what it's going to say but it might be something that's within that which is a financial constraint if you've got about 400 about half which is see that's a challenge again is is it just the risk of before the cost generally there's a risk of that money that we put in the 200,000 starts to disappear and i suppose my question then is how do we cope because i think you could probably share about return on that investment but not going to pay for council going around is not loads of money yet it seems to be doing really well if you hand how you sell it to someone senior and say no don't count this because look out can you give them evidence to show yes yeah i think the first element is continue to to show that the work that we're doing and the fact that we are punching over our way for the improvements demonstrating that and then all together become quality so there is that you know the kind of constantly sharing that we're demonstrating the difference i think there is a there is a challenge in terms of impact because the impact and the work that magnets are doing to track that impact through in terms of long no employment takes takes time um so it is quite hard to do that but we are genius in kind of demonstrating that they are doing what we do so it's kind of constantly doing and i think we are creative in the use of funding as well and in terms of other programs that we get through and the fact that we run from an academic year rather than a financial year we're just general budgets and our finances as creatively as possible to keep the program going but ultimately at some point we will ask for results and then that is a critical council decision in terms of good people so at some point we will need your support i think because this reports into the local energy post partnership obviously reports will be there more as well the timing guarantee is part of that board and he's very supportive and he always talks about his desire to continue his program i feel like we are in currently and really doing things um but yeah it is an issue for sure yeah i mean i'm really conscious i'm i'm welcoming people and i've heard about um the new stuff coming into the schools and uh be informed with the importance of careers so they can participate but i find it very almost impossible to believe that some schools um i understand the pressures that schools are under but i find it almost impossible to understand that some schools perhaps don't take the careers advice um as as importantly as perhaps they should because the advice the quality of the advice that they get or don't get is going to have an impact on that child for the next 50 years or so so i i i think it's hugely important and the other thing which is easy for me to say and i know it's not possible if you like perhaps in every family is the role that parents have to take as well in terms of for me as advice and if i dare say grandparents you and i had a conversation very recently and i've got a granddaughter who's doing a gcc now she adores me i do assure you but we have conversations every week about careers but we have conversations we talk about all kinds of complexities and challenges things that i never knew about when i was 16 the opportunities out there i genuinely didn't know so i think the work that the team are doing here and the work that should take place in schools every january i go into my local high school in tembery and i conduct mock mock interviews i've done it for about eight years now and i'm always amazed that some of the children that i interviewed they they have no idea what so ever as to what career choice these are 15 years old as to what career career path they want to take others are absolutely spot on the clarity there so it doesn't matter i don't think if at age 15 you don't know what career path you want to take it's a journey you know and uh if you're going to go on to further education and then then so do you but the other thing i can just raise which i think is hugely important and where many changes take place in recent years and that's to do with apprenticeships and i can remember a time very well when you know apprenticeships were for those young people who weren't able didn't have the ability to follow an academic career and successive governments at that time would put a figure of the number of children that they want them to go to university because i think that's very different today apprenticeships are being viewed in an entirely different way and i know from my time uh in mormon on mormon district council a lot of the high tech companies there for example who employed the majority of their staff were employed with phds and now i see someone's nodding there and now of course they are looking at apprenticeships but they're tailor-made apprenticeships for young children who are shown the natural aptitude in a particular area and then they are putting programs together for them and they're progressing right through so apprenticeships are not just for bricklayers anyway you know apprenticeships are across the board and i i like i'm delighted that we are seeing much more apprenticeships growth if you like that and what have you so funding um thank you for the the good lead there i can take that away with me um i might want to daniel he's back into that how do we um try to encourage children into those those key positions we need but the name's got question before we have a comment and a question um really fascinating uh areas that obviously delighted to see that was this year is putting this issue really high upon our agenda and how far it it's come um i don't remember anything like this when i was 15 16 or so 30 years ago now um i'm just trying to think back it it was quite not just the careers advice so it's important that you are facilitating a conversation between the employee and the pupil you enablers and you're helping to break down that barrier between employment because at the age of 13 14 15 16 or so it's very daunting for those ages then to think i'm going to go into employment you know there's a great barrier there and i think that it was absolutely right i've got a 15 year old daughter who really switched on really clever top sense of everything um but she doesn't know what she wants to do at the moment now privately you know i'm slightly worried but maybe i shouldn't pity um but grace doesn't know what she wants to do and i suppose the whole of this agenda is shining in her eyes on well these are the options for you um and i think that's really really important so therefore my question then comes on to the Worcestershire Skills Show which i think that that to me sounds really really important and i guess you've got some good numbers there you know you've got four just under four thousand uh young people at 28 schools across Worcestershire attended over two days hey where is it held please um and did you get a good buy from local employers you know that was you know demonstrated many many different areas and i'm assuming they have like a stool or a you know they get frustrated well if you want to go into our sector whether that's engineering or teaching or what the university you know or have you that they then explained that this is the pathway so so i think the school show like that is really really important and will that be an annual event now um so this is it sorry um i thought it would be yeah so unfortunately we used to a chapter of me um and actually we used to have a lot more young people but capacity that it says yes that's why it's only 28 schools there are other reasons as well and you know the cost of transport we've got do for some bursaries and we the district council often support us but for more money into that however transport costs are permanent when it comes to schools buying into that um yes actually we will do it and it is long that we can afford to keep doing it it's not a cheap exercise um we've done this this is our ninth skill shed we did them pre-povid yeah are they growing every year are you getting more employers uh yeah reflectively this year we did grow yeah it's a capacity issue and that we can yes absolutely we did grow we grew this year because we did a two-day event with evidence to the importance of one day yeah we made that change because actually a lot of the feedback that we had i think it's quite it was quite noticeable it was too busy and some of the quality of conversations wasn't really there we were trying to squeeze three thousand into a day so in all just um expanding over two days changed that it's a big ass from an employer and actually you know jams up in would be really um interesting in this because he attends um the point is that we advise our employers about what they need to do we give them a bit of a you know just come to the table and something that you need to bring to have a go so you need to bring something that you can actually interact with what's really interesting and what was really interesting for me this year is those employees have been doing very well you can see how their standards have transitioned and progressed and you know you've got robot arms and all kinds of different things going on and then you've got some where you're just like oh really it's just a bit boring and you can see again people just don't really go and talk to them um but yet dan intended uh this year you were very busy we were so again we attended the first time last year we were unsure from a social care social work careers perspective how that event would go but we thought as part of the work we've been doing around future workforce we we thought it was an opportunity we needed to do so uh we did it for the first time last march and we were really um pleased with it with the event it was really engaging and we did speak to well we spoke to a significant amount of young people but more meaningfully conversations there were still hundreds of conversations which took place um and yeah from my perspective having done it for the first time a really um successful event i wasn't we were in short because it was younger young people sort of about 11 to 15 age group how engaged with young people really big actually we were really surprised and pleased with how engaging it was um so part of our commitment of this piece of work is that we wanted to continue to do it so we then did the next um career show which was for older young people and young adults and that was in the autumn and then we signed up and did it again um this um this seven spring as well and then obviously again we did sit there and think gosh that's a huge commitment to go for two days um but again it was it was very amazing and it was really successful and obviously one of the things needed was it was paying these bringing young people along and so we were able to have some really great conversations with them um as well and about this time period so from our perspective we found it was really successful and are committed to continue to do it i think it's worth mentioning the secure show is part of a series of four annual events that take place we have the skill show which is targeted in year seven to ten we then have as dan's mentioned in the autumn term we have two careers and apprenticeship road shows which are focused on the old bmp so it is 10 through 13 and that is a different conversation so rather than the skill show which is there to sort of kind of arouse interest and get them really interested in careers and start exploring their opportunities and their options the careers and apprenticeship road going shows you've a bit more of that specific in what you need to be next what does the employee pathway look like etc and then the third in our series of events is our scmd event so we now hold a specific life beyond school event that is targeting the young people from our special education in schools or any people in mainstream that has in the xd field so again it's very very different conversations in terms of you couldn't have a young person with a skill show with an education or have them not necessarily at the same level of quality of conversation that they would do our life beyond school so you can cover all of the age groups and the demographics through our four annual event that segues quite nicely into your your piece of you yeah thank you very much so yeah as I said earlier my name is Daniel Gray and I'm a group manager in social care and safeguarding in Worcestershire and every year we have a business plan the key priority of that business plan every year is workforce it's one of our key assets and we absolutely know that to run good successful services we need a strong and capable workforce and over the last year we had a focus of saying actually wanted to begin to engage in our potential future workforce and different kind of opportunities that we wanted to create to support that so we engaged with a number of different partners across our local universities and colleges with Judith and her services and teams to really understand what would we be able to do and I won't go through this Judith's gone through it and I love to detail the types of opportunities which are there and as an employer as a social care service we've committed to and begun to engage with and to be part of the last year we've been involved in that annual programme and as I said before from our perspective we found that to be really successful and some really meaningful conversations have taken place one of the things we really reflected on as an employer was around social work and social care careers and often this is a career choice which can be a little bit hidden it's a career which is often presented in the media very negatively when something has gone wrong which sadly sometimes that does happen but that is a very very small percentage across the many many children and families that we work with and support and have really successful outcomes but people don't often see that side of it all social work is often portrayed in possibly not the most accurate way in the media and so so social workers will often say that that's not wrong but this is the impression which is being given and we wanted to create a space to engage with people to actually put social work on the map and to create a space for people to think about this we're also very conscious we're working in a very sensitive safeguarding environment where we can't say we're going to bring lots of young people directly into the workplace we need to balance that in the right way so we wanted to create an engagement opportunity and to bring young people in with the health and social care um who aren't taking that course and wanting to come into this type of work in the future so we worked in partnership with Worcestershire's Worcester 641 College just across the road to develop and run some pilot engagement events and we've run three of those across the last year and we've engaged with 70 young people on health and social care courses and they've been really successful and we've run them with our staff internally so staff have taken time out of their busy days to come and do that and to give them a window into our world and into the experiences you can have as a social worker and the great and amazing things that social work can achieve with families and the feedback we've had directly from the college and from young people has been really successful we've taken that to develop it so when we've run that course again we've built that in and the feedback again um was very positive in terms of the opportunities that we've shown young people um and it's creating a window to see what it was really like a lot of the feedback we've had is that often I think people saw that as health was big and social care was quite small in that health and social care space but the feedback that we've had is actually people have become really interested in social care and social work careers so we're not necessarily going to see an impact of that right here right now but we're starting to put it on the map and actually giving people the information saying actually if you did want to come into social work and it's not just social work itself but all those support roles around it how you can take those steps into it and what if you needed to go and do your degree to become a social worker the steps to achieve that as well and there are lots of different ways that people can do that now so giving that information and actually the feedback from new people not all but some is actually yeah this is a career choice now that we're really interested in so it's what we've really tried to do is create the space to put it on the map and to get people interested in social work where it's been quite hidden in the past so that's what we've done over the last year and moving forward we're looking at actually how we can roll that out wider as I said we've only done that in partnerships so far with Worcester Sixth Form College so now it's about saying actually how can we roll that opportunity and do these events with other sixth forms and colleges across Worcestershire to really grow this piece of work and that's what I wanted to come and share with you as an addition to the work that you've been doing and sort of actually how it can work a little bit in practice and the successes that we can have from it really thank you. I think it's really important now that it's not just a break on the map as this could be a part of you to go into but it's actually also breaking down barriers there's um there's a perception sometimes which is a scary perception of what a social worker is and families could be scared to say actually I need to speak to social workers for support because then they actually have a genuine fear of if we're talking quite young to young people about this but breaking down these barriers which means years to come then well actually I need to support myself I now know where to go and I think that is so important to have that those early interventions those early prevention steps and strong and connected so thank you very much. I just wanted to share I mean if you think you're right you know everything we're doing was to share uh you know and all of my facts you know they've all got connections and families and you know that feeling of what is it social work will do and it's something that we're always always keen to just yeah communicate really positively and I just wanted to share with you a letter that I received about three weeks ago from a year six pupil at the great Jim Worcester and the class were tasked to write to somebody that they felt would be a future employer and this is a letter that I received from this young boy. "Dear Sir and Madam, I'm writing to you today to show my sincere interest in becoming a social worker for your captain. I have a passion for social care and would love you to join your beautiful environment. I would be a good social worker because I am empathetic and I enjoy talking with people about their problems. I'm also very patient so they require more time than usual and need to talk to me about their problems they can. I also think I would be a strong candidate because right now at school I'm a prep reader this means I read to the year ones and the year two children and I also help them with their schoolwork enabling them to improve on it. In addition I love playing outside with the year three children and I've made quite a few duties from playing with them and teaching them their football skills. I have seen what I need to do to get this job so I'm going to work really hard to get all the degrees that I need to work with you. I've heard so much about your wonderful council and what you do for children and others and that is why I chose your council so many others. Thank you for considering this unless that's painful to you. That is really lovely, it made me cry too. I just, every time I read it it makes me and I just think you know it is getting out there you know. We have a good service and we want to help people and that we will protect nobody too but and that's just a really good example of you know it's hitting home people you know understand that you know children's social work is a good place to work and we do a really good important job for children's families. Questions on the last one? No, just the fact that it's really showing the success of the work that you were doing in practice but then it's also not only helping people find prospects into education but also helping us find our future workforce. I think that's something we can perhaps look to utilise for other jobs. You might say my daughter is doing better at that for young people, and if you're getting a job that's not a problem. Of course, making sure that more people go into that and education psychologists and these jobs are desperately needed but people don't necessarily think of when they are thinking of their career path. I mean you can't utilise yourself then so really much for getting those. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. We're going to go on to our cabinet members before we post the work project. So from me only, as I've just mentioned down there, that you know he mentioned before about the bad press and the bad media. Maybe we should spend some time talking about to get some stuff out there and showing what we are doing and for the benefit that can be and take it away to those names. I just like to thank your office and see if I can for them. They are an amazing set of people and I truly great for them. I would also congratulate you on your new appointment and I'd like to say congratulations to Tina Russell on her new appointment, but I won't. But I will thank Tina for all the work you've helped to get me on this panel. You've already given me the last 10 days in a new role so thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] It's not usually because of work done to condense the work program here a bit so we have got really to add some items on. But obviously we'll look at the next meeting. We've got the impacts of courses to children's birth being brought back in-house. I think that's going to be a really important one to do and I look into some very interesting things about that. And then we've got the SMD Ofsted inspection. It's going to be a full one so I don't know if I'm going to be able to [inaudible] So you know, bring a coffee with you. So everyone happy with what they've got currently. One suggestion I will say despite about before and then he wants to also talk about something, which was the work we do for the early years and with our health visitors and our clinics that we do on screen time. And it's quite salient to be looking at screen time at the moment for young people as there's a report that's been collected at connecting increased screen time on young people with instances of missed health. It's also being spoken about in the house to common. So I'd like that to be added to our workflow now. And then he wants to make sure we're including everything like that. Yeah. So there's lots of reports going around. There was a bit of a BBC article on the BBC Gloucestershire yesterday he searched BBC Gloucestershire to type in the word, something like boxing school. He would find that was one of the teachers saying so it's just about the pressure on schools to, you know, become slightly exam batches that some of them are very involved in the restrictions. Yeah, that was understandable, but maybe too much of it, too much pressure from the school's concerns. And then he said, yeah, what kind of both parents and pupils have because at the end of the report, it's also a survey done to find it. And it's quite negative. Even in the school, God goes off to them. And as you say, 70% said their child was unhappy at school. And we want to focus on looking at our faculty, children who do well at school and get good grades. We don't want to have good grades and expect from happiness. And so we're still looking into that. And the school survey is important. And then how open and transparent they are to the wider community. Yes. Good point there, though. So we'll be able to maybe talk to some schools and say, what is your process? But yeah, there is an ideal process that schools are using. I think that's what we're talking to. Because I think, again, we're not said about the, and the quote says 70% of the people like it. I just wanted to find out if you're correct. I think there's an offset. I think it's part of the offset. It's obviously when you have an offset. So they talk to the parents what they think. So you can see that 70% said their child was unhappy. 51% said the child was safe at this particular school. But then he still got green at the moment. There's an academy set off to that initiative where we have less studying with the academy. No, no, I was just thinking, because that kind of figure is only took by doing the offset before. So it depends on which school you pick in which school. Unless you go through an offset, we wouldn't know the difference. I just want to get us know. Yeah, I think we need to think about how we do this across the field wide rather than individual schools. There is going to be an institution wide approach that might be best practiced. I think that's it. It's my best plan to find out. Our schools may be going, some schools may be going down this route because they think it will get them better offset after grades maybe. But then it means understanding what is the impact on the child. But I'm not so unhappy children at schools. Is there a best practice on how parents and children can perform? Well, we'll do some research and then there was one movement we picked up in and. Well, it means that September might be able to have that report on the screen. No, I'm just not David when he came in, he said that he thought he can escape home to school transport. He's got home to school transport. I will be looking at home to school transport. That means I will be looking at all opportunities. However, we get the information that we need to be able to scrutinize and that means that the data is confidential. So we won't go into a confidential setting. Thank you so much for your support. My first ever account here, so hopefully next time we'll have a few more members to be able to send out the emails. Thank you very much.
• Thank you very much. Welcome.