The meeting included a quarterly review of Children's Services performance, discussion of the Council's strategy for providing accommodation for children in its care, an independent review of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and a consultation on proposed changes to Children's Centres.

Children's Centres Consultation

The Children and Young People Scrutiny Panel received an update on a consultation on changes to the way Children's Centres operate in Greenwich. The consultation, called Children's Centres Beyond Walls, proposes to relocate the services currently offered at fixed Children's Centre locations to other sites in the community, or to provide more flexible services in different locations, closer to where families live.

The consultation document describes how funding cuts mean that the council needs to make savings of £33.7m, but will still invest £3.6m in Children's Centre services, more than any other south-east London borough. The council believes that a new Children's Centres Beyond Walls operating model would provide a more flexible and responsive service, spread more fairly across the borough, help to meet the increasing demand for childcare places, and improve the council's support for children with special educational needs.

The consultation document provides a breakdown of the current and proposed services to be provided at each of the borough's Children's Centres, including:

• Rachel McMillan Children's Centre
• Sherington Children's Centre
• Pound Park Children's Centre
• Invicta Children's Centre
• Robert Owen Children's Centre
• Cardwell Children's Centre
• Glyndon Children's Centre
• Mulgrave Children's Centre
• Plumstead Children's Centre
• Alderwood Children's Centre
• Greenacres Children's Centre
• Shooters Hill Children's Centre
• Discovery Children's Centre
• Abbey Wood Children's Centre

For each location, the report described what is currently on offer at the site, what is proposed to happen at the site under the Children's Centres Beyond Walls model, and what other Children's Centre services are available nearby. The document encourages people to respond to the consultation by attending an event, emailing the council, or filling in a survey. The consultation ran from 19 August to 7 October 2024.

Children's Services quarterly performance monitoring: Q1 2024 - 2025

The meeting included a report on the performance of Children's Services in the first quarter of the 2024/25 reporting year.

The report was split into several sections relating to how well Children's Services is meeting its objectives. These sections include:

• Children achieve throughout their education. This section describes how many Greenwich schools have been inspected by Ofsted and what their rating is. The report states that [a]s of June 2024, there were 88 state funded schools in Royal Greenwich and c.480 early years providers (of which c75% are childminders). The report describes how, following a high level of Ofsted inspection activity during 2023/24, 94% of Greenwich schools were rated as good or outstanding. The report also includes a table describing the provisional headline outcomes for children in England at Key Stage 2. The report notes that it is too early to say how Greenwich performed compared to these standards, but does state that Greenwich outcomes will exceed England standards.
• Supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities. This section describes how the council is performing in terms of the number of assessments for Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs)¹ it is undertaking, and how many are being completed within the expected 20 weeks. The report states that, following strong performance during the first half of the previous reporting year, there has been a drop in the proportion of EHCPs being issued within 20 weeks. This has been attributed to staffing changes and an increase in the volume of requests for assessment. The section notes that recruitment is taking place to fill vacant posts.
• Missing education / risk of falling out of education, employment and training. This section describes how many young people are classed as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training)², how many are missing education, and what proportion of young offenders are engaged in suitable education, employment or training. The report notes that the proportion of 16-17 year olds who are NEET, or whose activity is not known, was 3.8% in the first quarter of 2024/25. This compares to a rate of 5.4% for England and 3.4% for London. The report also included a table showing the characteristics of young people who are classed as NEET. The report states that the largest disproportionality is with respect to white young people where there is a far greater proportion than the overall 16 - 17 cohort.
• Risk outside the home. This section describes how many young people have been recorded as missing from home, or missing from care, during the quarter. It notes that the number of young people in both categories has risen over the last 18 months, but that most missing activity by young people is for short durations and for most they only do it once, particularly with respect to missing from home.
• Children at risk, suffering harm or in our care. This section describes how many children are open to the Family and Adolescent Support Service (FaASS)³, how many have Child in Need (CIN) plans⁴, and how many have Child Protection Plans (CPP)⁵. The report states that the council's performance on these measures remains strong and either better, or close to, the comparator data. It does acknowledge that Greenwich is an outlier in terms of CIN plan rates, and states that an explanation for this was provided in a report that was presented at a previous meeting.

Independent review of Children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) in Residential provision

The meeting considered a report on an independent review of the residential provision that is provided to Children with SEND in Greenwich.

The review was undertaken following the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's review of the experiences of children with disabilities and complex health needs in residential schools in 2022. As part of the national review, all local authorities were required to undertake review activity and report back to the Children's Safeguarding Panel and the Department for Education. Royal Greenwich's initial review considered five children in its care who were placed in residential special schools registered as children's homes.

Following the completion of this national review activity, Greenwich Council and the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership (GSCP) commissioned an independent review of all children with EHCPs in residential placements. The GSCP appointed an independent reviewer who considered Quality and Safety Reviews of each relevant child that had been produced by Greenwich Council officers, as well as relevant case records and discussions with involved professionals.

The report summarises the findings of the review, and states that it confirmed there were no widespread or systemic failings in relation to the safeguarding and wellbeing of children with SEND in residential placements. However, the report did make a number of recommendations, including:

• The council should analyse the strategies it uses to manage challenging behaviour.
• Social workers should be trained on how to work with and engage with disabled children.
• The GSCP should organise a multi-agency learning event based on the findings of the Quality and Safety Reviews.

Update on the impact of the new sufficiency strategy and draft plan for 2024-25

The Children and Young People Scrutiny Panel discussed the council's Sufficiency and Commissioning Strategy for Children in our Care 2023-26, titled A Place Called Home.

The strategy, which sets out how the council aims to ensure it has enough accommodation available for the children in its care, was published in October 2023. A Place Called Home sets out four ambitions:

• To prevent children from entering care by supporting and safeguarding them so that they can live with their families.
• If children cannot safely remain with their family, to provide them with family-based care, with trained and experienced foster carers in Greenwich.
• If local family-based care is not appropriate, to secure a safe and stable placement for children with the care they need to thrive, either via an Independent Fostering Agency or a Children's Home.
• To ensure that when children in care reach 18, they enter adulthood with somewhere to call home, a supportive social network, the skills to keep themselves safe and well, and are in education, employment or training.

The report summarises the progress that has been made against these ambitions during 2023/24. It notes that the number of children in care remained stable during this period, with between 413 and 430 children in care at any one time. It states that the council increased the proportion of fostered children placed with the council's in-house foster placements from 56.5% to 60%, and that the number of children placed with Independent Fostering Agencies decreased from 134 to 120. The report also notes that the council opened a new in-house children's home during this period.

The report goes on to summarise the actions the council plans to take during 2024/25 to further its ambitions, and describes how five of the council's Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS)⁶ proposals relate to placement sufficiency.