Transcript

Transcript

Good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's Policy and Scrutiny Committee for Children's Services and Education Skills on the B-Day, the 6th of June. There are no planned fire drills this evening, I believe. If you hear the fire alarm, please treat this as a real emergency. Evacuate the building via the nearest safe escape route. The escape route is via the stairs to your left as you leave the counter-chamber or the public gallery. Exit via the door to the back of the building and will cross you in the car park to the evacuation point. The pavement opposite the police station. This can't be used in the event of an emergency. Treat the light into the building via a safe. Do so by a member staff. Apologies. We have three apologies this evening. Councillor Medland, Councillor Leaver and Councillor Downer and I don't believe the Alliance have managed to find a replacement despite trying very hard to find one. So Councillor Quigley has to leave at 6.20 tonight. We might be slightly different with the agenda because at that point obviously we're not recording the meeting. It might be 4.8. By a miracle someone else turns up. So I think we'll just go through the agenda as far as we can and at a certain point we'll do the next timeframe. So quickly I'm just delighted to be chair of this committee. I've never chaired a committee before but obviously this is my area of knowledge and interest so I'm pleased to be chairing a committee. I want to thank Richard. Richard's done a great job chairing this for three years and graciously with other battles to fight decided not to be chair this year. So I'm going to do introductions around the table. I've got a lot to do in a non-political manner so I apologize to my children. I'm not going to go around the room. My parent governors. I didn't know. Do they apologize? Okay. We're expecting the parent governors and the diocesan line but neither has happened to date. So item number two, the minutes of the meeting of the 7th of March. Any questions Councillors on the minutes of the meeting? Can I have a proposal proposed by Vanessa. Seconded by Richard. Sorry sorry to interrupt. I did actually have a couple of comments. Okay thank you. Just do you want me to just quickly go through them. Yes please. So in the paragraph 43 in the third section it talks about committee given insurance there would be multiple consultations to gather provide information on the planning item. I haven't listened back to exactly what I said but I don't think I said there would be more conversations. I think the discussion was around there would be multiple opportunities for stakeholders to participate in the engagement and there would be some consultation. Not that there would be multiple. There's only ever planned to be two presentations. There's now only going to be one because. So I just wanted to be changed. And also in paragraph 40 there's talk about the ILEX the action plan following the offset ILEX inspection. The plan that was presented last time was the draft plan final action plan. I thought it was important that that was noted in there. And then in paragraph 45 first first paragraph talks about something that Naomi was talking about around payment and it says the improvements have been made in areas. I think that should be some rather than. Thank you. Thank you Ashley for your detailed last section of the minutes. Do I do I sign these? And then when I sign the amended sign these and the amendment. Still happy to. Vanessa Richards seconded. So all those in favor of the minutes as amended by Ashley you went here. Any abstaining? So that's passed. Yeah. Okay. So item three. Decoration of interest. Anyone? Decoration of interest not already declared on your council. Decoration of interest. Okay. Item four action of vice chairman. I would like to from the chair nominate the Richard. It takes the role as vice chair of the committee. We've had a chat earlier so I'd like to nominate Richard vice chair. Any other one? All in favor? Thank you Richard and thank you again for what you've done over the last three years. Public question time. We have no public questions. Written or found in the gallery. So swiftly on to number six the progress update. Very short item so much fun item on there. Found the list of events and bits and pieces. I know you've got a lot to do Kay. So an update. In regards to the events so we are actually reviewing what's been looked after events will take place throughout the year but we haven't got a defined pair with you at this time. We've just re-established the court parenting board. So it's part of center breath themes and also to triangulate that with our nation gender. So it may be about three ready and finalized. What happens will take place by the September meeting. Yes we'll have it by the September meeting. Perfect thank you. Any questions Councillors? Okay thanks Kay. Okay item seven the performance budget and children's research transformation. Thank you chair congratulations on your election as chair and also to Councillor Quigley for the question. So I'm going to say just a few things. The paper's been circulated. It's a very broad paper covering lots of different topics but just to remind what the recommendations are it's just that the committee notes operational financial performance of the new directorate are planning around what happens relating to the service level agreements when they finish at the end of January 2025. About the progress we're making with the key priorities which we identified at the March meeting within the directorate and then the fourth area is just some other matters arising that have come up since the last meeting. So the things I'd like to draw people's attention to first of all about the needs that we're seeing amongst children young people and families on the island the needs that we're seeing continue to be high and if I just pick a couple of examples from the two main areas within the directorate first of all the area which which Naomi leads on around education inclusion and access if we look at levels of or the numbers of children who are coming forward for assessments for education health care plans we continue to see really high numbers of children needing to have an educational health care plan for their needs to be met. If we think about the children's social care side and the area of the directorate which Kay leads and we look at the data which is in the report around the numbers of children in all areas of the system actually they they remain very very high and so of course what that means is that the workload which we're seeing across all teams you know I would say universally across the directorate are very very high and so I'm really grateful to all colleagues for the work that they're putting in to meet the needs of these children young people and families at these continuing high levels. The second thing I wanted to draw people's attention to is around what's happening in addition to that in terms of the very significant transformation agenda that we have within the directorate at at the same time. So some of these transformation areas relate to the establishment of the new children's services directorate so for example the planning around the service level agreements and in in the report I've explained what what they are and I've given a couple of examples about the work that's going on to do with the multi-agency safeguarding hub and to do with the planning around the educational psychology provision that we have on the island. Some of these were pieces of transformation which were in train anyway so if we think for example about the case management system within children's social care and the transfer from the system which is currently called ICS and the move to mosaic that has been a significant piece of transformation work which has been going on for indeed several years but that continues and indeed as I've explained in the report there have been some changes around that as well. But some of this transformation relates to the priorities which we've identified as a new directorate so for example the on the education side the education strategy the 2030 education strategy and the development of that the transformation around special educational needs and disabilities and and also the transformation work around school place planning and of course on the children's social care side we have the work around improvements in the youth justice system we have the work relating to the action plan from the iLATS inspection and we also have the changes which Kay's already referred to around corporate parenting and there are also still aspects of the new service which are still being formulated so if we think about for example the data and intelligence team that has been established as I've put in the report we still have significant vacancies within that and those new colleagues in there are having to deal with significant amounts of manual workarounds because of the issues we have with the IT systems which are in the progress of being improved. So there's a very wide-ranging and I would say challenging transformation agenda as well that we're having to make sure that we implement at the same time as dealing with very high levels of day-to-day operational requirements around meeting the needs of children and young people on a immediate basis. And then the third thing I wanted to say really in the light of that is a big thank you to colleagues because colleagues are demonstrating huge amounts of commitment to delivering on this on this challenging agenda and I want to say thank you not just to the senior leaders in the directorate some of whom are here today and some of who are not but also to every single colleague within the children's services director directorate who are dealing with significant amounts of change and high levels of need amongst children and families. I'd also like to take a moment to say thank you to Debbie Price who is going to be leaving the council tomorrow is her last day and I'm sure you would all join me in thanking her for the huge amount of support that she has provided for children young people and families on the island over many years and not just that but also for the leadership that she has displayed in a number of different roles over the years as well she's left a real mark on the island and we're extremely grateful to her service over those years so Debbie thank you very much. The other two groups I'd like to just say thank you to are colleagues across the council because with this very challenging transformation agenda we're working very closely with colleagues in in the other departments so for example adult social care we're working increasingly closely with them not just in terms of looking at pathways into adulthood about working with colleagues in housing but also for example colleagues in the in the IT service who are responding very rapidly in a very supportive fashion to some of the challenges we have around these systems and the the data reporting elements so we're very grateful to them but also as I've put in the report because of the volume of transformation change in the volume of work to be done we're engaging with some external parties as well so specifically the local government association and also the the southeast sector-leg improvement partnership which is a collection of local authorities throughout the southeast and we're tapping into the expertise that they have across that group and they are we're talking to them about how we can bring some of their resources to help us on some of the transformation work that we want to do. So those are the points I wanted to make about the report and we're very happy now to answer any questions that the committee has. Thank you Ashley and I have to say I should say report wise from what I'm concerned reports I've taken the red all counts of the red reports so it's good to have key points brought out I want to spend most of my time on more reports focusing on the questions as opposed to you know listening so thank you for the you know picking out the key salient points. As I say Debbie I remember the day Debbie started here when she was first recruited when I was cabinet member and yeah the job she's done fostering and adoption the honorary council has been brilliant so personally I remember when you were first recruited first time we ever met so thank you from you know personally as well. So questions, Councillor Grigley. Well done Debbie good luck whatever you're doing I'm assuming you're not retiring are you? I'm going to say I'll tell you not so much a question and I don't want to tempt fate but just to say thank you for the blistering start you've all made because I know it's not been easy and and we were concerned when Hampshire said it was a drawing but I think from I've got several points of contact within within the Directorate and every single one of them seems very different how it used to be and the feeling and the words I get from staff are that they feel very motivated about what comes next so it's a very exciting time so the only question I have and I'll probably ask this repeatedly as we go through is we are it's a very big danger that the political process slows down what is the your process so is there anything we can do or not do that means you can stay on track I know we have to scrutinize but we're also a policy committee so it isn't just about sticking a finger in your chest and make you feel uncomfortable it's also to make sure you can keep the speed up so is there anything at all that we can do as Councillors? Thank you Councillor for the the question so a lot of the transformation work requires a really good understanding amongst members of what the key issues are and why this transformation is required we've invested a lot of time in briefing actually not just Councillors but but the wide range of stakeholders to make sure that they understand why this transformation is needed and so I guess anything that the committee can do to share these key messages across the full range of elected members to make sure that people understand how absolutely key some of these changes are how vital they are would be very gratefully received. The key point I think is that in all the transformation work that we are proposing and driving forward this is about improving outcomes for children and young people and some of the decisions that will have to be made are difficult and they will be decisions that not everyone will support but our role is to make sure that when decisions are made that they are made in a fully informed fashion that people understand the benefits of making these decisions and the consequences of not making them so that these decisions are made in a properly informed way. So for example when we hold all member briefings on topics which we have done in the past if people can encourage people to come to them to make sure they are so I'll give you an example I was at a public engagement session one of the I think it was seven we held across the island for all stakeholders we had lots of parents and carers school staff along to them and you know I had some feedback from an elected member that they didn't necessarily know about some of the things we were talking about and actually we had gone to quite a lot of effort to advertise sessions where people could have could have come along and accessed that material so we're doing everything we can that anything support any anything you can do to support that would be very gratefully received. Councillor Churchman. Yes I'm a bit children it's obviously me 20,000 children but we've got a population of 142 and therefore I would be very stage visited mash it was extremely effective but as I said I have a reservation about that another thing that worries me is education psychology you know I can't help wondering sometimes whether do we need the psychology is it because the children don't get enough exercise for a start is it because they eat the wrong food and the children are almost almost being encouraged oh I don't feel well oh I'm I've got a mental health problem and this really does concern me that we are creating or have created an industry regarding mental health I mean others might disagree living on the island isn't helpful because the future for the children is not that great we don't have enough employment but I'm still very concerned about the psychological element thank you. Thank you Councillor for those points if I may respond on each of them in terms so the multi-agency safeguarding hub you're right to raise it it's a significant piece of work to set it up and Kay's now leading on that work now she's been in post since the 18th of March and we are also talking to I mentioned two external parties one of them we're talking to about bringing some external expertise in as well to help us on that piece of work it is a significant piece of work and it's important we get it right and that that's why it's being prioritized as one of the main pieces of work that we need to do under transformation I did put in the report that one of the early conclusions of the feasibility study of what future options are is that it's not practical to set up a different arrangement by the end of January these things will take a lot of time it's not something the local authority can do on its own it has to work with health colleagues and the police and there are recruitment elements to it and systems elements to it and I've already talked about some of the things that happen with systems so we're not going to rush this we're going to do it properly and Hampshire we're pleased to say have agreed that they're going to work with us on that extension even though it's not strictly speaking parts of the service level agreement in terms of the educational psychology we do need educational psychology on the island for lots of different reasons and I'll give you one of them so the council has statutory duties around the education health care plan system and in order for us to deliver those strategy duties we do have to have educational psychology input there is a discussion about how much additional educational psychology we need above and beyond the educational psychology we need to deliver that statutory duty and that perhaps could be delivered in a better way oh sorry a different way but we absolutely do need educational psychology on the island. I have four questions actually I'll do them all separately the first question you sort of touched on the first question was around paragraph 3.2 mentions that current arrangements for MASH and ed psych it comes to the first affair with me to think beyond that you've also totally touched on the fact that Hampshire you know could still do those services for us is that a definite they will if we don't set our own or we look at the first affair where we'll come along quite quickly but not careful 3.2 says we need to start planning for future delivery sorry we have written confirmation that they uh will assist us in extending provision beyond the end of January as I've put in the report we haven't agreed terms for that in terms of costs etc. I actually think the MASH across all ages because of our size actually I think could work on the island you know I've been to MASH on the mainland and it's brilliant but because of our size MASH just for children may not be big enough to attract the people and the size and the scale that we need so I think across all ages it could it could actually be what the other one actually needs is something different so I think that could you know I get the challenges I think that could work so my second question educational health care plans obviously we've got loads we've got a lot compared to other authorities I've sat on the panel and seen how they work and you know the system works really well but I noticed that the the time scale for issuance of 20 weeks has gone down considerably from 85 percent to 33 percent and no requests have gone up but the increase in numbers doesn't equate to me to a 42 percent drop in time frames is there really another reason for that so this decrease in the adherence to the 20-week issuance time scale for education health care plans is something that's happening in many many local authorities around the country and I guess it's a function of several things really every single educational health care plan requires many different about many different assessments and reports to be written and at the moment if in the national system there are a certain number of caseworkers in SEN teams across local authorities coordinating this and there is a very significant increase in the volume of work that's going through those teams everywhere and you know we we are doing everything we can to get that back up towards 100 percent because historically the Isle of Wight's performed pretty well but this decrease I was talking to a local authority the other day who's actually on zero and but this is going to be an ongoing challenge now part of this is in the gift of the local authority because we run the caseworkers who who coordinate the educational health care plan statutory process but that process is also reliant on other partners so for example if the child requires an assessment from a speech and language therapist or an occupational therapist they they will need to do an assessment and write a report on that child and there are timelines as well that relate to the provision of that advice so partners they are the the statutory processes they're meant to provide advice within six weeks and if that six-week timeline is not delivered that has a knock-on effect for the local authority's ability to hit that 20-week window so one of the things that we're looking at in in understanding what we need to do to get that 20-week issue and number back up is understanding which partners which teams is it physiotherapy occupational therapy speech language therapy educational psychology who are the partners who need to allocate perhaps additional resource to get those reports back on time because if they're not hitting their six weeks it makes it very challenging for the local authority to hit their 20-week timeline so that that's what we're doing about it at the moment it's linked into conversations around the earlier point oh actually because if we think about it for in the sense of educational psychologists who are very frequent contributors to this statutory process you know how much capacity do we need on the island for the educational psychology element of that to be able to meet those deadlines so that's part of the mapping out of what capacity we need in educational psychology uh and actually at the same partnership board uh in um at the end of june so that's the second city of the new same partnership board we're actually having a deep the deep dive focus uh is actually on health provision so it's waiting times for these services to look at what capacity we have in the system and how time we were able to deliver this support because there's a link because it's often it's the same practitioners who are a delivering support to children who are already in the system but be doing assessments on new children who are coming into the system and if you do more of one you perhaps less have less of an ability to do the other so we're working closely with colleagues from health and the integrated care board on that as well a third question so i'm just reading the report 4.1.10 about um our hard work in recruiting retaining decent social workers and reliance upon interim agency workers i know it's a real challenge how short are we and how many interim so um have we got just as just the guide well for example in our child assessment and safeguarding teams where we have the highest demand really in the system um but also where we're struggling most to recruit permanent social workers so at the moment we know that we've got on average around 60 percent reliance on agency social workers um there is a however so we have a plan of how we're going to tackle that and explore that so um there's been a lot of work that's taken place over recent months and debbie actually has been integral to that work um as our principal social worker working alongside workforce development um to look at how we recruit internally um our own social workers so there's been a scheme whereby our family practitioners have had an opportunity um to be able to qualify as social workers so um only two months ago i think debbie was working on looking at how 12 new social workers into the system will be placed into those permanent vacancies which will mean that in the longer term we can release some of those agency social workers and we're also looking at a campaign for recruitment at the moment so that we can celebrate what is good and exciting and excellent about working on the island so that we can have a rolling program going forward so we appreciate that that's really high at the moment um and actually the caliber of agency social workers that we do have we we're very fortunate because they are very committed they're they're very experienced and they're very loyal to us um but yes certainly we we want to improve on our permanent recruitment strategy really good here actually going to rely on yeah it's it's hard sometimes that leads us to the last one the sell the idol i i read the um post inspection action plan oh it's really good yeah they're actually rightfully proud of this we've obtained a good rating with the real detailed report my concern is there's a lot of ambers on there which means we're on track but to deliver all of those ambers means a lot of man hours at times you're going through transformation yourself school place planning it's a real stretch on the team um are you confident all those ambers you know won't slip back to red and in fact most of them would change to greens there's a lot of ambers to deal with at the same time isn't there you're right to raise the point that there's a lot of work going on uh and so what what we're doing is uh we're working with colleagues across the council and indeed external people as well lj southeast sector led improvement partnership to access as much resources we can to help us on the implementation of this work but it it's it's true that some of those uh elements of the action plan are very challenging to deliver so for example um the piece around the the um the case management system the move from ics to mosaic that that is a very challenging situation the um addressing uh of the agency um social worker situation the high numbers of children which individual social workers are responsible for which i lack which ofsted raised that is a challenging situation to address and that one is something which is being experienced by local authorities across the country but you know many other authorities face the same issues so um we we do give them we can on that as we put in the report actually there's been a decision actually to pause the project around moving from ics to mosaic because it was felt we needed to look again at the mosaic specification to make sure that the the specification in mosaic that was implemented was going to be fit for purpose long term given the uncertainty around for example the future mash arrangements we needed to make sure that the case management system did have the flexibility to to deal with that when it happens so that is going to take longer than we hoped it's probably also going to cost some more money relative to what was previously allocated to it but it's the right thing to do for children and families on the island in the in the long term but you're absolutely right to raise it there's a very significant amount of transformation work in here including certain elements of the ilacs action plan thank you do you have any further questions that's a quickly just one k really is uh in terms of the social works obviously pay is an uplift of your agency is are we getting in the way if you've been able to recruit by not managing the pay of permanent staff so in terms of you know we pay agency a lot more than we would do permanent staff are we as a council getting in the way have you been able to attract permanent staff because we're not just in the pay rate so you know if you're in 35 pounds an hour as an agency worker you're not going to take on the job for 30 grand a year i'm not sure that the issues around recruitment is just um pay solely um i think it's it's also that stretch of water it's being able to find appropriate accommodation where you're going to live and at the moment we actually pay um we do provide permanent staff with a market supplement and which is in addition to what their normal pay scale would be i think what we do need to review going forward is the longevity of that because that's an interim position to enable us to recruit but but the wider issues as well is about how we market what we have to offer on the island so for example there's real work-life balance opportunities so there's there's a lot that we can do alongside reviewing the pay options also so at the moment i don't think that's the barrier because we pay the market supplement but certainly in the longer term we need to review whether you know whether we do um a comparison by other local authorities also um because it is an issue particularly when you um when we look at our leaders within the organization so team managers service managers and so on because comparatively on the island um pay is much lower so i think in the longer term we will need to review that to be realistic really um about any of those recruitment issues so councils are we happy just to note the recommendations item two on page 12 i suppose that we know there is can i just add though actually it is nice and i don't mean this is detrimental to hampshire but it's nice to have such an honest and transparent report i don't feel like there's anything hidden in that at all and i think the fact that you've put so many ambers i don't see that as a failing at all i think that's new eyes looking at a system that was probably about to fall over again i don't mean to blow smoke but i you know i think that's actually a good thing from where we are now because they're very early on so thank you i agree there's an o'clock going on that we should be grateful for and more to do and as cats quickly said it'd be nice you know we want to work with you on the policies and the and the way forward so someone happy we all note show as we note this recommendations okay thank you very much i think because we're doing okay for time i think we'll just stick with the normal agenda at this point is where let's cancel and have cancer because they know i think yeah as you say the specialty report has gone through cabinets so we'll move on to item eight the child care sufficiency assessment 24 25. so i'll assume all council have read the detailed report that the salient points to pick out and then we'll open up to questions okay so the purpose of the report is just to provide an update on how the local authority secures sufficient child care places to meet parental demand and it is a statutory duty that we hold the local authority and the report is completed annually and this report this particular report is based from january to december 2023 and obviously things change quite quickly within the child care market so it's just a snapshot of that time the data from this report was captured from the early year census and the early years funding portal we had parental surveys provider surveys surveys from public health housing and other national data sources that we put into the full report on the isle of white currently we have 78 providers 35 of these are private 13 are school-based which by that we mean that they take children from two years of age so they take children from two to

1. we have one school that actually takes from a birth to 11 and we have 30 child minders and but that's decreased since this report's come out in terms of those numbers of child minders and that is a national trend the number of child minders decreasing across the whole country when we look at our offset judgments for early years 97 percent of our early years providers on the island are judged good or above so that's in line with national figures we have a really good mixture of available child care on the island where we've got 77 percent of our child care offering beyond term time again that's just above national on the island and at this time the time of the report being written we had 101 children early years and children that were being directly supported in our early years settings the next section on there looks at the funding rates on the on the early years children we have 85.6 percent of two-year-olds taking up child care offer on the island which again is above national currently our three and four-year-old cohort has decreased but this is linked to the very low birth rate that we're experiencing on the island which eventually obviously has that knock-on effect moving forward and we also have a slight decrease in the number of child care places available on the island which is due to some providers closing and due to providers changing their opening times but we do still have sufficient places on the island so that hasn't caused us any concern at this moment as i said child minders are decreasing and that's due to the low wage that is on offer and due to the really high responsibility that child minders have of looking after really young children in their homes and again that's national in regards to that we are looking at a workforce campaign on the island to try and encourage more child minders into the child care market which is also a national campaign that the dfb are also doing at the moment despite of the financial challenges and what's happening on the market at the moment we do have sufficient child care places on the island for any parent that wishes to send their early years child to an early years setting who wishes to go to work so at the moment we we are doing that we are meeting our statutory duty the report also talks about their half delivery which talks about the dfe fund program which is aimed to deliver an enriching holiday activity and a nutritious meal for all those children who receive benefit-related preschool meals on the island and that's been a huge success on the island it's been growing we deliver in the christmas period in the easter period and the summer period and it has been growing strength and strength as as the times gone on we've had an increased number of secondary children that attends that with 21 increase this year which is amazing to get those secondary children in those really good activities and we've had a 10.7 increase with primary children also attending those activities so it's been a real success on the island during those periods for those families that find those periods of school holiday sometimes a real pinch point they can you know children are being fed during that time which is brilliant and and then the report goes on to talk a little bit about the ehcp's on the island as said before there is an increased number of children early years children that have got ehcp's apparently there are six at the time of writing the report there were 62 children who are early years children that have ehcp's with our portage workers we have about 60 children at the moment who are on the caseload in regards to portage workers or early years children and the report then goes on to talk about the new expanded entitlement that is rolling out across the country which you have probably heard about with phase one from april 2024 working parents of two-year-olds were able to access 15 hours of child care support so we rolled that out on the island april this year which again was a successful rollout and all children that were aged two or both that wanted that child care place were able to access a child care place phase two is uh september 2024 where 15 hours of child care support will be extended to working parents for children from the age of nine months to three-year-olds at the moment we are um we've been mapping that out and looking at what that looks like and we are predicting that we will have enough places for those children for september 2024 phase three from september 2025 working parents of children age nine months and to the age of five will be entitled to 30 hours of child care um you know that's difficult to predict because it's difficult to predict on the island how many of our parents will actually use that and what that will look like so at the moment um we are again we're mapping that out across the island we also need to consider about school place planning and what that looks like moving forward and how that will affect our earlier sector so at the moment we are um mapping it out and we'll see what that looks like as we move forward we also need to take into account on the island our workforce is very different to across the water we have a lot of tourism on the island and so parents may only need that 30 hours for specific times throughout the year which we could possibly manage quite well that we might not be able to manage if it's across the whole year so we just need to think about all the different scenarios that will come into play for september um and that that's it really in the full report but actually you know what i can say is that at the moment we are meeting statutory duty and the level of um earlier settings that are out there is really good we're offering a good service thank you questions after quickly thank you chrisa uh it is i mean there's a lot of report it did take some reading but sorry yeah but you know fantastic uh you know i don't think there's anything missing from what i could see which makes it hard honestly so all i will say is in terms of the terrain the problem train coming out is on the track is there anything in particular you need to be aware of that you need help with and if you had a magic wand what would you be waving at we do need to consider obviously we've been working very closely um in regards to the school place planning with what that looks like um as i said we've got 13 schools that are two to 11 provisions so if um one of those schools is named then that's going to have an impact on the earlier sector we also have over 70 of our early year settings are also on a school um on school grounds so what does that then look like if a school closes and we've still got an earlier setting on that same ground and we need to consider um even simple things like utilities if those if the gas and electricity was supplied through the school what does that then look like if the school closes and the preschool remains um and we need to consider um i think in terms of that labor market what the labor market looks like moving forward on the island because that will affect what you know what who will be sent what children will come into the early years sector um and i think that campaign about it's it's it's not an easy job working with early years children um and i think we need to highlight actually that it's it's it's a real challenge but the success of it is immense because actually they are the foundation blocks of moving forward for our education system if we get that right in early years then it's going to improve as it goes on honey um you know capacity is always an issue um you know at the moment across the local authority in terms of my scent team as i said i've got 60 um children um who are 20 per footage worker on their caseload and i've got a six-month waiting list at the moment and some of the danger of that is is those children that are on that waiting list they may start school before we get to them so you know it would be good to have an outreach worker that can then support those children in that interim period those children that are on that six-month waiting list i know it's a magic wand uh treeza thank you for such detailed and commenting report it's good to read and hear that we have got sufficient places on the island it's really encouraging um you picked up you know the one one threat is if if a school closes with a pre with a preschool provision the schools tend to pick up the energy bills and not charge very much to the preschools but obviously if the school wasn't there the energy costs would be massive some of the preschools they're borderline financially could you know could be a problem too but it's all very positive yeah the birth rate figures indicate why there's a school place planning problem it highlights it in your report but what do you see as the biggest threat what is a a satisfactory position at the moment i guess in terms of parents an increased number of children coming into the market so although our birth rate has fallen it's fallen and if we have um a huge number of children say in an area where we don't have a lot of preschools that's then going to put a pressure on the uh on the sector so for example in newport we have a lot of preschools in newport in west white we don't so if we have an influx of children that come into the west white area and we're going to struggle to be able to place them in the west white area so it's thinking about those children that come into the market where they're coming in and being able to map those places for those children um you know we have a a huge number of children in the newport area because that's where most people travel in to work but there is still a need in the other areas on the island so i think it's just considering um you know when we have the rollout in september 2025 where those children are going across the island geographical as much as number of placement challenges um rob have you got a question if you can yeah uh yeah i do if that's okay yeah thanks jeff all right you you may have already answered it to some degree because i think you referred to a recruitment campaign for child minders and i don't know if i missed it does that does that include helping private nurseries and so on in in recruitment because i understand that's quite a challenge in this sector certainly it is on the mainland for companies that i know provide preschools is that the same on the island where recruitment for private suppliers if you like it is a challenge as well as for that of child minders thank you unfortunately yes it is a challenge and i think um as we can see um across the country that lots of really experienced early years practitioners are leaving due to the low wages and as we've spoke about the number of children with special educational needs coming through um from a young age it's a really big responsibility for these um practitioners who are on low wages that have to that are working from eight to six with particular children so unfortunately we do see um lots of practitioners experienced practitioners leaving again we have that stretch of water so it's quite difficult to have practitioners coming over but we do advertise for practitioners and we do deliver training for practitioners and we do campaign for you know to try and increase that number on the island but it is a challenge thank you but this current ratios and you mentioned there's plenty of sufficiency of places currently there's there's not a sort of an urgent issue at the moment or or do you see that on the horizon not at the moment we're not following national figures because national figures um having conversations with colleagues in hamshire and actually their um figures for early years they are really struggling in terms of having enough practitioners in their settings at the moment we are not there um and i think again it will be linked to the new rollout of the extended entitlements how many children actually come into the sector will then affect those ratios and what that looks like for our early age sector and also bearing in mind that some of our special educational needs children need one-to-one um in terms of ratios so that's quite difficult as well so at the moment i don't see it as a problem and it is something that we will monitor moving forward and we will continue to campaign to make sure that we have enough practitioners on the island thank you thanks very much chair thank you i don't detect any complacency in your encouraging report because you know you know where where we are now is good but you're aware of the threats and which is you know encouraging to hear um so if there are no more questions i propose from the chair that we note the report everyone in favor noting the report carried unanimously thank you treaser thank you chair um this is a verbal update so please do ask any questions at the end of it i'll keep it quite short um our plan at the moment we've identified 201 additional special educational needs places across the island that we can deliver within an 18-month period this is a variety of primary and secondary places that will cater for a variety of different special educational needs including autism cognition and learning sensory specific learning difficulties and social emotional mental health needs these 201 places are initially aimed at reducing our eotas packages which we've inherited and want to bring them down because children are best served in a school environment where they're safer and we can meet their needs better and ensure that they are on pathways to adulthood and successful routes onto college training whatever that may be and we also are looking at um reducing the number of main land places um to try and keep children on the island with their communities and their families we think that's really important um for for the island and for the families here this we are looking at developing this further as you're probably aware we have about a nine percent growth of ehcps on the island year on year we are initially working on our high cost packages and safeguarding of children that's our main priority so that's the reason for giving you a verbal update is because obviously with the school place planning it's incredibly sensitive around the primary aspect so our main focus at the moment is on secondary and then once we name and we're progressing with the school place planning we can then work on going forth with our primary expansion plans and notwithstanding that we have as you all aware we've got two special schools on the island st georges and medina house and we also have the island learning center they are crucial in our plans for developing our places and i was very pleased last night to welcome a number of people to the island learning center to see the refurbished rooms that we've developed for vocational pathways and just to clarify eo task is educated other than at school so that's for children that are on packages rather than in a specific learning environment we feel that that's going to be safe for children so i wanted to give that update because i think it's a really important point so it's a really positive new story for the island we're lucky that we're able to do that we feel that we can do that at quite a reduced cost but actually it will save us money overall especially some of these higher cost packages that we take to the mainland where we have got children that are away from their families and traveling for quite extensive periods of time in taxis and on boats so we feel it'd be better for them to be on them on the island with their families community and have less time traveling and i'm happy to take questions thank you very much pastor quickly thank you i amy um and it is you know it's very exciting really i mean that's quite a hell of a statement two of them on what are the what you're concerned about the handbrakes what are likely the things that get in the way of being able to deliver it at the moment it's around um i'm very conscious about school place planning and so it's about being really um considerate with our papers that come to cabinet for approval um i don't want to uh i'm i'm really conscious about the well-being of our staff and our primary sector so we've paused on any other developments there obviously we have the green mount rp that we're working on at the moment the expansion there and i don't want to send mixed messages out to the primary sector but we are going to utilize um medina house special school there and i think that the the handbrakes are that with the number of ehcps coming through tribunals can direct that takes us over our 10 we want to try and retain say within the 10 because it gives us capacity as a local authority um so it's about we have to deliver on this to catch up to where we need to be and ensure that children have the right pathways at the moment um we don't feel that they have and we need to do some work around that and ensure that we have that therapeutic offer that will meet the need children's needs better i've got one question actually the head of a bold statement 200 won a place in 18 months i'm impressed with that so we'll um in 18 months time we'll have that on the agenda to name that so that's a real bold statement also the reducing main land paces that's um really expensive um it's not just about places i don't know how are you going to do that because some of the needs of more complex and simple traveling man because there's no places it's a bit more complex so how i'm interested in how are you going to reduce these mainland placements a really good question so for the most complex children obviously we need to provide the best possible placement and that could be on the mainland but we have got a situation if i use an example we have um across the country you normally have hi which is um you have hearing impairment visual impairment and physical disabilities and they're normally kept separately so you might have a hearing impairment you know resource provision or a visual impairment resource provision by combining that into sensory and having a sensory provision on the island we can cater for the needs of our children who may have a hearing impairment of being deaf or have a vision impairment or have a physical disability and rather than send them to a very expensive mainland placement we can meet their needs in a school because cognitively a number of those children are you know able to perform with their peers but removing them and taking them to another school take them away from their families and some of the feedback we've had from families is actually they would like a provision on the island they don't want to send their children onto the mainland just because they have a special education needs which they can overcome with the right support so it's about going around looking at the needs of the children and what we can deliver on the island so we're in negotiation with a number of head teachers and governing bodies at the moment obviously we're not at a place where we can name but we have got the plans in place for that so we feel that's a really good way of reducing those really expensive packages but more importantly keeping the children with their community thank you very much and again a detailed verbal update is really you know i look forward to that children one places yeah that's a nice it's not so bold statement like that because it's using encouragement it's cancer it gives you encouragement of saying right we're going to do children one place in 18 months so it's this sort of a project and yesterday you saw that we delivered on the IRC that was great and um you know i look forward to the new academic year and the delivery at the um St George's studio site in East Cowles because that's a really exciting development for SCMH which is social emotional mental health thank you uh this was just the information so we just know the information would be right this evening so we'll move on if you may so is this the right time to comment on the learning center that we went to yesterday some of us it was you may yes um this is obviously educational needs and i'll tell you i was absolutely blown over so anybody who hasn't visited i know Councillor Bacon was there um it really is such an inspiration and that is how i came away i thought this inspirational so thanks to everybody involved thank you chair thank you for your council i'm sure officers will appreciate your kind words so thank you very much um item 10 we couldn't have debbie leave without giving a final fostering report so um are you doing the adoption one as well okay we'll do the fostering one first um council figures give us got 20 minutes left on the schedule so if we break this down into like two 10 minutes sections if we can you might be lucky enough to get through um so i'll say i'll assume everyone's read the fostering report i can't promise everyone's read the adoption report because it's too long but it's very long fostering one um the salient points you wish to pick out and then we'll open up to questions um yes so this is the um update of the fostering service so the isle of white foster care is those that are approved by the council um i bring this report every year so um here we are so the local authority this year in terms of the highlights the fostering service was inspected by office dead as part of the full eye lax inspection um they gave us lots of really positive feedback unfortunately not much of it made it into the report as is often the case um but the the feedback that was in the report was positive and the feedback that we would that we received verbally was incredibly positive too so that's good um in terms of marketing we do a number of um awareness raising events um those have really taken off again obviously they they slowed down over the last the last couple of reports that i had done because they were really impacted by covid no longer the case we've got lots of people going out there and spreading the word and that's really important because although we don't get lots of leads directly from those events what does happen is people come back they google fostering um and we need to make sure that they've seen us out there so that they can do that that's been really positive we know that 24 of our inquiries are generated from word of mouth as well so we really make sure that we work upon that the thing that we all need to be aware of is around the digital marketing that is a really big area for us that's really important we're upping our social media presence etc but our website is very difficult for people to navigate because it's a council website and it's not built around fostering so that's something that we've grappled with um we've worked with uh set slip over a number of years the southeast east group to look at with other fostering agents of course local authority fostering teams how each local authority manages their inquiries the feedback from that has been really positive so we pick up the phone really well we they rate us it's a kind of secret shopping thing they rate us against other local authorities we always come out really high so we know that our ability to meet with inquiries but when they looked at our website we got the lowest marks we've ever had quite significantly so we know that that's a real issue for us um and we've we've worked we've been working with other teams in the council to try and work our way around how can we get a better a better website that people can access because when people google fostering they look at a range of different websites they they're likely to look at private agency websites so we need to make sure that the work that we're doing is really up there but we want them to choose us over our other people so that's something that we are working on in terms of our recruitment it's fallen short a little bit it's a little bit lower than it was last year but in terms of our inquiries um we're finding that we're converting more inquiries through to foster carers so that's positive because historically we had a real issue with our efficiency so our marketing was that we were getting lots and lots of inquiries through so we're having lots to deal with but actually at the end of it very few people were going on to be foster carers that's changed and that's improved it's improved again from last year but we do need to generate more inquiries at the in the beginning not just anybody but people that are going to be the right people that are going to go through to be foster carers so there is still work to do on that what we have seen is unlike other local authorities we haven't lost as many foster carers so we've actually got more households than we had last year by one but in other local authorities they've reduced so that is really positive and you can if you've had a look at the report that the number of inquiries is is quite a bit less but the number of actual approvals is only one less so we're doing okay in terms of the conversion but the website i think would be critical to get people in um in terms of the the team how the team are operating in terms of the support of foster carers it's really good and we're seeing that as a result of that we are retaining foster carers which is is is very positive but also when we when foster carers do leave we're seeing that more of them are for positive reasons so if for example our biggest number four was as a result of a special guardianship order being um applied for a child so the child the children are still there but the carers no longer fostering and that child's no longer in care so that's really positive but we've lost that foster carer so our numbers might have gone down but the children are still there and the work is actually better than it was before because we've got less children in care so that's positive we're seeing children returning to parents and sometimes we've connected carers if they're only connected for that one child if children return to parents then they'll no longer foster um but bernie and her team are very good at talking to people about converting to general carers when we think that that is something that would be positive so there's lots of good news in there i would say there's been a much higher level of compliance across all areas and i remember bringing this report for the first time and and the compliance wasn't good um and we were all worried about that bernie's done an amazing job with her team around you know we've seen 100 supervisions of foster carers that's not easy to do they're busy people um the unannounced visit has really improved they've got new arrangements around that to make them not only um more that not only is there more compliance they're actually better quality um because they've got other people other than supervising social worker going in and having a a good safeguarding eye on those children so real positives we've also seen placement stability improve over time both the short-term placement stability so when we first place children within the first year and even that numbers um lower than our better than our target but within that we look at why those numbers are higher and quite often it's because children have moved with parents as part of an assessment so we're not seeing children having more than three moves because placements are unstable very often at all i'm not saying it never happens it does happen on occasion but those those those children are doing much better um we've seen children it's staying in the same placements we're seeing us getting the matches right more quickly um and we're seeing that where children have moved from one place for another when we look at it is because the parent has moved with the child maybe from a foster care placement to a to living in their own home so in terms of assessments the timeliness is really good um that's improved over time and the quality of assessments that i met with a panel advisor that's really improved as well so i don't know if i've got anything else i need to say any questions yeah what says lip southeast south east i should also say we're doing regional recruitment with them as well so there's a regional recruitment group we're part of that now so some of our fostering recruitment will be done it will continue to do some ourselves but some of it will be done in the southeast across that using that group so that there is some joint advertising that's done and for those people that come forward from the isle of white they will come to us so that's really positive too i just have one i just have one sensible question because obviously you mentioned your report about if someone's looking to foster they tend to go to private sites rather than come to council and that's always been the case do they own it is a massive difference in the amount of money paid for private agency to the council no it's not but they but there are some differences um and i think sometimes you know different agencies pay different amounts but i think the amount we pay is much greater than the amount that the foster carers receive so there's not a massive difference in in some cases in the amount that the foster carers receive but in terms of the cost to us it's very different that's the quickly thank you devi for your last report and well done bernie that's uh you know the really good results i think just as a practical point and it what's holding up the website your own website why can't that happen the council has one website and is not keen to have several websites so it's about thinking how can we be creative about how we achieve that and that that has been a difficulty for a number of years and and when we when the council had the new website we were hoping that that was going to kind of help us to be able to be more creative within it but it's quite difficult it's being quite difficult but we think we might be get with is something that we're working on again and we're hoping we might get a breakthrough because that seems crazy that seems like something we should be able to resolve fairly easily because if if it means you convert two families to use the council and not private fostering then we've saved any money that the website might have cost and also so it just i mean from your point of view it just seems a handbrake we shouldn't have created for you you know sort of these tiny hands behind your back i don't think the problem i don't think the problem is the cost of it i think it's about the council as an organization having lots of different websites and wanting it's not unusual for councils to want everything to go through one and then and then branch out and it's about us finding a way to make that work so that for the user it looks as beautiful as the glossy one that the agencies are able to create because they don't need to have that same kind of gov website i'd still think i still think they're unnecessarily causing you bother sorry kate no it's absolutely fine um it's an issue that we're going to pick up so um what bernie and i will do given that debbie's leaving us working with um mark rodwell who's coming in we're going to look at our whole sufficiency strategy which is about how we create the right homes for the right children at the right time that's also going to include really looking at our fostering strategy for recruitment retention and marketing so within that will be our website so um we'll look at a strategy for how we um change that view and the reason i'm only pushing this because that is something we should be able to do politically is help you push that because that just seems crackers debbie thank you for your fostering report we need to note the report yeah are we happy to note the receiver report the annual sync report thank you um and the adoption one which is about 10 times bigger um would you like to pick out i assume everyone's read it so debbie anyone you want to pick any points on the adoption one sorry the adopt south report is um obviously very large because it covers all of the local authorities that they cover what i would say in summary is the service that the isle of white council gets from its partnership with our adopt south has worked really in our favor and we have seen really good outcomes for children as a result so that has continued this year which is really positive um in terms of their recruitment of adopters they've continued to do that on the isle of white so that they they say have a presence on the isle of white they've done various marketing included the isle of white they even do isle of white radio and the isle of white county press to make sure that they are targeting people on the isle of white that want to adopt which is really positive um and and people come to the island in order to do um adoption events they also are really proactive in terms of the regional um advertising they do they've done some really positive campaigns around some particularly difficult children who've needed really specialist uh adopters um that hasn't necessarily benefited us this year in terms of those particular campaigns but what we know is they're really good at doing that so if that's what we need they've been really successful at it they've done some some they're the really good stuff around um a particular child they talk about in their report called Noah so lots of really positive work that they have done to to get um parents for children who it's it's been difficult to um to find them initially and that might be because a range a range of reasons that that children um have got different needs that need a particular type of adopter or a couple they've done lots of awareness raising result events as well across the south which really helps us because although it's great that they do lots of events or some events on the isle of white we're not we don't always want for for the children that that we need to find parent or parents for um we don't always they don't always need to be on the isle of white so it's important that they do all of the stuff that they do across the south so that children can go to the right places for them in terms of the numbers um four families have been invited identified for children a sibling group of three a child over the age of five are all matched there was one child waiting at the time of this report and i thought you'd want to know that that child has now been linked or no they they're in the process of meeting someone so they're they're a child that have got specific health needs that we need to make sure we get the right parents for that can meet those health needs so we're current so it's taken us a little bit longer as it sometimes does um but we have got a couple that we are in the process of of talking about that child's needs and hopefully that child will be linked with that couple we've had no disruptions um we haven't had any disruption since i've i'm not suggesting this is anything to do with me but in the time that i've reported there's never been any so that's really positive so and it went on beyond before that too so that's really positive we've got excellent scorecards um in terms of the children that isn't always the case because sometimes children take a bit longer to find the right family for but the and that's fine if that if that's what's needed we we make sure that we find families for children whenever we can and if that takes a bit longer it takes a bit longer and our scorecard doesn't look as good as it might that's fine um but at the moment it's really good so what the scorecards are about is how long it takes you to for children to be with their family and then to get an adoption order and that's working really well so we're doing well within the government threshold in both areas so there's been i think around the same level of there's been 133 increase in adoption orders for last year what we would say is historically adoption orders weren't happening as quickly as we liked because there was a backlog that took a long time to clear and the courts were only doing adopt only hearing adoption orders four times a year that's no longer the case we've seen them come through really quickly and we had one didn't we a couple of weeks ago that had happened in a few months i think yeah so that's really positive and parents are feeling confident to apply for those orders quite quickly because of the quality of the matching and what i would say is that the quality of the work that takes place between our children's team and adopt self to prepare children for matches is really really high quality and we have been able to place a number of sibling groups this year which has been really positive so we've had a one sibling group of three that were placed this year and another one that was matched i think and our place now so real positives i don't know if you've got any questions any questions from counselors counselor quickly well it's not really a question it's just the reason the report's so big is when the docs south came last year they did a fantastic presentation on what they did i think this does show the importance of us working with specialist providers in this area because you know i'm sure it's not perfect i'm not going to pretend it is however all everything's going in the right direction which is a really really happy story i guess um i guess it'd be difficult to answer what you'd want to wave your magic wand at but if there was anything in particular that we can help with is there anything in terms of adoption i think to be fair i think in in terms of adoption the partnership with adopt south is working really well for us and i don't know that you know we've no adoption we've had no disruptions haven't had to pay for any placements we children are being placed within the school card i think if we could continue doing as well as we're doing now we'd be happy um in terms of fostering i think that's a different story i think you know they're they're they're there's work to do there are gaps in terms of the quality the confidence of foster carers not the quality we've got some excellent foster carers but we need to do we could do some work around the confidence we could it would be good if we had foster carers that were confident to support children through more challenging periods to keep children on the island um to be to be to stick with children when they're going through really challenging times and i think for for some foster carers are able to do that but in terms of some local authorities and some agencies would have specialist foster carers that are really experienced at managing children through the most challenging times and i don't think we have that and that will take some some work in terms of training and other things so that's about the sufficiency um thank you just in regards to um what counselors can do to support um i think it's it's being aware of our corporate parenting responsibilities and my plea would be that any environment you are in where you have an audience where you're having conversations whether that be one-to-one or the wider audience that we promote and talk about corporate parenting responsibilities about how we want to create and provide homes for our children on the island and that includes encouraging people to think about fostering um and people from all different backgrounds walks of life um so yeah we're inviting people to think about being foster carers um bernie and debbie are right we also want experienced people so part of our strategy going forward will no doubt be looking at perhaps we can be a fostering friendly organization and council so that we have a flagship we have a branding we can then get local businesses and so forth to take on those branding um ideas also so that we're promoting fostering wider and potentially with police colleagues teachers and so forth so whatever opportunities you have that would be my plea talk about um our children that we're responsible for and you know encouraging people to provide homes if they can just for clarity on on the report that that comes with the other report three-page report the background statistics are all adopts staff statistics aren't they so when it says like um six children place externally for 224 000 that's external to the adopt south region a percentage of that comes down to us i guess does it what percentage of that comes down to the other way council is it a quarter or with hampshire and fort smith is it a it's not separated it's not separated in terms of a quarter because we obviously have much less children um so it's done on a proportional basis um and i think as an island we really we benefit we were paying for placements prior to adopt south so we weren't able to go out there and find um families for children and now we adopt south are able to find families for our children so that's really positive and all of those families have been you know they've done well children are having it getting adoption orders um so the quality is good i think adoption i've been you know been able to sign up last cabinet when we signed up to it i think it has worked and your report indicates that adopt south has been a success so thank you for your report and you know your last four years whatever was working here thank you thank you Councillor Quigley thank you for staying four minutes beyond the time i was going to say so at the former partner meeting i think we have to end at this stage as we're no longer core eight so thank you stop recording but but we can still have an informal