Transcript

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Children's Education Subcommittee. My name is Councillor Abdul-Manan and I will be chairing this meeting. The meeting will be held in person with the committee members and key participants present in the meeting room while others are joining online. Due to technical error happened to prevent online attendance from participating, I will decide how the meeting should be continued after taking advice from officers. The meeting has been filmed for the Council website. For public viewing, people who are participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. I asked members of the meeting wanted to speak on my direction and engage and speak clearly into the microphone so that they can be heard and their comment can be properly recorded. Justina, any apology, please? No chair, no apologies. Any members got anything to declare on interest? No. Thank you. All the members, the last-month meeting, have you been through any description, or is there someone seconded, please? Last-month meeting? This one? We had a meeting last month. Can I just prove that? Who's seconded? Okay. So look. Justina, that's you. Signed. Sorry, chair, can I just make one? There was one, just an admin thing, I'm down as a parent governor, just for factual. I'll amend that, thank you. Chair, you have got an email from Ashraf Saman, I believe, asking for the link to join online. Update on action log, include on the agenda plan, any members happy with this, all members? Okay. Moving swiftly to item 5.1, early health offer, our first item this evening, focus on progress update on the council, early health offer in place to support and improve family well-being during the critical years, early years. I would like to welcome Deputy Mayor (inaudible) for education and youth and life-time services. Corporate directors, Steve Reddy and director of social care, Susana, basically married to present this item, so thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, chair. I'm absolutely thrilled to present updates on three vital areas that underscore our commitment to excellence and service. These initiatives are heart of our mission to support our community and thrive meaningful change. So the first one is the family hubs progress report. Family hubs have become a, have thrived into vibrant community space, dedicated to reducing inequalities and supporting families. Key highlights, I would like to highlight a few key. The services integration offering comprehensive support from conception to age 2. Community engagement, actively involving families to tailor services to their needs. And positive outcomes, significant improvements in family well-being and children development are already evident. So within the report, I think Susana is going to briefly talk about it. Before I finish, I just want to finish saying that I'm sure a lot of our councilors you've seen and committee members, the work the family hub does, especially during the summer, there's so much activities, so much events we've done. So I'm extremely grateful to our officers, our volunteers, our partners. I think those family hubs are so important to the council, to the community and our partners. So thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to talk about the family hubs. I'm actually going to hand over to head of service, Mohamed Jalil, who's going to take you through the highlights.

Thank you, Susana. Our vision of family hubs has been one that's been long standing. It's about getting the community together. We all have heard the phrase, it takes a village to help grow a child. And in the family hubs, that's what we hope to do, provide that village or provide that catalyst for that village to come together to support a child. And our vision is encapsulated in that, that what we want to do is come together, which is our approach, and to make sure that every young child, family or person, feels included in their communities, is happy and healthy and can easily get help when they need to. And the aim is to make sure that each child and every child has a full potential to thrive. We're really fortunate in this borough to have four family hubs. And those are supported by a hub spoke model. So what we have got is a number of other sites. So we've got 12 other sites that support those. So in each locality, we have one family hub, and at least two other spokes, which we deliver services from. And the four family hubs are shown on the presentation. Although you have a gap in the middle, what that is really, or what that picture really isn't showing, is the number of spokes that we've got that run through the middle of the borough, which is where a lot of the lower super output areas, which means that those are where some of the most deprived wards are. So we launched our family hubs, and we had over 4,000 families that attended, and in total, we had over 80 partners that took part in the delivery or launch of our family hubs. A breakdown of what they are. So this map actually shows you that in the middle, that sandwich that we've got in between, the densely, kind of densely, dense area, sorry, we have a number of additional sites which we deliver services from. In total, over the last year, what we have done is to promote our family hubs, we've had 43 outreach events, we've had 419 articles posted on websites, or have delivered through papers, et cetera, in terms of trying to promote the family hubs. We had 161 meetings, and that's with partners, et cetera, and families, to kind of promote the work that takes place, and we've, the family hubs is all about a culture, and what we've had is over 200 partners and volunteers who signed up to our shared behavior framework, and that's a framework that we've developed with our partners to say things like, we all want to help families, we all want to make sure that we have an open culture, we all want to make sure that we're curious about our families when we want to support them, so those kind of things help us, or are part of our shared behavior. We've had 348 members of staff who've been trained in adult training, things including oral health, young carers' awareness, substance misuse, et cetera. The impact of our family hubs, so we had a significant drop in the number of families that were using our family hubs, and that lended itself from the pandemic, and it's only in this quarter what we have seen is us going back to the normal, or what was the levels of usage and the levels of services being delivered from our, or families' take up of the services in our family hubs. So in the first two quarters we exceeded what our target was, and we wanted 12,000 families to use our Children and Family Centers, but we know that that succeeded, that we went beyond that, and over 15,800 families used our services. Now this time last year, when we were doing early health assessments, we were doing not as many as we could do, and over the last year we've really ramped that up to kind of work with our targeted families, and we've had an increase of 68%, so at the current moment we've got 141 cases that we are working with really, or have got assessments that we're really, really not concerned about, but below the threshold, and have assessments, and that's in just one quarter. Through the family hubs approach what we have done is we've identified 97 mums who are about to have children, and what we've done is we've identified that they may be elements of perinatal mental health or support that they would benefit, and we've been able to move those on to specialist services to be able to support them. We've got 140 members of staff, and when I say staff, and that's staff in the partnership, not just local authority staff, who have been trained now to deliver a number of intervention parenting intervention programs, so no longer are we the only ones that are delivering parenting programs in the borough. We've got voluntary sector organizations and we've got partners that are delivering them, and we have 773 families that have received parenting programs as a result of that. As I mentioned, this is all about a village coming together to support a child and support a family. So we've had 73 partners signed up and have signed up to a memorandum of understanding that they share our values and what they will do is deliver the family hubs a vision as we want it to be delivered. And out of those, what we've got is we've got 37 that actually now have partnered up with us and deliver services from our own sites, so deliver from our children and family centers. The work that we've done has been recognized nationally, and a number of different people have come to visit us as a result, government departments. So we actually had Dame Andrea Ledstone, who used to be the Minister of Health in the previous administration, who came and launched the family hubs approach or family hubs from our children and family centers. We've had more recently, and it was just in August, we had the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities that came and did a focus visit around perinatal mental health and breastfeeding support. We've had the Department of the Foreign Office and Commonwealth, who bought a delegation from Ukraine to come and look at the work that we did around early health and prevention. And previously we've had, last year in June, we had the permanent Under Secretary from Education to also come and have a look at our children and family centers to better understand how we did early help in the borough. We regularly carry out surveys in our children and family centers, and this is just a snapshot of how satisfied people are, and 98% of the communities that use our children and family centers and our family hubs said that they felt very welcome, and 78% of that percent felt that they were satisfied with the services that was being provided. I've got some comments, so we regularly collect comments from our children and family centers and our family hubs, and I have to say most of them are really positive, we've got a few quotes up there, but in the last quarter what we have received is 217 different comments, but you've got those in the slides. Some key areas that we need to keep on working with, as a part of family hubs, we have to make sure that we provide a minimum, there are minimum expectations the government has of us, and we have to make sure that we meet those by March 2025, and that's a priority for us to make sure that we meet that minimum requirement. We are confident that we are going to meet them, and DFE is actually very pleased with our progress in where we are in meeting those. So a couple of things that we need to keep on, a couple of milestones, data is always is really important for us in terms of directing the work that we do, but also to make sure that it's really meaningful, we still need to finalise our data sharing agreement, we've got an outreach and community strategy that's being co-produced, and we need to finalise that as well as our communication strategy, our outcomes framework, and some changes that we need to make to make sure that data gathering is a lot better. So overall, it's a really positive picture that we've got in our children and family centres, and just before I finish, I think what would be really helpful is if I can share a quick video with you, if it's okay, chair, to illustrate some of the work that's been done in our children and family centres, but also I suppose also parents' voices speak much, much better than I can sometimes articulate, so here we go, hopefully it will work and it will play. Here it says. I'm a father of three, I have a nine-year-old, four-year-old and one-and-a-half, and my nine-year-old is a special child. I have two children, a boy and a girl, one has special educational needs, and they are doing very well. I have two children, my elder boy is seven years old and my younger one is four and a half. The family help has been there, I would say, from the birth of my children up till now, I would say they are still part of my life and part of my children's life. There was a time I was really struggling to access the lights of Othman for my son. That caused me depression, I was really depressed, I was able to get the talking therapy through the family help and it was, I think I did a 67-week session. Through that therapy, again, I was able to get access to more information, more support that I needed and how to access it. I have an eight-month volunteering experience with a play and stage session. I have my elder son who has a delayed speech, as a mum I was worried about that. While participating as a volunteer in the play and stage session, I have learned so many things, how I can support my son and how I can do one-to-one at home and now I can see he has developed a lot. I am quite happy with that, I got the opportunity to come here, family help center and learn so many things and I applied in my practical life as well. I received a lot of help from the family home regarding my son because he is a special child. When I moved to London, it was really hard to find out how I can get into the schools and other services. The center helped me to find out the same people where those people helped me to get into the special ed school. Right now my son is doing very well actually, he is more calm and relaxed. When I left my hotel job it was really frustrating, I was just walking around on the street. I don't know what to do, I was looking for something which can manage my time with my child. So I started volunteering and slowly, slowly I continued with the family housing. I wanted to do something, I wanted to work, like I was able to secure a job through the family home and like when you have kids, small special needs kids, sometimes it is overwhelming. You need to go out and do something for yourself, like I was able to get that support and I am really, really grateful. That has really improved my mental health, I would say, yeah. When I came to the family home center, gradually I gained my confidence. I be motivated, I believe in myself basically. When I go back to home, I try with my son, let's do this, let's do some art, let's do some water playing or messy playing, some sensory playing and it also helped me to work out with my son. Now I can see a huge change in my son because now he can speak nicely in English as well as in my own language. This place is like family to me, like when you come to the family home, there is someone that will always listen to you, someone is always there to give you support. It doesn't matter what you are going through, but when you come here, there will be help, help is always here, I would say, yeah. It is very important to have everything in one place, I believe, because people are so busy in here, the city is always busy. They don't have enough time to run one door to another door and if you get everything in one place, it is really important for the family, especially for the family. It has been great, it has been great. A lot of things have moved forward. If there was no family home, I think I would still be struggling to access things that I need that I would not be able to know which number to call or where to go to access the right support for my kids or for myself. Definitely, a parent needs to come to the family home centre. Sorry, three families there and two of them have actually got jobs now working in our children's family centres. One, the young gentleman there, we actually supported him to start his own business and he actually caters for the local authority now and caters for a good number of our events that we do in children's services. Can I just add one thing that yesterday, Jaleel was speaking at the national conference around family hubs about what we are doing in Tower Hamlets and so nationally people are looking at the work that we are doing here in Tower Hamlets, so we are sharing our learning too. I could share my side of it, a couple of weeks ago we visited, the child managed to get one of the family hubs in Isle of Dog to visit to see how the operation, so a few counsellors who are not on the board here, they visited. Also, the Counsellor of London probably came in for about ten, fifteen minutes, but we had about six, seven people there and the way they operate, they show us how they operate, how they run, especially hearing from some of the women, who English isn't their first language and how they struggle and access to the hub, how they benefited, not only the two ESL classes, they also opened the door to other classes, other job opportunity, like part-time, do other stuff as well, so I was very happy to see that and I think we have very good feedback on that, so good work, thank you. Over to my colleagues for questions, anybody got a question for the panel, any questions? Dr Phillips, you're number one. Thank you Chair, okay, one thing I particularly heard is the very impressive list of visitors that you've had, I just wonder quite what the structure about this is and what are you trying to do, is it particularly to, will it open further doors with DfE or how strategic is the list of visitors and I think I heard you said people came from the Ukraine as well. We got asked would we be willing to host, so we didn't ask for them to come, any of the visitors, Andrea Ledson in particular is really interested in the work that we were doing with health and perinatal work that she had heard about, so she wanted to come and see what we were doing about putting in place the policy into actual practice and yes, it was the Foreign Office that asked could the Ukrainian delegate come, because they're already planning how they can reset up their services back there, so we were asked a lot of times, we can't always say yes, but just saying people come and approach us. Also as governments start to make their position concrete in terms of policy, it's really important that they really understand what's happening on the ground and we've always felt as a local authority we have a lot to offer and where possible when we are asked if a minister can come and look at one of the most diverse local authorities in the country, one of the most densely populated local authorities in the country and one that's really doing well for our families here, we're more than happy to oblige. Yeah, I want to know more about how parents can access those policies that are available for them and especially for children with SEND. So in our children and family centre and the approach that we take is an initiative approach that we take in terms of support, so what we have got is when I look at my colleagues in London but also nationally, one thing that we've really tried to hold on to in London part of town is our universal services and by doing that, so what you will find is in each one of our localities there's at least one universal service running every single day and the idea is that if you open the net up wide enough you get families coming in and as I said in my presentation in the last two quarters we've had 15,000 families that come in. Now through that process what we're able to do is we're able to then identify families through ourselves through the universal service but also other universal providers like health visiting, like the schools for example and what we're able to do is identify those families that would then benefit from additional support like SEND. We then have a more targeted approach where we invite those families to take part in some targeted sessions and those are run by people who have been trained to run those targeted pieces of work. Following that if we still think that actually that that young person or that family would benefit from some specialist support then what we're able to do is then make referrals to a specialist service. I'll give you an example so for example speech and language someone's come in we've got loads as a local party we we're not where we should be in terms of where our children should be with our speech and language so children will come to our universal services they will benefit from those but there will be some children that may have speech delays those children will then be identified and then we will ask them to attend group sessions. Most of the children there will be able to support and they'll be where they need to be there still be some that would need would benefit from more specialist support so what we would do is then make a referral to our speech and language therapist and that speech and language therapist would then provide that specialist support to make sure that that child was getting the right support so that it was meeting these milestones. Does that answer your? Yeah and just following on really because recently I've had a few case works where list of services but most importantly is are those services from schools like is the same service available in every school or how well have families have been supported in the schools? So I think if I can just make a distinction so my service provides a primarily provides a lot we provide services 0 to 19 in terms of the educational support and school readiness so we will work with those children's 0 to 5 and my colleague Lisa's online and she'll be able to answer for schools so if there are if you've got any concerns around the family or the family hubs and the support that they are providing I'd be very much interested if you can point that towards my way and the reason why I say that is because we regularly carry out satisfaction surveys and yes we don't get 98% we got 98% last time so most of the time families tell us that they're satisfied with our services and those families that aren't satisfied I'm equally interested to find out why that isn't so that I can better the service. You know I want to say thank you guys first of all because I think Tower Hamlets has a lot of support for children under the age of two in terms of mother and baby classes activities sensory classes I don't know if that's part of the family hub or not but it's there and I'm one of the service users in those sense and it keeps my partner busy as well when she's at home so that's really great what I want to say is that so you've from the math that you showed earlier it seems like you've isolated a big section in the middle of the borough because obviously your service that this end and that end and nothing in the middle so first of all are you planning to get more services in the middle because obviously I'm thinking about people whose English isn't the first language for them to travel it can be quite convoluted getting the buses with children and it's quite difficult for some people um and following from that is you've identified like quite a lot of people that are hard to reach so what are you so what is who is the most difficult to reach and what are you doing about to target them so I'm going to quickly so our family hubs so we've got 16 different sites that we deliver services from and if I can just give me a second let me just share a slide so the first one that I showed you was a slide of where all the family hubs are and some of the requirements from their family hubs meant that we we necessarily they may not have been in the right location but they were the only buildings that could provide that kind of that kind of service so one of the requirements was for example making sure that you could provide health services so we had to make sure that the building that we had had a proper health room with a proper health bed and that room had access to water so that a midwife could run services from there so another requirement was that we had to we want as many so one of the families talked about being able to go to one of these centers and get all the services that I need so co-location was another requirement some of our buildings are bigger than others and so what we had to do is we had to work out which building could facilitate all of the requirements that then the tick box exercise that we had to do to make sure that that we could then call it a family hub so those were the four biggest sites that we've got and those were the sites that we could deliver the most from but what I have got here is whoops sorry it's closed down but what I will show you is a quick map of where the other where the other here we go if you give me a second here we go and if I now so if I go back to my presentation so what you have got here and maybe I can make this a little bit bigger so what you have got here is the four family hubs that we mentioned that are around but you've got can you see one one two three four five six seven eight nine you've got 10 sites in the middle there so in terms of the spokes that we've got for the hubs they they cover where the most dense and the most as I mentioned the lowest super airport areas which is the most deprived areas in the borough as well so we've tried to put the spokes in those areas so that families can still access services one of the mantras that we we try to have was that each family should be able to be a pram distance away and pushing pram distance away from one of our children and family centres and that's what we try to do there and just to layer on top of that it's not just council-run buildings we have voluntary sector partners buildings as well which we haven't overlaid in in the map as well so there are lots of other buildings and the whole point is you go into any of them and you get the advice and guidance it's a one-stop place so that's where we work with our partners to skill them up with that information as well and the hard to reach question so in terms of hard to reach as a local authority we're really really happy to be able to register we're able to register most of the fat children that are born in the borough so we're about at 97% now what that does mean is we know which child has been born in the borough where they live and when we're able to do is we're able to target those families the dwp provides us a list of families that eligible for two-year-olds offer and what that means is that that family is that family is receiving some sort of benefit so what we're then able to do also is with our average workers able to go to those families if they're not already using our services to help encourage them to use our use our services so it's through that kind of use of data and kind of really scrutinize scrutinizing who uses our children and families and who doesn't we're able to make sure that the more vulnerable families or the families that may not use our children and families are targeted and we can do some direct outreach to make sure that they would that they come and use our services okay sorry just a quick because i've a lot of people very quick just um do you have any plans to update your website because obviously i didn't look at it and especially the stn section and you want like um parents who might work with us who have children and try to navigate that for me is very convoluted it just links to various places so that i think needs improvement i'm sure my colleague lisa will speak about it a little bit more but but what we are doing is we're fortunate enough to be one of the local authorities that have been funded for our family hubs so we've got a certain amount of money to be able to um uh bring together our local offer or to make it a little bit more user-friendly and one of the things that we are doing between ourselves and education and health is looking at how we can better bring that format and make sure that that it's a much user-friendly approach to families we're trying to create a bot in there as well so you will be able to do is ask certain questions and hopefully a computer will respond um i'm telling you that you can do this you can't can you have your question answer brief please because we are okay sorry thank you chair thank you for presentation and i was one of the contingent that visited the mill wall hub and it was brilliant it was really fabulous actually to see in action um but with with my hat as always one of my questions was about finance and where it comes from and you talked about government grants and the probably the likelihood of amending within the next 18 months um now we all hope they're gonna say exactly the same but rename them as they often do with with a different number in front of it or something however it got me thinking because they are really really fabulous places and they are as you say they're really being taken up now what have you got in your background are you thinking in the background are you starting to plan that god forbid if if it doesn't come what what might have to go or where you can try and tap in extra funding from so so we've got a mixed economy of funding almost half of our funding comes from either local authority or from public health so in that terms we're not as so the core offer that we provide in our children and family centers is funded through those process so yes some of the more targeted sessions among some of the more targeted work is provided by the additional grants that we get from central london sorry central government um but um if central government took away um all of their funding is a core offer that we will still offer and just with some of the money that we've been given as grants um to spend in quite a short amount of time we've been training up staff so that we've got a sustainable model and both in terms of internal local authority staff but health staff schools partnership as well to deliver different sets parenting programs or different things that families need as well so we're always looking how can we be sustainable rebecca can it be i know everybody taking this time yeah thank you i will be short here uh you have mentioned that the pandemic has had an impact on the family hubs what exact impacts have you faced and how are you tackling this thank you one of the biggest um so two things really um i'd um i'd say that the first thing was that that there's still um a worry about coming into open and public spaces for children so it's trying to get those families into our children and family centers and we know that when they come into our children and family centers that's when we can make the differences to those families but secondly what we are finding is that children in terms of their social um their social and their language development is an area of that's been really impacted by the covid so that that's something that we're really trying to um work with and accelerate so those those two most probably are the things that we we are most concentrating on so um our energy and okay i'm gonna ask you a final question before we need to move on next topic given the rate high rate of domestic violence in thailand compared to other areas in the london what target target outreach and support services are being offered uh to their fathers who who may be at risk or have committing domestic abuse so basically we talk about always talk about women's but men also get domestic abuse as well and they're also abused as well so are there any plan on that as well um yes so here in thailand we're very fortunate um that we have our positive change center which is a specific staff that work around supporting perpetrators victims children group work in terms of domestic violence but also we have our model that we've developed called repair which is about how we skill up practitioners whether that's within early help or social workers to work with families the whole family around domestic abuse we also have funding in terms of the family conflict model so really early intervention where there becomes conflict between parents as well and we run we run groups within the family hubs and within the children family centers it's one of our key priorities for the whole division of supporting families just to add that of course people will only get help if they feel confident and also um if that um if accessibility is made easier and the children and family hubs provide both those they provide a safe environment so we know that families that go through family conflict or domestic abuse come to our children and family centers and secondly as sutella mentioned we've got that graduated again approach to supporting both men and women um be they perpetrators or be they victims thank you i just thank you for coming and was a good to hear a lot of questions from panelists for good to get inside information and and well done for the as i said one of the hubbies it was very nice to see how his work so rather plug on that we're going to most certainly going to move into item number two which is five point two are we ready and our next item is inspection preparation and red line for the anticipation inspection of local authorities children's services i'd like to reintroduce uh the deputy mayor mime to look down um and the steve and suzana and sorry i forgot susan susan and others as well please bear in mind uh come again thank you are you ready i'll quickly do introduction so inspection readiness we've been waiting for a while now so every pretty much every monday i i asked the team have we received any phone calls so the answer is no so we are eagerly waiting we are waiting for for them to come and visit for their officers to inspect us so our officers and um director officers everyone's really working hard and they've been putting a lot of hard work over the over the years and we believe we're ready and i am passionate i am passionate as well as well as our officers our directors steve everyone suzan especially working day and night and we believe that we're at a stage that we're ready for inspection so um so i will pass on to susan i shall go through the the presentation and hopefully you'll understand more where we are thank you thank you um yes as uh the deputy mayor says we are eagerly waiting um ofsted uh to come and do the inspection of local authority children's services the ilacs and we are the last london authority not to have had their inspection in fact they've gone back and gone to two london authorities twice in the time that we've been waiting so what i've set out first of all is what happens it's a it's a two-week inspection um on monday you get a call uh by 9 30 and then that week there's lots of work in terms of getting the documents getting the data the audits um meeting with the inspectors online to set everything up for when they actually arrive in person they arrive the following week on the monday and because we've scored good in the last inspection in 2019 it's just a two-week inspection if we will requires improvement or inadequate it's a three-week inspection so they're here for that second week um when they arrive there will be four social care inspectors there will be an education inspector and a regulatory inspector for part of the inspection they will be like quality assuring the other inspectors just to make sure it's fine um so they will be looking at loads of children's records meeting with lots of social workers early help practitioners meeting with lots of partners just in terms of to really understand the quality of work and triangulating that work um we get then we get the initial feedback on the friday so it's a short time they're here we expect during that week that there will be a significant focus on care leavers that is a new judgment since we've last been inspected as well so then i set out the the three main areas that that will be looked at so the experiences and progress and children who need help and protection which will include early help as well as safeguarding and then the experience of progress of children in care and then about the progress of care leavers and they also look at leadership and so that's leadership corporately politically that golden thread is everybody championing our children and delivering the best that as well as the leadership of our team but leadership across the board in terms of quality assurance and knowing ourselves as well so those are the areas that they look at i've then set out what i believe is um as our service we believe is our strengths i think we have a really clear vision and a really clear practice a framework so our vision is that we believe that the best place for children is to be raised within their own families wherever immediate or wider wherever it's safe and appropriate to do so and our performance shows that actually we have less children in care than other local authorities and i really believe that that we're really committed to working earlier with families we do over 400 family group conferences a year um we have a strong edge of care service with our significant early help service um we really think it's that early intervention focus is really important we also ensure that our staff have manageable caseloads so that they themselves can be the change working with families our other strengths is we do think we have effective leadership and we think that we have a supportive but a challenging culture we talk about high support high challenge and really welcome internal and external scrutiny we believe that our practice framework really helps us embed excellence in practice and at the core of that is about relationships that's the relationships between ourselves as staff and our partners but how we work with families not to families and we've aligned our quality assurance framework and all our initiatives to our practice framework so we can measure our impact but the number one i think strength is our workforce excellent i think our staff are our greatest asset um i think over the last two years we've had about five external people coming in whether it's an lga peer review or it's the government advisor on care leavers and they always talk about our our workforce and how important that is but we still have areas that we want to focus on consistently we we have a relentless focus on our practice priorities like you mentioned domestic abuse but it's harm outside the home and neglect and how we can really um intervene even more impactfully with our families as well consistently and partnership we're always wanting to strengthen our partnership um of the refinement of our better together our practice framework we're still working about cultural and diversity integration how we can really evidence that in the work that we do um and we've been uh championing the career development of black and global majority professionals and how we can even champion that further the early help transformation into family help it's really really important and family hubs and we've been doing a lot of work how we move together our a front door from early help and safeguarding so families have one and professionals one way to move in and the other one is about transitions transitions to adulthood whether that's children with special educational needs whether children with contextual safeguarding issues or children with mental health we're really focusing on so we've we are very keen at looking the themes which merge from other local authority inspections so we we read all the inspection reports we judge ourselves where do we think we're at where we can improve on and these are some of the themes that have come out of other local recent local authority inspections that we've been focusing on so our 16 17 homelessness um young carers um how unregulated placements exploitation are missing um about senior leaders taking an active role in championing children's safeguarding and corporate parenting so those are some of the areas that we continue to focus on the last time we had a formal engagement with offstead was in march this year which is our annual we have an annual engagement meeting with our in our senior hmi for offstead um and we have to present our self-evaluation of ourselves where we think we are and we had a positive discussion about our areas of strength and focus they didn't highlight any significant concerns and they did confirm that our next inspection would be this short inspection offstead inspection they haven't told us when and the other peer reviews that we've had we've had mark riddell who's the government advisor on care leavers he came last year he came back about two months ago and is very pleased with our progress and thinks that we're aspirational for our care leavers and gave us some really helpful suggestions of where we could further strengthen that we also had a youth justice board peer review of course they have a different inspection framework but half the children in youth justice are open to children's social care as well and they could see the positive working together of children's social care or exploitation service and youth justice we also measure ourselves against the london improvement alliance data how is our performance doing in line with other local authorities as well we have a clear improvement plan and it has five key priority areas and those are monitored monthly at the children's services improvement board chaired by steve ready and we've had a series of away days reflecting on performance as well so how do we remain prepared so we we have this monthly improvement board it considers all of our qualitative and quantitative data as well as spotlight on any key key issues i chair fortnightly meetings of inspection preparation which actually we call them our better together meetings because it isn't just about inspection it's about how we deliver continual improvement to be the best that we can for children i have a weekly meeting with all staff a 15 minute on a tuesday morning and we've extended some of them to focus on inspection areas off-step preparation as well we are regularly briefing staff our audit program continues to routinely focus on different areas of the service and this is also supplemented every month by dip sampling a more targeted deep dive in whatever areas that we want to look at further i have i chair monthly performance surgeries with each of the different areas where we drill down into child level data as well and as i've said we've had a series of peer reviews and i've set out you've got some data there about our children i just wanted to there's some data there about our unaccompanied asylum seeking children which is quite a large proportion of our care leavers and so we've been really looking at what our offer is to them in particular so when they first come in there's a specific health their initial health assessment is tailored to take into account maybe some of the trauma that they've experienced and so cams and other support around health there as well and then i've put some performance some of the performance data i mean we have a significant a weighty tomb of performance indicators that we look at these are just some of the the highlights there and when we measure ourselves against other local authorities we are in the middle to the top where we compare favorably with other local authorities in particular i'm going to say we do very strongly in terms of care leaver performance so for example for our care leavers in employment educational training 73 74 percent of them are in that which we are look at but we look at month by month and how we areas that we need to improve we we look at religiously and then duties and responsibilities of politicians and senior leaders so ofsted will really want to ensure that corporate and politically children's services and children's safeguarding and corporate parenting is a real key thing for them and that they have a sound understanding of the key issues and priorities and meet fortnightly with the deputy mayor as lead member and keep him up to date and they'll want to test that as well they won't expect granular knowledge but want to see that there's grip and challenge at most at all levels question thank you thank you for your presentations steve do you want to say anything or before i go to the floor no thank you chair i guess just on the last point we're really grateful that the committee's allowed us to bring this because sharing this and your awareness of the inspection is really important as well so i just want to say thank you uh to the members questions so let me make a note i'll be very brief this time um no it sounds like you guys are doing like a lot of work to manage after service i myself run a after service uh for uh kelivas uh in balham for one of the council so i know the hustle so my question is basically um in terms of commission services for 16 and 17 year olds at the moment i know officers are like registering all those services so what support is the council providing those commission services within the borough um to become ofted regulated and how is the council working with uh to this discussed i think few months ago about partnership with the local businesses because the caregivers are characteristic protective characteristics at the moment so how is the council working to get into eet for the care leavers with the local partners thank you so the first one is about the the changes um in related to supported living accommodation that they have to now be offset regulated um for 16 17 year olds um so this has been a real area of focus for us um because you had to register as a provider by the end of october so we had children who were in places that they had registered to make the application but they hadn't um offstead because of the weight of the number of applications that they hadn't become fully offstead registered so what we we we've taken a pragmatic approach and we have uh reviewed all of those children there's we've had a panel with our independent reviewing officers with the social workers with the heads of service with resources for children looked after and myself as well have made decisions about each of those children i've signed off reports for each of those children to be there we did have 26 children i think we're now down to 12 as different homes have become registered or as the children have gone out but what we've made sure is that we visited those children more frequently as well and checked on their well-being and worked with the providers as well to help them push through but this is an issue that's been discussed not just in town hamlet's but actually nationally with the change in the legislation can i just say i was just going to add to that um obviously to move a child would be a very big decision that we'd want to make um and stability for our children is is paramount so we take we we really thoroughly examine those decisions about the where they're currently placed and if it would be beneficial for them to be moved so we consider everything holistically in terms of taking a decision around that but we're working with commission providers definitely to to understand some of the issues they're facing i'm taking that back to our stood where we can and then in terms of care leavers there's a protected characteristic and apprenticeships and jobs and it's something that's really important to the council and i think we've been first looking in-house how can we um increase the number of apprenticeships of care leavers um i'm not quite sure of the number i'm going to say i think it's something like we've got um six uh within um currently i will get back to you about that i don't want to give a figure that's not correct um but actually we've just heard from another uh from the resources uh directorate that they have found match funding of 300 000 to create more apprentice posts for care leavers that was literally this week looking at one in it one in hr one in um finance as well so we're looking internally but also looking at the support offer to make sure that we are really making it successful though because actually some of our care leavers because of some of the trauma that they might have suffered that actually they might need more support so we're looking so we make it successful but as part of our corporate parenting strategy the next stage is about how is we as a community are we corporate parenting what does that mean in terms of apprenticeships job opportunities work experience the whole range so that really is we've been looking internally first but we're really wanting to um look externally we we every single care leaver has we've we've increased our offer um with our staff around education employment and training and every single care leaver has a named person that walks that walk and links with work path links with other places to get them whatever their dreams and aspirations are as well so it's something that we are continuing to work on thank you my next question is from hasan can you be brief on that please yeah any question thank you for the presentation my question is how the council when it's working with the partnership they ensure the children are safeguarding and are top priority and they ensure that the partners and everyone's they're following in the right way the children are safe what action they are taking on it thank you councillor so we're really fortunate in the borough because of our really positive partnership working and we have the the children's safeguarding board which i i'm currently chairing that and we have representation from senior health colleagues and the police the borough the borough commander and their teams and uh we recently published the the annual report which i'm sure we can certainly circulate to the committee again um we're in a strong place but i think the um there's been some changes nationally around the guidance around safeguarding boards but even despite that change we feel that the arrangements we have in place locally are working very positively next thank you my question is um well abuse in terms of children abuse is everything is serious but i'm just going to particularly i want to address neglect and sexual abuse um how often you go through these cases i mean the sentence and uh what is the comparing to neighboring borough um it's looks like we have a little bit of high proportion uh compared to the neighboring borough because the section neglect and sexually abuse is not only um brings um you know it's a problem but it's it's an effect children go through a trauma and um it's a serious issue in mentally as well as physically so what precaution you take and what's the proportion thank you um so let me take the one first of all on neglect the neglect is one of our priorities for supporting families so um from early help all the way up to adoption um but it's also one of our partnership the safeguarding partnerships priorities is around neglect and so we have developed a neglect toolkit about how to in um how to assess and how to intervene with families where there is neglect and this is now so we use it internally but actually this is a partnership tool as well so in particular working with health and health visitors working with the police as well um so that's something and we've trained up so many of our practitioners but it's a really it is a difficult one neglect as well um and you know that's the importance of looking at family histories and looking how we can intervene the other one about child sexual abuse actually our numbers are relatively low recorded and reported as other local authorities um as well um and so what we've been doing we've been training up staff um to be like champions for where where there have been allegations of child sexual abuse and that we need to intervene and that actually that they are supported how to do that we've been working with um i'm going to say it i think it's the the sunrise child sexual abuse hub um in terms of that and i'm going to pass over to julial no i'm just um we're just looking at the data um counselor in terms of sexual abuse cases we've had three without three in the last um six six months i'm just coming back to the neglect case a significant number of our neglect case is um down as a nickname because of domestic or or family conflict so that's how it gets recorded so it's it's neglect both in the same in the traditional sense but also because of of the issues that we have around relationships and also we understand the impact of poverty and we don't want to confuse poverty with neglect and so actually how that the wisdom how to support families as well and to know the difference as well uh sure um i'll be quite quick um there i believe we've got 4706 children registered on the hcp so the education health care plans um why were there only four parents present in the send self-assessment and can i quickly ask the second question it's for the next item oh okay yeah and then um lastly so i know there was um improvements that were needed in the governance arrangement for the overseeing children missing from care or at risk of exploitation what measures have we taken place since then um we've overhauled our data set um and we've also introduced um so i chair a strategic exploitation exploitation um board so that um the information comes to me because part of it was yeah it was about that oversight um around missing as well so we've done a lot of work with we've got an exploitation service um and in terms of um the offer about it's a return home conversations when children have gone missing and if children don't want to engage that actually we've got support workers from our exploitation service that will go and keep building that relationship with them um and we what we do is we pull together at the strategic board looking at the themes from missing as well and we work closely with the police um as well um to how can we get them to intervene as well earlier um the the missing children and monthly in fact i sent it today to the lead member um in terms of the children we're most worried about frequency of of missing in the month so um the the lead member gets that as well as uh uh steve gets that as well so we we scrutinize it on different levels thank you there's been improvements yes there's been improvements yeah little me at your name i know she's she's on this okay no problem thank you for saving the time how we extend our meeting can we have people online please a chef do you want to come along please online yeah hi so um can you hear me i can okay brilliant thanks so much for the presentation um quite insightful um information there um can i ask that someone who works in um primary care in the borough in general practice as a pharmacist um i come across um quite a few cases um you know who are from kind of various background vulnerable backgrounds and um and obviously the wider kind of set up in place to address many of the issues around domestic violence and sexual abuse um and those who are in particular very vulnerable um is there a role for the wider community um is there any work that's being done at the moment to try and disseminate you know um information around some of these issues so that the wider community the different sectors within the society you know have knowledge um and are able to recognize some of these um issues and and something to be discussed i'm just trying to think about how the roles of you know various um places the voluntary sector um place of worship and community centers and other ways schools of bringing this up so that it becomes a talking point with sexual abuse um many of these things um is kind of on the rise um and i think there's there's probably a need to engage the community so that we have a wider understanding of some of these can i have your question briefly so yeah so really a question in one in one question so would be really to understand better in terms of the role is there a strategic um role or any plans to engage the the wider community in in this effort to kind of um yeah um yes so as part of the safeguarding children's partnership that does include the voluntary sector as well and we have representation um as well and so those key messages um get passed through there we have um introduced an interfaith coordinator so she started in post working with um faith groups as well um so we're we're in fact we've got a big event coming up um around that but also letting people know about our local authority designated officer as well um we also work with our partners and do some training around where there's um i'm going to harm outside the home contextual safeguarding um so where we're uh worried maybe about exploitation as well and that there is we do we go out and do training to different partners um as well um but i think it's a point that we could always do more in terms of engaging our wider community so i think that's one that i will also go away and think that there probably is still definitely more work to be done can i can i just add that also more broadly across the council we partner with and feed into key strategies such as violence against women and girls strategy um so that's taking a kind of more organizational approach and community approach to detect to addressing that issue a really important issue that you've you've identified there final question from me if we move to the next one what action has this safeguarding children partnership taken to ensure the engagement and representation from health partners in our multi-agency safeguarding hub so i've got good news on that it has been it was an issue capacity was a significant issue for the first two years i was here and it had gone on longer than that and the icb have funded icb and public health have funded two extra posts and they have started and it makes a significant difference having extra health advice and input at the front door from the day they started that extra capacity it's made um so there's better attendance at a strategy meetings but just um building those relationships to provide sorry advice and guidance you should also mention there's been some developments around it so that the health officers who are based in our front door have direct access to the health information of their children families thanks for the topics it was very much in depth so we had we had a lot of chance to answer a question the panel and i think it was quite effective on that last on the item we is going to be same item and it's the same people on the panel as well except uh is it thank you so we go my young yeah and steve uh is it lisa here yeah so lisa's um pulling online so they'll go through the presentation so good evening um are you ready for me to start yeah but can it be i'm sure everybody read the paper so just go through the presentation on summarize right please so we have a more chance to ask questions okay so my colleague polly madison is going to briefly refer to the presentation the presentation outlines the requirements of the new send inspection it gives an update on our preparedness for the area send inspection and it also provides a short update on um the areas of improvement that were identified in our previous written statement of action and on our priorities for improvement and our draft self-assessment self-assessment document is also included in the pack so um pauline could i ask you to briefly um take us through the highlights please yes certainly and can i just check people can see the slides yeah we can that's super thank you so much good evening everyone um yes as lisa said this is this is almost following on from the last item very well which is also particularly about inspection what we're doing about it uh and um i want to go straight on through in terms of what we know about this new inspection regime which is much more rigorous than the previous one and we would uh expect it by the end of 25 but it could come next week in fact um and like the ilacs as suzan has said only two authorities in london actually haven't been inspected so we are expecting it uh any time and the particular weight of this inspection unlike previously is on the experiences of parents and children themselves and it also includes just to say although we think of send alternative provision as well so those of you who know a leap london east alternative provision very an outstanding provision it has been ostented recently um that will also be included in uh this inspection so from recent inspections what we have seen um is as we might have expected the majority are in the middle so you're either positive inconsistent or having wide spread systemic failings well we hope we're not the latter um but um we would probably at this point in time rate ourselves as being inconsistent what inconsistent means effect is that as they look at in depth at particular cases they might find things that are not as high quality as they might be dates haven't been met so it goes on you would have to be extremely good to to be rated as positive uh and but we're working hard to actually if we can get there we will do so themes from recent inspections that we're particularly focused on a timeliness and i'll come back to that and your review timeliness is also important it's not just about ehcp timeliness um long waiting times for health assessments uh ours have improved dramatically and i'll come on to that but that has been a big issue for um inspections uh to date lack of multi-agency working has been uh a big one um under twos in terms of antenatal and review visits and then lack of effective adult support and adult support again going back to what suzana was saying in terms of apprenticeships etc that will all be picked up um significantly within the inspection in fact more so than we'd ever imagined uh was the case so huge amount of inspection prep going on we've already done our self-evaluation that is attached to this document i don't intend to go through it but the key thing is please note that we have got a draft it must obviously be updated when the inspectors come because it will be out of date it's out of date every week of course as figures change um multi-agent inspection there's a prep group we've got risk logs um just to say annex a those of you who don't know annex a annex a same on the ilacs the minute they ring you have to produce an annex a with a lot of data a lot of evidence the key is you have it planned well in advance if you don't you're going to uh really struggle on an inspection so we have all that ready multi-agency audit team confirmed and we have data backing up everything that we have done so we we are ready um if they were to ring but let's hope they don't so learning from other areas we're constantly in touch with every time an inspection uh phone call comes into another authority we're finding out how they are managing again as susan has said political engagement absolutely essential from a leadership perspective um it is comes back all the time to the experiences of children young people and parents i cannot stress that enough and it is so much more intensive we've got loads of documentation the fact is it's very clear inspectors do not read it and you can't expect them to have read it but it's a very useful exercise for us anyway um and i can assure you that uh documentation will be ready so um the the out the last inspection was in in uh 2021 a long time ago nearly five years ago uh and so consequently we have made huge progress so i want to go through that progress um we meet dfe and nhs um uh england um many times and they're always very positive about our progress we've got evidence about improvement um we've i think i particularly want to pick up our health figures have improved significantly in terms of performance uh our communication with parents has improved significantly we now have what we call let's talk send events parents didn't attend so we moved them to a saturday if they wanted them and we've got much higher engagement we've got a very helpful early years therapies model in early years and you might ask what verbo is 55 schools signed up to verbo i hope today it's even more and that is a health speech and language uh program which our schools are very excited uh to implement so parents and schools can track speech and language development and our the membership of our schools forum excuse for i'm sorry parent forum has increased significantly and they will be great allies to us in any spec inspection process so it's from that angle it's positive so what are we focusing on in the next year and i look at that particularly um we've got a sending inclusion strategy um and um that is very important it's it's uh going to cabinet tomorrow it's gone through health and well-being board um and that is a five-year program we've got the seth it's attached to you in draft we are going out after half term on consultation on an inclusion framework and you know send is not just those children with ehcps send of those children who also have special educational needs of some form don't need plans but actually do need specific provision within the school setting and that's called send support and so we're doing a framework that's actually looking at what parents school should be providing to all children and then to those on send support but what parents can expect to be provided because it's so important all the way through the parents understand and how they can support their children make progress we're doing a complete funding review which includes resource based review and that is incredibly important because of the limited resources that the government give us in terms of send called the high needs block and we're also doing we call it a send front door for information it's linked to the local offer which jaleel was talking about so that we actually can ensure that parents can see the different pathways to the support that they can access and we'll be working very closely again with early help to make sure that that our parents experience of going through the send system is as best as it possibly can and i've mentioned that we've good things very recently that that our alternative provisions being great is outstanding our youth justice quality status is great and just our relationships with parents care as young people has improved significantly since the last time the question is is it good enough and we will continue to push for that so what impact the impact is often judged by how many plans you achieved in 20 weeks and that is a national figure that that is one of many that we need to be looking at and we have a plan of major improvement on that one because at the moment it isn't good enough at 34 many of them are completed just after the 20 weeks so don't think they'd be waiting a year or whatever but nevertheless we're working hard on that but we've got to work hard on seating to maintain plans as well because seating to maintain is usually a sign of great success if a young person is in employment they don't actually need any hcp so we need also as well as producing hcp's we need to go through the process of ceasing them as well as i say our diagnostic the autistic diagnostic waiting times are below the national average now and that was a huge concern in the last inspection we've actually got parents now involved in a range of dropping sessions and we've actually looking at the last end event if you look at those figures we had 85 was satisfied or very satisfied with the monitoring and assessment of their child's needs and that's both by the local authority and by its schools so i'm sure members got lots of complaints but actually there are a lot of positives in send as well when parents access the right support so what are the priorities for the next 12 months and this is what the send improvement board that steve ready chairs uh will will be monitoring very closely first thing is finalize this strategy as i say it goes to come tomorrow night uh and we've strengthened the send improvement board we are clearly have a program for improving our timeliness improving our annual review process improving the quality of our ehcp's and that is absolutely vital so you go sorry i know i did ask for summarizing because we did have this presentation so you can have a minute to finish your presentation fine absolutely sir thank you very much so so uh i said that we have got to actually look at the high needs block because we you know that we're well overspent on that and we're doing a lot of work to actually make best use of that resource as far as possible i just want to mention again the inclusion framework which is absolutely vital that we're launching that and we're making sure the children are supported at transition points and finally just to look at i say the streamline of our local offer that is imperative so that parents can be part of our co-production and can actually work with us with professionals alongside children and young people to make sure that what we are providing meets um their needs as far as possible so i'm not going to go on to the ceph you've got that and i just want to finalize that by that slide to say our provision for young people is quite amazing in tower hamlet in terms of our schools we have the highest leveling of inclusion in the country six point eight percent of our children um in the ceph it says are included in our schools with the hcp's they're not all tower hamlet chcp's i should say but for a school that's how many they have that is way above the national and london average which is below five percent our performance on that slide shows that we are achieving well above the national average uh in terms of achievement our attendance is higher and our suspension exclusion rates are much less than the national average what that shows you is our schools are incredibly inclusive tower hamlets and something i think we can be proud of for our children with special needs thank you chair okay um thank you for your presentation it was lovely presentation in lot in depth um members please raise your hands for the question yep um you heard my question before would you like me to appear yes please um i believe there's 4706 children on the ehcp plan the education health and care plans why were there only four parents in this send self-assessment and because i know i might not have time for a second question i'll quickly fire away uh you mentioned that uh our exclusion rates are uh kids who are excluded from schools are extremely low does that take account for schools that have exclusion rooms so when i was in suddenly school we used to have something called exclusion room does that count within your um data um i i have to say i don't know i can i can find out for you um but but the the point i was making was that our children with send against the national figures who are excluded and suspended is incredibly low in fact on on exclusions it was nil um that is that is startling in comparison to most other authorities so that was it that was ehcps and send support i was referencing um i i don't know lisa i don't know if you would know the answer to that in terms of exclusion rooms i don't think we that would take account of that so no those are the published national figures which compare us to other local authorities nationally um but that doesn't take um account of um any internal processes that schools would have or any internal exclusion rooms however i would say that in terms of um inspection reports from offsteads they highlight the inclusive practice across our schools so again i think that's a positive um just coming back to the the first question in terms of the four parents who were involved in send self-assessment um i'm not sure what group of parents um you're referring to and it may have been a meeting with some of our send parent ambassadors but we've been going out to um various different groups of people and and looking at numerous opportunities to share the ceph and to get some feedback on it so um it may have been one example of us doing that but certainly i would agree um for parents isn't enough to feedback on that self-assessment and that's certainly um not the only opportunity um that that uh parents will have to feedback um just to add as well the uh send and inclusion strategy that went to cabinet yesterday and has also been to the health well-being board a considerable parent input was included in drafting the strategy and agreeing the priorities is that fair to say lisa absolutely yeah okay um first of all i would like to say i've been doing some work with leap and it's been absolutely brilliant so it's a shame if we could try and replicate that i know i'm always banging that drum and another drum i'm gonna bang which has been one of my bugbears for about five years now and i'm really sorry because i know it's all new faces but and i know you have already addressed it but it's the timeliness of the education health plan care plans um if we're still saying the same thing five years on what is going on why am i still asking these questions what what partners are contributing to delay is it is it schools is it is it nhs is it the council what's falling apart and um you know it's just a shame that probably i i guarantee you that everybody here was not somebody that i was addressing this to five years ago but i'm still addressing it again and i know that is one of your priorities but it's something that you need to think about so what's not working yeah i think yeah if i can if i can start and just see if pauline and lisa need to come in um so i think there has been improvements uh over the period over the last few years in terms of how the teams are are working with with children families and partners and that unfortunately those improvements and even additional resources just hasn't kept pace with the demand they're just for for a range of reasons um you know our children our families are presenting with additional needs in increasing numbers and and we have the council has invested in additional posts and and our partners as well i mean you might have seen there was some uh coverage this week of the national children's commissioner put a report out there were the particular um focus for the media coverage was the waiting time for health assessments and health interventions which you know um it's quite quite shocking really it's sort of two three and even four years in some cases um but we we have recognized that and locally our partners have invested and certainly because as members of the committee will i'm sure be aware constructing the plan requires inputs from lots of different places including um at psychologists and and other health colleagues as well as the schools as well as social care and we have been tracking that input to the plans much more closely and we've seen real improvements in that but the the volume of requests for plans coming in as has continued to rise the other issue is we we don't want to churn out plans that aren't quality and don't provide the right support so uh the our processes around quality we've been revamping those but i think it's fair to say um because i was on the end of it yesterday the mayor is is as concerned as you are and has asked me to set up a specific task and finish group and a pitch for additional resources to address that what is an increasing demand i think there's a wider issue that we need to look at as well which is is the more we can do as as a borough as a partnership as a system to help children families much sooner and much younger so that we can we can we can support them much sooner lisa and pauline is that about right yeah that's absolutely right and and following on from the last point um the early intervention particularly in early years is absolutely crucial including with our our colleagues in uh early health because there is clear evidence that if we can get in early they wouldn't schools wouldn't then be putting it children through the assessment process the assessment process is not only lengthy it's also extremely expensive and it'd be far better if our resources were put in earlier um so that they could be effective earlier so we've got to align the the two situations together and reduce the incredible incredibly high trajectory of um assessment requests just sorry i was just going to say one thing i don't want to keep bashing but because i do want to say one good thing our last one was super quick so i do want to just also say it is also working rebecca you're there for your question um thank you chair oh you know that there are around 9 000 children and young people in tauram with with scnd between the ages of two to 25 years but my question would be what steps is the council taking to address the lack of support services for the scnd or second question is is there a possibility of relocating this provision to another school in the borough to ensure that there these children receive the appropriate education and the and support they need apologies without a specific school you referred to didn't have the right support oh was it overall oh yeah um no i think i think going back to and the point that i made earlier and that you've raised there just the the the volume and rising demand has been so quick over the last few years and i have to say our as pauline's indicated there are our particularly our staff in schools are working incredibly hard to make sure they can meet the demand and i have to say having done this this role for quite some years and there's been a real change in what our head teachers are focused on so when we meet with groups of head teachers now the first thing we talk about is send it's a it's a big it's a big priority for our head teachers as well as the council the head teachers and their teams in schools have been really involved in um again the the send and inclusion strategy that was agreed at cabinet yesterday and there is obviously a commitment to additional resources there and we're working hard with um our schools forum that agrees how the finances across schools are diverted and and deployed and we are spending an increased amount of money which is part of the overall education budget on on high needs um but i think i think some some families still um are not receiving what they need and and we do need to we do need to look at resources and i think without um making any sort of political points around this i think it's fair to say the new government has already identified the feedback from education leads and local authorities is that nationally the send resources is not enough so we need to look at nationally how we're how we're deploying uh finances and investment and also how we're supporting the whole workforce around children and families to deal with what is a massive rise in demand sunday do you want to ask a question i think you did raise your question yeah please be brief here all right sorry um on the let's talk send um even the the parents did not agree that their child hcp helped their support what actions have you taken that are in account i want to feedback to in line of say actions that it's not just taking the feedback there is something you are giving back to them or actioning up and what have you done um yeah certainly the inevitably not all parents are going to be happy i mean that that's that's a given uh in every authority across the land um and where a parent is actually indicated that they are um either not satisfied or not um perhaps not engaged as they would like to be or whatever the issue is that is followed up by our um sendias service which is the uh service that offers advice and support to parents who have children with send so they will uh find out what the issues are um and and often it is simply that um they feel as though they're the communication either from the school or from our own service has not been um as good as it might be it's often it's rarely a timeliness issue it's usually communication or it may be that they just were hoping that they would get something and they haven't got it um and they might have wanted a school and a school has refused to take the child and you know that often happens as well so there are a whole manner of reasons but that it would be followed up by by that service uh my next is the ship please be a brief on that yeah i'm always brief um so i'm just going to basically follow up on uh councilor rebecca's question as well in regards to the support for sense so we like a lot of barrows have arps in position um and what are we doing for the mild to moderate um scn young people that are not like you not mentioned that there are support work but what specific support work can you train the teachers more or and in addition what are the plans to um target and tailor support for scn people who are facing barriers such as like single-parent households or low-income households thank you yes yeah pauline do you want to start yeah go on i do apologize steve um as far as as as within school i i mentioned the inclusion framework and that is exactly for its ordinary available provision and sent support it's those young people who are not at the level of an eatp exactly the group that you've talked about and actually uh showing what we would expect of those schools um we will be doing peer reviews of those schools so schools challenging schools but particularly looking at good practice between schools um and uh we would also um be uh looking at how we can actually engage i mean it's about engaging in the curriculum engaging children um much better than some schools find with some children all our schools do well with the vast majority of children um but to see where those are and a key is exactly exactly as you said and that's the um workforce development the the uh training of teachers more offer of training opportunities we have a range of training opportunities i've been at two meetings today already about how we can provide opportunities for teachers to be part of pilot projects etc to raise their skill which is absolutely essential as far as cost of living etc i'm going to refer that back actually it's back to family hubs and all of the work that jaleel has uh uh indicated and our schools are very much tied into family hubs as well thank you thank you i'm just gonna have to take a question from mr lulu uh after so yeah yeah please thank you chair i told you you're not gonna give him because time is very short so i'm not taking a long time uh thank you i have a sample question uh giving the new inspection process place significant weight on feedback from children young people and parents how do you ensure their feedback is not only collected but also act upon how are children boys being strength in education health care plan um yes happy to answer that pauline pauline so on please hold on a second so what was the last part of your question are the children boys being strengthened in ehcp education health care so put pauline children's voice within their uh education health and care plan yeah so um there there is in in um all plan processes um a uh right at the beginning of the plan an opportunity for children to voice um what their views are more important what their aspirations are and we are actually about to um appoint a new um uh uh parent coordinator who is actually looking also at the way in which parents and children actually have a much easier route through the process as well as and i've already mentioned the local offer etc which is all to support parents have a much easier understanding of what's happening um and they they will be working with parents as well because it's important to have the pet the parents have a major part in the in the assessment process but they don't always choose to take as greater role as they can some parents very actively do some parents don't so we will be very much encouraging that um as far as the inspection process is concerned of course what the inspectors do is that they follow particular children through the process so they will select six cases to look at in depth but then they will select others and they will be talking to the children and talking to the parents and the question from just to look even put your hands up or there thank you chair i'll try to prevent trying to summarize it quick as possible i've got two short questions i'll try to combine and throw it at once since the beginning of the um the very beginning was mentioned that the inspection reported 2021 since the inspection taking place it has been significant progress within the system but can you just just want to clarify that the what kind of progress and was it a something simple or something you had to work hard and what's the current and what you have achieved since the last inspection and the additional question is the second one which is in regards to the action plan is it possible can we share with us the details and the the action log thank you um yes we can certainly um share the action plan and the update from the action plan that we've been updating since the inspection in 2021 and and as uh pauline mentioned we have um because of the findings of that inspection we had something called a written statement of action which lays out the areas we need to improve we have a regular visit every couple of months with um the dfe and nhse advisors who review the evidence that we presented um but as as was mentioned in the slides uh the quality and oversight of education health and care plans waiting times for assessments for things like autism um the speech and language service and communication between leaders and parents i think when we share the action plan you'll be able to see um the specific areas where we've improved on all of those the the self-assessment is attached to the back of the slides and we haven't gone through the detail of that but that has got some of the evidence of that improvement but we can circulate to the committee the actual plan and you can see the progress thanks okay uh dr fiddich thank you uh one stock statistic um the same context the gender imbalance just shocks me 72 male 28 female um i mean what is going on uh and is and how do we i suppose really set some context how does it look nationally or is it more specifically a terra hamlet's problem so if i could take that one so my understanding is that um that um more or less reflects the national picture in that girls um often have undiagnosed um special educational needs um that we need to make sure that um in terms of our workforce development and how we train our teachers that they are more um ready to to to pick up on the signs because um i think um from what i've read uh in terms of um nationally girls are better at at masking their needs or or or or or they don't um they're not so much in evidence but polly might um have a an informed view of on that no i don't agree entirely and and it does mirror absolutely the national um situation the final question from me before we conclude how is the council addressing the rising cost of transport and what steps are being taken to ensure those costs remain sustainable while still meeting the needs for children and young people thank you chair it's a really good question and again you'll read reports nationally of some of the councils who have said they are potentially going to be bankrupt they will talk about um the pressures of adults and children's services and many councils will talk about the cost of transport and we've certainly seen a large rise in the number of children who need who need transport alongside you know as as all councils have seen the rising cost of staffing the transport the actual transport itself and also fuel costs have been rising um so in in our council we have a mixed uh provision so we have the in-house council transport provision plus we also commission uh buses and and taxi provisions so um there's some some strategies we've got uh been implemented around how we plan those routes so we can get more efficient and more cheaper routes and our council transport services are working with us on that but again importantly we need to consult parents as we do that and the other thing and i've witnessed this myself we've got a really good travel training offer so as as children are progressing through primary towards secondary school and beyond we engage with families really on to talk about travel training and and got a really good partnership with british transport police transport for london the bus services and other transport providers and we have a really good offer for our young people and families to make sure they feel confident and can use public transport as well and the final thing is um we've we're brought in a consultancy to do a review and that review has just started and is going to be carried out over the next um four to five weeks and that review is going to make proposals around changes we could make to how we operate plus it will also bring back some policy proposals as well and some of those we might not agree with and some of them we might we might want to consult children and families on but it is a is a massive issue in terms of um the spend in this area so uh happy to update the committee in due course when we've had the feedback from the review thank you steve that concludes this topic for tonight and which last topic is aob and i've got one or two things to discuss uh as well um do you have an update on the forthcoming uh the visit to the school for it's raising awareness this week regarding the the intake of the free school meal and stuff like that and we'll go plan for that uh a few months ahead uh yeah so just to confirm our next meeting is on the 5th of december 2024 and one of the items which we're looking at will be corporate parenting so we're planning a visit to kick at terrace which members some members may recall we went there a few years ago and we broke off fast with some of the care leavers so hopefully we can visit again and see the updates i know that there's renovations and works happening at keka terrace and then in february we'll be looking at free school meals so that's an opportunity to then go out and visit some schools and look at the quality of the free school meals being provided and the uptake levels so i only i know it's a long way about four months away but putting a diary because it's written on this last tuesday particularly is a value for many free school meeting like that so those counselors who want to come along please contact diet or myself and on the february we will visit more than one school we would not know it's the visiting school to see i'm up for uh tasting okay yeah absolutely here and steve you're also welcome as well and that'd be nice and thank you any other business okay can i say something sorry uh while steve is still here actually is it possible to visit a commission service to review that especially that the new office that's happening so in the future to see that care leavers how they live in and and if if it's if it is oftended properly thank you so one minute we've got uh council bello uh with the chair of health and adult school the subcommittee will be carrying out the scrutiny review on maternity services and support for the new mothers and fathers no one's not fathers here okay was regular members work program development session key issue members so anybody who want to help mr belal sorry yeah on that you're welcome please do contact ask about the council so we'll move from there and also uh we'll go collecting feedback from the members about the experience figured out at meeting uh we wish to participate please complete a paper copy which is there and we'll take it from there uh it's got qr cortisol scanning and finally there's no other urgent issue unless somebody raised any questions no thank you for tonight everyone attending out uh do you have a question sorry it wasn't it was i was trying to catch your attention earlier with regards to the free school meals are we still going to only be looking at secondary because the secondary um option is very different from primary good i was going to suggest only we can look at both uh there are a lot of schools that cancel supply the meal and that a lot of schools that cancel pay they pay for the meal but their sources from outside the a private company so we have a lot that's a big lot of thing we need to we need to benchmark make market to make sure these are the council and others all the same platform same standard so that uh that's what we need to look for as scrutiny thank you for tonight thank you for everybody coming appreciate thanks [BLANK_AUDIO]