Transcript

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Children and Young People's Scrutiny Commission this evening, whether you're here in person in the council chamber connecting virtually to this meeting or watching live online. I want to remind everyone present that this is a formal meeting of Hackney Council and all the constitutional requirements for council meetings apply. Can I remind everyone present this evening whether you are in the chamber or connecting virtually, that this meeting is being held in public and is being broadcast live via the internet. The rights of the press and public to record and film this meeting apply and everyone present should note that media representatives may be in attendance or viewing the live stream. Item one, apologies for absence. I've got apologies from Councillor Garcia and Councillor Sissorunga. Apologies for lateness from Councillor Troughton and we have members also joining virtually this evening. Item two, urgent items. Order of business, there are no urgent items. Moving on to item three, declarations of interest. Do members have declarations of interest? Councillor Sissor. Parents of a special needs child. Thanks, Councillor Sissor. Now moving on to our first substantive item for this evening which is item four, the Ofsted ILAX inspection action plan. Children's social care service in Hackney were inspected under Ofsted inspecting local authority children's services, ILAX, you may hear it referred to throughout the meeting, framework from the 1st to the 12th of July 2024. Ofsted published the outcome of this inspection in the summary report on the 20th of August 2024 and we were pleased to record that the service was judged to be good. The local authority is required to submit an action plan that responds to the findings set out in the Ofsted inspection report which must be submitted within 70 days of receipt. Whilst Ofsted may discuss and offer critical friend advice, it is the duty of the local authority to ensure that the action plan is fit for purpose. So this evening we're going to be looking through the action plan which is included in the agenda pack this evening and for this item we have Jackie Burke, the group director for children and education, Diane Benjamin, the director of children's social care and Lisa Aldridge, the head of service for safeguarding quality assurance and improvement. We have 45 minutes for this item. Can I ask Jackie and other officers if they would just like to highlight key issues from the inspection report and action plan for five minutes and then we can go to Q&A please. I think Deputy Mayor Brownwell was going to come and introduce them. Thank you Jackie, thank you chair. So on the 24th of June we were, there was an announcement that we would be off setting. I know it was very busy at that time because you know it was in the throes of a general election being called but what you have is one week off site and then two weeks on site so a period of three weeks which is a very intense and very thought and thorough process but rightly so for the children that we look after in our care. Delighted to see that when Ofsted came that they saw a good service and one of the things that I said to the inspectors, I know that when you go around you will see a good service because I know the services may be improvements that we would all want to see and that is what they saw that isn't hubris or being audacious, it's actually seen the growth and strength of the service. They acknowledged a number of things whether it was our anti racist model, our star approach was the systemic trauma informed practice, they talked about how our staff knew our children, they talked about our record keeping, they talked about scrutiny in the work that you do here so it's important that I acknowledge scrutiny so I'm not doing that to a trauma offensive chair, it's in the report. So I think every part of the system and what we do is really important. They spoke about our leaders, Jackie and Diane in particular where she held the service in that period of time and myself of Dawn, visible leaders that were accountable and supported and can hold the service to account. They did say that Dawn and I were here for a long time chair, but I thought that's not hard and Dawn and I were both born here I would like to say. Last thing I want to say is I want to thank the staff that have been incredible, you'll see a different service now, curious, open, willing to learn and just children and family at the heart of what we are doing and you can see that throughout. Thank you chair. Thank you. Did the officers want to come at you? Yes, just in addition to Councillor Bramble, I think the Oxford inspection was previously we were required improvement so to get to this good that absolutely Oxford saw the tenacity of our workers but I think that change in terms of understanding what our children need, I think Oxford clearly saw that, Councillor Bramble was right, it was a three week inspection, they were on site for the two weeks and I think what we did, we showed them we knew ourselves, we knew ourselves in terms of what they saw, what they said they would find, we told them that. I think in terms of morale for staff is absolutely improved morale knowing that we've got this outcome. There's work to do and of course we know that but I think this action plan speaks to that and speaks to the work that we've got to do and we want to do but ultimately for me it's about the children of Hackney and knowing that they are now getting a good enough service. Thank you very much. I know that we've mentioned this before in a previous meeting but just to thank you all for all of the work that's gone into this. We've been on a real journey with you through this. I think from the focus visit right through to where we did get requires improvement and there's been a change in the officers that we have in front of us, changing of hands during that period. We've had cyber attack, we've had COVID, we've had deepening complex social and financial context within the council. A really difficult context to be making meaningful improvements to services. So I just want to take this opportunity to thank you all and also all of the people that we don't get to see as a Scrutin Commission who are the ones that are on the ground doing that work, whether it's at a strategic level or directly working with the children and young people in the borough. So thank you all for your work. So now on to questions from the commission. We're setting them out thematically that might help us to get through things. So the first area that could we have questions on is governance and oversight, please? Councillor Vinnie Leboeck. Hi. Thank you for this report and for all the work you've done so far. It's been really good and really good to see, obviously, recognizing that. My question was about the internal governance and oversight systems to make sure that the action plan really delivers the required improvements where we have those for children in social care. There are some items here which I think under consistency, response to care leavers and just around how we gather the data and how we're making sure that we're doing that consistently and really reflecting back on it. So it would be good to know if you feel like that's an extra layer that is having to go on top or if that's already something that's kind of within the resources that are available and to really action that. I'm also interested in what's the role of the improving outcomes for children board? How does that relate to the role and function of the corporate parenting board? Thank you. Can I have one more question from Councillor Gordon, please? Thank you, Chair. Just to sort of add to that, could you tell us a little bit more really about your, the effectiveness of local internal audit and quality assurance processes and also how you use peer review processes from other local authorities to benchmark services and sort of sense check the internal quality assurance processes? Thank you. So I'll talk to the first question and then I'll bring Lisa in, in terms of the quality assurance questions. So in terms of the oversight, absolutely I think we've got the right oversight. We have a improving outcomes board, as you've noted. I chair that and that's about the journey of the child through that. So attempting to break down those silos in terms of that service led work, it's about the child. And so we do that journey through the child in terms of that proven outcomes. We also have corporate parenting board that Councillor Bramble chairs. And again, it's about having that real oversight about making sure we can see the child as opposed to the systems as opposed to the processes. So I think is an extra layer needed? No, I think we've got it right. I think there's always room for improvement. And I think we do that constantly when we're reviewing. Improving outcomes board, you know, it's been, gosh, for about 18 months now we've had that board, but we're constantly reviewing. We've had external people come in to observe us and they've noted, we've had outstanding and good luck authorities come in and saying there are bits of it that we could change and there were nuances about that service, about what we do. But I think improving outcomes is just that added, it gives us that added layer in terms of making sure we can see the child, understand the system, understand the processes. And obviously within that there's the data as well. And we're very clear in terms of our data as well, making sure it's as robust as it can be. I think there are lessons learned. I think our ROSTA inspection said, you know, there are improvements in terms of our data. And I think we're doing that. And I'll bring Lisa, if you can answer the question in the audience. Yes, of course. Thanks. So we were really pleased to see some positive comments from Ofsted about our quality assurance programme and clear oversight of the quality of practice. Oh, you've got your own mute, Lisa. Sorry, my notepad pressed a button. All of our data and the findings from our learning conversations, which is what we call our audit programme, all come to the improving outcomes for children board for scrutiny and peer challenge across the services. Our learning conversations are called that because we recognise that the learning is generated through the conversation about the quality of practice rather than a tick box audit that's done separate from practitioners. So those findings have a scrutiny at the improving outcomes for children board. We have whole service learning conversations as well as service specific deep dives into practice as well. We have taken up the opportunity for a number of different approaches to peer reviewing. So we've engaged through the London Improvement Alliance looking at, for example, peer reviewing, how we grade our audits, our approach to grading. Our most recent one this year was on the Lado service and our approach to responding to allegations of harm against staff and volunteers through which we had some very strong feedback as well. And through the London Improvement Alliance, they've now set up a quality insurance London-wide group. So we're stepping forward to be part of that group as well. I think the biggest changes that we've made since the previous inspection are closing the feedback loop. So actually measuring the impact of our audit programme, do a learning conversation and audit. So has it made a difference? We've closed that loop and improving how we disseminate the learning from quality assurance to continually improve practice as well. I hope that answers the question. Sorry, just a quick follow up on the question there about data. So I really appreciate that that's all good work that's going on. I'm just wondering, with the improving board, and you're talking about breaking down silos, is there any key data that shows where those silos are getting broken down? And there is a line in here about linking data across the service. And there's sort of a timeframe for that January 2025. There's not a sort of status for that. So I'm wondering what does that look like in practice? I think our data is sufficient enough. It's robust enough, I think. Where we get that data from, it's from, you know, we have a quick sense system. So for me, it's intelligent enough for us and sophisticated enough to kind of think about those silos and the work we need to do. I think our data could be better, absolutely. I think it's a work in progress. I think it's about, you know, we've just, it's only been two years really since we've been back on Mosaic. So I think there's lots to do with the back end of the system in terms of making sure that data is adequate for our practitioners to understand and also for me to be able to do that rigorous intel with the data. I think in terms of January, that's the aim in terms of being able to have something that can think on its feet, that can be intuitive in terms of understanding our data. So it's a work in progress for now. I think the data needs to say what it says currently. I think, you know, we've got a data team and we work really well with our data colleagues. But I think, yes, there is work to do, there is improvements to be made on it. Yes, yes, we are on different systems as well. So hence, you know, they're not necessarily intelligent enough to kind of speak to each other. But it is about how we merge them together. Thank you, care. One of the things that you mentioned before, Councillor, around improvements was the timeliness allocation of compensation for care leaders. One of the things that has happened is that Director Ricardo now has set up a board where we're looking at housing and we're working across housing and children's services. So that's one of the ways that we're trying to improve what we're doing. In terms of bigger and tracking data, so I set up an oversight board. The focus of that was to oversee us going from requires improvements to good. That board has done that. So I've now, with the conversation at Jackie and then at the last board, have repurposed it. We will now deal and look at this in our corporate parenting board, which I chair. It will come to here as scrutiny. So we're seeing you part of that integral piece of work. I've invited Councillor Ette to now sit on corporate parenting to have a strong political link across housing. And the last thing it will go to is the what's the three to one in effect is the Mayor, myself, Jackie Nicholson and the Chief Executive on a quarterly basis, all the group directors alongside Diane will come for a quarterly meeting and we will look at and interrogate the data there. Because I keep saying if they are our children and we hold them corporately, everybody in this position across the council needs to interrogate the data. So I hope that gives some reassurance, Chair. Thank you.

It's interesting. We've landed on this point because just last was it Tuesday? We were at Health in Hackney, Excuse Me Commission meeting and actually, again, just talking about somebody said that they'll talk to you about it, about, again, sharing more data across that space and identifying the focus of that particular item that we were looking at was around perinatal mental health and understanding those disparities and why that was of concern for us as Excuse Me Commission is because we know the connection between those women in particular and the children who we find in our care system. So I hope that once we're strengthening as we're it's an ongoing piece of work, I imagine, our data that, you know, I welcome the news of us trying to work more collaboratively across the different directorates because clearly just from that meeting last week we can see where, you know, sharing data on those families would be hugely valuable. I was just going to say, obviously for me that's the ambition to be able to have that data. And again, once we get it from different services, we can understand the need better and then once we understand the need better, we can then deliver better outcomes. But it is a work in progress and I think it is, you know, certainly for social care understanding their data, getting it in a place that we understand it and then being able to share it and then receive data back from other professionals as well, other agencies. And just in terms of that issue, I think why wouldn't we want them to share that data because we can understand ourselves better as well in the needs of our children. Thank you very much. Now moving on to questions about support for care leavers. Do we have questions from the commission? Councillor Ross, please. Thank you, Chair. My question is about the mechanisms that the service is developing or improving to ensure that there is greater multi-agency input and planning for care leavers always. And currently is there an issue of getting multi-agency partners to be involved or is it that the structures and processes currently are not adequate enough to enable partners to be involved? >> One more question from Councillor Sizer and then I will bring Councillor Pinkerton. >> Thank you so much, Chair. I know that we've done some previous work around living conditions for care leavers and we're really aware of how much that impacts their wellbeing holistically. So it's just to check that are care leavers regularly and systematically assessed within their home so that all social workers or advisors are fully aware of their home circumstances? Thank you. I'll leave you with those two for now and then come back to another round. So I think in relation to accommodation of our care leavers, I think in terms of allocation it's absolutely something we're working on. I think we understand the problem and understand that we it's in our gift in terms of that solution. We're working so much better corporately now. I think that was a stumbling block for us in terms of our care leavers. But in terms of timely allocation of care leavers, care leavers accommodation in Hackney, outside of Hackney, I think we're doing some really good work in that space. I think it's for me speaking to care leavers about what they need and what they want. So I think we're doing some work with Ricardo in terms of working more closely with the corporate centre in terms of that housing need and getting that follow through in terms of the type of accommodation that's needed and really, really the quality of that accommodation. So I think we're getting there. I think this action plan speaks to that. It speaks to our ambition. It speaks to what we need and what we want for our care leavers. And then the other question was around care leavers in PA and their assessments. Again, I think the action plan speaks to that. I think we are looking at ensuring that care leavers are seen, seen regularly. PAs understand the needs of care leavers. One of the things Austin had said about us was making sure where we know where our care leavers are living and how we do that, how we're reaching out, how we're being created in terms of reaching out to our care leavers. A digital approach. And I think there's something to be said about us understanding how we understand our care leavers and where they are and what they want from us. Austin liked our offer in terms of our offer on our website. But I think it does need more in terms of being able to be in different languages, et cetera. So again, I think our action plan is ambitious, but I do think it speaks to what care leavers are asking as well. You've got Councillor Pinkerton, then Councillor Gordon, please. Thank you all very much. So it's very positive and encouraging to see in the note about the quarterly programme of leaving care training for personal advisors that's been mentioned. So my question is, how is this going to be rolled out to all personal advisors? And is this training going to be obligatory? Thank you. Covering slightly similar ground. I think really a sort of big concern of this commission from previous work we've done really is about being reassured that all care leavers are getting consistent, accurate, up to date information about their housing options. You know, appropriate time for them to make decisions. So I think that maybe some people will cover later as well. But that's a very big concern to us. Sorry. Lisa, are you okay to come in on the training point? Yes, thank you for that Councillor, I went in a bit too quick there. Yeah, it was just a share. So we're developing a bespoke programme for our personal advisors. They've always had access to the plethora of all other training. But it was a helpful reflection on what we need specifically for personal advisors who are differently qualified. And looking after, you know, providing support for a particular context of young people in particular circumstances. So we're just scoping out that programme, what the content will be. And it will be an expectation for all of our personal advisors to attend that those sessions on a quarterly basis will be growing their learning and development as a cohort, in addition to the other training that they can already attend. So we're hoping to get that programme ready for sort of launch in the new year. And just to clarify, Lisa, will that be obligatory, that training? Yes, sorry, it will be. Okay. Yeah, for all personal advisors. And will young people care, experienced young people are very much central to sort of determining what that training in terms of what that training looks like? Yes. Yeah, we have to do it in collaboration. Yeah, absolutely. And I think just going back to which I'm sure you'll come to Councillor Gordon's point on comms, because I think that that has struck us about this, when we've looked at this item in particular, is the distinction between what we're doing and what young people know and are experiencing. And I suppose it's the training is as much about ensuring that the personal advisors know what's available to the young people as it is that there is a very clear system of communicating things and having those assurances that the young people are aware, know how to access them, and have that consistency, because we know that for various different reasons that are outside of our control, often you might have more than one personal advisor for the whole time that you're being supported by the services. And it's important for young people to have that continuity of service and support. Sorry, back to the other question. So it is about that consistency of messaging and something we've been grappling with, something we know we need to get better at. We work with Greenhouse, we work with housing, we've got a digital text messaging service, but I think there is absolutely more in the space we can do. I think opening the care leavers hub will be again another way of making sure we've got consistency of messaging. It will be a space for them, it will be a place where one hopes housing will be there, benefit advice will be there, so they will be getting those consistent messages. But I think you're right in terms of the PAs, and I think you're right, Councillor Gordon, in terms of the training, once they understand what that means in terms of that consistency, they will get that. The system is only as good as the people that are using it, so it's about our care leavers and making sure that they know what the offer is, and that messaging is a two-way process. So I think there's lots of things we're doing in that space to increase consistency. I don't think there's a panacea and one size fits all, so I think there's different things we're trialling and absolutely the training is one of them. I'm really, really looking forward to the care leavers hub because it's something they've been asking for. Again, it's a place where they'll get those messages, but we need to hear what messages we're sending, who's sending them, and you're right, I think unfortunately there will be several PAs within a care leavers lifespan, and so the messages need to be consistent from one PA, one care leaver, to another. Thank you very much. Is that a follow-up? Thank you. I just wanted to come back to my question earlier, which I'm not sure was addressed fully on the multi-agency working, because also we've been talking about housing, which is obviously a control for care leavers. I'm also interested to hear about health, education, other services, which maybe that's where the hub will come into play as well, but it would be good to hear just a bit more about how you plan to improve multi-agency working. Thank you. Apologies, I'm really struggling to hear, so I didn't hear the beginning of the question, so apologies. If I think I heard you, it's about that. Sorry, you didn't want to ask another question as well. That partnership working and how we hope to improve that, I guess. I think we're doing a lot in that space currently. I think understanding care leavers and following the off state judgment, we're very clear that we all need to lean in when it comes to care leavers. Care leavers needs to be everybody's business, so we're very, very clear on that in terms of we are corporate parents for these care leavers. We can't be working in silos. We're very clear with our partner agencies. For me, it starts at the beginning of the system, right through to the end of the system, but that's my system. I think in terms of partners, we've got them on board. It's just we need to be consistent with what they do and how they do it. Language is so important as well, and how we talk about our care leavers, we're forever challenging because sometimes the language is not as it should and it's not as appropriate, so it's about how we do that. How we do that in the health space, how we're clear what the offer is for our care leavers within that health space. Navigating that forum, assisting them. Education is something they constantly talk about in terms of universities, schooling, et cetera. So we're doing it. We're all leaning in, and it's all about how we do that together. I think we've got a very clear strategy on how we do that. It's about, for me, delivering and thinking about those outcomes for our care leavers. Thank you very much. I think we'll be moving on to questions about children that go missing from care. I don't mind kicking us off with this one. Can officers set out the scale of children who go missing from care, the numbers, the frequency and the age group? Are officers confident that there is now sufficient capacity to consistently undertake missing from care reviews? How many children's rights officers are there within children's social care services? Another question on this point is what analysis is undertaken of interviews or reports of children that go missing? Is this data being used, being effectively recorded and monitored to identify patterns or trends which may help identify unmet needs or safeguarding risks? Lisa, sorry. >> I was just still trying to write some notes for everything you asked, so if I've missed something, please remind me. So I haven't brought all of the data with me in terms of this year, but I can say that between 2023 and 24, we had 256 children go missing with a total of 1,000, an alarming 1,408 missing episodes. 37% of those were looked after children who, and with the frequently missing children, that represents 76% of missing episodes. So in terms of our response to missing children, we have daily missing meetings with our colleagues from the police and ensure that our social workers and police colleagues are working closely around missing children. We do a weekly briefing for our senior leads around the children who are still missing at the end of the week, what their circumstances are, what the strategies we're taking together as a partnership to locate them. And until Ofsted, we had 2.6 children's rights officers who undertake independent return home interviews and also provide advocacy for children as well. We recognised that we were struggling as a service to ensure a consistent offer of return from missing interviews across the service and certainly consistent record of those interviews taking place with, for example, maybe a case note or a visit note being used to record that conversation with the child rather than the template that allows us to report on our practice. So since Ofsted, we've appointed two additional children's rights officers. So from here on, the children's rights officers will contact all children upon return from missing, rather than this solely being the role of the social worker. So we've set ourselves some targets to increase the number of children offered return home interviews and the take up as well. We do recognise that for a small number of children that may go missing several times in one week, during a return home interview every time will feel a bit mechanistic to a child. So we will be making some, you know, thinking with children and carers, how do we approach those conversations with children? And also reframing our language. I mean, the official language is return home interview, but the offer of an interview for a child isn't very child friendly. So we're looking at how do we change the language to really be much more child focused and engaging as well. We know from reviewing our missing children and returns that sometimes our return home interviews can be directly impactful with a disclosure made from a child, intelligence shared from police. Sometimes children will simply say, but I was just with my friend, don't recognise themselves have been missing. But I guess referring back to our data reporting, we've got some further improvements to do on measuring the impact of our return from missing interviews beyond the data too. So that's a priority for the year ahead. I think it might be helpful for the Commission also, Lisa, if you're able to, to just give us a sense of what these missing episodes, what they actually look like, because I'm sure that many people will be alarmed by the number of instances, as somebody who used to work as an advocate for looked after children, I am less so, because being late home by, you know, an hour to foster care might result in them having to call the police, because it's like a process that has to be followed, which I think makes it quite challenging. Again, as a parent, thinking about all the times my daughter has been home late by an hour, and many parents will have experienced that, it's very difficult to determine when something is, when something is up. We don't, we never know what has happened during that hour, whether it's just, I do want to just spend more time with my friends. And then also there are lots of instances of young people, I suppose, going back to see family, because they've been moved outside of the borough, and they don't want to be there, and they want to be with their family or friends or in a locality that's more familiar to them. So if you could just sort of help us to better understand what's coming up, what are the themes and trends? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So just looking at our missing children data from quarter four, 23, 24, I'm just looking at here, and out of the sort of 88% of missing episodes were between zero and three days in length. So about 63, and I'll give you the overall number, were missing for less than one day. So that is those children who might be late home from school or said they're going to a friend's and they're coming back late from a friend's. And whether that's the parent or a carer making a decision, actually, this is beyond expected lateness for the child, reporting them missing, and then the child returning home again. The majority are missing for one day in length. So that could be a 24 hour period, including being missing for overnight. So that is an additional concern. But we do know from speaking to children on return for missing episodes, sometimes we know where they are, they are with a family member where we don't think that's on their best interest, but safer than being missing without anyone knowing where they are. We do have a high proportion of children who don't understand why we talk about them being missing and why we're offering them a return for missing interview, because they said, well, I've just been with this friend, that friend, stayed overnight with my mom, etc, etc. So after those cohorts, the numbers of children who are frequently missing are much, much smaller numbers. So the statutory guidance reflects that sort of need to really ramp up attention and multi agency strategy to find the child after 72 hours. But of course, within that short timeframe, it's doing everything they need to do to try and locate that child, phoning them, phoning friends, contacting parents of friends that are known to the child to try and locate them and return them safely home. So it's a varied picture. The children that we do have concerns about extra familial harm are very closely monitored by, through the daily risk meetings, through the update briefings to senior members and through our extra familial harm panel and where appropriate through child protection plans for those children as well. Thank you, Lisa, Dr Bremley. Thank you, chair. So just to add that I get a report and I've now added the mirror to that. So every week we know if there are children missing in our care, because I feel that's really important for us to know and to hold. Thank God there are weeks when no child is missing. And that feels, I can't tell you how wonderful that feels. We also get a breakdown of the data and looking at the trends. And I think at least Lisa alluded to what I want to speak about. So the difference between not knowing where those children are at all or knowing where they are, but they're still recorded missing because they're not in the home that we've designated for them. So the data is still high and alarming, but sometimes we know where a huge majority of those children are, they're just not in the home that we've allocated for them. So that may add a little bit of reassurance, but of course, any child, not where they are allocated to be, will obviously continue to be a concern. But all those meetings, what Lisa talked about is where those children are tracked, I'd say constant and integral part of our weekly dialogue. Thank you, chair. Thank you very much. Now, can we move on to young carers? Do you have any questions from members of the commission on young carers? Councillor Martin. Thanks, chair. What improvements are planned to help identify and support children who are themselves carers? And how is information from schools effectively captured and shared with appropriate agencies? Thank you. Councillor Pinkerton for a second question, please. Thank you, chair. Could you just talk a bit about what is the Hackney offer for young carers, please, and how the local authority is assuring itself that the offer is sufficient in meeting the needs of our child carers? Thank you. So on reflection, you talked about our schools telling us about young carers. Yes, but I think we could do better. I think it's all about identifying young carers. I think this sits in Pauline's service who's also got young Hackney in her service. So I think it's absolutely a work in progress in terms of how we do that with young Hackney. But, yes, I think Upstead kind of highlighted this work for us to do. I think, again, data, numbers, are we identifying young carers? And then, therefore, what kind of service are we offering young carers? We have to be mindful of young carer services via consent from parents as well. So that's something that we have to take into consideration. But, yes, I do think we are doing so much better in that space. I think Upstead highlighted that it's something we knew anyway, something we knew how we work with the systems currently in place a little bit better in terms of identifying. But, yes, our young carer service is part of our, it's on our young Hackney website. I think it's clear, I think there's certainly more work we can do with our schools. And I didn't hear the questions. >> I suppose just thinking, again, on that comms point, because this is another interesting group of young people, because I imagine there's lots of hidden young carers. So if the schools aren't sharing that information, because perhaps they don't know themselves, you know, because this is the really tragic thing for us, I think, as members of the commission, the length of time that many of us have been on here and the number of focus groups that we've done, when you go along and you're doing a piece on school exclusions and then you find out that you've got a carer and that that hasn't, no one's really picked that up, or that a child's been travelling into school from miles away because they're in temporary accommodation outside, you realise that, you know, just, yeah, that often these things can be missed, but sadly we can see the evidence or the impact of how these things are, you know, affecting their lives through what's going on for them. But they are missed, sadly. Do we, can we, if we've got information on the Young Hackney website, how many young people are going on there? Is there more that we can do to meet young people in the spaces that they currently are, and, you know, especially if they're carers, that probably wouldn't even be hubs or centres, because they've got, they have to be at home, so how do we meet them where they are, which I'm pursuing like social media and Councillor Martins and then Deputy Mayor Bramble. I just wanted to add to that, Chair, in terms of the language when we're talking about young carers, because I think for a lot of carers they wouldn't identify themselves because they just see it as caring for a loved one, which we do naturally, so I think how, yeah, how can we, I guess, tailor the language so that they understand that what they're doing is actually extraordinary and it's not just looking after a loved one, but actually doing a lot of responsibility that they wouldn't necessarily be doing at such a young age. Thanks. I think it's about early identification, isn't it, and I think schools need to help us, help us to do that. I think Young Hackney is great in that space, but I think you're right, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Some children don't know they're young carers. How do we get them to understand that they are young carers? I think schools, you know, do a lot of work with schools, but I think it's been very clear, you know, Young Hackney do lots of workshops, but it's that consistency of messaging so children can understand, actually, I do identify as a young carer, that's me, but I think one session is not enough, so it's about the ongoing messaging and how we do that, and I'm a fan of early identification. How do I work with schools better? I've got my colleague here in terms of how do I do that. So WAMs are in schools and they, do they do that work as well with us? Yeah. But it's about, for me, that consistency and knowing so children can identify and know they are a young carer. Thank you, Chair. So just to pick up on some of that, so I know this got raised before and schools are doing work and it normally goes through the same codes and the information is given to schools. I remember talking to young people the last time when it came up in schools and having a discussion around young people, if they thought having posters up was the right way or information when they go and see teachers when they've got something that they want to express, if that was the right way, but Jason and I happen to go away and have that conversation again with schools. There's a notice that goes out from Jason as the director and a notice that goes out from me as lead member so we can always put that information back out to heads as Jason talked about WAMs and that's the mental health and wellbeing team in schools so there are different ways in schools that these are picked up but because just as children are leaving and new children are coming or a young person may not be a carer but then becomes a carer in any circumstance and it's definitely something that we have to continue to revisit but there is work going on in schools but Jason and I happen to go back and just delve down a bit deeper, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Chancellor Gordon. Really briefly on young carers, thank you for those reassurances. I'm not really sure whether I know the answer to this but I have a feeling that maybe the numbers of young people in this situation are increasing following the pandemic as more parents or adult carers of children are living with long-term health conditions so I don't know whether you've got an idea of the numbers and how that's whether it's been increasing. I mean I don't have specific numbers but we're seeing through the front door need has increased and you're right I think it is post-pandemic in relation to children's needs as well as adults presenting with needs as well but I don't have the numbers for you specifically but you know maybe our data in terms of what's coming through the front door could give us some themes potentially. Thank you very much. Conscious of time we've got a few more questions that I think we'd like to get through. We might have to be a bit of a quickfire couple of rounds before we move on to the next item. We've got capturing and holding the life story of children in care. Councillor Sizer please. Yeah thank you so much. It's just about the really fundamental role that the life story plays for children in care and such an important piece of work so I was just wondering how we're storing the life story work. Is it digital and real? Thinking about the impact of the cyber attack and also how are we ensuring consistency across the board so that it's not just based on who's around any one time or postcode or anything like that but there's a real consistency in life story work for the children in care. Thank you. OK I'll let you have that one and then I'll give you another one if that's OK. So how did the cyber attack affect our life story work? It was really detrimental in terms of not being able to hold the data for our children. I think we really struggled in terms of understanding what our systems were telling us what was on there but what we've done now is we've got we've rolled out memory box and it is a digital platform where we can hold data for our children. GCSE certificates, photographs, so it's a place to hold all that information. We've just rolled it out in September and it's about being able to have all that information and have that consistency regardless of change of social worker, change of PA. It's a digital platform. It's been rolled out just in the care leavers service at the moment. Happy to kind of have come back and review and see how that's worked and whether we have impact and whether that's actually had impact for our care leavers. They'll get to an age where they can request the documents where historically we haven't been able to hold them. So really exciting for our children in care and our care leavers. But that life story work starts from the beginning. So it's a space right from the beginning. It's a digital space where we're expecting everybody whose journey of that trial to be able to hold information from pictures to letters to GCSE results to certificates to swimming badges, whatever. But it's really, really, really enthusiastic about the potential of this moment. It's called the memory box. Thank you for that. And just a slight follow-up question about the cyber attack. Are our IT systems supporting children's social care? Are they fully operational now? So as you know, the number of our documents that were held on the document section were scrambled. So we are still systematically, there's a team still systematically working through documents and recovering information. You'd also be aware that there has been a delay in subject access requests for some of our former looked after children because we haven't got the information and we are still trying to find it. But the team, so we still got a team in place. We're still recovering that information. And for some children it's more patchy than others. But we are, as I say, we're not giving up on it. We're still working on it. And it's been painstaking. It's been like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces just all chucked up in the air, but we're not giving up on that. We are getting better. We have made progress. We have made significant progress with the subject access request. So the numbers have gone down significantly and we've got a very strong relationship with the corporate team that does that. So we've got a strong tracking system as well. And prioritisation too. What a challenge for you all. And just, you know, I think to see that we're still grappling with it now, it just goes to show the scale, I think, which for members of the public and even also I think for us as, you know, members of this commission, we've not had to confront, we've not seen the impacts of perhaps, you know, but we can see from just how much work is still ongoing that just, yeah, how much damage was done and how difficult it's been to repair. We've got a couple of other questions, more general questions. Do I have any other members of the commission would like to ask any of those if not? Councillor Ross. Can you hear me okay? Is that good? Okay. So my question is around the Ofsted inspection report which noted that the higher incidence of placement breakdowns and increasing placement instability is after the age of 12. What analysis is undertaken of placement breakdowns both individually and collectively to help prevent future breakdowns? Thank you. And then Councillor Pinkerton did you want to ask a question about the two outs? Okay, don't worry. I'll ask another question about in the previous ILAC's inspection, November 2019, one of the key findings was that there was insufficient management oversight of cases which led the council to deploy additional management in children's social care. The commission notes plans agreed by cabinet to reduce layering of managerial staff within children's social care. Are officers confident that the current managerial arrangements configurations have the correct balance and ensure sufficient oversight of children's social care cases? So in terms of placement breakdowns it's really, really complex as you can imagine. We try and prevent placement breakdowns. I think there's lots of competing factors when we think about potential breakdowns for our children, where they're living, foster carers, need. There are times when children's behaviours warrant moving from one placement to another. That's not what I would want for our children. But there are times where children are in, I use the word alternative home again and it's about language. I don't particularly like the word placement so I use the word alternative home. So when we're thinking about different alternative homes for our children, we've got providers who don't necessarily have the skill set, are unable to manage the risk and unfortunately we have to move our children. I think it is getting better. I think we're working much better with providers. It is a work in progress. I think we often match our profiles. Our children's profiles get matched to particular alternative homes and then the reality is it's really hard for these providers to meet need. We often are looking for therapeutic homes. They don't often exist or if they do exist they come at an additional cost. So I think in terms of, certainly I have management oversight. I'm clear about those placement breakdowns. They come to me. I look at and I agree potential alternatives in terms of those. I think our data is showing it's getting better. I would prefer in house foster carers, of course I would for our children. I need to skill up our foster carers to be able to do that. I need foster carers in training to be able to do that. So I think I'm aware of the issues in terms of the solution. I need to be working really, really closely with our providers. I want local providers as opposed to having children having to move away from their schooling, their family, all the connections that they have in Hackney, hence looking at building our own children's homes and thinking about what that looks like. But the caveat is that the children's homes that we do have are for our children living really, really high complex needs. We'll always need providers. We'll always need alternative homes. But it's just about that connection for me in terms of making sure we can prevent breakdown. What we also know is that the older children are when they come into our care, the less impact on their outcomes being looked after by the local authority has. So Diane and her team are constantly looking at the information of doing a big piece of work at the moment, looking at the age of when children are coming into local authority on accommodation, what their outcomes are, how many placement changes. So we can look at putting support further upstream so that we're not bringing children into our care unnecessarily. And the other thing that Diane is leading with her service is looking at our clinical offer. And she's worked really hard with CAM's colleagues to look at, Lisa is leading that part of the service as well, to look at how we are supporting children in their placements. So we've got some highly skilled clinicians who work in children's social care. So our focus for them going forward is going to be how do we work with children so that they don't need to come into our care and our families? How do we get that support there? And if they do, how do we then support placements so that children are able to be there as stable as possible so our foster carers will really appreciate the support of our very skilled clinicians. And if we have children who are, so some children when they move around their mental health support changes with every locality that they might move to. So with our in-house clinicians we'll be able to have a much greater focus on those children because the more they move around then the more the cost escalates as well and they're not getting great outcomes. So if we really focus the support on helping those homes that are looking after those children do the best they can to support them then we get better outcomes, we keep down costs and children aren't just being moved around. So we are giving masses of thought to that currently with Lisa and Diane and her team. In terms of management oversight and what Austed said about us previously I think yes it's appropriate now, it feels appropriate in terms of being able to be clear about those lines of management. I think we had the LGA, we had a peer review also telling us the same thing in terms of we need to streamline our management processes. We are currently doing that but I think there is something around having that clear management oversight I think it's in place, I think we've got the right structures now. The proof will be in the pudding in terms of looking at making sure the data is on the system, making sure our outcomes for our children are good, our audits are telling us that the children are receiving the right service at the right time, they're on the right plan at the right time. But I think it's constantly about knowing ourselves, constantly about reviewing ourselves and I think certainly you feel since we've come in the last three and a half years we're doing that constantly. We're having that professional curiosity about our services and understanding what's working and what isn't working for children. But yeah I think I am clear in terms of the management oversight, I think we've got enough managers in the system to be able to do that. Thank you very much I think that's the end of the questions from the Commission for this item. So I think that we could probably let you go unless you're desperate to stay for the next slide, so don't be offended, Mayor Woodley, if they do go. Thanks again. So now moving on to item 5 which is Cabinet Q&A with Mayor Woodley. So Cabinet members who have responsibility for children and young people's service are invited to the Commission annually to enable members to scrutinise services within their portfolio. The Commission may identify up to three service or policy areas on which to focus questioning, all of which must be notified to the Cabinet member six weeks in advance of the meeting. The Cabinet member is required to give a verbal response and take any follow-up questions. Mayor Woodley is the Cabinet lead for a number of children and young people's services, these are listed at page 19 of the main agenda pack. The three areas which the Commission have chosen to focus on are commissioning of independent and non-maintained SEND provision, roll out of the free childcare entitlement and graduated response in schools. The full detail of submitted questions is contained in the report pack at pages 19 and 20. Can I suggest that we take these one at a time? If Mayor Woodley would like to respond for six to seven minutes then members will have some time for follow-up questions. Can we begin with the first question on commissioning of non-maintained SEND services, please. Over to you, Mayor Woodley. Thank you, Chair. I'll sort of whistle-stop through because I think each of your questions have sub-questions as well. So your first one was around how many children with SEND are supported in independent, non-maintained settings and I might just do a little bit of scene setting because I'm sure you've heard, all of you by now, a lot from schools and the Council about how we've seen a growth in the need for specialist support in Hackney, with a number of residents within the HCP rising from 3,243 in 2023 to 3,473 in 2024. That's equivalent to 4.35 per cent of 0-24 year olds making Hackney's rate of SEND needs the 13th highest across England and this doesn't capture the wider needs in terms of SEND support and the added anxiety, mental health challenges and so on that we've seen since the pandemic which there's no doubt was putting a strain on the system. To meet this rising demand and this year's budget we committed to investing 10.2 million on youth and early help services for families and that includes activities provided through our four youth hubs and our wide network of adventure playgrounds which I'm really proud and we've managed to sustain in Hackney. We've also put 21 million into our school buildings including increasing provision for special educational needs and disabilities in the borough, bringing us closer to our manifesto commitment of an additional 300 places for children with SEND in Hackney by 2026. If we're able to go as far as we'd like with the capital funding that we have and depending on the suitability of sites we hope we might actually exceed this number so watch this space. I may summarise what we currently offer with your permission shortly. So in Hackney our mission is to provide the best possible support to our young people with SEND. We want all young people to live happy, healthy, independent, safe and fulfilling lives and to achieve this we collaborate closely as a local area partnership made up of children, young people, their families and professionals from education, children's and adult social care and health services and volunteering community organisations. My point being it goes beyond schools. It is in our interest to keep children close to home where possible but there are of course always going to be a number of families who will prefer independent settings for example faith settings, our Haredi community for example and in some cases children will require settings that we do not presently have within our maintained system in Hackney. So if I just do a quick summarisation, I'm not sure everyone here will know what we offer. Across our primary schools we have one, two, three, four, five primary schools with places for autism and the places around 10 to 12 in each case. We also have an ARP for social and emotional and mental health at the primary level and also two settings for speech language communication, each of which have 10 places. At secondary level which we're really keen to build, we have 15 places for autism, 15 for cognition and learning, that's sort of moderate learning difficulties and then also a provision for hearing impairments through an ARP with 12 places and in development we're looking also at early years so we're currently working on 12 places for nursery children with complex needs, 24 places for speech and language communication and then there'll be a new setting at secondary for SEMH, 30 places which will be a really big change for us here in Hackney because SEMH has been something we've not really been able to provide at the level that's needed and in any secondary school you're going to see quite a high need for that. So to your question, currently 532 pupils attend independent non-maintained special school settings, 309 of these, so a really good proportion of these attend independent Haredi schools and that will continue, we're not looking to remove that. Hackney currently supports three, as I said, 3,473 children with an EHC plan, the percentage of pupils attending in those independent settings is 15.31% of children with an EHC plan, the percentage of children attending independent non-maintained school outside of Haredi schools is 6.4%. You also asked me to set out the total annual amount spent on commissioning external independent non-maintained services and you asked what proportion of the Haredi's budget is this, so I had to ask officers to advise me of this. The reported spend in 23/24 for top up and other funding, non-maintained and independent providers was 18.7 million so it's a substantial amount. This is 29% of the dedicated schools grant a high needs block of 64.2 million and the total is made up of three parts, 16.5 million independent special schools, 0.4 million specialist nursery providers and 1.8 million independent tuition providers. You also asked me to set out the average cost of placements throughout Burgh, independent non-maintained placements and how it compares to average cost in Burgh. So I've got a chart here which I can of course circulate which sets out our sort of additional resource provision costs at an average of 15,000 plus our 6,000 element 2 funding of course it can expand from there depending on specific needs but as an average across autism, speech and language, moderate learning difficulties, social emotional mental health and severe learning difficulties these all come in at an average of 21,000 pounds in Burgh and are maintained settings. When you go out to the independent settings this can in some cases double. So in autism we've got an average cost with transport of 49,617, the speech and language 55,785 so you know you can see the variance there is almost 35,000. With moderate learning difficulties it's more similar at 22,545, with SEMH again it doubles at 51,698 and similarly with severe learning difficulties at 49,391. Once we go out of Burgh this can in some cases come down a little it depends on the setting obviously. So with autism our average and again this includes transport and additional cost as you go out of Burgh we're looking at an average of 37,725, speech and language 28,375, moderate learning difficulties 34,702, social emotional mental health 40,379 and severe learning difficulties 48,423. So it kind of the case is clear that increasing that in Burgh maintained provision and we're still absolutely ambitious to do that and to continue doing that. One thing I will say that in terms of some of the in Burgh independence they do there are some that we support very directly so side by side where you see a lot of our children from the Haredi or Jewish sort of more orthodox communities we have given capital funding to them they've got a new building it's not new now but we saw it being built and it was exciting to see that development and to have that closer engagement with children in the Haredi community and we continue to work very closely with them. We're also proud of you know our relationship with the Boxing Academy who we've got a really long-standing relationship with and there are others both in Burgh and out of Burgh who we will likely continue to work with particularly where needs are so complex until we perhaps provide new accommodation for them we'll have to continue that relationship but I still think overall we can reduce it the more we bring in our own additional resource provision. You asked me to explain what contract monitoring takes place to obtain assurance that children placed in independent non-maintained settings and are placed in good quality settings and you also asked about commissioned independent non-maintained placements and whether they offer value for money for the council so obviously this is something that we have to check and we basically ask all providers to complete the National Association of Special Schools or the NASC contract. Contracts are reviewed annually and consider key elements of delivery which includes attendance levels, value for money and provision. Providers are challenged on the delivery of these contracts for example if low attendance persists for an individual child, contract monitoring meetings will take place. All of the settings in Hackney are visited annually by a senior contract monitoring officer and this helps to strengthen relationships as well as provide oversight. The council is part of the children's cross regional arrangements group or CRAG. This group is a commissioning partnership with 30 for local authorities working together to source and commission placements for children both in the care and education sector and CRAG manages fee uplift requests and quality assurance monitoring for the majority of providers and if you like gives that sort of benchmarking cross reference point that we would need if we're not to feel sort of completely powerless and isolated. You also asked me to update the Commission on measures to improve commissioning arrangements of independent and non-maintained same placements in relation to financial control and quality monitoring. Essentially it's as above as I've just set out but in addition the council has undertaken key quality assurance visits to the main providers in Hackney and this has resulted in providing in improving financial oversight and stronger commissioning of providers and Hackneysend services have also developed a team around the school approach to work with those independent settings. This is basically key professionals holding termly meetings with providers so the council has a better idea of what's going on with our children and young people in those settings and I think the last one was what strategic opportunities are there for increasing embarrassing provision from prospective national policy developments emerging from the new government and from local developments such as vacant properties within the council's assets. So for item one you can imagine we're lobbying and making the case but we're awaiting announcements from the new government on whether the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan will be implemented in its current form and watching budget decisions coming forward very closely indeed. And then in terms of local developments clearly vacant properties provide a really good opportunity to build local provision. An example of this is the intention to develop what was the old Daniel House building in Stoke Newton into that additional resource provision for children and people with SMH that I was referring to earlier as a real landmark moment I think for us if we can get that off the ground. We do hope if we can use our assets we've got empty buildings and potentially can look at the Hackney Education Estate as well because of the closures and amalgamations that we're all having to deal with at the moment as painful as it is. But we do think we could create at least one additional special school potentially two depending on capital funding coming down the line and convincing ourselves that it's the right good value for money and the right thing to do. But we've been scoping that out and hoping we can make that work navigating around the free school presumption looking at the current relationship we have with the garden school and pavilion and how that's worked as a sort of under one sort of executive head and seeing whether we could kind of continue that approach. But it's all work in progress. So that's one. Thank you so much. Much appreciated for your really detailed answers to each of our numerous sub questions. Questions from the Commission. Andy first please. Thank you very much Mayor. I must say that I'm heartened by the commitment that you've just expressed there for the expansion of the provision for special needs ARP provisions within the borough. I do know that you mentioned that there were new provisions for secondary which I warmly welcome. You mentioned 30 at Stoke Newington and there's another provision coming online. But when I compare that to the numbers that you've described for the primary sector, I just wondered what plans do you have to ensure that those primary school students once they've left that sector, what provisions do you plan to ensure that they have that continuation of support going forward? So that's my main question. And the other is around you mentioned having to procure services out of the borough. I would imagine that is, is that because that is down to parental preferences or is that down to the inadequate expense that you have within the local authority? On that last one both, I think you know there is family choice and we can make our recommendations and offer places. Sometimes we can't offer places because they're full and we have to look at alternatives. Sometimes the family would prefer to opt out and then there's a negotiation I guess around the costs that are involved because we would obviously want to get best value for money. Your question about continuity from primary, I mean in many cases, certainly not all, but in many cases with early health and early intervention support at primary level, we would hope that ongoing and secondary they might be able to stay within mainstream education, particularly the graduated response, which I'm coming on to, and a more inclusive, and I launched a whole inclusion charter as you know around race and sense. So the dream is that the mainstream settings would be able to accommodate some of those primary children who with that early intervention and early health will be able to cope in mainstream. Certainly in some of the ARPs you would hope some of the children come out and use ARP for periods perhaps for particular subjects or periods where they just need that more nurturing, quiet environment and then reintegrate with mainstream so there's that fluidity that we have to manage when there's a pressure on places and that's no easy task. But you know as I say we also want to invest in increasing that and having more places in secondary schools so we'll be watching where that capital funding comes in. Essentially you're preparing a bid as I speak, so if you're not doing it, and that can only be to the good because it's been quite exciting for us seeing some of the developments taking place in secondary settings. Thank you very much. Any other questions from the Commission? So we've got Councillor Sizer and then Councillor Gordon please. Yeah thank you so much and it's really encouraging to hear about all the work that's happening. I'm just wanting to hear a little bit more about the role of parents, carers and children themselves in this work, how their voices are being listened to and used. I think Councillor Gordon please. Yeah I was actually going to ask something like that so but I'll just ask a different question. So you know again it's really good to hear about all this work and it has to be a better offer for the most children who aren't able to remain in mainstream settings to be sort of you know educated nearer to home and within their own communities so I really hope we can do as much as possible in this space. Just really wondering if any of the vacated sites from phase one of the school closure programme offer any additional opportunity for more extended specialists and provision in the borough, thank you. So parents and children together take place in the sort of the annual review process where we're looking at placements and where they might go. My end of it is often where that hasn't worked out so I feel like I've got a very biased position because you and your admissions team will obviously have done a bit of a matchmaking service and place many children where they want to be. I tend to meet the children who have not got into their desired setting, the one that's maybe closest to their home or their parent feels mostly meets their needs and that's why I feel so driven to increase those places because there's nothing more devastating than a parent with their child knowing that they can't get the placement that they've been at most looking for. I think in terms of, sorry you were asking about the school estates. School estates yes. So there's a school in the last round that we think would be ideal as a setting but because it's still sort of early days there's been some scope in terms of design and position. I'm not sure if I can name it, no. So I think we indicated it as we went out with the cabinet report for this new round that with the previous round that we were looking at technical accommodation, looking at special school site and looking at other education service uses but until we've developed that and then feel a bit more confident about what's possible, Jackie's nodding vigorously to my right. I probably can't sort of name names, sorry about that but as soon as I can I will. Thank you very much I'm sure many of us feel similarly how sort of encouraging it is to hear that there is scope for us to increase capacity internally. I think you know the figures whilst I appreciate that point about parental choice and that irrespective of what you have on offer in borough you may always have parents who choose to go elsewhere but I think given what we know about the quality of many of our send provision in borough and the eye-watering amounts of money that are being spent on sending children to placements outside of the borough which often sadly don't have as good a reputation as our schools in borough and not to mention the transport costs on top of it. I think many of us would like to see us get to a point where 29% of our higher needs budget isn't you know isn't being spent on services that we don't run ourselves and have that sort of trust and you know confidence in. I have a couple of questions before I think we can probably move on. So will send commissioning be part of the overall review of children's services commissioning review? What is the expected timetable for the completion of this review and new systems established? And how does the send service review the outcomes for independent and non-maintained services that it commissions? How does it utilise the views of children and parents in assessing outcomes? So how does send service review the outcomes for the independent and non-maintained services that it commissions and how does it utilise the views of children and parents in assessing outcomes? So to your first question I heard a resounding yes from Jackie in my ear so it will be part of the review and did you just say you're recruiting? I had a service tomorrow. There you go so I guess we've got somebody coming in to take direct responsibility for that. In terms of the service review outcomes is that to do with the independent settings because I talked to you about the monitoring that we go through in the annual review and the visits on site which is our sort of quality assurance non-monitoring process. So I suppose how do we utilise the views of children and parents in assessing the outcomes? Well because they're part of those annual reviews so they feed into I guess the extension of that placement or if they want to go there in the first place so they get they do the visits and they get to make a sort of commentary on that level I don't think they get into the sort of technicalities of what's on offer they give you at their lived experience which is you know really important to us. They help us I suppose to build quite a comprehensive picture of those independent settings would you say? Yeah okay. Thank you. Just quickly on that you said that the average costs in the independent schools for this support is quite a bit higher. I just wondered is there do we kind of have general ideas about why it is higher in those settings? Well we could talk about capitalism and supply and demand. I mean I think it's just you know these are specialist places they cost quite a lot to provide that kind of wraparound care and some of the children have very very complex needs so that means that they're being attended to by you know a number of professionals and that would be I think the the argument given by those those settings for why the costs are so high. Obviously I would I'm very very keen to get to a place where we don't need to send children to those independent settings but we'd have to match that quality of educational and sort of wraparound care support here which in many cases I think we do our special schools are good and outstanding our ARPs are it's been a point of pride developing those a little bit of capital funding to make adjustments and to bring in that specialist support. I would have liked to have come back here and been able to demonstrate how much we've reduced the amount of spend we're putting out because that's been my kind of investor save approach of creating this additional resource provision and I think you know again the case is very clear as to why we'd want to do it in terms of you know finances alone but also the better experience for the children but in fact we've seen demand rising so steeply and I think there's a lot of work that has to go into understanding why that is around children surviving birth in a way that they might not have done in the past. Our improvements in terms of diagnosis and understanding what children need and you know feeling that children are being picked up in our earlier settings as and perhaps less culturally resistant to recognising my child might be autistic or you know I might need that little bit of extra help. It'd be interesting for us to see if that will level out or whether it will continue to rise which I think will given that we've got 90 million deficit in send costs at the council at the moment we need to kind of come up with a good game plan. Thank you very much. Now moving on to the second question please. I'm conscious of time and we're gonna have to move through the next two questions a bit more quickly but thankfully there are fewer sub questions and with these questions hopefully that would be a bit easier for us to achieve. So over to you Mayor Woodley. Sorry this is the rollout of free childcare entitlements in Hackney. So you asked me to update on uptake so scene setting will be quicker this time. I think most people know in March 23 the former government announced a plan to phase in additional free hours and this commenced in April 2024 when all working parents of two-year-olds were able to access 15 so-called free hours per week. I'm saying so-called free hours because one of the big frustrations for the sector in previous years has been that whilst the government funds free hours for parents if the funding that goes into the settings that's providing those free hours doesn't match the cost of delivering them you see our settings really under pressure under huge financial pressure and so there's been a tension in the system I think it's fair to say. However as part of the plan to phase in additional free hours there was also an increase in the funds that would follow which has made it a more tenable prospect. As of September 20 so sorry in April 2024 all working parents of two-year-olds were able to access 15 free hours per week. As of September just last month this was expanded so that all working parents of children aged nine months up to three-year-olds can access 15 hours per week. We could argue over whether it's right that it's limited to working parents but I'll save that for another day and next year from September 25 all working parents of children aged nine months up to three years old will be able to access 30 years free childcare per week and the argument I mean aside from the additional cost that this would bring government government the argument that was made that this would bring so many new children to the system would be difficult for us to accommodate them that this is why it's been phased we have another year before that comes in. So in Hackney we saw 677 codes issued to newly eligible two-year-olds of which 572 so that's 84% were validated by settings for the period April to July 2024. By September 2024 one hundred and sorry 1257 codes have been issued to children nine months to two years and of these 847 so that's 67% have been validated by settings. The validation rate suggests that whilst children may be eligible for 15 hours childcare parents may not be ready to take up provision possibly due to not yet returning to work from maternity leave or may be supported by family rather than formal childcare and this chimes I guess with my experience a couple of years ago of us doing a big campaign to try and attract more two-year-olds into our settings and you know some families simply don't feel ready for their children to go in but of course we the sooner we can bring children in the sooner we can start that early intentional work that when I put my send hat on them I'm very keen that we get going and also when you think of some of the pressures have been faced by families in Hackney in recent years if you if you look at the pandemic and cost living crisis and so on to have that peer support network is so important around stay and play and other areas of offer that you know that drive continues. We've not received any information about parents being unable to find a place and this may suggest that the majority of new codes have been issued to children already accessing childcare and we've not received any notifications from settings about not being able to meet the needs of parents accessing their setting. You also ask them to provide details of any consultation or engagement with local childcare providers on the challenges that they have or will face in delivering the extended free childcare offer. So engagement with local providers on the challenges to living childcare are captured in the commission into affordable childcare report which I know you've all reviewed and you know gave your feedback on so I'm assuming you're all familiar with that and that was in November 23. The termly early years professional development networks that are facilitated by Hackney Education and these are sort of well at least the ones I attended perhaps they're in person now but I attended quite a few during the pandemic which were online. These I think we've got something like 300 earlier settings so a lot of our private voluntary and independent sector nurseries and childcare settings join those professional development networks and it provides a really helpful forum to discuss and understand that the precious settings are facing. Officers have advised me that our DFE early years local authority engagement lead met with a number of providers escorted by Hackney Education during the spring to discuss the factors impacting their sustainability. Recruitment the early years entitlement funding rates and a reduction in the number of children enrolling were cited by settings as factors impacting the successful expansion of the funded entitlement so essentially there was concern across the system I think it's fair to say even if we're not getting any direct concerns raised with us at present. And then you asked them to set up what actions the council is taking to support the local providers to recruit and maintain qualified childcare staff to work across local childcare settings and how is it working with other council teams. So Hackney maintains an early years training programme to develop the workforce which supports retention I suppose rather than recruitment although people move across different settings. The training offering includes good practice working with babies, early literacy, communication and language, and understanding behaviour which are free of charge. There is a charge at cost for certified statutory training such as food hygiene, safeguarding and paediatric first aid etc. Staff are employed by individual settings with different employment terms and conditions. The council is therefore not in a position to recruit staff to work across settings however the corporate wide implementation plan to take forward the recommendations from the commission into affordable childcare that you reviewed does include exploring the possibility of bank staff which I remember was an interest to some of you and I guess the feeling that that's an ambition that may take some time to achieve, be mindful of employment requirements and procurement considerations but it's something that we're certainly minded to look at. It's important to add that Hackney Education does act as a bridge between settings which at times means recurring employment opportunities between settings and display staff and employment services support unemployed individuals into childcare where appropriate. Hackney Education continues to work with New City College on an apprenticeship programme and I've also had the pleasure of attending graduation days for some others or third sector organisations. I'm thinking of the African Community School invited me along to a graduation event. They'd been doing some sessions at Maple Dean and their students were doing adult social care and childcare training and we try and support those groups across the network to recruit our own and train our own in Hackney the Hackney way which is always very gratifying. I think that's it for that one and then we've got graduate send response. Thanks so much, Councillor Binney in a book. Thank you for that. It's interesting stuff. I was just wanting to ask, obviously the most significant change is coming in September 25 when 30 hours free childcare will be available for children and vegetable parents aged nine months and above which I imagine will place greater demands on local healthcare providers. I'm wondering what kind of planning is in place to help providers meet that demand and are there grants available to support local childcare providers to extend and develop premises to enable them to respond to expected increase in demands for childcare. Thank you. Would you be able to take a second? What is known about the uptake of the extended free childcare places geographically in the borough at which settings is this evenly spread across the borough and across different settings, children's centres, PBI settings for example? So, Councillor Binney-Lubbock, partly for the reasons that I described in terms of the drive we had to do to try and bring two-year-olds in, I've got to say we're not hugely concerned about the increase next year. We do have surplus across our settings if anything as you know with the falling rolls, that's a real concern for us. There is, I think you've probably heard of previous review sessions, Donna Thomas talking about concern perhaps in our Haredi communities and whether we could meet the need there and certainly when I think of Liebovitch, children's centre, it's already hard to, that's an over-subscribed and I think that's an area that we're looking at. We've looked at it previously through I think there was sort of mayor grants for teaching child minders, child minder training to try and support that system. There's also been a sort of national drive from government, the former government, with pilot schemes placed across the country but we're not one of them, Islington has done one, so we'll be looking at that with interest and it's got sort of £1000 bonuses to get people to recruit into the system. Very irritating when none of us get it and we don't, but you know, then there's the breaks I guess. So I think in terms of planning, we're always monitoring sort of surplus places but yeah we're not hugely concerned at this stage. If anything we'll be looking to sort of promote the offer to try and get more children in. Sorry, you asked about extended free childcare across settings, geographically I think I described that sort of network of almost 300 settings across BVI so again we liaise with all of them around their sort of surplus places and they will benefit from this free entitlement funding. There's no pick and choose, they've got access to it. Okay, do we have any other questions for the Commission? Councillor Ross? Thank you. Childcare sufficiency assessment has been taking place every other year with the most recent being completed earlier this year. Given the unprecedented changes taking place in the childcare sector, would it be prudent to revert to yearly assessments so that the Council has tolerant and up-to-date information to assist in its role to support the rollout of you know free childcare entitlement? Sorry, did you say should we go to annual assessments because I think we do do it annually but we give an annual report, no? We have a sense, an annual census? Yeah so I think that's already in place and what we tend to find is that less children take up places at the beginning of each academic year and quite often that's an issue for us because we're you know tracking vacancies and you know that's put strain on some of our children's centres in particular but actually as you go on into spring and summer you see those places taken up so by the end of the year they tend to be full and feel full and there's no problem here but there's always a lag for some reason so I'm not sure increasing the number of times we do the count as such would would sort of tell us anything new but I can take that away to Donna. I don't know if you want to comment? No we can do. So there's the sufficiency assessment and if there was anything alarming or radically different to any of the census points then obviously that would we would review what our sufficiency was telling us because we wouldn't just sit back on our heels and wait for a crisis to happen we would just use that information intelligently. There's also I mean more broadly being the announcements and again we'll be listening very hard in the budget around bringing nursery provision into schools and that would be a way of I suppose schools may hope to tie some of those children that come in at two years old to carry on into the primary school into the future just to kind of shore up their admissions and their roles so we'll see what comes I feel like every answer I have to every kind of question at the moment is I'm waiting to see what comes out in the budget but you know I think that could be quite a good sort of structural way for us to track what's happening. Thank you very much and I think we will move on now if that's okay to the graduated send response. Thank you. Okay so you asked about the key elements of the council's graduated response in schools which is set up so that children would send a given the right support at the right time scene setting the graduated response was developed support mainstream schools and understanding expectations of them with regards to the special provision they were expected to make for children identified as having a special educational need it's obviously of no help to anyone if you are excluding children with additional needs from mainstream when they're perfectly capable of doing it if they're given the right support so this is also known as the ordinarily available provision the range of activities experiences and strategies offered as basic good practice quality first teaching for children with special educational needs or disabilities and that's in line with the send code of practice it's our duty it was based on the research evidence that providing targeted supports children young people early will often lead to better outcomes and reduced escalation of need and the first graduated response document was published in September 2021. Nick Wilson came in shortly after I came into the role in cabinet in 2020 and had experience in this field and we got this document together it linked to priority two of the send strategy and earlier response and when consulting with stakeholders and developing the send strategy families told us they wanted to see more support and intervention offered before education health and care planning had begun basically because of the turnaround times the weights and the difficulty of even getting into that process each mainstream school receives funding through their seven budgets which should be used towards the cost of fulfilling their duty to use their best endeavors to secure special educational provision for their pupils with Senn the development of the workforce is a key part of the graduated response the integrated send team changed the offer regarding educational psychology and specialist teachers in 2022 probably were aware that there was a terrible shortage of educational psychologists across the country so again we tried to do our do it our own way teach people perhaps who were not as experienced as you'd want but to train them up ourselves once they're qualified and to improve our offer the previous offer was based on schools contracting services individually so EPs separately to specialist teachers and this has now changed so schools purchase a combined offer and receive support from both professional services which my understanding is is appreciated as an improvement this means that professionals from different specialists specialisms are working together around a specific school or setting the amount of support provided is based on the school's notion of Senn budget and ranges dependent on the individual needs of the school or setting bespoke training is also offered to schools based on their individual needs together with central training you also asked that the evidence that the local graduate response is working for evidence that the local graduate response is working effectively in helping to meet needs of young people earlier without recourse for the need to apply for an HCP so I think it's fair to say that the original graduate response that we published in 21 did not achieve all the hopeful change that we wanted to see the percentage of children with EHC plans and with Senn support has continued as I said earlier to increase year on year it's currently around 4.8% for HCP and 14.3% for Senn support putting Hackney at 23rd and 52nd respectively when compared against the 151 local authorities in England so reviewing the data in consultation with stakeholders has led to review of the graduate response document and the publication of an updated version which for me is great because it's much easier to read and it's called right support right time that was published just in June 2024 and it cuts across earlier years and older so what feedback has been obtained from schools on the operation of the graduate response what challenges have they faced and how they've been resolved you asked so feedback on the graduated response was gathered in the preparation of the new version and I can summarise some of the feedback that we had so parents carers felt that schools would make fewer requests for education healthcare needs assessments if they use a graduated approach they felt it would be useful for reviews in schools as parents carers and school staff could track progress together using the new version there's sort of really specific tables around needs and they'd like schools to use the strategies described although recognise that there may be other strategies that could be used Sencos came back to us as well they wanted more support regarding developing an appropriate curriculum for children with SEND primary Sencos felt they knew when a child needed the support described in the EHC plan and would submit a request for an EHC needs assessment without evidence secondary Sencos felt that earlier intervention for children in primary schools earlier would result in reduced level of need when the children transferred to secondary school right support right time gives a clearer description of the level of need and appropriate responses from schools under the groups of all most some and few essentially the focus is on communication interaction cognition and learning social emotional mental health and physical and sensory needs and there's of course a wide spectrum of sensory multisensory and physical needs so fine and gross motor skills movement balance coordination tastes smell sensitivities and spatial awareness and that's probably get into deaf or partial hearing and visual impairment you asked if all schools are fully engaged with a graduated response and if there's a consistent uptake of training I think it's fair to say that not all schools are fully engaged with the graduated response so that's a work in progress but we're working with the continuing professional development team to integrate and CPD for schools around the needs of children with send together with offering bespoke sessions to schools I mean that's just an area of work that we're committed to what feedback evaluation has been received from children and parents on the acceptability the graduated approach our experience in terms of going out with the original document is that parents and carers do you think it's helpful they recognize that it's our drive to make schools more inclusive that's what they want to see as well and they'd like the school to use the strategies that we're putting forward and to use them earlier as I say that the new version I hope much easier to use document came in in June so we could essentially go back out to children for feedback early next year but I'm just landing that on Jason now without agreeing earlier so he's going to look at me very closely if you ask questions about that and you asked if there's now a consistent and effective interface between any help services and services and ensure the two areas do work together to meet the needs of families to enable the children to thrive and we're reviewing the current arrangements to ensure that they're achieving the sort of after aims I also want to add that we've done a revamp of the local offer and we've much more closely aligned it with the family information service so do check that out I mean I know it's more than a website in terms of all the activities that take place but that website's a really useful portal for members of the commission I think to just see what's provided there and in addition to supporting parents and carers through the local offer we've also most of you are probably aware got the City and Hackney Carers Centre who provide information and support service from carers as well so they've been working with us for over a year now and their task is to kind of be an umbrella for those other support groups like HIP and others that you'll be familiar with and my sense is that that's all going well and so I think the engagement with our parents and carers with our children young people as we continue to roll this work out and link it with the Inclusion Charter you know is an ongoing work in progress for sure Thank you very much Councillor Gordon please Thank you very much Chair and Mayor Woodley you know it's really really good to get this update as I was involved in some of these sort of earlier work in relation to development of this so just a few sort of follow-up points I mean I think it's you know obviously this is you know sort of complex sensitive policy to roll out but it does really sound like there's been some really good progress made just a few things that occur to me can you give us reassurance really about the sort of level of feedback to parents in relation to their children's progress which was one of the really big weaknesses under the previous regime of SEND support where in some schools feedback ranged from inconsistent to non-existent so which was obviously you know understandably a motivation for parents wanting the more accountability of the EHCP plan so I think that's a really a really important thing is is you know and it sounds like you've been doing this is building trust between parents and you know the the graduated response that this is going to meet their child's needs but also they're going to be you know involved in part of the process and you know fully informed of how it's of how it's working. I suppose my second point really is that I mean you have mentioned this in relation to teacher training is that are we how sort of confident are we about the sort of consistency of you know the sort of skills base across the sort of whole landscape particularly in primary schools of SEND hose as well and what sort of support is being given to develop that so I know that's quite a lot of questions there. Thank you, they're great questions. I thank you for the question about trust but like there is no way I can describe the SEND system as anything other than continuing to be an adversarial system it's a deeply adversarial system it's a deeply underfunded system and parents get angry and rightly so. All I would say is that we recognise that and we try not to be defensive about it and to improve the offer. The in terms of reassurance and feedback of parents we did a quality assurance piece in terms of the HCP annual reviews and tried to ensure that you know they were looking reviewed annually. I think some parents would say that in the past that they haven't been. In some cases the schools might argue actually that was because the HCP was still reflective of the child and their needs and it didn't need to be technically updated year on year but I think that was another moment of breaking down in trust because the parent knows their child and they could see perhaps discrepancies so that quality assurance piece was really important. We should review annually. You'll get me off on one if you want to talk about Sanko training and confidence because it's just like a really well attended, really well supported offer here. I was at labour conference speaking on a SEND panel with my new sort of hat of shadow executive children and young people wanting to use the platform to raise the case for SEND and sitting with Helen Hayes who is the newly elected chair of the select committee and Olivia Blake who is the chair of the APPG for SEND and Olivia Blake actually came and spoke at one of our Sanko conference sessions a year ago I think it was or maybe the year before. So we bring in speakers from all over, we bring in people who are really close to policy, who are really invested in change, who are really quite driven, you know Helen absolutely driven to make a difference in this area and we bring in experts in the field and practitioners so you'll hear from the re-engagement unit, you'll hear from individual Sankos, you'll hear from people who have established a way of working that has been rolled out across many schools and I always come away from those sessions feeling so heartened and inspired that people really care but also really concerned because the Sanko goes back and they're one person and unless you have it from the head teacher, the senior teacher, you know through the teaching assistants the entire school understanding the good work that we can do it may fall short so you know that's the mission to take the brilliant work that's happening in those spaces and embed it in those schools and the graduated responses at the right place, right time, whatever it is. I'm like I'm starting a dating agency you know that we get that right. Did you want to come in? Yes, no just to add to that I was going to say exactly the same thing I think it's a much stronger document the second one and it's you know fairly kind of user friendly and I would agree I think Sankos embrace it but it's really got to be permeated throughout the school so one of the things I think we can do better as a service is I've asked my SCN team to work with the school improvement team so our school improvement partners are they all aware of it? Are they aware of what it says? And how can we use kind of them as advocates for this type of work? Minded that last year when I ran the school improvement team I think I presented this to head teachers a high percentage of schools are working on what they call adaptive teaching, high quality adaptive work so it makes sense to kind of get teams working together and I think if we do that more effectively we might be able to get more schools to use it because it's quite well put together. Thank you so much for that we've got a question from Councillor Ross and a question from Councillor Sizer we might have to that might have to be the end of the questions for this I'm afraid. Thanks Chair so the secondary school landscape has changed with or further with schools entering into multi-academy trusts so what do we understand about how academies are engaging with the local SEND offer from Hackney Education and is this consistent with maintaining schools? Then Councillor Sizer please. Mine is a comment as well as a bit of a question I want to really pay tribute to the fantastic work that the SEND family coaches are doing as part of Hackney's offer for SEND families. It's an incredible piece of work that's happening and just want to say a big well done to everyone for commissioning it and for the amazing work that's happening. How is this being embedded? Is there plans to further roll out the SEND family coaches? So on academies I didn't list the actual sort of sites and settings by name but for example Bridge Academy is one of the academies that is now taking on additional resource provision. We do work with them as I mean frankly they want our advice and support and they want to be able to use a consistent guide so they will also look at our kind of new graduated response as a model. Our powers are limited in terms of how much we can follow up on how well it's embedded across but we still have access through the HCPs in terms of those annual appraisals so we can as it were follow the child. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens with academies now, what's going to happen with the free school presumption, what's going to happen in terms of the sustainability of academies with the private sector and what's going to happen with the new government, whether they want to bring in additional powers for local authorities. So it's a lively space potentially that everybody's very interested in right now so I'll keep you updated if I have anything to report. Thank you for your comments on the SEND family coaches, that's lovely. I'll feed that back and perhaps use that comment for a bit of advocacy to further embed and roll it out. Thanks Councillor Salazar. Can I just have one last question just around whether the graduated response is part of the traded service offer and whether in this context I know that you've said it's a work in progress in terms of getting all schools on board and that sort of ongoing relationship with schools but in the context of the school budget pressures, does this have an impact on the take-up? I think only through training in terms of take-up of that professional development. I know we in the past actually took away the traded aspect of some of the SEND support we were given because it just wasn't being taken up and in the end we want to support the child but there is traded, I don't know, charged, fees and charges around training for sure. If there's more we can do I'll discuss it because we're having lots of conversations about income generation right now as you can imagine. Did you want to come in? Yeah we offer CPD packages and we've integrated that as part of the CPD package so schools will have access to this if they buy the regular package and I think in terms of being able to offer something better which will make things kind of more sustainable not just in terms of waiting for EHCPs but a lot of schools will often have to provide children from their own funding so I think anything like that would be warmly welcome but I think again just to go back to what I said before it's getting it integrated across teams, getting that consistent message, try this, try this first, let us know if it isn't working. We're also going to be bringing the CPD teams in front of all headteacher meetings over the course of the year to do just that. That's great. Thank you so much for that Mayor Woodley. On the original, one of the original areas of questioning selected for your Q&A was the outcome of the Childcare at Children's Centre consultation. Given that the cabinet decision has been delayed until after the judicial review which is in November, would you be able to provide us with a brief update in the meeting in December? Yeah I'm sure that's fine. Great, perfect. Thank you so much. Now moving on to item 6 which is housing support for care leavers. At its last meeting on the 11th of September 2024 the Commission received an update on the implementation of the housing support for care leavers review. There was insufficient time to present all the questions that members of the Commission had at the meeting and officers kindly agreed to submit written responses. Written responses from the corporate parenting team, housing needs service and housing strategy are provided in the report pack. Do members have any questions or issues arising from the reports? We're going to need to agree what we think is the best way to sort of follow up on this report. I think I'd suggest that given how rich it is for us to speak to young people, the care experience young people that we've had multiple focus groups with as part of this ongoing work, I think it would be great for us to catch up with them again and perhaps do some site visits and to have a look at the places that they're living in and to get a sense of their experience of how these service developments have been working for them. That's both in light of this piece of work but also the recommendations in the action plan. So I'd like to propose that we perhaps put that on the agenda for next year and that hopefully we can get some members involved in that. Deputy Mayor Bramble. In my head I was saying don't say anything more but what I wanted to say in terms of supported care for our care leavers is that because of the work that we've done with our housing colleagues and now our care leavers go on the housing register 18, they start that process of their independence and transition earlier but we also back date their claim. So normally when new policies come in it's only effective when that policy begins. So if you for example on the housing register at 19 now it gets back dated as if you were on there from 18. So I just thought I know that you're going to look at it but I just thought I'd share that positive move forward and thank you for looking at this. So I'm grateful for all the support and the consideration of our care experience young people and the work that the Commission does. My request would be we've got Ricardo Hyatt who's the Group Director for Climate Homes and Economy who's chairing a subgroup of the Corporate Parenting Board. It's a task and finish group on housing needs of care leavers. So I'd quite like that to get underway and have had some achievements. It would be great to let that run a little bit and then maybe dive deeper into in terms of your timetable because I'm really delighted that Ricardo has agreed to take this up. It shows a real commitment corporately to the actual corporate parenting task as well. Thank you Jackie. Yeah I think we all welcome the closer partnership working between you and I think we see it as a huge benefit, a huge step forward and you know even just thinking that looking at that item that we were hearing from the corporate parenting team housing needs and services but also strategy that we're having to factor in the needs of our young people into housing strategy which was unfortunately not something that was considered previously. So yeah I think we can schedule things at a time that feels like it would have given us enough time to have embedded many of these actions that I know that many of you are still working on. So with that in mind do members note and agree the response? No thank you. Moving on to item 7 that's the minutes. The minutes of two previous meetings of the Commission are enclosed for members to review and agree. That's the 22nd of May, 2024 and the 11th of September. Actions from the report to note the following upcoming reports to be circulated shortly. That's the SSP letter and recommendations to the, sorry that Safer School Partnership letter and recommendations to the Metropolitan Police. Pupil absence and emotional based school avoidance and disabled children's service. Those are all in the pipeline and to note that Hackney Education sent a response to the public consultation on the changes to PSHE curriculum in schools. Do we note those minutes and actions? Great, thank you. Item 8 work programme. The work programme for the remainder of the municipal year is detailed within the report pack. The next meeting will be devoted to school estate strategy and a range of contributors will be invited to participate at that session. Item 9 any other business? There is no other business and the date for the next meeting is the 26th of November 2024. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. [BLANK_AUDIO]

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