Transcript

expecting a fire alarm test this evening so if the alarm is sounded please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live and to make sure that you can all be heard on the broadcast and in the chamber please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and officers to introduce themselves starting on my right. Nick Tappan, Church of England representative. Rosalina Gungro, representing St. Peter's on Canalside. Councillor Saika Pando, St Mary's and St James' Ward. Councillor Hannah McHugh, also St Mary's and James' Ward. Mary Clem and Westminster Diocese. Good afternoon, my name is Ian Swift, Director Housing Operations. Evening, my name is Councillor Una Halloran, exec member for Homes and Neighbourhoods. Good evening, Councillor Michelin Safton Gungo, exec member for Children, Young People and Families. And I'm Paul Convy, representing from Caledonian Ward and I'm substituting for Valerie this evening. Claire Samet, Councillor for Holloway Ward. Susie Graves, secondary school parent, Governor representative. Councillor Lael Kirchenka, owner, Laycock Ward. Sophie McNeil, parent, Governor representative for primary schools. Councillor Nestor Sugorova-Sandstrom for Highbury Ward. John Abbe, Dorrits Children's Services. Sandy Townsend, Head of Strategic Programs and Structuring Children's Services. Maria Gilby, Safeguarding Children's Partnership Coordinator. Amber Harris-Cooper, Training and Quality Assurance Manager for the ISCP. Good evening, my name is Alan Caton, I'm the Independent Chair and Scrutineer for the Islington Safeguarding Children's Partnership. Hi, good evening, Curtis Ashton, Director for Young Islington. Good evening, Deborah Idris, Interim Director for Safeguarding and Family Support. Good evening, I'm Jill Holden, I'm the Interim Assistant Director for Safeguarding and Quality Assurance. Thank you. We have apologies from Councillor Boston-Makwashi and Councillor Paul Convy substituting for her. Do members have an interest to declare? Nope. We now move on to the minutes of the previous meeting. Can we agree the minutes held on Tuesday, 10th of September? There has been an amendment to the minutes that would be sent an email, but if there are any other... Yeah, Kurt. It's just a minor comment. We were inspected by the Inspector of Creation, not the Inspector of Prisons. So just a minor amendment for the minutes. Thank you, Curtis. Now I'll move on to the Chair's report. Okay, that's fine. So we are joined by members of the public this evening. If you would like to ask any questions of the agenda items, we'll take that during a discussion of the item. And officers and committee members will do their best to answer the question. Bear in mind some responses may need to be issued outside of the meeting. In recent weeks the committee has received several detailed questions from residents and members of the public that are beyond the scope of what could be answered at scrutiny meeting. The committee can't accept the questions that don't relate to the items for the discussion this evening. Depending on the scope of the information being requested, it may be more appropriate to raise this as casework with your local ward councillor and as a question to the executive member at full council. Or you can request data to be considered under a freedom of information request. We now move on to our first item of business this evening, which is the Islington Care Leavers and Housing Protocol. This is an item that's come to consideration following its endorsement by the Homes and Communities Committee on the 26th of September. I understand that the Director of Operations, Ian Swift, is in attendance and also Councillor Buena O'Halloran, the committee member for Homes and Communities. But before I take comments from members, if officers could just provide like an overview of the protocol. Apologies for that, that speaker doesn't work. So the report you have in front of you, as the Chair has said, has been to the Housing and Community Scrutiny. And the decision was to approve the protocol and then send it here for your important changes that you wish to make. First of all, I'd like to start by saying I'd like to thank Councillor Osdamer and Councillor Ilkay Shingo-Una for promoting the developments of this protocol, probably 18 months ago that you requested it when he was both on the Housing Scrutiny Committee. So that you are aware, we've developed this intrigued partnership between the Homes and Neighbourhood Service and the Children's Services Directorate. It's been a joy to work with the Children's Services Directorate in developing this. We have consulted wide on this, we have consulted people leaving Looked After Care who's been accommodated into East Linton Council properties. As members are aware, we have purchased 20 properties, X-ray to buy properties specifically for people between the ages of 18 to 24. And that initiative has been really successful and that also brought revenue funding to Children's Services to appoint Housing First coordinators to support those children in the accommodation to ensure that no one has become homeless. In addition to that, last year we allocated almost 50 properties to Children's Services through the choice-based letting scheme. What the protocol basically tries to demonstrate, which is quite a radical document, we've consulted with all of the Homelesses Forum members, that's 80 community-based organisations. We've consulted with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Governments and we've consulted obviously with all the other directorates across the Council. As this has implications across the entire Council as we're all corporate parents. What the protocol tries to do is to ensure that nobody is homeless if they're leaving Looked After Care. And if they become homeless, that we pick them up straight away. Fortunately, I've been here three years, I've not encountered anybody sleeping rough who's 18 to 24. In that period of time we have one of the lowest rough sleepers counts in central London. However, we can't rest on our laurels, homelessness is at a crisis point at the moment. As society knows, we've got the highest homelessness problem this country has ever seen. And what this protocol tries to do is to safeguard and enhance the corporate parenting responsibilities. So we're basically committing that nobody will ever be made intentionally homeless. So they may be housed, may go into rent areas, et cetera, but they may not be evicted from the Council property because we'll work with them in terms of ensuring their rears are reduced, eliminated. We'll give priority need for all care leavers for homelessness. We reviewed the housing allocation scheme because that's what members of the homes and communities currently wanted. We've given additional priority for leaving Looked After Care. We were one of the first Councils, if not the first Council, to have a no local connection criteria. So if anybody of our children moved to Liverpool or wherever, they're still connected to this borough. And we'll always rehouse them in the future, as you are aware. The government consulted us before the Prime Minister spoke at the recent conference about the changes to leaving Looked After Care, homelessness, priority need, et cetera. And it's fair to say the government's adopted our approach that we've had in place now for the last 12 months. So the report is there for you to be as critical as possible before we adopt it. We've tried our best to make it as friendly as possible by liaising with leaving Looked After Care children and by tenants and residents who have approached us as homeless, to ensure that we do entwine the residents' voice in this protocol so it isn't a bureaucratic document that sits on the shelf and that we forget about it. It will be constantly reviewed in partnership with our stakeholders, in partnership with Children's Services. And more importantly, the residents that access these services. I think the documentation is radical, as I think the Homes and Communities scrutiny is fed back to me in terms of the approach. But I think we need this approach in Islington, given the severity of the housing need that young people are facing. I am aware that there's another protocol that went to Housing and Communities scrutiny last week, which we'll be travelling on to here, and that protocol is to deal with homelessness families with children in temporary accommodation, which I know Councillor Oostermeer wishes that to come to this meeting and will liaise with the Government Director of Children's Services to ensure that comes to a future scrutiny committee so you can scrutinise that, because I know that's a massive interest. We may have the third lowest number of children in temporary accommodation, but that doesn't mean that we can't improve. But hopefully you'll like the protocol, but by all means be as critical as you can so we can make further improvements. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ian. And yes, I would be very keen and I'm sure committee members to see that report come last week. My mistake, I would have liked it to come here while you're here, but that means we get to see you again. So that would work. Yeah, thank you very much. I'd like just to echo to say thank you to our housing colleagues, especially to Una and her team for the great work they are doing. But I think it will be a good idea for the next month report for the protocol also to acknowledge about how are we going to assess the need of the children. Because last week, when we had democratic week, some of our caregivers concerned it was about sometimes the flat we are putting them is not meeting the needs. We do have some disabled look after young people. When we place them, they find really the flat is not really for them. I think we need also to take about disability or special needs into account when we are offering them a flat. Before I get Councillor Una to come in, I think that might lead into I was going to ask if the joint approach is going to be with housing and children services when it comes to rehousing the care leavers and what that joint approach looks like. And also some of the some of the language in that protocol is housing services may work with a personal adviser because I know that they have a personal adviser up to the age of 25. Or maybe we could say that they will work with a personal adviser. So then issues such as disability or special needs that they actually have the advocate to kind of help them. But yeah, what would that joint approach look like? So if I give you some data, because we're in the middle of a house, we're starting a housing crisis that's not going to get any better. So in terms of one bedroomed properties that's been adapted for people in wheelchairs in the last 12 months, we only let four of those properties. And that is a massive issue for us. We're facing, as we was at last week's adult social care meeting, we're obviously facing the winter months crisis within the health service. We're going to face a lot of people being forced to leave the hospitals that we need to provide accommodation for over that winter period. I've got to be honest with you and say, let things are reducing, you know, year on year. So some accurate data. There's 18 times more people on the housing register than there are available properties. We only rehouse seven percent of people on the housing registry in the next 12 months. And that is getting worse. We've got a 35 percent increase in homelessness, mainly single people. The good thing about Islington is we do have a strong partnership with Children's Services. So we've never, as I'm aware of over the last three years, accepted a homeless case for a curleaver. We've always housed them before that came to intervene. But I think members do need to be aware of the housing crisis that we're facing. Thank you for raising that. That's a really interesting point, because we're a council that we listen to the young people. So you've heard that direct from young people. So we'll give you assurance that it will be in the document, that if they haven't got someone advocating that we will run everything jointly with Children's Services. We make no apologies. Our care leavers, we should look after them. Priority. You know, these are some of the most vulnerable children, had the worst start in life. And we need to make that clear. I know any meetings I've had with the director and the lead member and some of you, I get in my inbox every day, what more could you be doing? You've given 20 homes, we want another 20. You know, and we will work together because it's not even only, we need to keep those young people in Islington, in the borough, because then we can sort of keep an eye on them and work with them till they're fully independent. It's even 25. There's 25-year-olds that, you know, I've got a 37-year-old. Are they adults? Who knows? So we need to really, I want to make a commitment now so that the young people are watching it. And if we get things wrong, come and tell us. Like, I want you to be as critical if there's something we've missed. Children's housing scrutiny, they picked up some things. This is what we're here to learn. So we put documents, that's why we share it. Be as critical as you like. But our young care leavers and children's services, well, in my book, even though I'm housing, will always come first with me. Thank you, Councillor O'Luna. I'm just going to open questions to members of Councillor Hanar. O'Keegan and then Councillor Claire Zammit. Thank you. I'm slowly using my voice, so I'll try and go slow. I was really delighted to approve this protocol at the Homes and Communities Committee, as some of you all know. And I think this really showcases what a progressive and person-centred council can do. So a huge thank you to the councillors that push for this and certainly to Ian, Oona and Michelin for expert and really hard work. It's something we should all be very proud of. I have three questions. So firstly, it's great that there's going to be an advisor working with these young people. I'd like to know if that advisor's work is set out in a programme. Is that planned? Is that predetermined? And how will that advisor's work be monitored and scrutinised? I'd also like to know what is the offer and how are we supporting young people where they have unpaid council tax and rent arrears? I know from sitting on the corporate parenting board, this is a recurring issue. And then finally, but relatedly, what is the handover going to be like when these young people turn 25? What changes at 25? Is there a risk of a looming rent arrear or council tax bill unpaid that suddenly they find themselves struggling to cope with? How are they going to be prepared for that time? Thank you so much. I wonder, in terms of the personal advice, if someone from Children's could kind of give more information about their role. Oh, OK. I'll take. Claire, do you want to come in before I get an answer from the tech bar? Yeah, sorry, I just didn't want anyone to repeat themselves. So, so I sit on, so my feedback is slightly similar to Hannah's. I sit on the fostering panel and I have heard from a couple of care leavers that they find it difficult to engage with the service after they are kind of aged 21 to actually find accommodation. So in a couple of instances, actually, they have decided not to. So actually, you know, they've kind of gone out themselves to try and find somewhere. And I would imagine there will be some instances where they haven't been they haven't been successful. So I guess my kind of question is and actually one of some of the feedback that we received recently was that when they did engage with the service, there was a lot of proof to me. Send me your documentation. And actually, having been in the care system for so long, they had wanted to to not be reminded kind of of the background. And this was certainly in evidence when some somebody I spoke to had just come out of university. So they'd spent university thinking, actually, I'm going to come away from this and then had just been reminded. So I guess it is the same as kind of sort of what is that process going to look like so that it is a little bit more welcoming and a little less kind of bureaucratic. Thank you, Claire. If I just take the answer from Deborah around personal advisors and then Claire's question. Yeah. So in respect of if I'm correct, your question was around how what would the personal advisors look like and how are they how's their work oversee? So the personal advisors work within Independent Futures, which is our leaving care service. So they sit within children's services and part of a social work team where they have a manager and they're subject to scrutiny in terms of the quality of their work and support around how they can improve practice. So they're no different in terms of how social workers are scrutinized. The young personal advisor has that same role. It's just a different title, but they're doing very similar work and tend to work with much older young people as opposed to our kind of 16 to 18 year olds. So that work is subject to quality assurance activity, looking at impact and where there's any kind of areas of practice that's areas of concerns. They'll be addressed in the usual format in terms of supervision. They have a caseload and they work within the looks after children's service, but for care experience. Thank you. That's really helpful, particularly on the oversight and the scrutiny. Very, very reassuring. Will the goals of the advisor be set out somewhere? Do we have a program of exactly what it is they're working with these young people to achieve within their pathway plan? So there's always a plan that has to have some objectives and goals, and it works within the framework of our practice model. So it's no different from a child who's looked after, who's a minor. Obviously, when you're 20 plus years old, there's a degree of cooperation and agreement in terms of it's a lot more collaborative in terms of how the goals and what's set. But that's what the scrutiny, that's what the checking is. So I would be expecting there to be evidence about, OK, if you're working with this young person, what's the purpose? What are you doing? What's the objective? Has it been? And that's part of the quality assurance that's checked and interrogated. Thank you. And I know you had two more questions. It was just about the handover at 25, what that will look like, and a question about council tax and rent arrears, what the offer of support is. So with the handover, I think that that's part of the general work. It's around how are we preparing all of our young people for adulthood? And so we want to, we don't want there to be a cliffhead, because I know I've been at corporate parents involved and heard those experiences. So it's an ongoing piece of work, really, that we need to look at in terms of what does lifelong corporate parenting look like in terms of post 25? Because obviously, as a service, we can't necessarily provide the same intensity for 30 year olds, you know, because the system just is really difficult. So we're looking at how we can continue to support some of our care experience. Young people want to set up support groups so that they can sort of learn from previous care experience. And so there's that kind of buddy system around somewhere to support them and sort of do's and don'ts and how to help them. So I think it's on an evolution trail, if you like, because I think the commitment is there. It's just around how do we make sure that we can provide something that's sustainable? But the objective is not to just kind of be a sudden cut off and it's like your 25 right case closed. It's got to be needs led and the right time. And, you know, sometimes, you know, I have been in situations where it's like, come on, this young person is nearly 26. You know, we need to kind of like start moving on. It's really difficult because a lot of our YPAs and social workers, they're so committed and you build a relationship with people. So it's it's still trying to kind of maintain that and being realistic about what we can achieve. But we don't want to leave any young person just floundering and try to offer support and looking at the external network. What else is in the community? How we linking them with local provisions, charity organisations, apprenticeship work, all sorts of things that, you know, families support their children with and their young adult children as well. So we're hoping to try and replicate that type of preparation for adulthood in terms of council tax. And I mean, I think that's an area that still needs to be explored a bit more because I think we're driven by, you know, central government legislation. So unless there's a council that we can find extra money to support longer term things like council tax and exemptions from that, that may be something we can explore with the protected characteristic. How far can we take that? It's not something that we in Islington can unilaterally decide, but if we're going to do something like that, it's about how we're going to pay for it and up for how long. So I think, again, the appetite is there, but we need to be realistic about, you know, what we can afford to kind of support and try to support people where they are, not just say, well, you're 25, it's all over and be a bit flexible, depending on people's individual circumstances. But it is a very difficult question to answer because it isn't necessarily something that was within my budget or anything that John and I can do to kind of fund that. But it's an area, a conversation that we could probably continue to have because young people are saying it is an issue. It is a problem. Thank you, Deborah and Tanya, did you want to come in too? Yes, just on that last point, internally within the council, we've just repurposed the cost of living board that we had to a tackling poverty board. So if it's OK, can I take that question and those thoughts back to that board to have some consideration about what we can do in terms of that and how we can pull together the whole council around that particular issue? Because definitely our assistant director who deals with financial resilience would be really, really interested in terms of thinking about that, particularly in the context of child poverty and also the child poverty strategy that's going to be out in spring 2025. Thank you, and in addition to Councillor Zamit's question, I know we had a motion about care leave has been a protective characteristic. Would housing be, does the housing system have that kind of in place where they know that someone is a care leaver without kind of probing those questions? So in terms of the two questions related to housing, so in rent arrears, we meet on a regular basis with Children's Services to ensure that nobody's falling into arrears. In the council tenancies that we have for the living looked after care, we've agreed there isn't a cliff edge in terms of when you reach 25 and one day that the protocol suddenly ends. We've said that that would extend beyond that period and that we still treat people as non-intentional, almost priority need, et cetera, and work with them in terms around employments and stuff, because clearly, if you're in, you know, rent accommodation with the council, it's the cheapest form of rents in Islington, about £120 a week from one bedroom flat, which is cheaper than housing associations, cheaper than private rent, et cetera, and if you've got people in employment, that's a better future for them. If there was paying social rent, that's the future that we're trying to build for them, build a better future. In terms of documentation, unfortunately for, and I know that the case that you've recently brought to my services attention, the law says it's a different one, so we have to collect data in terms of documentation from people. Now if they say to us, go to children's services for that, we will go to children's services for that information. If they don't say go to children's services, we don't. When we get the information from children's services, it contains quite a lot of the information, but not all of the information to allow us to comply with what the housing legislation insists that we do, in terms of that work. We are trying to adopt in partnership with children's services, tell us once approach, like we do with adult social care, but on occasions, children's services will not have the information that we require, and we have to ask for that information. Maybe if we can just have some kind of assurance that we put kind of tell us once, kind of in the protocol, or that would be really. Yeah, so the two changes we can certainly make is where you say we may, we'll change that to will, and we'll present it back to the chair for her approval, and we can certainly have something in there around about the tell us once approach that we're trying to adopt across the council with housing. Thank you, Ian. Any more questions? I'd just like to ask, as in paragraph 1.19, there's the talk about the maturity of people and their ability to make decisions. It says housing authorities should consult with the relevant children's services authority and obtain advice and information as to the young person's emotional and mental wellbeing, maturity, and general ability to understand the impact of their actions. How are those judgments made about the maturity of an individual, and how long is that information stored for? How long will that judgment follow that person around? So, from a housing perspective, we only house people leaving looked after care, that's recommended by children's services. So, everyone that's rehoused by essential councils, housing operations service will first of all receive a referral from children's services to say this person requires accommodation, will try to get that person accommodated as soon as she can be possible. That will contain all of the information that you've mentioned in section 1.19. The information that we retain is retained on file. We normally keep all data for five years, because that's the storage capacity that we have within our service. However, when something is personal to that individual about their support needs, their vulnerability, et cetera, vulnerabilities change over time, sometimes vulnerabilities increase and we have to step up. The housing first supports work closely with children's services, and then sometimes it decreases and they don't need that support anymore. So, it's a person-centred approach around the resident's needs, plus children's services information that we get to start with. So, the initial decision is made to children's services by maturity? Children's services make every decision of who is in council rehouses in terms of leaving looked after care provision. Thank you. And just my point would be, would there be kind of a holistic approach to those who are in rent or rears? And in terms of holistic approach, just similarly to what Claire was mentioning, would the kind of frontline housing staff be trained to kind of work with care leavers in a sensitive way once this protocol is improved? Because I think that would be really crucial, because it is really overwhelming for anyone navigating through having a new home. And I think to deal with that as sensitively as possible would probably require some of the housing staff to be trained in terms of what that impact could be on care leavers. Thank you, that's a really good question. So, what we can say to you is, we're going through a restructure at the moment in terms of housing management. There'll be one housing officer for 561 properties, which is the approach that members wanted, moving away from the 2,000 plus properties that a officer had to manage, which was ridiculous. Each person from January will be going on an intensive training in terms of, we've met today with my corporate director, in terms of training on safeguarding, the holistic approach, vulnerability training, et cetera. And we're linking in with the training that's provided by, that's already online, that's provided to Children's Services. And that's the plan for us to go forward. So, it will be placing that individual at the centre of everything that we're doing. We met with our corporate training team to ensure that housing officers, homelessness officers, estate services, property services will receive the same training that Children's Services offers at the induction for social worker. Thank you, Ian. And if there are no amendments or further questions, oh, sorry, Nastas. Thank you, Chair. Just a few questions from me. So the first one, first and most, absolutely brilliant to see this protocol. I'm assuming we're not going to have to vote on option one or zero. Has that been done already? Excellent. I'm sure the progressive choice was chosen. There's a chapter here on page 16 on young people in university, which is really great to hear that we've got these high expectations. But I really liked the mention of apprenticeships as well. And apprenticeship dodges happen in London. They happen all across the world, the UK. And how would we be supporting and what's the protocol for supporting people doing apprenticeships who have experienced care? That's my first question. So we've designed this in partnership with Children's Services. When the restructure comes about in January, which it will do in February when we go out, we're aiming to recruit leaving looked after care children into employment within housing operations. We've run a training session in partnership with Children's Services for them to nominate people. They've already been through our training programme, shadowing my team, spending a week in terms of where they thought they would want to work within, say, homelessness. They've had that week and then realised they don't work in home system or work in housing management. They've had another week. So we've done all of their inductions. We are assisting them with the completion of applications for employment because everything has to go through it. We've created trainee positions within the service because some of the people will never be able to obtain the apprenticeship because the education attainment they have in terms of English and maths not being attained. So we're aiming at slightly below the apprenticeship level. The training will be prioritised for leaving looked after care people and people with lived homelessness experience. We've been to London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road to try to get students who are local in Islington residents to grow our own in terms of the future of housing management, private sector housing, environmental health officers and homelessness officers, and we will be creating apprenticeships within the service as well to cater for leaving looked after care children to be employed by housing operations throughout 2025. That was amazing to hear. Sorry, but that wasn't my question. So just for clarity, if there's a young person who's experienced care and they would like to, under the age of 24, and they would like to do an apprenticeship not in Islington, how would they be supported? Is there a protocol for that? I don't think there's any barriers for them. You know, I do know of apprenticeships outside of the local authority area. I was with a care experienced young person who's going to do an apprenticeship with the Home Office, which is in Whitehall, which is, no, sorry, the tax, HMRC. I should know that, shouldn't I? So yeah, because we've got young people who, not a huge amount, but there are some young people who might be quite settled outside of the borough. They may have grown up in Kent, so if they wanted to work in that area, there's no restriction. If we could arrange it and they wanted to work overseas, if a great opportunity would arise like that, that would be supported. So there's definitely no restrictions from where anybody wants to go. We want our young people to be aspirational, ambitious, and to kind of not have any barriers. Whatever they want to do, they should be able to be given that opportunity, and I wouldn't see why they'd need to be prevented from. But obviously, they're competing with, you know, all local authorities are looking after their own, their children. So I guess there's that kind of competing, if it is within the council. But yeah, I think it's not an area that should be restricted in any way. Do you have a quick follow up? Yes, thank you. It's not free, just a few questions for me. Yes, so maybe this is to Councillor O'Holloran. There's quite a few cost implications there as well, in terms of paying money upfront for when it comes to private renting, in terms of paying for it for the first month and the deposit. So it seems to be quite kind of detailed in terms of what's available. But I know, for example, some private landlords expect you to pay for the first two months. So does that flexibility exist within that? Is there enough money to cover those eventualities? I can answer the first part. So what we're offering here to Leaving Land to Have to Go people is what we offer as well to homeless households. So there's that kind of like tram line that we don't want to offer anything different. We have approved landlords that we work with in terms of a procurement of that. I've got to be honest with you and say the ability to get private renting to property in Islington is zero. There are no properties at the local housing allowance that the governments expect. And we're trying to get properties for Leaving Land to Have to Go people as close to Islington as possible. And that again is proving challenging. But what we do offer is a month's rent in advance and the deposit. If it's urgently required we could be flexible on that. It is contained within the budget provision that we've got. All councils in London have got a massive overspend in homelessness. We are at the lower end of that overspend. But yes it is a challenge for this council in terms of homelessness services at the moment. Can I say, sorry I do move us along because we're only on the first item. So are there pressing questions or quick questions? Just something that Claire brought up about the fact that fostering a looked after child is constantly being asked questions about their background. And I think we don't know their background but it may be very traumatic. Whatever it is, it's personal to them. And a few years ago we had a scrutiny where we were interviewing looked after children. And I felt so conscious. I felt so bad because they are constantly asked the same question over and over. We're talking about thousands of people they meet through their life if they're going to succession of families or whatever. So I'm just throwing that in. I know it's indirectly related to the housing. But if maybe a passport, an Islington passport looked after, because it's actually celebrating their resilience. There's so much resilience in a child who's going through that that no one talks about. But something that they can say and they can hand over. So they don't have to go through a whole retinue of something that happened years ago. I'm just throwing that in if it's possible. Thank you. Before you answer, can I take Councillor Ogunro's question? Thank you. Quick one. He answered part of the question that I had. Well, I was going to ask if we were unable to house these young people in Islington because of shortage of housing. Would we be able to send them somewhere else outside Islington? That was one question. And the other one was, must they always go through their personal advisors or social worker? Or could they come directly to you for their housing needs? So the person, if they are housed, say in Haringey, we're trying to rehouse them in Haringey for the shortest possible period of time because we're committed to bringing them back into Islington. So yes, is the answer that we would place somebody in close proximity to Islington. Fifty percent of homeless families are in Islington, 45 percent in neighbouring boroughs, 5 percent in other parts of London or the fringes of London. In terms of when they become a tenant, visiting council, they'll have that officer that I said to you, the housing officer that would work with them, that would link up with children's services as well. So it'd be a partnership between housing and children's services throughout that tenancy until the person reached 25. Thank you. And on Mary's point, can we maybe include just a commitment for there to be a trauma informed practice from housing officers? So we're not re-traumatizing our care leavers during the process, even if it means there's someone that's leading on that or ensuring that that happens. I think Claire made a really good point, because the last thing you need, and like you've mentioned, somebody going to university, they come back and you want to sort of move on. You don't want to keep relaying it and relaying it. So I think that we should put something in it. And I think, like everything else, we are a bit radical. I think we should be pushing on this for future, because I've sat on the fostering panel for a couple of years and things. And, you know, you're wanting people to be adults and take responsibility and then you're going back, you're past the past. You know, so I think it's something that we should commit to and maybe look in it. And I know Ian will push and I will push with anything that we can. I really think that's a really good point. And maybe that's something Children's Services could kind of help housing with in terms of what that trauma-informed practice looks like and training and so on. I think joint training around that kind of interface as well with housing and social care so we can, you know, that's not something that would be hard to arrange with our workforce development. Thank you. And are there any questions from the public? Do public members want to have any questions for this item? If you just press the button, there's a button with a -- yes. Hello. I'm Priya Baradi. I'm a training reporter for Covering Bunhill. I was wondering, and I'm not sure when I was looking for the PAC, if this is addressed, but is there a system by which a young person in the service can appeal if they feel like their young person's advisor isn't suitable for them or they'd like to request another? Thank you. Deborah, if you could. Yes, that's possible. If you're not happy with who you're assigned to young -- yeah. We'd like to kind of obviously explore what that's about, but obviously if there isn't -- especially if you're a young adult and you're not connecting, there is a manager or three managers within the service, so I would encourage people to raise that and what those issues are. There are probably some attempts to see if things could be addressed, but if not, that wouldn't be difficult, but there are systems in place for that. It does occur, but like I say, we'd like to try and see if we can resolve matters if that's possible, but if not, there would be a change. Thank you. Did you have a follow-up question on that? Okay. Thank you. If there are no amendments, can I ask members to agree to endorse this protocol? Thank you, and thank you both so much for coming and hopefully see you next month. We'll now move on to the next item this evening, which is the Islington Safeguarding Children Board Annual Report. Members have read the items, so if officers could give a very brief overview before I take questions, that would be great. Thank you, Chair. As I said earlier, Alan Caton, I'm the Independent Scrutineer for the Safeguarding Children Partnership. What I want to do is just give a brief overview about the changes that have happened this year before I get into the report. A significant rewrite of statutory guidance in working together 2023 has led to significant changes in the way the partnership is structured. Whilst historically it has always been the report of the independent chair, i.e. I would come to this group and send the report, it's now the report of the safeguarding partners, of which there are now three safeguarding partners. That's the police, the ICB and the local authority, and they are led by lead safeguarding partners at the chief exec level, and then they delegate those responsibilities. So for the local authority, John is the delegated safeguarding partner, we have the police and we have the ICB. It might be in future that you want to have the three safeguarding partners come and present the report, because it is all about making it join an equal responsibility between those three partners to run and deliver the partnership. From my perspective, my role has changed from an independent chair, although I do still chair some meetings, to become what they call a 'scrutineer', to be that sort of constant critical friend, if you like, constructive critical friend within that service and provide support and encouragement, and oversee the effectiveness of the safeguarding arrangements across Islington, and that's what we've tried to articulate in this report this time. Now, I'm conscious there's 72 pages, and I'm not going to go through them all page by page, but I did just want to sort of highlight really, I suppose, the fact that, and I've been doing this job in Islington now nearly 12 years, and it's worth noting that the complexity of safeguarding continues to increase. Children and families are presenting now with more complexity, a multitude of issues that affect those families, you know, mental health, domestic abuse, drugs, gang affiliation, exploitation, all of those things, and, you know, some of these children have multiple issues that affect them and their families, so there's a continual thrust of training and work to make sure everybody's kept up to speed with all of those issues and provide that safeguarding service. I mean, and I do want to emphasise also that safeguarding is everybody's responsibility, that all of us, everyone in this room, we all have a responsibility to ensure that we, you know, if we see something, we respond to it, and it's all our responsibility. It's not just the responsibility of John and his colleagues in social care, it's actually everybody's responsibility, although the children's services will have that lead role. I mean, very briefly, I continue to be impressed with the partnership in Islington. I think, you know, it's very effective that the three safeguarding partners have really gelled together quickly under the new arrangements, provide joint and equal leadership to those arrangements. We're well structured, we highlight a number of key issues as priorities which we focus on. I think you'll see in the report, you know, progress against those priorities. For me, there's two areas of challenge that I sort of highlighted in the report. I mean, as I go through the year, I suppose I can be seen as a bit of a thorn in the side, some might say, but, you know, it's just asking those questions and ensuring that the partnership delivers the best they can for the children and families across Islington. I mean, the first one really is a challenge to the police, and I know they're not here, but the funding for safeguarding arrangements according to new legislation is supposed to be joint and equal and equitable between the three safeguarding partners. So you would expect them all to submit, you know, to fund the arrangements, i.e. the business unit, perhaps analytical support, business manager, to pay for the child safeguarding practice reviews that we undertake to be shared between those three partners. At the moment, it falls disproportionately on the local authority and has done ever since I've started. So this is yet again a similar challenge, and it may be one for Councillor Comer Schwartz in her new role to take that challenge into the Metropolitan Police Service, because their contribution is really, dare I say it, woeful to the safeguarding partnership. And the other area has been data. I mean, as a partnership, we really do need good data across the partnership to ensure we're effective. And I know I've had conversations with Deborah and Jill about this, and we're working, or the partnership is certainly working very hard to get that data, but we need to work at pace, I think, to get that to really understand the impact of safeguarding across all of our families and children as it affects them across Islington. Lots of highlights in that report and lots of detail. I mean, it just goes to show, I think, the breadth and depth of detail that the partnership goes into in relation to safeguarding. It covers a whole range of issues. It talks about, you know, the child safeguarding practice reviews we undertake. It talks about the impact we have against the priorities that we set in our development days. It talks, you know, how we are addressing inequality and disproportionality, which is a key aspect of that, of the board's work. It talks about other key areas of business. For example, when I heard someone mentioned earlier, we were talking, weren't we, about young people falling off a cliff edge in a different scene. But within safeguarding, certainly where children are being exploited, there is that sort of issue of transition from children's services into adult services, which is a real challenge for the partnership. So, because many of those children, you know, if they're being exploited and get a wraparound service within children's services, the minute they reach 18, if they're not seen to have care and support needs, you know, may not qualify for any adult services or adult mental health support. So, you know, we're working with the adult board and there's lots going on in the background to ensure that we're getting ready for that. So, private fostering is another thing, the numbers. We've talked before, I think, about private fostering. It's where children sort of up to the age of 16 are being sort of cared for and looked after by somebody who isn't an immediate family member. And this came about following Victoria Klinwe all those years ago now, who was being privately fostered by a great aunt. The numbers in Islington are very low, sort of between, hover between sort of two and four children. We think across the country that the numbers are particularly low and it's really important that schools, that GPs are involved in identifying those children who may be living with somebody who isn't a parent or close relative. So that there is a requirement for social care to monitor those children, because we obviously, you know, we know that there's safeguarding issues there. We talk in the report about elective home education and education is a key function of safeguarding. I mean, I've always maintained that schools see our children and know them better than any other organisation and service and have a key role to play. Working Together 2023 recognises that and we now need to make sure that we're getting education representation at that strategic level. So I talk about the three safeguarding partners being the police, health and the local authority. But education is trying to be brought into that level and have those discussions at a senior and strategic level to ensure that they can put into the safeguarding arrangements as we move forward. There's lots, of course, I can talk about chair and I'm very conscious of time, but I didn't know whether you perhaps wanted to spend more time thinking about any questions you might have and I'm conscious also that, you know, I've got colleagues here from the business unit, Amber and Maria and Mike who did a fantastic job in pulling this report together, which has been no mean feat. And it really does highlight all of the work across the partnership and obviously with John and Curtis, Deborah and Jill here, who may be able to answer any key aspects you might have around sort of children's services or youth services. So, yeah, no, thank you. OK, chair. I know that's definitely OK and thank you so much. And I think it was really, you know, the report was really thorough and showing that multi-agency work and what that actually looks like with different agencies with Islington. So thank you so much. And that scrutiny element really did come through and it makes, you know, it's really useful to us as a scrutiny committee to see the things that you have highlighted, the challenges and also the things that are working well. So thank you for that. And as you've mentioned, that one of the greatest challenges in Islington is lower attendance in our schools and that is a scrutiny topic. So I'm sure that members will might have questions around that before I do take questions. I did want kind of a point of clarification if that was OK and just some more information. We've seen that the rise of domestic violence and domestic abuse numbers have risen, I assume nationally as well. And I know there was a review, say, in 2020 that kind of discussed that local authorities weren't necessarily taking those risks to the children as seriously as they should be taken, especially in terms of potential significant harm to a child when there is domestic violence and abuse. And I was just wondering how that would then potentially mean that there might be more children in need and more children on protection plans with that increase or just more kind of what your insights were with that increase relating to Islington. I'm sure one of the others who want to come in in a minute, but certainly there has been an increase and there will continue to be an increase, and I'm never bothered about that particularly because I think we only see the tip of an iceberg and the numbers are really quite low. In reality, you know, because somebody experienced domestic abuse, I think, I don't know how many times, tens of times before they actually have the sort of ability to come and report that to the police or to the local authority. There's been some changes in legislation that actually now state that if children are ordinarily resident or present when domestic abuse takes place, they actually become a victim and are recorded as such. So I think there is potentially the likelihood, and we all know the detrimental impact that domestic abuse has on children as they grow, and I think it's really important that that is recognised and I know that there's a lot of work goes on. I think it's mentioned in the report as well, but the change from the monthly MARAC, which was the multi-agency risk assessment conferences that took place in relation to domestic abuse, I think they used to, you know, hear about 50 to 60 cases a month. You know, well, actually that risk from one month to the next, it can vary dramatically and can change. So now I think what is a great service within Islington is the daily safeguarding meeting, which addresses those issues on a daily basis. So I think, you know, I'm not concerned about the numbers, I'm pleased that the numbers are coming in so that they can be monitored, but there will be impacts on children. And I guess I'll defer to Deborah to talk about perhaps the numbers that are going on to plans or what have you, if that helps. Yeah, I mean, domestic violence and abuse for the past, I don't know how long, five years plus has been the primary reason for referral from the police into children's social care. Actually more recently we've seen a slight dip in domestic violence and abuse and child mental health has actually kind of risen on par with that number. So there are, in terms of our child protection plans, they usually fall within the category of neglect, and neglect is usually the highest number and the highest reason for domestic violence and abuse. And so within our plans, obviously there isn't a category for domestic violence, but when you look at cases where children are at risk of significant harm through neglect, there's usually domestic violence that's there. There is a multi-agency service which we have our Violence Against Women and Girls VOG service incorporated within Curtis' service that works alongside statutory and early health provision, helping staff understand the challenges around working with perpetrators, with survivors of domestic abuse and working with children. So we have a whole systems multi-agency approach to tackling domestic violence and abuse to try and decriminalise mothers particularly, or putting so much responsibility on mothers to relocate or to feel threatened and that the whole responsibility around safeguarding their children falls with them. So it's trying to kind of shift the approach to responding to the feedback that mothers are particularly giving which is that they often feel that everything, the perpetrator is maybe relocated or even incarcerated, but the responsibility is all on them to move and if you don't move they fear that they're going to have their children removed. So we're trying to work with that to try and have a more personable, integrated response to safeguarding, but Curtis you might want to add something. Thanks Deborah, yeah a lot's been covered by Alan and Deborah there. The only thing I wanted to add is that the increased number of reports isn't necessarily a negative thing because we know that domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is very underreported and undetected. So what we have done is ensured that we promote our services across the borough so we have more independent domestic abuse advocates for instance who work in our sexual health service, in our youth service, in our children's social care department, in our housing department that can really engage with women who are experiencing abuse. And in July we actually had a reduction, it was actually the lowest monthly figure since lockdown for domestic abuse so that's something that we are mindful of so the reduction could be a good thing in July but actually it's something that we could be concerned about because it could mean again that women aren't reporting the abuse for their suffering. And again what Alan mentioned as well in relation to the daily safeguarding meeting is really positive as a multi-agency forum which is quite unparalleled in a way because not many local authorities have that system in place where we can actually tackle the issues that women are facing and come up with a multi-agency plan to actually reduce the risk of harm that they're suffering and that of their children as well. Most local authorities do have a monthly merit so we're in quite a good position as well in relation to that area. No yeah thank you, I think seeing that it's moved to daily safeguarding you kind of think how was it ever monthly so that was really good to see and it was more around just the child, kind of that child centred approach with children that experienced DV in the home and kind of that work around the child and how it's affected them. But I'll open up to questions. I've had Councillor Pandora, Mary and then Councillor McHugh. Councillor Pandora. Thank you for your report, it's very informative and what I'm actually concerned about are those unseen children that we are not getting to. Certain members from my community where they have grown up with where there's violence within the home but it's not spoken about, it's mostly a very shameful subject. A lot of these women have grown up used to this kind of violence and sometimes the perpetrator is not a man, it's a woman within because there's lots of extended families and there's an aspect of forced marriages that is never discussed and this is historic. Women believe that this is normal within their society, within their culture but it's coming from an Islamic perspective just to make it clear that it's actually child abuse in terms of if a girl at the age of nine, ten years old has been promised in marriage to a man then this is not acceptable. But a child is growing up thinking that okay this is fine, this is going to happen, they go along with it. Then they get into a relationship where it's not something that they want but they accept because they're happy but they don't realise they're in a forced relationship. Then they go on to children and the cycle continues because it continues with their children. But what I'm concerned about is mental health is a taboo subject, all of these things are taboo subjects in my community and it doesn't necessarily come out. What I want to know is are there any trained staff that will be able to approach the subject when they see that there's a concern because sometimes a concern doesn't come out and this child may be thriving at school, doing really well, it could go up to GCSE levels, thriving academically and it may not come out because it's a shameful subject. But surely we need to be training staff so that it can be picked upon but also approached in a very sensitive manner that the child or the mother in question is not made to feel judged. So that's what my main concern is because it's happening right now as we speak and it's not talked about and I want to see is there anything that we can do about it to bring parents forward so they can discuss it and also there's such a massive distrust between services, a lot of distrust so I want to see how that is repaired somehow.

I know when you look in the report there's certainly been some audit work around minority communities and how they engage with local services and what more we can do to do that. I absolutely agree with you. Of course nobody, whoever they are, should have to live in fear of abuse or forced marriage or any of those issues that need to be addressed. I think Amber's here who delivers a lot of training and it might be that Amber might be able to tell you the sorts of things that we do in training. But certainly as I said right at the beginning, it is all of our responsibility, all of us. So if any of us hears this, we have a duty perhaps to make sure we refer that on and I know within John and Deborah's services people will be there to respond to that and respond to it without judgement or sensitively as well. And I don't know, Amber, whether you want to mention anything about the training that goes on. This is across multi-agency services as well. So in relation to, I just want to pick on your point of identification, it is a challenge if a child is doing well, the general markers that you'd look for in relation to concerns, we actually need a really skilled workforce to recognise that an overachieving child could also have a need or need a focus or have a conversation and support to build those trusting relationships. Also in relation to trusting relationships with services across different global majority groups as well is something in relation to engagement and how we work with families is something we talk about very robustly across all of our core training for our multi-agency audience. In our core training, you'll see on the training pages in the report, sorry I don't have the numbers up to hand, but we do cover in those core training aspects such as FGM, forced marriage, harmful practices, it's a very light touch because it is core training, it covers a range of topics, but it does cover it. But what we do offer is standalone FGM and harmful practices training, it's run by the local authority, MHA charity and health colleague who led in relation to FGM at Whittington Hospital. It's a very robust training, it's actually training I've delivered for a long time and I'm very passionate about that training, it's very needed and within that it talks about the practicalities of having these conversations in a sensitive way and acknowledging those. I also know that there are certain parent forums that happen where general topics are discussed and within that these aspects are brought up. So it's brought up in a way that's non-judgmental, normalising the conversation and that's undertaken by the FGM lead within the local authority actually, so they're really great sessions. And that's something again that I would like to bring into our multi-agency training more around those kind of practical conversations, but the identification is a challenge. We do sometimes rely on disclosures, we have to acknowledge that, but that is encouraged within training of we can't just rely on disclosures, we have to think about professional curiosity and the London partnerships. I'm currently devising a professional curiosity course, a training course as well that I plan to bring into the Islington partnership training offer as well, where we do look at this in a lot more detail. And I certainly would be happy to meet with you if you can think of if there's any ways in which we can improve what we're doing, so I'm more than happy to do that. I'm really happy to hear this, but also I really want more support for parents because a parent, the women that I'm speaking to, they're such good parents but they have such low self-esteem and they're scared to come forward because they're afraid that their children will be taken away from them. So it really needs to be a sensitive parent-led approach, that the parent is made to feel like a whole person, that she's trying to do the best that she can. That's what I'm looking for, a really parent-led approach and sensitive approach, but I'm happy to work with you. Thank you, Councillor Pandora. Mary, did you want to come with your question? Yeah, the report is absolutely brilliant and it's so well displayed, it's so easy to read, but there's so much in it. It struck me how qualified everyone, how expert, all of those professionals are in here. Islington should be proud of all of this expertise. It's amazing when you look through all of that, but two things struck me and they're small things really. One was on page 46 and it was about serious youth violence and they'd identified six children. And five of the six of them all had all six children impacted of parental separation, racism, disproportionality, placement instability and impact of COVID. And they had recommendation one, although already understood and known, it is essential that details of the impact of this lack of suitable placements for four of these children undermines the impact. So what struck me was that all of those things were impacting those children and I presume they were having counselling and mental health support, but is there any incentives to train up foster families who would be able to take these children on? Because I presume the lack of them is lack of training and maybe incentives like finance that was impairing their placement for them because they've got all of these issues and they haven't got a fostering payment thing, so that's a bit of an open question. I know it's a hard one, but on page 54, which is completely separate with what you referred to, was the elective home education. There's a recent case where that child, I don't want to go into it because it's still in process and I don't want to affect that, but the child went into home elective education, so then all of the school's kind of connections with the child sort of disappeared. And I do wonder, are we picking that up as well or have we got any means to see when a child suddenly has gone into elective home education? So there are two questions and two separate ones. Thank you. Yeah, it's a really good point that you've picked up in terms of placements. Those six children in the audit were part of a wider thematic case review that was done around a child with a similar experience and so just kind of like looking at what we could have learned from those and what could have done differently. That is exactly what we want more foster carers, trained foster carers. The training we can put on is the recruitment that's a real challenge and it's a real issue for us, but it's an issue that we're taking on quite robustly. Currently we've actually undergone the assessment of six potential new foster carers in the borough, sorry, eleven potential foster carers in the borough, which is quite a significant jump from I think the last previous years where we'd had probably less than five that were recruited. But it's a campaign that needs to be really sophisticated, you need to stand up from the rest because we're competing with 30 odd other London boroughs and private fostering agencies. So you're right, we do need to kind of make sure that there's foster carers who have the resilience to deal with some of these very challenging young people who are used to people turning their backs on them, adults giving up on them. And so it does take a certain type of individual, but also a wraparound support because you can't do it on your own. And that's the challenge, but it's a challenge that we're trying to kind of overcome because fostering is much better provision than a residential or a place in children in the middle of nowhere far away. But yeah, it continues to be a struggle, but it is something that we're working on to try and improve. The other part of the question was, just remind me, electively home educated children. Yes, we've recently been doing some auditing on that because that is one of the frameworks for Ofsted as well. So currently we know of, there's over 300 I think electively home educated children in the borough, but we have about 33 that are actually open to children's social care, where we have, they're open on the child protection plan or child in need plan, and we're working with those children to try and, sorry, some of those children who are electively home educated probably need to be in school. They're not necessarily getting the kind of education that we would consider a good education because there are other factors, hence why they may be on the child protection plan or child in need plan. So again, it's like working with our colleagues in education around how do we get these children back into school or find a school place that they can kind of engage with, because being at home it's just they're not necessarily receiving an education. There are lots of children in the borough who are electively home educated and are getting a really good experience because it's a choice, a parental choice. It's the ones where they've kind of off rolled or it's another way of, you know, going back to the previous Councillor's point about hidden children potentially, and that's where it needs that kind of robust curiosity around how can we get them back into education because the ones that we know who are down as electively home educated really shouldn't be. So by them being on plans, the scrutiny and the oversight for those children is sitting in my service, which is children's social care. Thank you. Councillor McHugh and then Councillor De Samet. Thank you. This is a really thorough and impressive report and I think we all know the dangers to our children and young people when we do siloed work, so I'm really delighted to see all that's going on. I have two questions. So the first relates to the significant finding that there are disparities in terms of workforce representation. I think other people in this chamber will be aware I've taken every opportunity I possibly can with the MET to emphasise the way to build trust and confidence in services is to have a force or a service that looks like the people that it serves. That's absolutely the case for all of the bodies affected by this review and by the partnership, particularly because one of the main priorities is tackling structural inequalities. I can't see in this review that there is data breaking down the ethnicity across the workforce, but I'd like to know if you have that data and I'd also like to know if that data is reported on an ongoing basis and if there's an action plan of how those disparities are going to be addressed. I'll ask my second question afterwards. It's one of the key issues that we are looking to address when we deliver our section 11. Section 11 is when we bring agencies together to ask them how they're delivering certain standards of safeguarding and the main theme this year will be around disproportionality and inequality. I think those key questions will be asked basis because you're right, I don't think we do have that data to hand, but it is something that we are working on. It's one of the objectives because that was one of the areas again that Stutely picked up that do we have a work right across the partnership that's reflective of our population and at the moment anecdotally we don't. But we don't know so there needs that interrogation so that there is a task and finish group that was addressing that because it's a whole scale different systems counting but we do need that and that is a priority and an objective and I would like to think that next year's report or the next report will have that data because that's an area of focus that we had been addressing because it's needed. Just before your second question, I think if it's in relation to the workforce data in Islington Council we do have that data for Islington Council but in terms of other agencies. Can I request actually as an action that this committee sees that data at a future meeting whenever is appropriate and the other part of that question was to get an action plan together for how to address those disparities so is that something that you could address through this partnership framework? So just to say because I do some DEI work outside particularly in terms of things around representation etc and what's really really important is not always about whether the workforce looks like you but it's also the people in the workforce also being very culturally competent and really understanding the communities that they work for as well as how to respond to different communities as well so there has been quite some significant work going on across the partnership and still going on around how to build up the cultural competence of the different agencies within the partnership as well which is also equally as important as reflecting the communities that you're working with so whilst we do need to make sure that right across the workforce does look like the people that we're working with also it means that the people who are working with our children, young people and families they do need to have that cultural competence, that cultural intelligence as well to be able to respond to it. Thank you and I completely hear and agree with that. At the same time it would be interesting to see the data because if we have a very stark disparity that will be a problem and particularly I noticed that CAMS is one of the services in which there's a disparity and that flags warning signs for me. That internal critique and that internal cultural knowledge is really key to developing the competences across the board but I'm glad to hear there's robust training and competent staff. My second question, the missing children adolescent exploitation subgroup is going to be disbanded and the work is taken over by the multi-agency child exploitation MCAE to MACE which was tricky to read but I think I've got it. What are the resourcing and staffing implications associated with this? Is this just a governance change or will there be any reduction in funding or any streamlining of services? It says in next steps related to that merge of amalgamation, whatever it is, that there will be regular reviews of the change but I can only see that there are reviews planned at three and six months which doesn't seem regular and I wonder if you would consider doing another at least at a year's time. Thanks. I absolutely agree with that. I mean I've said to Michael and the team, I'm a bit concerned about the loss of that group if I'm honest. So I know Michael's done the work, it came up at the day, we don't want to duplicate work that goes on if there's work going on in the multi-agency child exploitation meetings that are held regularly, we don't want to duplicate that with another. In relation to funding and groups, no it won't have any impact because we call on the partnership to come together to form subgroups to do that which is a challenge in itself so this is helping some of those partners to streamline and focus their efforts on one particular meeting. But I, like you, want to see how that progresses because I do think that's a key focus of our work in Islington, children who go missing, who are exploited, etc. and I just want to make sure we don't lose any focus on that so I agree with you and I will be monitoring that and come back next year and we'll see if it's worked. Thank you, that's helpful. Is that a commitment to building extra reviews of just the three and six month review that is planned, to be clear? So will you be looking at, at the moment it says next steps will be a review of three months and six months and it feels to me, and I don't know how others are minded, but another review at one year would be wise given the change? Absolutely, we'll complete that in and I think it's good that they're looking at it in three months time and we'll make sure that they're agreed. Thank you Councillor Zamek. Great report, this is probably my first time reading this report so I think this is only my second year on this committee so forgive me if I've misunderstood something in here. So, I was looking at youth services in Islington, and so that's page, page 51, and you're reporting kind of, you know, fantastic work, the voice of the child, etc, etc. It's an area that I'm really interested in. I don't see a next steps or it listed in priorities as, as in work that might kind of go forward and I feel like I've seen next steps and priorities on other areas that you're reporting on. So, I'm just kind of concerned that you're reporting that it's good, but there isn't anything else to follow. So I just wanted to, I have got part two as well but John I'll let you come in because you know I can't call about this. Thanks very much for that Councillor Zamek. Yeah, we are absolutely going to be ensuring that this is a priority going forward. What we're doing is producing an annual impact report in relation to our youth services so we're actually in the process of producing the third one, actually, which we'll look at the overarching and overall youth offer across the borough. All about big youth hubs like Soapbox, Lyft, Rose Bowl for instance in the smaller projects, so we can bring that to a future board if you like, but we do have the second report that was recently discussed at our Young Islington Quality Impact Steering Group. So we can bring that here if you like, but do be assured that it is reviewed. We look at all of the data, the participation and engagement rates, we look at the demographics, whether we have enough Bangladeshi, Somali, Kurdish, Turkish young people attending and we have action plans in place to ensure that we reach as many of our young people as possible. So it's definitely a priority. Right, I would love to see that come back if that was at all possible. Sorry Claire, can I just come in really, really quickly on that. I think we acknowledge that the Safeguarding Annual Report gives us a lot of information, it wets the appetite for more scrutiny because what, for example, that page that Claire just referenced, if you look at some of the documentation that then comes to the Youth Justice Board, and the evidence that comes through, I think we can provide that information because I think it strikes true and I think it doesn't necessarily get deep and provide the breadth that you would clearly want, but I think if there are requests about can we bring that item, not just this one, to it, we can do it because there's oodles, there's actually loads of evidence around that work. Great, that would be fab. And then my second question was, because I saw it in priority three, which was fantastic, which was advancing the SEND strategy, and I guess kind of my question there was, what do you envision that might look like? Sorry, I guess this kind of committee is often talking about SEND and there's often talk about there are things that we can't do because of X, Y and Z, so I was just really interested in the fact that you have acknowledged that we should be advancing the SEND strategy, but you haven't actually really said what that looks like. So I guess I'd written to myself, well, what are the timeframes, what does that look like? Because as a committee, that's something we're really interested in because it has an impact on so many things like school avoidance. We know that a number of children who are waiting for SEND, not appraisals, I can't think of the right word at the moment, might then not be at school. Do you want me to pick that up? Claire, absolutely the right question. You're right, for those looking at this, that priority three on page, thank you. And I think what we spoke with the Chair, but Michigan as well, is the need for, we called it a round table partnership approach, where first of all we've come to all members, because that's not a quick answer to do in five minutes. What we have to do is bring all of the information to members, cross party, say what the challenges are. I think the ISOS partnership have come up with a useful paper, which outlines it's not helpful us saying the SEND system is broken, because we have to work with the system we have. There's a lot of frustration in there, we know there's a gap between three and five billion a year across local authorities. We know the safety valve isn't working, because that again is a challenge, we're not in that position. I think we do have a SEND strategy, we're also part of that, the sector led improvement partner with the DFE, we're working around there. I think it would be being able to come and air some of those challenges, we know there are frustrations, we know that there's overwhelming demand coming forward still, not just in Islington, but across the whole country. So that we can bring the data, we've got the data, we share the data, we have that hour and a half, we have that two hours where we just present it all, the funding, the demographic, the need, and then what we think is coming through. The government have said look, we know there's a challenge, bear with us. I think it needs to happen in more than eight years, which is maybe what they're suggesting, however we have to work with the system we have, we've got young people, but it is an overwhelming one. We have to use the resources we have as careful as we have that, that's part of our strategy, we keep our young people as close to Islington as possible, 1% go out of borough, national average 6%, that is why we are not overspending in our high needs block. It's systemic, and I think to answer the question, Claire, I'm not going to do it justice here, but I do know that Goldshin knows, because we've spoken with Goldshin and also with Michigan about we bring this to members, we air it, we have that round table, then we have a wider partnership. Because we need to, you know, we don't have all of the answers, we're working within legislation that needs massive reform, we know that the first 6,000 should now be the first, 9,000 schools can't afford that, it has that knock-on effect throughout. But we need to try and explain it properly, coherently, outline the challenges, I think the OSOS paper does that, I think Candy's slides would also say this is what it's like here. And then try and work together with those sort of forums about how we might better iron out some of those frustrations that parents and carers, but also schools and local authority officers have. Think about what do we do, because you can't just wait for, you know, pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because that could take a while to come through. Absolutely, so I think what we're looking for is, you know, when is that meeting, you know, when is that opportunity. Thank you, because we are trying our best to do it by December or early January, because the approach we spoke with the chair, the way we're going to approach our idea, it will be to meet with members, all of us to sit around the table to discuss. As all of us we know, we're raised with the new government, they will need a bit of time for them really to come with an idea that it's going to be nationally, but at the same time we realise the system is overstretched, we can't wait until there, we have to think what can we do differently here. And by December or early January it will be a cross party, we sit around, we present and we have a really honest and open debate. After that we're going to have another set of meetings, we call it semites, I think that is English, where we're going to bring parents also, because we need the voice of parents here. We're going to bring schools, we're going to bring DfE for another open discussion and also our idea, it will be to get involved the member of this committee to join us in that semite to discuss, because we need really to come with an idea until the government answers all those questions and discussions. What can we do as in Exlington, because we do have our local situation, we need to answer to those problems, it's not only officers or myself, we need parents' involvement because they know the needs of their children more than anybody else, to bring also school to listen, how can we work in partnership really to try to resolve this situation, that is our approach. It will be before the end of January, we are pushing to have them. We have been pushing on this as everyone can know that the number of SEND children in schools is increasing, putting pressure on schools, pressure on families, our casework we can see that, so definitely looking forward to that piece of work that we'll be doing as a separate item because it deserves attention that it needs to get. I do want to round off so if I can take two final questions from Councillor Chincotona and Councillor Manestas. Thank you, just going back to page 54, I just want to know how many children on social care plans have EHCP and also how many children who are in EHE, elective home education, have EHCP? So how many children on social care plans have EHCP and how many children in EHE have EHCP? I'm doing this off my head though, I'd like to get it a bit more accurate. It's very small in terms of on child protection plans who are EH, elective home educated, it's less than, it's about between 20 and 30 children. If we could get an accurate one offline, so we've definitely got it, that would be great. Thank you Chair, it would be nice if we had accurate figures. Thank you John, that would be great, thank you. Councillor Manestas? Thank you Chair. To make sure that our children are safeguarded, it's important to have a strong workforce. So I'm a bit concerned from this report where our designated safeguarding leads are reporting the huge stress and the workload that's increasing of them. But also reports that there is even more context to the local authority designated offices as well in terms of especially physical contact with children. So I guess as part of that my question is, do we have positive handling training that happens across our schools? Is that something that schools buy in? And leading on from that, there's a whole story here, I was also concerned about what's written about My Learning as a platform. Is it actually fit for purpose? Yeah, so My Learning, it definitely has some challenges, but we are overcoming them. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I hope to report as of next year since me being in poster for the next annual report, I do hope to report on the increased numbers of usage and what that looks like as to whether we've knocked that issue on the head. Just to draw your attention to this, this report covers up until March this year and I'd say there has been an improvement since then. I think with any system there are teething issues. There is a London wide review of what all partnerships are using and I'm hoping to have some feedback about that and where My Learning fits on that scale. From my understanding of speaking to other partnerships is it's very standardised in relation to the concerns, like some of the difficulties we've got. So there are some challenges to it, but I do think there are aspects where we've overcome, we're trying to automate some aspects as well. And yeah, so challenges but not usable would be my view on that. And the first part, you have to excuse us, I thought the first part was around social workers, family support workers, but it's more around manual handling and some of the training within school. So just to clarify, which was, I think the report mentions that designated safeguarding leads are picking up more and more work, especially for complaints from parents and obviously a lot of paperwork. And then the local authority designated officer getting increasing workload from schools getting in touch with regards to physical contact in schools. So do our schools carrying out positive handling training with the staff? So the first bit, Nestor, sorry I've got it now. The DSLs are, I think, extremely busy, mainly because of course the size and shape of school varies if you've got the smaller school, they've probably got many hats if you've got the bigger school, they may have a little bit more resource, but in terms of some of the challenge, I think I reported back at a meeting very recently about partial leads in secondary school, talking about the challenge of behaviour and how they weren't necessarily coping, looking at coping mechanisms, that then has a significant knock-on effect to your DSLs but also your Senco, and where schools might have had learning mentors, pastoral leads, a number of those have gone, being really clear, some of our schools have restructured four times. However, things like the manual handling, that contact, safe contact with young people, clearly is part of the training, we do have LADO, LADO report that comes through where those allegations may come through, but we also look at Section 11 audit, so schools again would have to talk about training and some of those challenges. Have you got anything on LADO at all? Yeah, the LADO report is mentioned, or significant parts of it is included in this report, and it is an area where, in terms of training for staff, and it's what John says, it's around the support for not only the DSLs but also our learning assistants as well, because I think a lot of those teaching assistants are the ones who are at the most pressure in terms of dealing with that challenging behaviour, but I think from the LADO's perspective, most of the significant majority of the schools in Islington do have a good response to the training and ensuring that the school system is supported with that, but it is a challenge dealing with some of the complex behaviours, but as you can see from the rising numbers of referrals, so a lot of that information is around schools checking out with the LADO within a day of an incident happening, that's part of the regulation, is to kind of just check out, is that okay, what do you think about this, and if you see the conversion, it is usually just advice, and it isn't anything that's kind of concerning or a safeguarding risk, so we just need to kind of be proportionate in terms of the numbers, because schools are being very diligent to share with the LADO, look this has happened, is this something that meets threshold for a more intensive response, and the vast majority, there's no further action based on the LADO making those inquiries and checking that no, actually this is quite low level, but then look at this, address this through training and continuing that way. Thank you Deborah. Just move us, do you, was it really quick? About 335 professionals have been trained in a trauma informed practice way, that's really essential, but is that just school staff or is that our family support workers as well, is every family support worker trained in an informed practice way, I really would like to know the figure, so I believe that every professional that is working with children, I know we've got a big number here, but I would like to know how many of our Bright Star staff are trained, and just a brief one, so it would be great. Trauma informed practice is part of our practice model, so this is something that's embedded right throughout children's services, so regardless of whether it's social work, family support, even in housing and other kind of agencies, anybody that's come in interface with children and families, it may not be as intensive, you know, depending on how much work you're dealing with children and families, but trauma informed practice is an area of practice that we've promoted for the last kind of 10 years if you like, and it's been around trying to roll that out as broadly as we can take it in terms of anybody working with children, but definitely frontline staff, they are trained in, it's part of their induction, it's part of their selection as well, we have a motivational interviewing where there's a role play, where people have to demonstrate that they've got the qualities to work in a trauma informed way, so we try to ensure that the people that come to work, for instance, have that in their, what's the word, in their kind of potential to kind of, if they need training, but we wouldn't want someone coming in there who's really compliance driven and very cold and just not interested in that, we try to pick that out in interview at all levels, so yeah, it definitely is. It gives me confidence to know that. Do we have any questions from members of the public? Thank you. I just did have a final quick question. I didn't see it in the report, it could be that it was in the report, but it was just around young carers and kind of the safeguarding approach to young carers and children that look after their parents for mental health, or any reason, if there was any data around the assessments that were carried out for young carers, if it was excessive needs, or even if the young carers were missing school or persistently absent because of their duties, and if there was any data around that, I don't know if it was. So what we're actually doing at the moment is to try and clean the data around young carers, so we've recently done some auditing around how many young carers do we have in Islington, how many do we have that are open to children's social care or to early help, and one of the actions that came from some of that auditing is around we need to do a bit more work with the workforce in terms of really understanding the definition of what a young carer actually is, and not every child that has a parent that's, you know, sometimes the definitions were just misinterpreted, I think, so there is some work to be done around young carers, but also how we identify them on our LCSR system so that they can be easily extracted. So we've recently entered, there's going to be a new agency that's supporting the contract, the commissioning arrangements to support young carers has moved from, I think it's NCH to Family Action, there's been a recent change in the agency that's commissioning young carers to support children, and we're sharing this resource with Camden, so as part of that change we're also looking at how we can best pull out all those that are young carers, regularly see the data, so I think what I think we should probably do is bring that back here. Or even if it's before the next annual report, because I think it is really important that those children are supported or even identified, and that Islington does have an up-to-date register. I am going to move us along, sorry, we've got two more items on the agenda. Thank you so much for that really thorough and robust report. Can I just ask members to note this report before? Yep, thank you. A really brief overview, that would be great. Yeah, it will be very brief because I think that it's very sort of data driven, it's not nearly as fancy as the ISCP report, it's quite wordy, but the content's good, the content's good. So I think the most key, this covers from April 23 to March 2024. One of the key areas that we're seeing is an increase in our contacts, there was actually 1586, 88 more contacts than we had last year. The top priority reasons for contacts, and a contact means a referral, a referral into children's social care. The top three has been domestic violence and abuse, information and advice, and parenting capacities. 45.4% of our contacts that came into the CSCT were progressed to early help services, and 15.6% progressed to children's social care. So we're showing that most of our contacts are progressing to early help. There's information on the numbers of children in need that we worked with over that period, so there was 913 children in need plans, there were 298 looked after children, 37 of which were disabled children, and 44 were unaccompanied and separated children. At that period there were 765 care experienced and 181 children subject to child protection plans. And over the course of the year, '23, '24, we actually had eight children who were in a private fostering arrangement, which is the highest it's been for a long time. If you heard Alan mention that we had less than five, but over the last year period we actually had eight. And a lot of those children came through the Ukraine scheme as well, just to add a bit of context. There were 30 young people from Youth Justice, and overall we worked with more male children than female. 53% of the children overall were male and 45% were female. So we also, in the report, you'll see that children and young people in Islington, they don't tend to have child protection plans, so we're showing that where children may have suffered harm, this is resolved as quickly as it can be. In terms of court orders, we applied to court orders to protect children, and it was the 49th highest rate out of 150 nationally across the country, so there's evidence that children aren't drifting in the system. The report also goes on to talk about children and the placements. Children who, obviously we've talked about how difficult it has been to identify placements for children, and children who were in school, sorry, children who were looked after for two years plus were on average, their attendance was 89.3%. So all cases across children, all children across safeguarding and family support were subject to monthly supervision, and caseloads over that period was in the children in need service, 11 to 14 per social worker and 17 per social worker in the disabled children's team, and children looked after, the average caseload was 10 to 11 children for those social work teams. The report also talks about disproportionality and there's some kind of trends there around are black and mixed ethnicity children being over-represented within children's social care system, and that is a continued priority on how to address that, particularly when we're seeing that referrals from schools predominantly were finding that children from black and global majority communities are the highest reasons for them being referred is for abuse and neglect, which is higher than any other ethnic group. So there's work to be done there that's been addressed. There's a big section around the contextual safeguarding and talks around our children who were missing from care and missing from home. In total there was 220 children who were reported missing and that was for a total of 1,136 times that they were reported missing. There's a huge, you'll see a section in the report that talks around our response to missing and exploited children and the service of the team that works with them. So any questions, I'm happy to answer. Thank you so much Deborah. Can I take any questions? I just wanted to know of those 913, how many would have any HCP, or for next time, just that there's so many breakdowns. Yeah, we have our disco lead who leads on SEND and you're right to point that out because that is an area I think that should be reflected in the report and I think going forward we'll make sure that that's captured because we constantly needed to be reminded around that particular data. So I will definitely make sure that that's in the report next year. Thank you Nick. Okay, so would that data be available to send in an email before next year? You can have it now. Yeah, brilliant. If you want it now or if you want it in the report next year. Thank you, an email. Yeah, cool. Councillor McLean. Yeah, it's just a short question. Thank you, I thought this was a helpful overview. On page 126.2 it talks about key performance indicators but it doesn't tell us what the key performance indicators are and the data which follows is actually quite descriptive data that's not necessarily related. So it's really for next time it would be useful for us to know what those KPIs are and what the outcomes of them are and apologies if I've missed it later in the report. Sorry, which page did you say? Page 126.2, excuse me. There's a mention that performance management can use key performance indicators. There's also some ambiguity about how useful KPIs are in the sense of their… Yeah, so key performance indicators are the timeliness of visits, assessment timescales, how many children ended a plan, how many children looked after. So it refers to data that submitted to the DFE so it's quite a generic term and obviously we probably need to kind of highlight that in a bit better context for understanding but that's probably social work assumption that everybody knows what key performance is. Yeah, I understand what they are but I don't know what your specific KPIs are and how you've measured against them. So it would be useful for us to see what your assessment is at the end of that process. Yeah, yeah. We can bring that, I'm just thinking what we're taking safely. It's in our quarterly scrutiny reports. We'll bring elements of that but we also have, when we go to the safeguarding assurance meeting, we take an excerpt out of the… The local information performance report. That's the one which gives all of those, all of those indicators which there are lots of them which we have to report in but maybe that would be useful to see. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good idea, yeah. Thanks, Jo. Thank you, Hannah. Councillor Inester and then Councillor Zafi. So, thank you, Jo. First question is on bullet points 6.35 and 6.36 which look at the high proportion of contacts from police are for children from a black ethnic group compared to contacts from other agencies. And then it lists three bullet points of kind of what the findings were. 6.36 goes on to say following these findings and other services are taking action to reduce the disproportionality. This includes work with our partners but it doesn't go into explicit detail of what that work is. It'd be great to hear that. And it also goes on to mention that the findings were shared at the ISCP away day. And again, I think it might be useful to have those slides or whatever shared with us as well to have an idea. Yeah, so the disproportionality is all part of the whole challenging inequality agenda because this is where a lot of that was born through the data provided this kind of information around referrals and police and using that as a priority area for focus. So, it's part of that ongoing work that's addressed within the ISCP objectives that was just shared today that's a thread that runs through all of the partner agencies around and that's including police around do you understand this data, what are you doing about it because these are agencies that are referring into children services. And so, it's kind of like holding the mirror up really around what's happening within your organisation which goes back to Hannah's point about, Councillor Hannah, sorry, around the make up of staff and the cultural competency because that's the work that we're doing and obviously as a council looking at child friendliness and equity and inclusion, it's all part of that same work that we're doing right across the piece. Sorry, the other part of your question? No, it was just, sorry. Wanting, needing to kind of have a bit more context. I guess when writing this report, I guess it's around how to kind of provide succinct information because this is drawn from a kind of much deeper data that we have and so, like John says, maybe it might be really good to share our, it's LPIR which is our local performance information which can give everybody that kind of, alongside this, you could have the local data that then you can kind of cross reference and look deeper into because I think that might be helpful if you want that level of detail, we've definitely got it but it's about how I've sort of elicited out the areas that I think might be kind of interested but if you want more, there's plenty, we can definitely share that. And we have a dashboard as well which is amazing, I don't know if everybody can access it but it would be great if you could see that because it's quite live and you can kind of really go where you want to go to see what you want to see and I think that would be great if you could access that. Thank you, Deborah. Councillor Chincotona? Yeah, thank you. I'm just looking at 6.35 and it's really concerning, the data on 6.35 that the higher proportion of contacts from police are from children from black and ethnic groups compared to contacts from other agencies. I mean, is there a pattern that you see in this sort of practice or is there anything that we can sort of like maybe address and try and look at the root, the core and see if we can actually look at the problem at the start, listen to the children at the start before they get to this stage? Yeah, I mean that's why it's in there because it's very hard to ignore, isn't it? It's there. I think Alan's suggestion about one of our designated safeguarding partners which is the police would be really good to come here and have this kind of scrutiny conversation with them because this is our reporting of their data for our children so this is something that we are challenging the police as well. Are you referring to the referrals that have come in from police? Yeah, so that's where I think that that challenge to them, this is what we do for the safeguarding partnership but this is children's scrutiny as well. Again, it's around what is the Met doing because it's the police, it's not us and it's that continued challenge so that's quite deliberately placed there. Thank you for that. It's just that we know, unfortunately, and maybe people may not agree with me here, but there is disproportionate institutionalised racism and that's why it would be really important and actually interesting to hear the police perspective on this because it just looks really disproportional and it raises the question of but why are these children coming to the attention of the police? I mean is there something that we could do going back to the training, going back to providing more facilities for parents and families and for children to actually raise their voice as well, to be heard and to be seen? So, yeah, I really look forward to scrutinising this. I agree, yeah, because we've got data on police protection that's overwhelmingly happiness to black children from the global majority. Again, it's around how are you saying to police what are you doing about it? Yeah, to Deborah's point, it's the police that we need to kind of question but Tanya, did you want to come in? Yeah, just to follow on from what the Councillor says but also what Alan was saying, it might be helpful if, because you do receive the annual business report, annual report every year, so when the item comes, it's not just the local authority safeguarding partner but it would also be pertinent for the police safeguarding partner and the health safeguarding partner to also be here because some of the questions that you have actually relate to bits in their area, so you'll be perfectly reasonable to actually ask them to attend scrutiny when you have that item too. Thanks for that reminder because can we kind of action that so ahead of next year we invite all three partners when this item comes next? It's nine o'clock, so I am conscious. Do we have any questions? Oh, yeah. So really interesting, I mean really useful loads and loads of data. I was just wondering whether or not each year when we look at this, whether or not we look at the previous year as well, so what I found difficult with this was it was just like it's really useful and there's loads of data but I didn't really see like the recommendations kind of come out of it and then also there are a couple of ones like 6.13 like placements for children looked after becoming more difficult to find and there's a national shortage. Well, that was kind of more a statement than actually kind of any data and I would have liked to have seen what is the recommendation. So I think I was just like querying kind of like the report itself like is it just meant to be a list of data or was there anything kind of meaningful that we were going to do with it afterwards? Because I know some of it crosses over in the corporate parenting board but I think it would be useful if even some of what is in that that's relevant to this item is kind of included because just on Claire's point around the child protection plans as well, it would be good to really have more granular data because we've seen a repeat in child protection plans and that doesn't always mean that's a bad thing because things change over the course of a period of certain years but it would be good to see if there have been repeat plans within a few months or within a few years then you could really understand okay this is a concern because of X so even that sort of data would be really helpful which I'm sure you have. Yeah because a repeat plan could be at any period, it could be ten years ago, it could be two years ago so our most recent auditing found that most of our children who were on repeat plans it was over two years plus, most of them. So yes we can have, I've got so much data, there's so much data the report could have been 50 pages but I think I'll take your point around the context because I think what previous years I've had in brackets what it was the year before and do that comparison and so we can kind of just make it a bit more live and just give you a bit more comparative data. What would actually be kind of useful. Yeah that's not a problem because yeah definitely. Thank you. Is there any questions from members of the public? Yeah go ahead. Hi I just wanted to ask about one of the statements made on page 124, that's point 6.35. It was just below the statement made about black young people referred to, referred by schools are more likely to be referred etc. It's the second bullet point, it took on average around 150 days longer for an Islington child of mixed ethnicity to move in with their adoptive family after they became looked after compared to white British children. I just wanted to ask, I just wanted to learn a little bit more about that statistic. So is it, which years are, is this average based off of, because it says, is this consistent with the findings of the 2000 study, is it based on a more recent set of data or? So this is based on the period that covers this report and on average, sadly, children who are black or mixed heritage or from global majority compared to their white peers, it takes longer for them to be adopted and that's for a whole raft of reasons. So currently we have an arrangement with a North London adoption agency which we share with four other local authorities and we have what's known as the Black Adoption Project, which is a project that's focusing on identifying more black and Asian, mainly black and mixed parentage carers because it's not, we don't actually have a problem with Asian adopters, it's black adopters. So it's an area that our black children are experiencing that disadvantage because it's so difficult to find placements for them but there's work that's underway to try and address that to raise the kind of understanding about adoption, take away the kind of myths that you have to be wealthy and have a big house and loads of money. It's just what if you've got, you're a family and you want to love a child and there's so many different types of adoption. So it's trying to get that message across because I think there's a very kind of Eurocentric idea about what adoption is and it's around how can we promote a much more diverse understanding that anybody can adopt and we're working on that but sadly that's what the data's telling us and we've got quite a lot of work to do. Thank you Deborah, did you have a follow on question to that? No, thank you. If there are no further questions, can I ask members to note the report? Thank you. We will now move on to our final item this evening, the Youth Justice Service Inspection Report. I don't know if Curtis, are you presenting this report? Yes it is, thank you Councillor Lozadamir. I will be brief because I know it's already gone past nine o'clock. So we were last inspected by HMIP Inspector of Probation back in 2014 and the outcome is not very good at all. So they re-inspected us a year later and again the outcome is very poor, unfortunately. So that led to us being placed on high priority status by the Youth Justice Board. At that time as well we had the highest custody rates, re-offending rates and first time entrance rates in the country as well, which was not good for our young people. So we are very pleased that when the HMIP came in, in May of this year, that things changed dramatically and substantially, which I'll go into in a minute. But it's really important just to say that young people are often demonised in the press and in the media if they are young offenders. One of the things we did a few years ago was to carry out a review of our top 25 most prolific offenders in the borough who were open to the Youth Justice Service at various points. And what we found is that most of those young people had witnessed or experienced domestic abuse, there was parental substance misuse, parental mental health issues, SEND and neurodiversity needs, bullying and multiple school moves. That's not relevant to all of the children but for the majority of them. So it's just really important to give that context in relation to this report. So as I said, we were inspected back in May. There are a number of areas that the inspectors judge us against. The first is organisational delivery. The second is court disposals where a young person has been to court and has received a youth rehabilitation order or a referral order. And the third element is out of court disposals which is a stage before even a preventative type disposal and resettlement is the final area. We're really pleased that we received a score of 34 out of 36 which is the highest in London. Most London authorities have been inspected. The only other two that received outstanding were Camden and Hammerson-Fullam who received 31 out of 36. We received 34 out of 36. This is also the third highest score in the country as well because only two local authorities received 36 out of 36 which was Brighton and Hove and East Ryde in Yorkshire. So we're really pleased that we were given outstanding cross organisational delivery and court disposals, two goods and two outstandings for out of court disposals and outstanding for resettlement. So in terms of organisational delivery, I mean I won't go into lots of detail because I'm sure you've read your report anyway and it speaks for itself but we're really pleased that the inspectors said that our vision and strategy were developed in collaboration with the wider service and the partnership and that we are aspirational and that we have a high value base in relation to the work that we deliver for our children and young people, that we are child-focused and trauma-informed in approach. Our management board was praised as shared by Councillor Safi Ngongo. We have partners of the appropriate seniority who attend consistently and advocate for children and young people. They also appraised our work with other strategic partners and the way that we look after the health needs of our children and young people. We're really pleased about the feedback we received in relation to our staff, the fact that they are passionate, dedicated and invested in the children, parents, carers and victims as well because the victims' work is absolutely essential. Their work with children's social care. Deborah's team was also noted as being impressive, which we're really pleased about. It was really good as well that they mentioned our universal offer because that obviously prevents any further escalation up the hierarchy of need. So we're really pleased about that. It's also really important to note that the children and young people were spoken to, some of them, as part of this. There was a session at South Box Youth Hub where one of the inspectors who leads on participation went and spoke to a number of young people who gave really positive feedback about the quality of service that they receive. Some children, young people and parents, carers were also sent text messages and a survey about the quality of service that they received and most of the children gave the Youth Justice Service nine or ten out of ten and you can see the qualitative feedback there. The inspectors praised our response to diversity because as we know, children from black and minoritised communities are over-represented in the youth justice system and in our youth justice service as well. We have an anti-racist policy and a commitment to anti-racist, anti-oppressive and anti-discrimination practice, which the inspectors praised. And in terms of court disposals, they were really pleased with our assessments for work that we do in partnership with other services to support our children and young people. Plans, they felt, were of a very high standard, very collaborative. The quality of the interventions, the delivery of the interventions, the reviewing of those interventions in conjunction with the children, young people, their parents, carers and other professionals were rated highly as were our court disposals, which I won't go into in lots of detail. Lastly, I'll just say that in terms of resettlement, this is a score obviously that we received as outstanding too, but if we had received inadequate or it requires improvement, then we wouldn't have been able to get outstanding overall if we hadn't done well in the resettlement element. They were really pleased about how we support children and young people who have been remanded in custody and those children and young people who are coming out of custody. We ensure that they have good quality and adequate housing, but we place them in education, training and employment when we look after their health needs, so that was praised as well. So we're really pleased we received outstanding in relation to that as well. We were asked to complete an action plan, which every local authority has to complete following the inspection. Thankfully, we only received four recommendations, and you can see the action plan in your pack that Theo sent out. So we have outlined what we're going to be doing in relation to those recommendations. Some of them are in our control, but there are a couple which aren't necessarily. One of those recommendations is in relation to Outcome 22, which is actually a decision that's resting and it comes with the Home Office at the moment, so that's something that we can't necessarily progress until the Home Office give approval for that to be implemented. But we will review the action plan at regular intervals at our Youth Justice Service Management Board. And that's the summary. Thank you for that really helpful summary, because I know some of the language in the report is like, Oh, I don't understand what that means. So thank you, and congratulations on the outstanding. And it is relevant, the score, that it fall out of facing. So thank you for that. Just before I take questions, I did want to say I did know, actually, one of the things that stood out to me was the staff, and it kind of was really conveyed that the staff were really passionate. And I think for Islington staff to not even to look at the young people and see that they came from a family of domestic violence and to have that approach was really nice to see. So I'll open up the floor to questions. Paul? I just got a couple of remarks about what the period that we've just come through, and it's a long period, 10, 12 years, has been like. I've read this inspection report alongside the 2016 inspection report, and it's a sobering experience. It's also a disappointing reminder because, indeed, former Councillor Joe Coluri and I were the lead members at the time, and we took quite a grilling on the 2016 inspection because back then we had one of the highest -- I think we had the highest custody rate for young people anywhere in the country. Now we're around about a half the London average. The 2016 inspection noted we had a reoffending rate amongst young people of 52%, and, in fact, in the couple of years afterwards it went even higher, and now it's around about 30%. So job not done, but the improvement is on a really striking scale. And back then, as we went up to the 2016 inspection, the authority, the council, had adopted a youth crime strategy with plans in place. The 2016 inspection is quite withering about that. It said it's all very well, having great plans about turning off the tap, and you're not equipped to actually deliver any of this stuff. Tactically, our partnerships were -- we weren't working with the police. Our yoss was really failing badly. In the 2016 report there was an absolutely chilling quote from a member of staff who said it's not that we're risk-averse, it's we're risk-unaware. And that 2016 report just spelt out a staggering range of problems. There was a culture of denial about young people being both victims and those committing crimes. That was in the police. It was in the local authority here in the town hall. There was a denial that we even had a gang problem in the run-up to this inspection, the 2016 inspection report. What has happened since then is phenomenal. We started off with an integrated gangs unit. We started the really deep understanding of early intervention and prevention rather than simply enforcement against young people committing crimes. We identified young people at risk. We came to the understanding of what was the causes of criminality, particularly trauma experience, family conflict, poor mental health. We've seen, I think, between that 2016 inspection and today, a fundamental transformation. And for parents in this borough, is it a reassurance? Yes, I hope it is. In the early hours of today, a 16-year-old boy, his name is Diante, perished on the edge of the Eilethorn Estate from stab wounds and a motorcycle crash. So the problem has not been fixed. It's still lurking in the background. But the transformation in our approach to reducing crime has been really, really breathtaking. And it's a credit to everybody over those years, particularly the last five, six years, who have achieved this. This report really speaks to an extraordinary turnaround in Islington. Well done to all of those. It's been a long haul, but we're getting there. Yes. Thank you. Suzy, did you want to... Yeah, I'm just sort of tying in the agenda items two, three and four, because if I'm looking at page 178 and this committee's looking at persistent absence and attendance, we're going to speak to the Youth Justice Service. And it says here that children are attending school less than 90% of the time. But then when I flick back to page 122 at 6.18, it says the average attendance of those open to the youth justice system was under 45%. And I go back further to when we talked on page 54 about elective home education and off-roling, and you said some of these children need to be in school. I mean, are these three things, am I just putting them together in my head or are they all joined up in some way? Yeah, thanks very much for that. Yeah, we recognise that we need to do more in relation to those children who are persistent in the absence or who are at risk of school exclusions or who have special educational needs and disabilities. We do have a really rich offer for those children in the Youth Justice Service. We have an education psychologist. We have a monthly education panel which tracks all of those children who we are concerned about, those children who have got low levels of attendance, those children who have received suspensions or permanent exclusions. They are tracked and monitored. In conjunction, we have our education department so that we have a really strong wraparound service and offer in place for them. So we're on top of the cohorts of children, but some of these children, as I said earlier, have really complex needs. These are some of the most vulnerable children. So, you know, sometimes they have dropped out of school or they've been bullied or there are other problems going on at home which makes it really difficult for them to attend school and education or establishments regularly. But we are making sure that we do as much as we can for them in a way. But I think your point is a point well made. We definitely have to do more. It's something that the inspectors picked up on as well, particularly in relation to alternative provision where we do have a relatively high number of children placed. But sometimes those children have to be placed in AP because they can't cope or thrive in a mainstream setting. So, yeah, as I said, it's something that we're monitoring really robustly. But we need to do more, you're right. We don't want them in the youth justice service in the first place because if they're not in school, that's that prevention, that work around preventing exclusion in the first place because if they're not in school, then they're more vulnerable and at risk of being exploited and getting involved in crimes and arrested by the police. So, it's around how do we prevent that exclusion in the first place because the trajectory isn't a positive one for them if they're not in school or they're not receiving an education. By the time they get to youth justice, yes, there's a really good offer, but what we want is to try and avoid them even being out of school in the first place. Do youth justice work with the individual schools that the young people attend or are they involved in the decision to send them to AP or which AP? Do they carry on that communication with those providers? They've got all the ed psych services and all that, which is brilliant, but do they work hands-on with the schools as well? Absolutely, yeah. The youth justice worker will work in collaboration with the schools to ensure that they are on top of the child's needs, that they can advocate for that child, and it will be part of the child's care plan or intervention plan as well to be integrating them into school or to increase their school attendance or to reduce their persistent absence rate. So, it's part of the overall package that that worker will be providing and delivering to that child. So, absolutely, working with the schools is absolutely essential. Some of our workers go out to see our children in their school environment in terms of alternative provision, you know, they're placed in. And, yeah, with parents as well, absolutely. So, it's a key part of the work. Thank you, Curtis. Just on that, because you mentioned the AP. So, I was looking for this online, and the latest Islington AP document that you can find is from 2015 to 2016, and I know other parents whose children are being sent to AP and they're looking for this document, and they've been told that it can't be shared with parents. They should go to school. So, is that true or can we have an oversight of what sort of APs children in Islington are being sent to? I'm not aware of the fact that parents have not been able to have access to that document. So, I think that's something we need to look into. But a lot of the children open to the justice system are placed at New River College, which is a very, you know, good AP unit, but there are other AP providers as well that we have children placed in. But I think that it's very important for us to make sure that document is up to date if it's not. [inaudible] Absolutely. Yeah, you can give us that information on why we can't access it. Yeah, we'll look into that. Definitely we'll speak to our colleagues in education. So, make sure that document is available. Nick? Very briefly. Just thinking about the exclusion project in the action plan. Are you able to work with those schools that have the highest rates of exclusion to ensure that they are putting into place decent pastoral care to prevent that high exclusion rate happening in the first place? Because I think that more than anything will be driving these children going to ARPs and then falling out of education. And I'm sure that there are other schools whose provision isn't as good as others. Yeah, absolutely really important point. We are aware of our schools who are excluding our children from spending them at higher rates than other schools. We're working with them and we have an action plan in place. There's a lot of quite intensive work that's taking place with those schools to ensure that their rates continue to fall. And as I said earlier on, we are acting as advocates as well for our children so that they don't get excluded. There's a lot of pre-exclusion work that takes place. Patrol is actually at risk of being excluded. A lot of pre-exclusion work takes place with our youth justice officers, our target youth support officers, our social workers in Deborah's area, you know, that often prevent children from being excluded in the first place. But there's more to do and absolutely, as you say, identifying those schools and working with them is absolutely essential and that's what we will continue to do. Tanya, did you want to come in before I take the next question? Yeah, I mean, I think, so I sit on Vice Chair of the Citation of Directors of Children's Services Standards Performance Inspection Committee and the thing about this particular inspection is that it is more intensive than even our inspections into children's social care. So to get the judgement that we've got through this inspection is not just phenomenal, it's not just amazing, but it's absolutely brilliant. My colleague is really humble here in terms of codes because ever since he's come into the local authority, in terms of the turnaround and the intensive work that he's done with staff, with members, with parents, with carers, with different people who have come in and out of the council has been absolutely brilliant. I can't actually, you know, we can't even go into the depth of work that he's actually had to do to really, really turn the youth justice system, I'd say, around including work with partners, et cetera. And I think also for the staff as well, they've done so much work and given so much and have been so passionate in terms of the outcome that we've now got in terms of our youth justice service. So it would be really great if the committee could send even just a note of congratulations to them in response to that. But also to Curtis because he's actually done something that has been incredible and actually other ADs and directors across London have actually commented on that. I think we shouldn't underestimate how much he's put into where we are now compared to where we are in 2016. Thank you for that, Tanya, because I'm sure Curtis is probably being too humble and doesn't want to toot his own horn. But no, thank you. And also I do want to say our youth services and that relationship with the youth hubs and the council because we don't really capture the work that the youth centres do to even prevent young people coming to the youth justice service. So I think that work and that relationship is really crucial. I'm going to take final questions from Councillor Quick and if you could just keep it to one question, that would be great. It's great that you've got this working plan with mainstream schools and to try and prevent exclusions. What about the alternative provisions? When children are being excluded they end up in alternative provisions and we know that in alternative provisions there are exclusions as well or there are unofficial exclusions which is off rolling. So how do you monitor that and what's your working plan with them? Can I just say before you answer if that's a question because it is about the youth justice service report so if you don't have that information please feel free to provide that offline and then you can copy me into... Thanks Councillor, yeah absolutely. It's actually in the action plan our response in terms of the youth justice service specifically. I mean it's part of a wider issue as well obviously but in terms of the youth justice service what we're doing is contained within the action plan and so I think that we will be reporting to the Youth Justice Service Management Board which is our governance board for youth crime, seriously violence and knife crime across the borough but there are some pieces of work that are taking place to deal with that issue. So it's time to push you to the action plan but if you need any further information I'm more than happy to discuss it with you or send you more information about what we're doing including the internal audit that's taking place in relation to children who are open to youth justice service and who are placed in AP as well that will involve qualitative and quantitative work. I think the action plan will probably be what we're looking for because it will probably include the information that's being... I wanted to know what happens to the children, what action plans they've got and alternative provisions when those children are excluded from the alternative provisions. Okay we can provide that information to you. I mean if a child is excluded from alternative provision you know we would need to make sure that they still receive education because that's their legal entitlement so we definitely wouldn't leave them alone. What I was referring to was the action plan within the documentation because there's an action plan which is responding to the recommendations that inspectors have made so it does cover what we're doing in relation to AP in there but I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that. I think what Ilkay's challenge is around you know there is a change from Nick's question around young people who are being excluded from school and we know disproportionately they come from a number of schools and that they then can go to AP. We know that New River College is one of but I think part of our challenge is how do we broaden that offer so it's not just a one stop shop as such and then there's what happens after because you know let's not forget why is there a New River College or you know in language PRU for some of our most vulnerable young people you know there are probably about 120 young people there and therefore tenders is not going to be as you want it to be at 90-95% you know they're complex and then when they go out of that system there can be reasons for that either they can't manage their behaviour, they decide not to come or parents then decide that they want an alternative off-site education education other than at school so there are a number of routes that you know go on but it is an extreme challenge when you've got some of those most young complex and the case that Paul referred to from last night that young person you look at the chronology for a number of years being in and out of school and that pathway is something again you can study in terms of the learning or the opportunities but the work that was done with the parents was quite concentrated and it's complex, it really is a complex one it's not an easy one just say that's the answer. Thank you John and I know as we were discussing in the pre-make because we are obviously really passionate about those who are in alternative provisions that aren't going to, who are persistently absent from the alternative provisions so they're not receiving an education and similar to child X in the safeguarding report what that outcome looked like but I think if we could probably have a meeting outside of scrutiny to really unpick some of that I think would be really beneficial to all of us because I understand it might not be... Broaden the sort of PID that actually you're looking at and focusing on secondary exclusion, sorry attendance which is poor, 12,000 kids go to secondary school but then we're also saying and I think that we're getting a lot of questions about alternative provision and New River College that broadening that scope I think therefore is what we're saying needs to happen I think then that encompasses probably the out of meeting let's have a look at that because I think we've had a number of recurring questions about alternative provision we've seen it crop up in Curtis's, we knew it was going to come so we did that report, it was recommended there so it feels like there are some opportunities there to broaden that study. Absolutely because I am conscious that it might just land on Curtis but it isn't overall so that was why I just wanted to clarify but glad that is being broadened because I think there was a misunderstanding previously and I think our concern when we had the pre-mate earlier is that if you're only looking at attendance in mainstream schools we all know that actually if there are issues there it could lead to kind of proof so actually you can't really look at, you have to look at the two together but actually what we didn't want to do is we didn't want to make it the main focus but you know one can lead to the other so yeah, thank you. Thank you, any other questions? Thank you, just to say well done, absolutely amazing in terms of the youth justice and the report, just bringing it back to that if I can. But just going back to hearing the story of what Councillor Conroy said obviously amazing work from staff but the council strategically have invested a lot of money in youth service provision, only in terms of the budget dedicating hundreds of thousands of pounds so I guess my concern is the sustainability that's been built in now and the resilience because there's still financial pressures is the service spring fenced, is it part of core spending essentially is it vulnerable to changes with the pressures that are coming down the line? So of course we know the financial challenges that are out there in councils the guardianship of members over a number of years has been exemplary the investment in youth services has been second to none and I always say this, not just here, but our members are really resident focused young people focused and have prioritised investment in those services rather than some more maverick episodes that we've heard of in other places protecting those services having been in some of the conversations with members that is first and foremost, there were some tricky decisions I guess over the next few years about decisions where you protect by not trying to invest in the prevention youth services, children's social care or stripping away early help will come back to bite because it will only then put excessive costs on the statutory part of the system I always say we are well invested but it then takes some of that protecting to do that but what I would say is we're mindful, Curt's has a small team they're agile, they're loyal, they're stable, they're out there tonight in the Elthorn Estate doing the detached work, they're committed and that's an ethos and a culture that's been cultivated I know Goldshin, you've been to LIFT recently as part of that PID, it's excellent but we have other youth hubs that do a number of those for us it's about how do we protect, how do we prioritise we have to sometimes give members proposals, we don't like them members then have the really tricky decisions about what they decide to prioritise but what we do know is that our members prioritise youth, young people and some of the most vulnerable people in our society in Islington and we'll do our best to make the pound stretch as far as we can the commissions to stretch as far as we can but it's not easy for anyone but a long way at last that we can continue to do what we do Thank you John, thank you for that question Any questions from the members of the public on this item? No, thank you If there are no further questions can we note this report? Thank you, thank you everyone, if there are no urgent matters or questions regarding the work programme then I'll bring this meeting to a close Thank you all, have a good night and have a safe journey home [BLANK_AUDIO]