This meeting of Hackney Council's Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission was scheduled to include updates on a range of financial and safeguarding matters affecting children's services in Hackney. It also included a review of the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership's annual report and a scheduled update on unregistered educational settings in Hackney.

City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership Annual Report

The meeting report pack included the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) annual report for 2023/24, which details child safeguarding activity in Hackney. The report included a section about the new statutory requirements introduced in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023, and in particular changes around the role of the Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews. The report's foreword, written by the CHSCP's Independent Child Safeguarding Commissioner, Jim Gamble QPM, says:

Critically, this new guidance further dilutes independent insight, oversight and decision-making (particularly around Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews), removes autonomy and mandates roles and functions that undermine the way we have successfully operated over the last decade and more. It also places unrealistic expectations on statutory leads, expecting them to shoulder a broader array of responsibilities currently fulfilled by chairs who are independent of statutory partners.

The report included a summary of the CHSCP's progress against its six priorities for the year. These priorities included:

1. The Health & Stability of the Safeguarding Workforce
2. Anti-Racist Practice
3. The Voice of Children and Young People
4. Getting the Basics Right
5. The Appetite to Learn
6. Making the Invisible Visible

The report included a snapshot of safeguarding activity in Hackney, saying that 54,352 children aged under 18 live in the borough, which is approximately 21% of the population. It also provided details of safeguarding activity within a number of organisations involved in safeguarding children, including:

• Hackney Children & Families Service
• The Metropolitan Police Service
• NHS North East London
• Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
• East London NHS Foundation Trust
• Public Health
• CAFCASS
• Probation Services
• London Fire Brigade

The report also covered the activity of the City Safer Workforce and Hackney Safer Workforce teams, who manage allegations made against people who work with children. It provided details of the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) referral process, saying:

Once contact has been made with the LADO service, it will result in one of the five following actions being taken:

• The contact/referral is managed by a LADO in another local authority
• A consultation takes place where the matter is discussed between the referrer and the LADO to decide on what action to take next.
• An evaluation meeting is held when the contact provides information that would suggest there is potential risk in the person’s employment but would require further information before the decision is made that LADO oversight or an investigation is required.
• Guidance and oversight are offered by the LADO when an employer is completing an internal investigation.
• An Allegations against Staff and Volunteers (ASV) meeting will be convened when it has been decided by the LADO that the threshold of harm/risk has been met.

The report included a range of key messages for practice, including Safeguarding First, Context, Curiosity, and Challenge. It concluded with details of the CHSCP's priorities for 2024/25, which are:

1. The Health & Stability of the Safeguarding Workforce
2. Anti-Racist Practice
3. Children and Young People
4. Getting the Basics Right
5. The Appetite to Learn
6. Making the Invisible Visible

Budget Monitoring - Children & Education

The meeting report pack also included a report detailing in-year budgets for Children and Education services for 2024/25.

Children and Families Services (CFS)

The report said that Children and Families Services are forecast to overspend by £7.2m. The main areas of overspend are:

• Corporate Parenting (£3.1m)
• Disabled Children Services (£1.5m)
• Family Intervention Support Services (£1.1m)
• Looked After Children & Leaving Care Services (£0.5m)
• The Directorate Management Team (£0.5m)
• Access and Assessment (£0.2m)
• Young Hackney (£0.2m)
• Safeguarding & Quality Assurance (£0.1m)

The report said that the overspend in Corporate Parenting was driven by an increase in the profile of placements linked to the complexity of care for children and young people. It provided details of the average weekly unit costs for different types of placements for looked after children:

The report said the forecast overspend in the Disabled Children Service primarily relates to the demand in home care services. The Family Intervention Support Services overspend was said to be related to over established posts and agency staff, as well as high spend in LAC incidental and expert assessment costs in the Children in Need service. The report said that the Access and Assessment and Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub overspend was primarily related to increased staffing costs from over established roles and agency staff. The Looked After Children & Leaving Care services overspend was said to be mainly due to staffing over established posts and agency staff as well as commissioning costs in both LAC and Leaving care services. The report explained that the overspend in Young Hackney was in part because Public Health funding for the Substance Misuse and Health & Wellbeing services [had] remained fixed since 2019/20, whilst costs have increased from inflation and service demands over the past four years. The Directorate Management Team overspend was said to relate in part to undelivered savings in 2024/25 from the Social Care Review restructure as this will be implemented later than planned in the financial year.

Hackney Education (HE)

Hackney Education was forecast to overspend by £1.846m on the general fund and by £1.647m on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) after the use of reserves. The overspend on the general fund was said to include the increase in our EHCP costs for the necessary staffing support needed within the assessment of our EHCPs, including Education Psychologists. This is mainly caused by staff over the establishment in order to cope with the demand led nature of this service. The report also explained that the SEND Transport Service was continuing to experience budgetary pressures relating to home to school transport for children with SEND. The overspend within the DSG was said to be driven by the continuing increase in recent years of children and young people with Education and Health Care Plans (EHCPs) and in need of access to specialist provision, on some occasions requiring out of Borough placements in non-maintained sector specialist provision.

Savings

The report pack included details of planned savings in Children’s Services and Education. The report said that £700k was planned to be saved through the consolidation of the Children, Education and Health commissioning functions which will allow more effective market engagement and more effective joint commissioning. It also explained that £750k was to be saved through a review of the Children and Families staffing structure. Other planned savings are:

• Children's Centres: £1,100k
• SEN Transport: £250k
• Young Hackney: £500k

Risks

The report explained that one of the main risks facing the directorate is the cost of living and fuel price crisis, and the potential impact that it will have on the cost of service delivery going forward. The report said that another risk was uncertainty around the DSG high needs deficit and the treatment of any deficit post 2025/26, explaining that the brought forward SEND deficit in 2024/25 was £19.1m and that based on the current forecast this will increase to circa £20.7m at the end of 2024/25.

Management Actions to reduce the overspend

The report explained that for CFS, management actions included:

• reductions in the number of high cost placements (£0.5m)
• review of the top 30 high cost placements (£0.3m)
• a Foster First Approach (£0.5m)
• review of agency spend through maximising permanent recruitment and greater challenge through the workforce development board (£0.2m)

For Hackney Education, the report said that the focus of cost reduction measures this year will be through further development of in-borough SEND provision, that will allow more children with SEND to have their needs met in local provision, often mainstream settings with access to specialist provision through the work of additional resource based provision (ARP).

Children’s Centres Update

Mayor Philip Glanville was scheduled to provide a brief verbal update on Children’s Centres in Hackney. This follows a public consultation on proposals to remodel provision of childcare through children's centres, and Hackney Council agreeing to settle by consent a legal challenge brought against those proposals.

Unregistered Educational Settings

The meeting report pack included a scheduled update on unregistered educational settings in Hackney. This follows a 2017/18 review of these settings by the commission. It is not clear what was to be discussed during this update, but the report pack says:

In the absence of new primary legislation, attempts by agencies and local partners to establish regulatory (planning, fire regulation, health and safety) and safeguarding oversight of children that attend UES have proved challenging.

Given the ongoing safeguarding risks to children, the Commission retains regular oversight of this issue within its work programme.

The report pack for the meeting also included the commission's work programme for the remainder of the municipal year.