Transcript

and Evacuate the Building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the council's website. Please turn your microphones on when speaking and remember to turn it off when you have finished. To make sure you can 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 Tappin, Church of England Diocese Rep. Councillor Saika Pandor, St. Mary's and St. James's Ward. Councillor Rosaline Ogunro, St. Peter's and Canal Site. Councillor Hannah McHugh, St. Mary's and St. James Ward. Mary Clement, representing the Westminster Diocese. Councillor Micheline Safi-Ngongo, Leads Member for Children, Young People and Families. Councillor Claire Samet for Holloway. Susie Graves, Parent Governor, Representative for Secondary Schools. Ilkaychenka Erna, Lake-Oppwood. Sophie McNeil, Parent Governor, Representative for Primary Schools. Councillor Ness, Degorovas Armstrong for Highbury Ward. John, did you want to start with the introductions? Good evening, John Abbey, Director of Children's Services. Tan Townsend, Head of Strategic Programs and Strategy. Angel Strachan, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at Place2Be. Hi, Shanice Britton, one of the area managers at Place2Be. Hi, good evening, Curtis Ashton, Director for Young Islington. Good evening, everyone. Deborah Idris, Director for Safeguarding and Family Support. Hi, I'm Victoria Lawson. I'm the Chief Exec. I've just popped in to have a sit down. It's all right, I've got one. Oh, you've got one. Oh, sorry, I thought we passed in a little. Sorry. Good evening, everyone. I'm Jill Sassini. I'm the Principal Educational Psychologist. Hi, everyone. I'm Katie Wood, and I'm the Attendance Sleeper at Islington. Hello, everybody. I'm Candy Holder, Assistant Director for Inclusion. Good evening, everyone. Paul Senior, Interim Director of Learning and Achievement, London Borough of Islington. Thank you. Do we have any apologies for absence? And we don't have any substitute members. Do members have any interest to declare? Okay, we move on to the minutes of the previous meeting. Subject to any amendments that members wish to make through me or the Clerk, can we agree the minutes of the meeting held on Monday, 25th of November? Thank you. We now move on to the Chair's Report. Just in terms of, yeah, my Chair's Report since the last meeting, we've had two evidence-gathering sessions, one with Brandon Centre and one with the Virtual School that have been really, really insightful. I just want to thank members. We've discussed some of the feedback from that in the pre-meet, but, yeah, look forward to them being in the recommendations, but they were actually really insightful. Just to say, for the purpose of ensuring that this committee has enough time to fulfil its business this evening, I'll be using my Chair's discretion to only take one question from the public for each item, aside from the first. If there are any questions regarding what the committee has heard from its guest speaker on the first item this evening, I would ask that it's submitted in writing, and we will do our best to contact places to be and then respond to your questions. I am aware there is a pre-existing public question still awaiting a response from the previous meeting, and I have been advised that will be answered within 10 working days. So, places to be on attendance today, and we're really looking forward to hearing from them. Can I invite you to give a presentation as part of our evidence gathering? Is the presentation ready? Yeah, I think Angel will be presented. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Yeah, we're both going to be presenting, me and Shanice, today. So, yeah, thank you so much for having us again, and apologies from our regional director, Jackie Vaughan. She's unable to attend, but we're going to be speaking on her behalf. Hence, we've got some notes with us. I hope you don't mind. But, yeah, we've got a presentation for you today. So, a lot of this will obviously be familiar to you, but just kind of set the scene around Place2Be's work on persistent absence and attendance. As we all know, obviously, one in five children across the country are persistently absent from school, so they miss around 10% of their sessions, which is around seven days of absence across a term, so 18 days or two days per month. Now, we all know that obviously missing school has a lot of evidence on the really negative impact that has on many outcomes for children in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as well. And we know there's a lot of different complex psychosocial reasons that drive persistent absence from school, largely mental health difficulties or special educational needs and disabilities, so SEND. We know that sometimes parent or family circumstances are a cause. Similarly, issues at school, so the school's culture or climate, behaviour management strategies, and wider policies that schools might implement that a lot of young people struggle with, as well as the lack of available support for young people, particularly around SEND support, mental health support, wider support that they need that's just not being met in their mainstream settings. And so why is this an issue? Obviously, we all know that persistent absence is a huge issue because when children aren't attending school, they're likely to lose peer connections, they lose a lot of community, they lose access to safety, trusted adults, food, all of these wider things that really benefit a child's development. So it's really important that, where possible, they need to be in school. And like I say, there's a lot of evidence out there around the links between mental health issues and school attendance, but we know that a lot of the policies in place to tackle this aren't working. And so why is that? We think that a lot of the external targets, government guidance, as well as the influence of OSSED, is potentially preventing schools from prioritising wellbeing and belonging. For example, the National Governance Associations, they're a big organisation that represents school governors across the country. Their 2024 survey found that over half of school governors said that OSSED was the single most significant factor in shaping their school's policy and practice. So we think it really should be kind of pupil wellbeing, pupil needs, not an external influence of OSSED and the targets and the drivers that they put on schools. So, like I say, we all know that children who struggle with their mental health are more likely to miss school, but what we're here to do is try and present some solutions to you. And so we do a lot of work with leading academics and researchers, and one of those is the University of Cambridge, and they did some research for us that found that one-to-one counselling from place to be may improve school attendance among persistently absent pupils, particularly at younger ages. So the research that they did analysed data from 7,400 pupils across primary and secondary schools in England, Scotland and Wales, who were supported by place to be with our one-to-one counselling service. We found that that service has the potential to reduce the likelihood of persistent absence by 18.5%. The data shows, like I say, that it could be most effective for primary school-age pupils and children whose parents and carers have no educational qualifications. We also found that of those children who had that one-to-one counselling, they had stronger engagement and enjoyment of school at a follow-up study. Outside of just persistent absence and attendance, we have more research looking at the impact of our service on fixed-term exclusions as well, so suspensions. And we found that for children who had one-to-one counselling who had previously had a suspension, their suspensions reduced from an average of two school weeks to half a school week after counselling. We found that 74%, so three quarters, had fewer suspensions and just over half, so 56%, did not have any further suspensions in the academic year that the counselling took place. So, clearly, our intervention is having a huge impact on children's attendance and experience at school. I'm going to pass over to Shanice now. Hi, everyone. I'm Shanice. As I said, I'm one of the area managers. And we have six schools in the Islington area, so five primary schools and one special needs school. So I'm just going to speak to you a little bit about kind of who we are and what we do for those that aren't aware. So we're a children's mental health charity, and we provide school-based support as well as a training programme for our mental health practitioners. We offer targeted intervention programmes. So we offer, like, group-type interventions, so one called Journey of Hope, which is an eight-week programme that helps children and young people to learn positive coping mechanisms. We have parent partnership work that takes place. So we also have family practitioners based in our team who offer personalised individual parenting training. So that's kind of like a parent and child-led intervention and working on any of those needs that may arise. We also support the school staff as well and support them to manage any concerns that they have for children and kind of just keeping the child's voice at the main front of that targeted work that we do. How did you do that? That's OK. OK. So I'm just going to talk to you about some of the outcomes for Islington in particular for the year 23-24. And as I said, we've got six schools in this area, so kind of just looking at the six schools in Islington, we found that 549 children and young people were supported in our targeted intervention, so we was able to reach out to that many children, whether that be one-to-one work. We have a service called Place to Talk, which is a 15-minute drop-in for children and young people. That parenting support that I mentioned earlier or group intervention. We found that 74% improvement rate according to teachers or parents. So as part of the work we do, we complete an assessment, and in that assessment, there is a strength and difficulties questionnaire which is completed prior and after intervention, and we found that 74% improvement rate. And also we found a 64% improvement rate in classroom learning as well from our interventions. So as Shanice said, obviously we know the massive impacts that we have on children's well-being and children's education, but we also know that our services don't just benefit that individual child, but the wider economic system as well. So to kind of paint the scene, in 2022, Pro Bono Economics did some analysis of our counselling services, in primary schools in particular, and they found that for every £1 invested in that service, we create £8 benefit back to the economy, and this is for a wide range of reasons. So for example, the reduced rates of absence that come from young people after they've had the one-to-one counselling, reduced exclusions, reduced odds of smoking and depression, negative effects that come from that on your health, lower risk of crime, and higher employment prospects and the wages that come from that too. And like I said before, we obviously work with a lot of leading universities, and one of those research projects they did for us showed that our support in schools could reduce referrals to CAMS because we work with children with greater difficulties in that school setting. In education, so outside of the health benefits, we know that obviously poor mental health, like I said before, has a negative impact on children's experience and their attainment, and often that means they've got lower grace than their peers, and so we did some analysis to see whether or not our one-to-one counselling and our support in schools might mitigate that risk, and they found that children who received counselling from place to be did keep pace academically with their peers with similar characteristics, so you can theorise that obviously that support might have offset any of the negative impacts on their grades from having mental health difficulties. And like I said before, there's a strong link between mental health and behaviour, so I think over half of the young people that we work with do exhibit some kind of conduct or behavioural difficulties in school, but like Shanee said, after our support, we see like two-thirds showing fewer problems to their class, their teacher, we see around 63%, 64% showing improved classroom learning, 64% had improved home lives, and 68% had improved friendships, and so we know that the long-term benefit and impact that this support in school has on young people. And so on to the specifically attendance and persistent absence, we're really pleased to see kind of enquiries like this happening that want to tackle the issues of persistent absence in schools and give schools really practical recommendations. And that's something that Placely also tried to set out to do, so last year in the summer we created a roundtable and a coalition of experts across the education, research, health, children's services sector that looked at the barriers that children and families face to attending school as well as solutions that we might be able to give schools to practically implement. And some of those solutions were, one that it kind of goes without saying, but we want children to enjoy school and we want to feel like they're safe and they're positive and they feel nurtured there and they feel included. So the main recommendation that we had was around looking at school cultures and making sure that there's a whole school approach to mental health inclusion that really centres on those issues, and we think that will have a positive impact on attendance as well. We think that means everyone in the school working together to kind of embed that whole school approach, which means obviously influence from governors, influence from screening leaders, leadership, we need training for school staff to understand how to embed that whole school approach. We also need the support of Ofsted. Like I said before, we know they have a really huge impact on school policies and practices and school culture, so we kind of want to get them on board. And we also need to create spaces in schools for enrichment, extracurriculars, and all of these wider services that will make young people actually kind of want to go to school. The next recommendation was around how reforming, how agencies work together. And so as you all probably know, we often see in a lot of areas across the UK a large disconnect between kind of health systems, education systems, local authorities, charities, youth agencies, all of these different agencies who just aren't quite collaborating effectively, so we want to see kind of the government helping these local agencies to collaborate more effectively, backed up with a cross-government strategy that helps tackle the root causes of persistent and severe school absence. Thirdly, from the roundtable event, we heard from lots of different organisations and experts who are doing a lot of really good stuff in schools. That's kind of evidence that it is improving school attendance, and so we want to make sure that those organisations that are evidence to provide good results are being supported effectively so that they can be funded and resourced to reach out to more schools, particularly those working with the more vulnerable communities. Fourthly, a key theme was obviously around earlier identification and support, particularly for families, so we know that obviously a lot of the time schools and families, particularly those who have children who are persistently absent from school and those children who are more vulnerable, a lot of that relationship has just been broken down, so we need to kind of restore that through positive collaboration. We also need to help schools to spot when pupils are at risk of becoming persistently absent or severely absent, and we also need to understand the reasons behind that, so we need better data as well across the board to back this up and be able to track different trends. And then finally, as we've said, there is obviously a really clear link between mental health difficulties, SEND, and school attendance, and we know that when young people are unable to access support or access high-quality support in a timely way, that can really worsen their school experience and increase their likelihood of becoming persistently absent, and so we need both that universal offer in terms of the whole school approach, we also need that targeted support for those young people who do need that extra specialist to care. So among that, we need obviously high-quality SEND support, we need funding to help children with more specialist needs to get the support they need, and ultimately, from Place to Be's perspective, we need that expert mental health support available in every school that's delivered by a qualified mental health practitioner that knows how to work with young people, particularly those most vulnerable young people. Now, the clicker's not working now, but that was everything we had. So yeah, I mean, Jackie's not here, obviously, but if you do have any questions for us, let us know, and we're more than happy to speak to her afterwards or answer anything, but yeah, that's everything we had today, so thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Thank you, Angel. Would we be able to ask just a few questions on the presentation? Yeah, of course. Just to start with, you said you was working in five primary schools and just one special school. I was just wondering... Which ones? Which ones? Or why, yeah, why five specifically? Is it because of, yeah, or why there isn't any, why you're not working in any secondary schools? Just in terms of just how places to be really work in schools and how many children do you then work with in each school? Sure. So obviously, we are a buy-in service, so it's at the school's discretion to buy into our service, so I guess it's about what school prioritises as needs. So that is the only reason that we're in five. We'd love to be in all of the schools in Iceland 10, that would be fantastic. But we are in secondary schools in some of the other surrounding boroughs or loads of them as well. And so your second question? When you are working in a school, is there a specific number of pupils that you work with in terms of what your capacity is? It depends on what type of model the school has. So we have two types of models. We have the mental health practitioner model where it's a trained therapist who offers the one-to-one intervention, so they see the children directly. And we also have the school project manager model who they support our trainees, so we have counsellors on placement, so they're able to see much more children. So it depends on what model the school has brought into to how many children we can outreach. But obviously, there's different elements to what we support. So we've got the one-to-one intervention and also the place to drop in. I can give you some more figures after, just around the specific data in Islington and how much children we reach exactly. That would be great. Thank you. Do members have any questions? I'll take Nick, Hannah and then Mary. Thank you. I'm the head of an inclusive school focused on pupil wellbeing. So if I wanted to have you come in to my school and do one-to-one, how much will it cost per pupil? So as I said about the two models, you'd be buying into the whole model. So I can give you those figures after. I haven't got them on me, but I'd have to kind of break that down in our figures to you. I can send that. Yeah, I could circulate it if you want to send that over and then I'll circulate it over to Nick. Absolutely. Good to know how much it costs. Councillor Maki? Thank you. Great to hear about some of the really fantastic work that's going on here. I just wanted to pick up on this idea of a whole school approach to mental health. How far away do you think the schools you're working with are from this kind of approach and maybe more importantly, what do you think are the hurdles of getting schools to having that kind of inclusive approach that you're describing? Thanks. Yeah, I can speak about the hurdles. So, there is guidance out there that promotes a whole school approach to mental health specifically. So, I think it was 2015 or 2017, I'll double check, when the Demand for Education implemented a whole school approach framework and it was 2015 that was eight key principles that schools could use to create this culture of mental health that was really prioritised throughout the whole school community. Since then, the government initiated a grant for schools to update senior mental health lead training. Again, which gives kind of a designated lead who would help the school to embed that whole school approach throughout the whole school culture as well. I think nationally around 74% of school settings, so schools and colleges, have taken up that grant to implement that training. However, the funding for that training has now come to an end so we kind of don't really know what's going to happen to the remaining 25% or so of schools that don't necessarily have a senior mental health lead. I think in terms of our schools, we'd say that our partner schools who have the place to be practitioner in there, they're obviously much further ahead perhaps than non-partner schools in terms of embedding that whole school approach because the place to be pride ourselves on being the pioneers of that and like we're saying, obviously the one-to-one counselling that we offer is just one of a range of different services that we try and give schools and we think that it's really important that it's not just around going into a school, providing counselling and leaving, it's around working with the whole school community, like the leadership, the governors, the teachers, the parents, young people themselves, to make sure that everybody understands mental health and everybody has the confidence to actually support themselves and each other. Shanice, did you have anything to add to that? Sorry, no, it's too good. Just a quick one, that's helpful, so just to really clarify, which part of, which link of the picture you're describing do you think needs the most emphasis, if you were to say which part of this approach, which people need that support the most in schools to move the dial. Please, can you explain what you mean a little bit more? Yeah, no problem. So I'm hearing you describe having a mental health lead in place, having a culture in which mental health is well recognised, but also you list here inclusion, enrichment, anti-bullying, and there's lots of different aspects, so I'm interested in your impression in the schools that you're in, what needs the most emphasis straight away to try and really move the dial to that kind of approach. I think it's like, is it kind of, is it on school setting, is it specific to like family, is it the culture, you know, I think it's, yeah, that kind of key theme that probably needs to be, yeah, tackled the most. I think it's a collective of it all, isn't it? It's the, you know, the children are at the forefront, but then we need the backing of the parents, but then also the school staff need support, but we need the governors on board to buy into the service. I think it's a collaboration of it all. And I think as well, just to add that we all know the kind of the pressures that schools are under. I kind of touched on some of the external factors that influence school policies around kind of these targets that are perhaps unrealistic or unattainable for some schools around attendance, attainment behaviour, the influence of Ofsted. All of this stuff means that a lot of schools, as much as they want to support people with mental health and schools recognise that there is kind of a mental health crisis that young people are experiencing and schools are experiencing often the brunt of that. They just don't have the capacity, they don't have the resources or the funding necessarily to kind of put in place these measures that could help them. And so I think it kind of comes from, we know at government level and national government level there's a lot of positive movements happening around we obviously got the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, they've got a commitment to kind of put breakfast clubs and give every school access to an expert mental health professional which are obviously really positive steps. We just want to make sure that that reform is being felt in the school settings, it's kind of being delivered as a priority and so we think that as much as I said before that the counselling needs to come hand in hand with that whole school approach we think that the commitment to put that expert mental health practitioner in every school that practitioner will be fundamental to helping schools to embed that whole school approach but yeah I completely agree with Shanice it's a really kind of comprehensive operation that we need. Hello thank you that was a lovely presentation because I know there's an awful lot that you've covered in a few sort of slides but it was very comprehensive I've got two questions one was and maybe you may not have that information you said there's five or six schools but we can actually know what those schools are that would be perfectly okay to have that information wouldn't it here if you do know them do you know what schools there are in primary if you could tell us which ones do I have to tell you right now or I can share it if you want me to think it would be useful to have it now personally yeah so we are in sacred heart and then the sister school to that Christ the King Hanover Ashmount the satellite provision and Paikman primary okay fine so that's really useful so they're all primaries aren't they so there's no secondary so that's useful because we can look at maybe attendance and maybe there may be a correlation maybe not whatever but it will be useful the second thing is that I know place to be has been around for many years but I remember a few years ago just before COVID there was a whole thing coming from King's College where mental health practitioners were being trained they were going into Camden I don't know if you remember it John so I experienced a few of them coming in they were training at the same time they'd come in and they'd come they'd ask me because there were two divisions this is just telling you now and it may have changed there was the ones where parents needed support perhaps they were having difficulties with their child in terms of behaviour or just coming to terms with their child's particular needs so there was that one or there was support with the child individual one to one or perhaps one or two if it was good shared group work and they were all being trained now I know it was a trial but they were going into Camden and I know they were going into other boroughs and they were equivalent to what some of the stuff I presume that you're doing which was really good practice but it was very expensive because they were coming in once a week and then there was time I had to spend time with them but they were really good it wasn't a sort of like so that I wonder if we've actually still got that if that is still available as cams because they were being trained with the cams departments I know King's College was involved I know the Anna Freud Centre also does training for those so there may be other things going on in the other schools in Islington which might be useful to find out and the other thing and maybe this is something that's already been thought of with the new government bills we seem to have this sort of idea where we have Austed and then we have mental health and well-being and really and truly Austed should be looking at mental health and well-being looking at all of the staff including head teachers it shouldn't be either or it's actually part of learning good well-being you know very healthy mental health and whatever nurturing and early school breakfast all of that all wrap up so I think for me the suggestion isn't that oh it's all about Austed it's actually it should be combined in and less of this data-driven idea which is important but you're not going to get good data if you haven't got good well-being or it's going to have an impact on the children there's stuff going on in the news about the impact on children's well-being if it is all data-driven so I'm just throwing that out there just for discussion thank you Mary I'm just going to take before I move on so question from Claire cycle and then I think I'm going to bring this to a close Claire thank you I was just going to ask whether or not you knew or whether or not you had an idea of what percentage of children that you see in Islington perhaps needed to have access to send so we're sort of looking at the correlation between young people children who might need send kind of assistance and whether or not they are being absent so I guess when we're sort of doing our kind of evidence gathering we're sort of asking kind of each organisation you know do they have a sort of a percentage kind of in mind would you could you put your mic on sorry your mic I'm so sorry I was just saying that it's not something I've got off the top of my head but it's definitely something that I can share that information with you when I circulate that yeah okay thank you Saika thank you for your report it's very interesting so as we know Islington is a really diverse place and I know that my own community struggle with mental health obviously it starts from the parents and the children manifests in the children and sometimes it's kind of kept away so what I would like to know and I really understand Hannah's question and where she was coming from is how with your staff and your therapists are they reflective of the children and the families that you work with I think that's a really really good question so I think I was mentioning about the assessment that we complete and the before and after so we do the strength for difficulties questionnaire prior and after and that's also an opportunity to hear about some of the positive outcomes that we've received from that we also do the child's voice as a part of that as well and we set goals so kind of the child is kept at the forefront throughout middle beginning and end in the work that we do to really ensure that we're keeping them at the centre of the word that we do hope I've answered your question I just want to know your staff are they reflective of the community the community in terms of the diverse community that we serve in Islington are your therapists or your staff reflective of the children that you work with because obviously children come in all shapes and forms yeah I definitely say they are and obviously I'm a part of a lot of the recruitment that we do as well so it's definitely you know we try to include everybody and I think especially for my area and this area that we manage we try to ensure that we do reflect on that so the children do kind of recognise that as well in the work that we do but yeah I do think we are thank you thank you I can if you like on a sorry on a kind of UK wide perspective obviously we know that the counselling and psychotherapy profession is largely white middle-aged women particularly because obviously a lot of the time people go into counselling and psychotherapy because it's like a later career or kind of second career they go into so it's something that we're definitely trying to diversify more across our whole services because we know also that a lot of time young people like you say they're more like to engage with the counselling and therapeutic process if they feel like their counsellor represents them and like they really understand so it's definitely something we're working more towards and we can share any more information with you the only reason I brought that up is because if a child or a family doesn't see someone that represents them then that can actually turn them off and turn them away and then we're never going to actually capture those families so it's really important yeah absolutely councillor Neslas thank you chair and it might be because I'm seeing my dentist tomorrow but thank you so much for addressing the root causes which is so important that you give our children time I'm a teacher as in my profession we are so stretched and as much as we would love to give that time we just don't have that capacity however much straining is actually kind of poured onto us it's just we don't have that time so the fact that you give those young people that time is absolutely amazing so secondly I am coming to your question which is that we've had I think Theresa May's mental health first aiders which was chronically underfunded I think we had promises from the current government of a councillor essentially in every school to begin with and if you want to call it a U-turn or a sidestep it's up to you I think the movement now is to have essentially things which are based in communities rather than schools and I think there was some evidence to suggest that that's more effective so what I would like to understand is what's the impact of school-based counselling which is what you provide and what the national government is wearing towards which is a more community approach so why should we go in schools around just have something or as an addition have something in communities as well yeah that's a really great question and like you say we've seen a lot of positive movements around making sure that every young person regardless of where they are can access support easily and I think that easily and accessibility of it is the really key point that we try to emphasise so one of the main reasons that Place2Be works within school settings is because it's where young people are we feel like that's a setting again where they're from a young age they're learning about themselves they're developing they're kind of meeting others they're kind of building those social connections and so we think that it's a really prime time in which to support them and a lot of the work that we do is around early intervention but also preventing mental health difficulties from arising so a large piece of our work is around through that whole school approach is about teaching young people how to understand their emotions kind of understanding what's normal when they might need a little bit more help knowing where to go for that help and kind of building that resilience and self-awareness as well so that young people can manage you know the day-to-day issues and the struggles that all of us will face that aren't necessarily going to cause a mental health difficulty making sure that these young people understand how to support themselves and know where to get support so we can prevent those day-to-day worries and difficulties that young people are always going to face how do we prevent that from becoming a kind of diagnosable mental health condition and so that's kind of why we work with the school setting because again it's about that accessibility reaching young people where they are and getting in early I think that the community piece is obviously also really important and what we want to see is where schools are working with local hubs with communities with local authorities with health services so that we've got a really comprehensive streamlined offer so that each young person regardless of their need or their circumstances is able to get the right support that works for them so I think that flexibility and the tailoring to each young person's needs is where kind of we need to move as a system and as a kind of local services so that we're not just seeing a one-size-fits-all approach so that answers your question thank you angel yes thank you for your report I have a question which is obviously in lsington there's the schools well-being service what is that the right term how does what you provide is it is it similar or is it different from what they provide can you tell me more about the well-being service what's that kind of literally maybe what one of the officers be able to answer that well say what the school well-being service is yeah I mean it's um we do have we're blessed with a um a school's well-being uh service um that is funded from public health so very different from um from um place to be where they provide them when I was ahead we had place to be in and we paid them to be in five days a week to address that that need so on that one-to-one or in that that 15-minute group uh which is very powerful um the well the school's well-being service do a number of things but they don't have the um probably the the skill set or the reach uh and the resource to do exactly what what um what our colleagues do here what I would say as well that although there are five schools in Islington who who do have place to be there are schools who would have their own uh their own mentors counsellors who would be in house as such uh there will be chance uk young minds hope foundation so schools can use a number of different resources based on affordability reach demand uh etc but the school's well-being service doesn't replicate that uh piece i think what mary was referring to was the trailblazer uh program that was uh was a pilot um but then began to didn't didn't sustain because obviously schools were then asked to carry that on uh and and that wasn't sustainable that was a camden program that i was uh aware of thank thank you sorry thank you john i'll take a final question from councillor valerie and then i've got one and then we'll bring this to an end thanks chair um it's just um i guess it's almost supplementary to what was just said and i did hear you say um about um working with other hubs so i'm just wondering do you do you like envisage going forward uh possible works with like um i don't know the ben can sell a trust for example where a lot of children young people enter there and some of our um children that don't actually um attend school so those are home schooled i don't know if you have any sort of community outreach that way because i think it's really important obviously some who don't look at schools being unsafe because of the bullying aspect but we can look at obviously knife crime that will all into like links into school so do you envisage envisage that going forward thank you no problem yeah most definitely we have currently just set up um in one of our projects called the greenhouse project i don't know if any of you familiar with it it's a it's a coaching project for children and young people um this is our only project that's not actually in a school and it's in more like a youth type um support so that is definitely the way we we want to go you know we want to be able to reach as many hard to reach or children as possible so yeah it definitely is but that all just comes with with funding really but thank you for your question thank you and i guess my question is because we've been doing this scrutiny topic and it's complex and there is different forms of support needed but i think what you're touching on the mental health practitioners and their expertise and how that makes a difference so i guess my question is because in most schools there's either a safeguarding lead that kind of tackles attendance or it might be the pastoral care so i just wanted to know just briefly in your view why it is mental health practitioners that really do support children obviously we know that since covid the increase in mental health and children have increased and yeah in your opinion why is that what you do that actually really helps tackle that problem i think where we're although we are separate to the schools where we're based in the schools we're kind of seen as a part of the school but not so i think that we're like a safe place for those children to come to that is in a familiar area like their school and but they're not disclosing things directly to people they see every day and not feel comfortable so i think that is where we we bridge that gap i don't know if that's answered your question i think it's just yeah it's just more around it just being about that mental health expertise in terms of obviously you're dealing with mental health so it's having a mental health practitioner really being able to build that relationship that makes you know your service really valuable to the schools and i guess just i get is that the feedback that you get from schools in terms of how um yeah and why they do um ask for your service i think that obviously we know that like i was saying before school staff do feel like they're at the forefront of children's mental health difficulties and we know that like we were saying before like a lot of school staff want to be able to have those conversations where a young person does approach them and kind of say i'm really struggling i really need some help a lot of the time not necessarily to islington but wider in our services we know that a lot of school staff don't really feel confident confident to have those conversations there's a little bit of worry there that they might make things worse and so i think having that expertise on site again is kind of really helpful for school staff to be able to say okay i i understand i'm going to support you have you considered going to talk to place to be about this however like i was saying before we know that training school staff is really important to again help to build their confidence and help to enable them to have those conversations as well as recognizing when young people are struggling because obviously the burden shouldn't be on a young person all the time to kind of proactively reach out and say they need help a lot of time we need to upskill the adults around that child to recognize the signs when that young person is struggling particularly like i was saying before that a lot of the time young people we support with their mental health difficulties are exhibiting behavioral conduct difficulties as we know that school staff across the country might say oh they're just a naughty child you know let's let's just kind of suspend them let's just kind of tackle it that way whereas if we can help school staff to recognize that that might be a sign of kind of underlying mental health difficulties that will really help to kind of shape that whole school approach and help shape the positive culture that we want to see across schools so i think there's definitely a role for both i think again like the teachers and the school staff need to be able to have those conversations but ultimately given the high levels of need in schools and given the difficulties that young people face accessing kind of nhs or cam support having that expertise on site in school is like a really valuable asset as well thank you thank you that definitely answers that and thank you so much for coming and taking your time to you know answer our questions we really do appreciate and if you could um circulate some of the the questions i'd really appreciate that thank you thank you thank you all thank you thank you if there are no further questions can i ask members to note this item thank you we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the executives report michelin did you want to oh one second i don't think you're yeah can you hear me yeah thank you chair as i said from the pre-meeting because my report was a bit long and my presentation it will be a summary about yeah thank you yeah the summary is about the full report you have and if it will be possible i can finish my report and people can ask me a question and also i'm happy for clarification because the main reason i did in this way just to have enough time for us to discuss and also for me to answer to the questions and what i i try to put oh fear is not working your thing really yeah the way i try to put my report i'm going to focus in especially in two areas area two and area three where we said about child-friendly islington and towards a child-friendly islington i'm going to ask to set the why i put it in this way for a reason everything we are doing in islington since day one even what the scrutiny is doing is to put children or a child in center of everything we are doing that means child-friendly islington is not mean we're going to start from scratch you can see our joint vision is for all of us we believe we admit and we are working very hard as a community including parents including our school including our team offices children services to make sure our young people they have a safety place to live and to call home in xlinton borough and all of us we believe in the same idea and also we have the join m and objective that is the main reason and as for since last time here is not moving yeah yeah here i want just to touch on some few features because i know when i'm speaking with some colleagues around this table they want to understand really my roles and responsibility as a lead member sometimes there is a bit confusion about my job and john abbey job i know by law both of us we do have a duty and responsibility for every child in the borough but mine is a bad political approach where i have to step to set up a vision i have to set up a clear leadership and as well as have to make sure to take in account to support john as a dcs and also his senior leadership in terms of supporting them and challenging them at the same time sometimes to get that balance right is not easy because i have to give them support and also have to challenge as a leader and as a member and my political vision have to be clear and also to be to make sure my team they're understanding what really we want to achieve and also to have a clear priorities about children services and also to make sure i'm setting a clear direction how we can approach and we can have a good outcome next slide please and i wanted to touch on this also because i believe it will be useful for the scrutiny committee just to understand about children services is very wide and very complex services really we so far we go to three different there are three areas the first one family support and safeguarding which is under child children social care under deborah idris we do have learning and achievement where we cover early help education and sense under paul senior and we do have youth young x linton violence against women and girls and youth safety that is under curtis you can see there we go to free directors and if we can see we start from early help early intervention and you can see when we are thinking about learning sometimes we don't say about our young children for early years sometimes we focus about primary school and secondary school early health is also part of our education because those children as soon as they start to get a good education at young age is helping them when they are going to grow up that mean under paul senior we do have children centers we do have nursery everything is there you can see look like we start from not up to all age that is where you can see sometimes it's not easy with children services we are dealing with everything and i wanted to point out you can see even we are trying to operate in three areas we are interlinked from one area to another next slide please if we said about interlink you can see when we said about prevent we are preventing in all three areas when we said about early intervention is in all areas that mean at one point we realize the free directors they have to work side by side for us to have the best outcome and so far by working that side by side to have the best achievements we are coming with different kind of ideas really to make sure we are helping and we are working alongside with our local families we managed to launch a free family hubs across the borough these family hubs when we said about families we can't separate the need from parents to the children i can use a simple example when a parent is suffering with mental health regardless it's going to affect the children or a child and when a child is been affected with anything it's going to affect the children or a child and when a child is being affected also the parents as an adult by having family hubs we are managing to have many resources at the same place when a families they are going to to request help or support is easy really for the same information to be shared with appropriate officers around the same table rather than them repeating themselves over and over because sometimes it's not easy when you need help families can come to us with the need of housing before you know it's not only a problem they are having to do with housing they are more to eat that means we need that kind of intelligence to engage with them to manage really to provide them help and support at the same comment points and we can see really it's working very well and our families they are benefiting for more and more and we have to bear in mind in xlinton we do have some families english is northern first language it's very difficult for them to keep repeating themselves over and over very early intervention prevent for any problem to escalate we realize really is helping us really and also i touch about the launch of child friendly xlinton we launch but i know next scrutiny meeting it will be 24th of january january february sorry we're going to bring a clear framework the framework we are not presenting today because today is the is my report is not officers reports officers are going to come with the clear child friendly framework for the debate me up just to give a bit headline for preparation about the next meeting in child friendly is helping us really to catch the voice of everybody just to make sure we are having a clear share vision as it's little community to understand where is the gap and what can we do differently that is where we can see i discussed and to set what it will be happening next and in child friendly i want to highlight we do have also babies friendly we do have babies in the borough we need really to be to make sure we meet our needs can we be the voice of our babies sometimes i realize as a uh lead member we are not talking quite a lot about our babies where is the voice of the babies that is what we catch on babies friendly borough because they have different needs and when i'm having early help and maternity board i'm the one i'm cheering there to be the voice including breastfeeding we got some mothers they want really to breastfeed their children because of the approach of the communities they are not having those supports how can we support them there are some children as soon as they are coming to this world maybe the mom is the first time to have a baby they can be depressed the depression from the mama because of the to give birth to the child this can affect the babies how can we support we said about mental health we focus about those visible children what happen about the baby we do have also babies can suffer with mental health where is then voice that is where we try to have baby friendly is linked on really to make sure we are there for them we are then voice and we can help them and also for us to expand more services across our free family hub and as a lead member really my next step is to make sure we have a good support around that is the main reason each time i said even when we are receiving challenging question from scrutiny is to help us to see where is there is a gap what can we do think differently for the benefit of our local residents next slide please yeah as i said before we do have a free areas which they are interlink i'm going to touch about education lifelong learning skills and arrangements in this way we can see that in this way we can see really here i can said we are we are proud really phoenix linton because we can see majority of our school they are greeted good or outstanding from of states but that can't stop us because of states they are outstanding for us just to be present there is quite a lot we have to do with our school there are quite a lot we have to work because we have to make sure the outcome especially for those more venerable is improving and we can see even statistically from bme background sometimes the outcome is not really at the level we want to do to be is still our duty and all of us duty and responsibility to make sure everything is being done in place and also we launch a school support program program and we are we can see there is a 10 team really from ministry school they are happy to take it and i know there will be a time different school they're going to get and the third achievement is about we are calling to army about attendance as we heard today and i'm pleased as i discussed with the chair from day one when she chose this topic because we know it's a challenging and for me as a lead member i can't wait until when you're going to present present as your report for us to understand what we are doing right now and how we can do from what the scrutiny can really give us as a recommendation because it's a challenging nationally and locally we need to do more and by doing more from your next recommendation it is going to help us really to have a clear vision from what we are doing now because when i discussed with you chair we said doing nothing is not an option rather than waiting until your report let's start somewhere because let's start somewhere because those young people need to go to school not just to be to school we need them to learn and to achieve because they are the future of the borough the fourth thing is about school organization we are in phase three in last week of december we finished in formal consultation all of us we know in this chamber we discuss more about phase three because israeli we don't have any choice we have to deal with it because of failing roles number and also school deficit it's become very challenging from some schools really to do what they have to do as mary asked a question about the attendance support you can see funding lack of the children everything they need lack of funding that means we have really to see a way to approach in different ways ways and you can see from our education uh we are really just yeah because i'm conscious of time next slide please just um i hope so we have time yeah i can just wrap quick yeah you can see here is about our care support and safeguarding uh i'm going to use again share this opportunity if you can allow for me to say really a huge a huge thank for our youth justice team really for us to be outstanding we came from very bad position to be outstanding it wasn't an easy job i remember even when i had interview with the inspector i was in my i was in hospital bed just for me to be there for the team because i because i knew our caretis john and the team worked very hard to make sure really we are coming from the bad place for us to be outstanding really i would like to say thank you to john caretis and the rest of the team for them to bring as a borrow into these places i know we still have quite a lot to do i know we still have quite a lot to do because we're still witnessing some crime and also and social behavior to our young people i believe is a process and also there is a need a bad community response that is where kertis is soon from january it will going to launch a huge consultation to the community because because we sorry i'm getting really distracted if we can just i can hear the whispering so thank you yeah because we want really to engage we we're going to start to have a new strategy our youth justice strategy currently it will finish in april this year that means we are in process to start to build up a new strategy that means we need a voice of everybody and there's going to be a plan please if we circulate some questionnaire to all of you don't be fed up because we need also your voice to be heard we're going to engage with young people it can be from school engaging with parents parent champion because we need really to know what we can do differently because a lot of life one life is one too many next slide yeah progress well to adulthood independently and profiled i believe all of us we know about it's not easy it's not easy really for our young people especially at this generation those in our care or those in needs or care leavers because of the society we are living that is the main reason i put it there and some of you you are sitting into our corporate parenting boards you know the challenging with our care leavers they are having and i know we are working very hard with our colleagues from housing to give us a bit more accommodation but it's still not enough really and you can see that is where many of our budget is going on and you can see also placements where we have to place children in care is causing a problem because there is not a clear placement glad from the new government bills is look like they're going to look on it and also we know we need a bit more forced carers really for them to fostering for the children because there is a shortage of those things and it's causing us quite a significant problems next yeah here i'm not going in details it's just for your information and this in your part it's just for the new bill from the government new bills and i think it was a good idea just to put there it's just a head line for you to read and we'll come back in the future when we're going to have details because this is just a headline we have it and i said it would be a good idea for the board to be aware soon there are going to be some changes and some changes it will going to answer some of your question you know sometimes when you challenge us why you are not doing this we said no by law we can't do it sometimes we can say to government it's not giving us a funding to do it and there's some question when you're going to read it in your own time you can see they start to answer some of the things until we receive a bit more information and we're going to take it from there you're going to see it playing into the future thank you thank you micheline um can i just echo what councillor micheline said in terms of the questions to be posed to her as an executive and obviously not as officers and can i please ask members because of time to kind of be concise with the questions and um i will only take kind of like one round the question from each um councillor so we can have enough time and then one question from the member of public

we can understand parents' working pattern changes. That means it will be for us, how can we be flexible or to change our policies to meet the needs of children and parents because sometimes parents now, they start to work at home, sometimes when they have to go to the office, it's long hours. How can we meet the needs of parents to allow them to go to work? That's really when we are putting together help and also we are going to renew it again soon. Because when we are going to put another new strategy, we add a consultation of parents, I believe 2024 for the next strategy. That means I'm proud of that strategy. The second strategy I can set about the offer of our youth apps. Really you can see yourself, sometimes you go at the lift, you go to different youth apps to make sure young people themselves, they are clearly articulated what they want and how we can work together to serve them. And from the new compliment we just did with the youth apps, I can see it's working really, because it's not people. I have one more. Three for a reason. Ah, you said three. Let me remember one more because children services is quite wide. I can say baby friendly. I can say baby friendly for a reason. To have a board where we are managing to have NHS people to come really to discuss about the future of the babies, because we are less investigating early from very young age, even if they are having anything to do with NCN, when they are that age to help them with also speeches. Since COVID, you know, we had a backlog for children that couldn't even speak. How can we catch early before they go to school? Because sometimes schools, as you said, sometimes you don't have capacity. If the children are going to school, many of them are not speaking. It's become very complicated. At early age, it can be when they are in children's centres, we are putting some resources there. It's helping really to preparation and for the readiness for them to go to the next steps. Thank you, Micheline. And if I could add as well the work that you do with our care leavers, always advocating to, you know, champion for them. But yeah, thank you. So Councillor Rosalind, Councillor Saika, and then Councillor Nastas. Thanks, Chair, and thanks for your report. The three family hubs you mentioned, where are they situated? And are families able to access them directly? Yeah. One is, I don't have an address. I know the places. You know the one near this corner we went. That is another one. I'm starting from the north, the north this way. So there's one in each third. Locality. But I don't have the address. I know where they are. Yeah. One at New River Children's Centre. One at Bementet, as well. Manor Garden. Manor Garden. The Children's Centre is the one to where you are going to... Yeah. You know this corner, like you are going to Destin. I don't know the place. I know the place, but I don't know the name. Oh, do you know? Yeah. Yeah. New River, Bementet, and Haunted Road. Well done. Sorry, it's good to know where they are. Yeah. Because we might have to signpost families to those places. They are also even on their website. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Councillor Nesnaz. Thank you, Chair. And I've been to all three of them, and I highly recommend them to anyone. If you've got children, I think that is one of the criterias. But as professionals as well, to organise a visit, because they are exemplary. So my question is about timelines and delivery, really. The vision that you have. I really love the focus on child-friendly in this, what you've kind of delivered, because it's very much part of the Islington Together delivery plan, and I'm not just saying that because the chief executive is here, but obviously it's really important that we deliver child-friendly between 2024 and 26. Now, back in 2023, there's a motion to full council, for Islington essentially to work with partners to become a child-friendly Islington. The administration in 2023 decided to basically do their own work, essentially start from scratch, and I would say or argue mark their own homework without having that accountability from an external body. In this case, it would have been UNICEF. Last year, in 2024, a full council asked for an update by the then leader of the council. I was told something would come in autumn. In autumn, there was a launch. I'm afraid I wasn't able to attend. It was on Zoom. I don't know how well attended it was or how well engaged it was. It would be good to get what the feedback from that launch was. And we come to this report today, where in the report it does mention here that the framework has already been launched, although now we're hearing that it's coming further down the line. So I'm sure it's one of the key priorities. I'm sure there's going to be resources which are focused on. But one of the key things that I mentioned back in 2023 was there's no point having a piece of paper, a strategy, that doesn't incorporate the ethos of this, which is that it's child-friendly and it's with the children. So my concern, and maybe you can alleviate that, which is that this framework, this framework, has it been worked with the young people, with the children to establish it? Or is it something else that we've just created top-down and saying that this is what we're going to instill? Yeah. Thank you very much for your question. I'm going to start. Yeah. If you, if you carry on, there is a, I didn't touch on that. Carry on. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you go far. Yeah. Yeah. Next one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That it was part of my presentation. As I said, I didn't go in much detail because just for your information for preparation for next scrutiny. You can see from child-friendly borough, we, we started to engage with young people, family, VCS, and partners since ages ago. And to our, for us to reach for, to these four pillars is that on pillars, young people came with an idea, the area they want the most from us to start, to start like a starting point. Because we said towards 2030s, we still have five years. And we have to bear in mind in that five years, the needs of our young people may change at any time. We are giving ourselves a bit of room to navigate, to meet the needs. And even when we launched, it was well attended. That is the main reason we did it online. Because to allow people to attend, because some people, they can't travel. It was very well attended. And here, the, our vision, child-friendly borough is not only the responsibility about children's services. It's everybody's responsibilities here. It can be we as a local authorities. It can be parents. It can be schools, including the police. That means this vision is a community vision, community responses. Because everyone is, we care about the greener. That is how you can see, we want really our borough to be greener. That is how you can see there. You see, even one of my lunch, I went to plant a tree with children from school. We started from there. It's their own ideas. That is what we are implementing here to work alongside with them. You can be even healthier. As you know, nutrition, mental health is a serious problem. Young people themselves, they are speaking even including obesity. That is the main reason we choose. This is what them, they want. And we, we are there to implement. You said about for us to correct our own homework. And I answer that question when you asked me to full council last year. The problem about NHS is it's costing money, really. And children's services, we don't have money. What the framework and what we are doing is exactly the same thing. It looks like we are paying just for someone to come to check. Are you doing something well here? Just the box exercises. Because for our baby friendly, we do have the one we are following the framework. That means we are familiar about what really the framework is. That is what we are following the line rather than just paying just for the name of the services. Because what matters is the outcome. Really that is what matters is the outcome. And what matters is about what the local people, they want really. And if we meet their needs, we provide what they need. I believe that is what really matters. For them also to join, to put something together. What really they want is linked on for. And how they want to contribute, how they want us to implement. Thank you, Micheline. A quick follow up? Please. Just thank you for that and for those examples. And it is great to hear you as well attended. So, how will this be accounted for in terms of how well it is impactful? I can give you an example. For example, for under four pillars. Every exec member, you can see every exec member. We do have an exec member for. If you don't mind, executive member of safety. They are putting part of their priorities. And when it's become part of priorities, meaning what they are working as a local authority, then priorities. And when they are working with their own VCS or community engagement, it's become part of priorities. That is where it's become everybody's business. That means the outcome. If you got a priorities, everybody is monitoring your priorities to know if you achieve it or you are not achieving it. That is where I said what matters is the outcome because it becomes a priority for everybody. And in every executive member, they have also a clear framework about how they are going to achieve. That is what Tanya and our team are going to present next for you to understand how the achievement. Because what we need to really for Xlinton residents, they set up something for their own children or young people and they are taking an eye on it because they are clear in the priorities, including our youth councillors. They are really on top of this to make sure we achieve. Thank you. Thank you. I am going to take questions from Councillor Sayaka. Councillor. Okay. Thank you. It's not really a question. It's just a congratulations to you because I am working with lots and lots of residents at the moment and they are parent champions. So I know you did mention that as one of your third things, but I would like to mention that because you have given people a chance. You have given parents a chance. Women from my community that would never have a chance that have actually got roles and got jobs and that is obviously filtered down because of their confidence. It is filtered down to their children, which is repairing their mental health. So I just had to say that because I know many residents that I know that are doing this programme and it is remarkable. So thank you. Thank you, Sayaka. Councillor Ilka. Thank you. Firstly, thank you very much for this briefing and report. My question is more based on data. On your care support and safeguarding page where we are talking about youth justice, it would be nice if we, for the next meeting or maybe if you can write to us with maybe Curtis for the data on the number of children known to youth justice services, the number of children arrested in Islington, the number of children... Sorry, the most we are thinking is that they want. Yes. Would that be okay Curtis if I can ask for this data for next time or you can just send it to us whenever you have it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, if you'd like that, we can provide that. So basically... We have all that data and let's go to different forums. Yeah, and I want it over the last three years so we can see whether there's been a spike or whether there's been a decrease in the number of children that are... Sorry, could you repeat what... Okay. Yeah, just repeat what you're looking for. Right. The first one is the number of children known to youth justice services. The second one is number of children arrested in Islington. Third one is number of children who have been a victim of crime in Islington. And the number of children who have been excluded from school due to their behaviour or maybe an arrest. And I'd like these figures over the last three years so then we can compare and see if there's been an increase or a decrease. It's just something that we can look at. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's fine, yeah. Thank you. You can email it to me. That's fine. We'll make sure we get them. We've got most of those figures, absolutely. So we can provide that overview. Thank you, Curtis. Thank you. Can I take a question from the members of the public? Any questions? No? Thank you. If there are no further questions, can I ask members to note the report? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Micheline. And we're going to have a quick five-minute comfort break. Literally five minutes, though. Thank you. Okay, we will move on to the next item this evening, which is the attendance update. I believe, Paul, are you presenting the next item? Or...? Yeah. Okay, thank you very much, Gia. Thank you for the opportunity, Chair, and members of the committee here tonight to be able to come along to update colleagues on progress with the work of the attendance program, a work and activity that officers have been undertaking recently, working with local schools and settings. We recognise across Islington that there is a significant attendance challenge with regards to persistent absenteeism on the increase in local schools since the pandemic. We know there's a big challenge across London and many city areas as well nationally. But at Islington, we know we have a number of concerns. So over the last few months, there's been a number of activities undertaken. So I'm going to introduce Katie shortly, who along with support from colleagues have been visiting every school. And I think colleagues have recognised that having visited over 50 schools in a short period of time to engage with those schools and settings, to be able to get a deeper understanding of the challenges, what those schools are facing in the attendance space, but also to work with those schools to come up with some bespoke solutions in addition to looking at what other support, the local authority, with the support of our partners across education, health and care, and some bespoke voluntary sector organisations can undertake as well to be part of this integrated approach. But let me introduce Katie, the author of this well presented report, and I'm sure everyone will appreciate it. It's a very well formatted paper. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Paul. And thank you, councillors, for the opportunity to update you on the significant work that was carried out last term to support efforts to improve school attendance in Islington. The report begins by detailing the work accomplished across each of our five attendance strands. And just as a reminder, the strands are the attendance call to action, the attendance mentors, children services scrutiny, school attendance support team and targeted support, and quality assurance and measuring impact. So, last term, we dedicated much of our time to visiting Islington schools. My colleague Michael Gooch and I visited all 52 mainstream schools to engage in focused discussions and legal requirements, focused discussions on legal requirements, new attendance codes, and available support. Through the visits and discussions, we identified common barriers to attendance, which have informed our strategy and strands moving forward. To further support schools, we commissioned attendance data profiles for the last academic year. These profiles were designed to assist attendance champions, chairs of governors, and support services in targeting attendance interventions more effectively. The data also informed our school visits, providing valuable insights into attendance patterns and areas requiring attention. In October, a workshop facilitated by Inclusive Solutions allowed us to collaborate with partners to share our vision, identify barriers to attendance, and make pledges of support. The event was successful in participants committing to Islington's year of attendance. We made progress with the attendance mentors program by developing a service specification and inviting services within the council to submit expressions of interest to deliver the program. Following evaluation of their proposals, in December, Bright Futures were invited to deliver it. Our aim is that five mentors will be in place in the second half of this spring term, and they will support as many schools across the board as possible. The school visits have allowed us to identify those schools and families, the families that require the targeting support from the attendance mentors. We have also successfully bid for a further £25,000 from the Mayor of London to train the attendance mentors. A requirement of the working together to improve school attendance statutory guidance is that local authorities' school attendance teams provide targeting support meetings to our schools. To ensure these meetings are consistent, useful and data-driven, we designed and scheduled training for the school attendance team, and the termly visits will continue this month. In addition, in-school interventions aimed at improving attendance have been collated and will be shared with the schools as part of their targeting support meetings. For example, things like coffee mornings for parents or pupil incentive schemes. I wanted to tell you a bit about what we found from our visits and the national picture. National research from Parent Kind and Impact Ed tells us that attendance patterns in primary schools are mainly influenced by parents' behaviour and attitudes. Since the pandemic, there has been a noticeable decline in the perceived value of education and the importance of attending school every day. Compounding this in both primary and secondary schools, there has been a rise in anxiety and poor mental health among children and young people. Parents also indicated that there is a need for more support from schools and the government to help overcome barriers to attendance. While the Impact Ed report emphasises that a strong sense of belonging in schools is crucial for improving attendance, both reports underscore the importance of support in addressing attendance and improving outcomes. These findings were confirmed through our school visits in Islington. In addition, punctuality issues, frequent absences due to minor illnesses and inconsistent attendance patterns are common problems across Islington. There has also been an increase in parental mental health issues affecting attendance and some parents avoiding engagement with schools. Repeated, unrequested, unrequested and authorised leave during term time as well as housing challenges where families are having to travel longer distances to temporary accommodation is also impacting on attendance. We saw a great deal of effective strategies but also some key challenges across the schools. We saw some exceptional practice to tackle attendance, particularly where schools create a welcoming environment and provide engaging learning opportunities. In other words, they are the schools that are creating a really strong sense of belonging. Schools with better attendance have clear policies, strong community links and staff specifically dedicated to monitor and improve attendance. However, we did see some areas for improvement. Some schools could benefit from a better understanding of the support first approach which is now thoroughly outlined in the statutory guidance rather than relying heavily on statutory action which should only be used as a very last resort. Additionally, there is sometimes a reluctance to use existing resources to tackle persistent absence and a negative attitude to change. As well as the school visits, we were able to produce several attendance products to support the programme. We have a visual here that has been designed to help schools understand how to improve attendance and that will hopefully be available by next week. It also outlines our expectations around the support first approach. Additionally, detailed notes from the individual school meetings in the spring term have been compiled as a baseline for the meetings that will continue this term. Although still in development, we are working on a comprehensive attendance strategy to address the issues across the borough. Key activities for this term. We have several activities planned this term. The inclusion hub pilot will be expanded borough wide and the school attendance team will receive further training. Our youth council have agreed to survey pupils on school attendance so we will get a lot of pupil voice feedback as well to add to the data that we have already collected. We will recruit and train the attendance mentors with a view to targeting children around the 80 to 90 percentage attendance. The impact will be monitored through performance indicators set out in the service specification. The school attendance team will be trained on new documentation and tracking systems and our legal services team will review the statutory action processes with us to allow us to update school policies. And finally, metrics for evaluating the impact of the whole attendance program will be set and regular feedback channels will be established. Data will be used more effectively to monitor progress and adjust strategies for continuous improvement. So, to conclude, we believe that our efforts to improve school attendance are showing promising progress but there is much work still to do. So, we will continue to work together with schools, parents and partners to build on the progress that we have started. Thank you, Katie. Just before I take questions, can I just ask for a point of clarification? Just in terms of the data, because when I check the Gov website with data, COLA, HH and St Mary Courtyard, there was no data available. So, has that been excluded from the overall 27%? Because it just says NA on the... Also, is that data included then from COLA, HA and St Mary? Have you got that data and is that reflected in the report? We've got that data, but I don't know... Sorry, we have the data locally, but obviously schools are uploading directly to central government now. So, for whatever reason, that data is not uploaded to central government yet. Oh, okay, because it wasn't online. And maybe I can show you after just for clarification. I just wanted to know if it was... It may well be a lag measure, Chair, in terms of that information being updated from the school directly to the government methodology. But as you say, we do have that data locally. Okay, thank you. Yeah? Thank you, Chair. Just to quickly follow up on that, because I think in your report you do mention that there's currently four schools that do not share data. Can you expand on that? Again, is it a specific type of the school? Because I think, frankly, that's unacceptable. So, those schools don't share data directly with the local authority, but they now have a statutory duty to upload it to the central government portal. So, we don't get the rolling figures daily for those particular schools, but the government do gather it, so we get it when it's published later on. Sorry, is there a specific type of schools that are doing this? So, no, there isn't. There's three, a primary, one is secondary. And, in fact, through Katie's visits, one of the schools simply wasn't aware that that was a requirement, because heads have changed successively and have now agreed to upload. There's now only three schools, and I think generally those schools have been concerned about the security. That's the reason that they've not shared in terms of the data exchange. Just, yeah, just on that, I'm just thinking from, because I think in the report it's really good about the risk of harm, exploitation and radicalisation, and just drawing attention to that when it comes to attendance, just from a safeguarding perspective. And I know that usually when there is a, when attendance falls below 50%, that would be a safeguarding referral. But if we, if those schools aren't giving that data, in terms of safeguarding, would we have some sort of right, I guess? Yeah, I think probably what we should have, it should have been clear in saying is they don't upload the data directly, but they, but they do send it to us in a different form. So, so we get the data, but we don't get it live. We get it with a lag. Thanks. So it's usually about two weeks, two weeks later than everybody else. So, so, so, so the data that's uploaded regularly is from, you know, 96% of our schools. The other stuff comes in and, and, and, and, and it's added right to it. Probably by the end of the term. So we have it. Yeah. But we don't have it live. Okay. Or open up to questions. Mary, Susie, Sophie first. Yeah. Mary. Congratulations on visiting 40 schools, which I have done once in my life and never, ever again. So how you have done it, someone with you each time, because you have the notes every day and then you went to the next one because that's mind blowing. But also the, the big outcome of that is how much extra knowledge and how much you really have deep dived into those schools. And the one thing that I just focused on there was the fact that some of the parents, their attitudes towards schooling is having the impact on the attendance. Because in, in, in some experiences I've had is you get parents who had a very negative experience at school. And they're not kind of anti school, but they just, they're emotionally kind of troubled by that. And no one has ever talked to them about it, whatever happened, it's a long time ago. Um, and that has a big impact. And then they, they, they project it onto their child. And then the other ones is, ones that kind of did have learning difficulties, but they weren't identified. Or they were identified and then handled badly. So I, they might, they, they're separate issues in some ways, because the, the first one might be a, a sort of, to do with the climate of the school. So I think when we were talking today with about place to be, there is an element. Did you feel there's an element of maybe just for a small cohort of counseling to sort of overcome those difficulties? Um, so I think, um, despite the, the reasons, um, you know, the high level reasons that we're saying some children don't want to go to school, some children can't go to school. But some, with some additional support, some kids can go to school, but we need to look at all of the children individually. So I don't think it's as simple as saying it's one solution, one solution for one child who's displaying the same symptoms might not be the solution for another. So I think we just, we, um, and, and what the schools are doing really well, particularly in primary schools, is they know those kids really, really well. They'll be able to tell you for the, the children who are for attendance, they'll be able to tell you exactly what's going on with those families. Um, and they will, and so they're very much in the best position to, um, to advise on what support is, is suitable for each individual child. I mean, I was focusing just on that small cohort of the parents who, who have got attitudes that are impacting on the children, not on all the other issues. Um, but yeah, that's, that's fine. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a big thing and we've got a lot of responsibilities here to come up with, uh, stuff to supplement yours. Sorry, you can't, no, you can't interrupt. You cannot interrupt it. Sorry. But we cannot interrupt this conversation. Sorry. I'm not, I can't, there is, you have an opportunity to ask a question, but you cannot interrupt in that way, because I'm just not going to take it on board. Sorry. Can I just move on to the next question? Susie, did you want to ask your question? Yeah, thank you. Um, so I guess what I was going to say is this report makes no mention of SEN and it reads like there is a lot of parent blame. Um, so I guess I'm saying the opposite of what Mary has just been saying as a parent, um, and as a parent governor representative on this committee, that's how it read to me. Um, but my questions, I've got two questions. Number one was, were parents involved in the October stakeholder event? And number two, about the new attendance mentors, they're going to be working with, um, those with 80 to 90% attendance. And I just wanted to know what support there was for those who are below that figure. Thank you. Um, that's an important question, how we engage and work with families and our parents. And, um, we've, we've heard already, uh, the views of, of parents as, as part of this. Parents are an important part of our work, our program, our worker. So the information that's collated in the report is the information that was captured, the data capture from the visits to schools. Um, there are a range of reasons why children, young people may be struggling with attendance or have attendance not at a level that we feel appropriate or for various other reasons. So the information captured, so whether it be SEN, whether the children have additional needs, whether children have situations that are barriers to progress with SEN, the information captured is only as good as the information that our schools have shared. Obviously our schools that we've well recognized know our children, young people well. They know their families well. So, obviously, as a local authority, we have no direct contact with these families. It's normally, it's the schools. Our role as a local authority is to be the facilitator, is to provide the framework, is to provide the structure, and to support our challenge of our schools as best as possible. In terms of going forwards, how we ensure that the voice and the views of our parents and carers are engaged, no doubt we have a number of approaches, such as the work of our Parent Carer Forum, such as the intention to hold a summit with a focus on attendance over the coming months, where we really want to ensure that we capture as many views as possible, including that of parents. So parents' voice and young people's voice are engaged in part of this process as well. So no one is saying here, at this juncture as we speak now, that we have all the answers. This is a few months into a framework of activity that has begun with canvassing the views of schools and ensuring schools' policies, systems and processes are fit for purpose and responsive to needs. But obviously over the coming months we will seek to scale up and increase the reach and those that we engage with as part of this process. Perhaps just to answer the question about children with a higher level, more severe needs, I guess the interesting thing about our data is that although we are performing poorly compared with other local authorities in terms of persistent absence, for severe absence we are better performers. So those children with 50% or less attendants actually we are out stepping national and in some cases inner London for some groups. Nevertheless, obviously we are still concerned about those children and families. The strategy that Katie just identified is where we are focusing those attendance mentors, of which there will be five. That releases some of the resources that are already out there working with, so attendance support teams, school advisors, educational psychologists, all of the services, CAMS, et cetera, who are continuing to work in more detail with those families where attendance is more entrenched. And what the introduction of the learning mentors does is release some of that capacity to do that work a little bit more intensively. So all of that work will continue to happen with those families and we are not taking our eye off of that board. But what we do know is that if we make an improvement and in mode into that 80-90%, then we stop attendance from deteriorating further so that more children join and fall into those lower groups. So there is a preventative strategy, but we continue with all of the efforts and all of the strategies, as Katie has said, in a very personalised and tailored way. There is no one approach. There is no one solution to any of this. We have got to base this on the individual needs and work with the individual schools to tackle that. And that work will continue, hopefully, with a little bit more capacity because we are dealing with that top layer in a different way. Thank you, Candy. And just before I take... Actually, did you have a follow-up to that, Susie? And then, yeah. Thank you. Just to clarify, I'm not sure if I heard that correctly or understood correctly. So none of the 52 schools that were visited raised SEN as a barrier to attendance or suspected SEN. Was that...? No? Just... You only took the information that came out to put in this? Oh. From the visits? I just didn't know why SEN... I mean, like, in terms of a key theme that's... Yeah, it's just not mentioned at all, but Paul had said that you can only use the information that you're given through the visits or what your SEN is not in this report in the slightest. I think I mean... I've got the same question, Chair, as well. Yeah. So just to clarify, and correct me if I'm wrong, Susie, is it in terms of those who... Because from some of the evidence-gathering session, it was those who have undiagnosed needs or are on a waiting list that are persistently absent, and was that kind of your takeaway as well from visiting to schools, was that kind of a key theme in terms of children with undiagnosed needs or SCND not attending school? Is that...? Am I right? Yeah, I... It's under 4.3, Cassie. Yeah. Sorry. I had a similar question, actually. So, under 4.3, it sort of said, talks about functionality and attendance issues, and I just noted there that nothing about SEND was written down. So there's no mention of it at all in the whole report, which we... Well, maybe a number of us had thought that was... Unusual, yes. Unusual, and perhaps would have thought that it might have come out in 4.3. I guess it's unlikely for a school to say, this child's got problems because of undiagnosed needs. They wouldn't necessarily recognise that. It would be because they will have diagnosed them or they will have identified them. So, yeah, so mental health certainly came up, you know, frequently. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, just before I take your question, I just wanted to, um, note, um, just in terms of what you were saying, Katie, and thank you so much for, um, going into all 52 schools, and I'm sure you can't put everything that you took from the 52 schools in a report, so maybe it just, yeah, there will be another opportunity, um, for that. So I don't want to put, you know, that much pressure on you, but I think just speaking from my own work experience, working in a school, and just what you did mention about around sometimes the intervention is with families, sometimes it's with children, sometimes it's with schools. And I think it's really important to recognise that all three can be true at the same time. Um, and it doesn't mean that because one person, it wasn't the parent, that it doesn't mean that in another scenario it isn't. And I was just wondering with the complex one, when sometimes it's a parent's mental health or a parent's physical health, which I have experienced, which is really difficult to work with, and because of that their children aren't going to school, how would a school then support that parent because it's, it's, you know, it's not on the child why they're not coming. And I've seen that sometimes threshold for adult services is too, it's not, doesn't meet that, so there's no service for that parent. And then also children services are involved because the child is safe, um, you know, supposedly. So I think with those complex situations, I think it's that small cohort and kind of what support can we give in that scenario? Because in the example that I had, the parent just couldn't get their child to school when she really wanted to, but she just couldn't because of high levels of anxiety. And it just seems she was just sent from pillar to post. Um, and it's not the child's fault that, you know, and she obviously was a primary school child, it's different to secondary school, but I was just wondering if there was kind of a conversation with the schools around those kind of specific complex cases. Um, so again, I think it's quite difficult to, to comment, um, unless it's a particular, in specific case, but certainly, um, what I want to do with the access and engagement service going forward is, um, to develop as more of an advisory service. So instead of its core being, um, issuing penalty notices, it will be working much more closely with the school, um, to ensure that we're giving, um, the best advice so that the, the, um, the, the, the services are aware of all the services within Islington, early help, um, CAMHS, um, the, the EP's wellbeing service. Um, and again, this, um, is the start of outlining some of that. And, um, so hopefully we will be putting in resources to help the access and engagement service to work with schools so that everybody is aware of the offers that are out there. I'm just going to, to Ilkay, Anestas and Sofen, and I'm going to bring it to a close. That's okay. Um, thank you, Chair. Um, I'm going to be really brief because I know that we've got loads of parents here that really want to ask questions. So I'm just going to ask this one question. When you were doing your, um, engagement and you talk about, um, interventions include parent engagement programmes, which parent engagement programmes? One. And two, was the Parent Carer Forum involved? And three, how many people, how many parents are actually involved with the Parent Carer Forum for you to actually get accurate figures? Because, from case work, we know that the figures are much higher than what's on here. So, I just want to know how you collected your data. What, sorry, Ilkay, I'm not sure which data you're referring to. It's, um, 2.8. They mentioned, um, they, we also developed and documented specific interventions aimed at improving attendance. These interventions include parent engagement programmes, and I want to know what those parent engagement programmes were and how many parents were contacted. Chair, can I, because the things that, sorry, sorry, Chair. Um, I think it's a good question from Ilkay, and I'm not necessarily, I, I think, um, someone like Jenny Ling, who heads up Bright Futures, that early help bit, which is sort of the passing comment, but an important one around early help Bright Futures, uh, and a number of those work, partnership work with parents when they, when they, when they come to family hubs. That's probably where we could probably elaborate, because I think the question's absolutely right, but I don't think we're going to do it the proper, um, the credit that it has, because Jenny and her service, and where we have, I think you mentioned it, Chair, as well, um, in an, in an email around, you know, particular school having six hours. Well, every single school gets some family support, worker support. It's very little, but more than most boroughs do get. But I think we need to probably try and add that to the paper, because that's the right question, but I don't think we're going to do it service, because there's probably more than we're actually reporting to. I, I agree. I think we will leave the Bright Futures stuff probably to a, to another time, because, you know, it's mentioned that, but I don't think we can go into what service that would provide from this report, because it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Did you, um, and I just want to repeat what my, um, colleagues said here, and what Susie said, um, and that is basically that, although I can see that you've put a lot of work into this, it does come across as a lot of parent blame, and I don't think it's really fair, and it is not mentioned. I just need to also focus on that. Can I just say, just because I don't, I do disagree with that, because there's a lot of parents who really do need support, and they would be really asking for that support. So I think recognising that some parents are struggling, whether it's because of cost of living, whether because it's mental health or physical health, I think it's right to include that, because otherwise they won't get that support, but I would agree that I think, because the SEND could be included, but that's, but I don't want for, because some, some parents don't have that experience where it's not that only to help, I'm not going to take away from parents that do struggle, and do have certain issues that we might not relate to, and if that's not recognised, we won't be able to give them that support. I agree, SEND, I do agree, because that has come up through our evidence-gathering sessions from parents focus groups. But moving on, Sophie? Yes, thank you Chair. Katie, this was a really good report, and I was encouraged by the amount of progress, well firstly the amount of work that's been done, and that you've made some really good progress on some key issues, so that was really fantastic to read, and I was also really interested to see about the appointing Bright Futures as the attendance mentors. I had a question, and this might be my misconception of what Bright Futures does currently in the borough, but my understanding of what they do is that they work with young people who have, you know, who are not attending school or have low attendance for school, and so my question is, if we have appointed them to help us with school attendance, is there potential there for a conflict of interest? And if so, is there, like, is this something that you've been thinking about and have a plan of how to manage? Yeah, I don't think it's a conflict, I must think it's complimentary, so these, the attendance mentors have got a very specific role, and we'll be working in a very specific way, and it will be brief work, and it will be targeted work towards a particular group, whereas Bright Futures generally will continue their work in schools, and it may be that some families need to either step up or step down, if you like, maybe referred into the main Bright Futures service if, after, you know, a brief intervention, things emerge that would suggest the family need more intensive help, or longer-term help, or, so there will be a relationship, obviously, there, but there is a very specific approach, and a very, you know, specific time-limited and targeted intervention plan for those, for, you know, for those families, so it's, I think they're complimentary, and they work alongside, and not, not over that. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Anastas? Thank you, Chair. Just very quickly, again, amazing work, you must have an amazing kind of overview and oversight in terms of what's happening. So, one of the things that had been mentioned in the report is about support first, so the general consensus is it that Islington schools are adopting and practicing a support first approach, and how are we on that kind of spectrum? Are there any bad apples? I think, generally, across the primary schools, we've seen that the majority of them, or all of them, I would say, are adopting a support first approach. I think we do have challenges in some of our secondary schools. Thank you, and I'll take a final question from Councillor Clare. Sorry. I just had a question around the 1% improvement, and just, when you look at, like, the detail in the numbers, just kind of where that 1% kind of is, and how you're breaking it down, and I just, I just wanted to know how many people were also on the parent forum as well, because I know that was, I think that was asked, but it wasn't quite answered. Should I say something about that? So, 1% sounds like very small and very non-ambitious. If we were to move by 0.1 of a percent, we would move from about 130th to 90s up in the above. So, this would take us towards the top quartile, just that. Is that candy, is that in the all, primary or secondary? So, are you, so what figure would that be moving? So, it would be, like, 1% overall would be the, the, the, the. On the, what, the all of 21%, or is that the percentage of persistent? Absence, yes, yes, yes. So, currently at 21%. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And moving to 20%. 20%, yes, absolutely. So, it's, okay, perfect. Perfect. And, obviously, we'll need to check, the parent care reform is in a bit of a state of flux at the moment, so. Yeah, I think, I think we would like to know, kind of, like, the numbers now, and kind of, what the ambition would, would be, kind of, like, in the next, kind of, like, three months. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I will take a question from the public. I will take one question. However, if there are disruptions, I will ask members who are disrupting to leave. So, could you please respect that? Can I, yeah, do you want to take a question? Yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to go back to the. Can you put your microphone on? Thank you. This one is. Well done. Thank you. Good girl. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. Well done. Can you hear me now, yeah? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I wanted, really, to go back to the parent engagement, really, in this, in this whole, um, situation. Um, I appreciate what Paul was saying earlier. The, the council feel they don't have the direct, um, you know, linking with parents. Um, but, I mean, someone, either the council or the schools, somebody has to, has to have a deep listening exercise with parents and children, because we're not going to get anywhere with this, with the best will in the world, if the only stakeholders that we're talking to are the people at the top, whether that's schools, whether that's heads. I mean, if you ask any parents, they will tell you that the school really has no clue about the needs of their children in a lot of cases. I'm sure there are exceptions, and I know that you've identified, you know, really good practice. Could you ask, could you pose it as, sorry, could you just pose it as a question? Yeah. A question. So, I, what I really want to know, I guess the, the SEM Parliament actually did a, um, um, surveyed parents in November. I can't see that reflected in the report. So, I guess my question is, how, how are you going to make sure that somewhere along the line there is a deep listening project that goes on that informs how you address attendance? Because unless we have that, we're not really going to get beyond the very surface issues here. So, that's my question both, both to you, but also to the scrutiny committee is how, how we're going to ensure that that deep listening exercise with parents and children who will be able to answer the why question, um, how that's going to happen. Uh, thank you. And I, I think you raise a, a valid point. It is extremely important that we hear from children and their parents. Um, I think just, um, going back to Paul's point, this was round one. Um, you know, we, we really wanted to get a deep understanding of this. It seemed like the best place to start was to go out and talk to the schools to make sure they had a good understanding of the new legislation. Um, and so we, we could understand. And, and so we had the opportunity again, to let them know what services are available to support the children going forward. I think certainly, um, we can, we can look at the best way of, um, we are, um, I did mention in the report, um, the, the youth council are doing a survey, um, for us this month, um, around the reasons that children don't want to attend school or the reasons that they do want to attend school. So we, we, we're starting to, to do that, but certainly we will, we will do more. Thank you, Katie. Sorry. I'm going to draw this to an end. Um, thank you. Can I give you some questions? Absolutely. Yeah. Um, I'm going to move back. Use the mic. Yeah. The only thing I'm saying is very much what's been echoed here. It's the number one thing in the five weeks that we've been on the scene. Yeah. And it's not just with the black community. It's right across the board. It's a real sore. You know, they don't feel they've been heard. So many of them have come to these meets and they won't even come again. Yeah. It's very important. But as to whom do I send those questions to for the team for yourselves? As to whom do I send them? You could send it to myself or to Theo, actually. Um, I'll speak to you at the end. Yeah. And he will direct it to the relevant person. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, can I ask. Thank you, Katie, so much in the team. I know, um, how much work has gone into visiting all the schools. And I know this is just the start. So thank you so much. Um, if there are no further questions, can I ask members to note the update? Thank you. Thank you. We will now move on to the next item this evening, which is the introduction to emotional-based school non-attendance. Um, is it Paul? Yes. Paul, are you presenting? Thank you. Paul, yes. Paul, are you presenting? Thank you. Thank you. And while, obviously, Jill is leaving this, there's obviously many folks across the local area. Many people in schools and educational psychologists have put this slide show together. So, Jill, thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you very much for the opportunity for doing this for me to present to you. Um, I, um, I am the principal educational psychologist. And for several years now, I have been leading, um, multi-agency working group, um, including health, education, schools, um, and social care. Bright Futures have been involved in really thinking about the factors that are impacting on non-attendance, particularly when it's emotionally based. And we have, it's culminated in the development of our protocol, which we're just about to sort of pass through our SEM partnership board and then share this, not really a final version, but another version. Schools have already received a previous version of our protocol. So I wanted to sort of come here and explain what the content is of that and how we've worked through, um, the process of doing it. Um, I think the reason why it's taken such a long time is because contextually the situation has kept changing and, um, we started probably about six years ago. Since then we had COVID. We've had cost of living crisis. We've had increased mental health needs for parents, which have impacted on children and an anxiety of children. We've had higher levels of children getting diagnosis of autism, and that has all impacted on factors around their, their anxiety and their wellbeing and effectively their attendance. So that's why it's taken a longer time to get to where we are. Um, I, I think we've covered the national and local picture quite well, actually. And I think it's really interesting that emotional-based school avoidance or EBS, emotional-based school non-attendance, um, the terminology is quite important. People are trying to move away from language that locates the difficulty within the child. It's much more around factors they're impacting on non-attendance. And it can be systemic. And, and, and so we've kind of, I think we're moving towards, uh, using the term emotional-based school non-attendance rather than avoidance. Um, but it's really thinking about what the barriers are, the emotional barriers for children to attend school. Um, so can we move to the next slide, please? So that's actually me just talking about the terminology, but I think it's also important to say that there isn't, it's not a diagnosis EBSA or emotional-based school non-attendance. It's a presence of, it's a presentation of behaviour. Um, and I think that's what we have to look at. We really have to understand the child and we have to know what's going on in that child's life and take time to, to understand. So if you go to the next slide, um, there's been some research. Kearney and Silverman have done a lot of research in this area and they've identified four kind of main areas that could, could, that can be the function of, you know, why children are attending, what is that non-attendance, what function is that playing? So I'll just go through them, um, each one. The first one, if we can go to the next slide. This, the first one is children avoid school because they want to avoid the negative feelings and effect that that can come, that can bring. And that could be anxiety, it could be low mood, it could be depression, it's uncomfortable feelings about being in school. And if we understand that sometimes those manifest as physical, so they might say they've got tummy aches or headaches and they're more somatic kind of illnesses, which is, which is because of their, their anxiety. So if we know that's what's happening, we want to avoid them kind of adopting this spiral of anxiety where they think by not attending things will be better because that would just increase the anxiety eventually because they'll get more anxious because they're missing out, they won't know how to go back to school, they'll start feeling shame or guilt or embarrassment when they see their friends. So we have to avoid that. We have to put interventions in place that really support them going into school or getting the support to meet their emotional needs. And that might be, um, some of the support around sort of cognitive behavioural approaches where they look at their thoughts and their feelings and understand how that links in with their behaviour. We might use, um, interventions like systematic re-exposure. So they do activities in schools that are less anxious and gradually they build up to things that, that, that they can usually would find more anxious but they can cope. And we have to create sort of safe spaces for them, places where they feel less anxious. So it's all about adapting the environment for them. Um, and the protocol goes through this and it identifies which, uh, which, which staff and services might be involved. Um, so for these children it might be the emotional literacy support assistants who are, their, their staff who actually, my team, the educational psychology, we train up emotional literacy support assistants. They're within school and they provide interventions for individuals and groups, um, for supporting, kind of managing anxiety and SEMH needs. Or we've talked about the school wellbeing service already this evening. They run, they provide individual or small group interventions for mild to moderate anxiety. So they might be a good, um, support group, support service to get involved. Or New River College outreach or the sort of school camps depending on who are the right services. But these are all school, um, services that schools can have access to. So that was the function is around low mood. But if the function is about avoiding school because of what's going on at school, it might be the environment. It might be, and we're talking about SEN, it might be unidentified or undiagnosed learning needs. Um, it might be that the sensory needs in the school are just really difficult for the child to cope with. So they avoid school to avoid those environments. Then, you know, then we'd be doing different interventions. We would be thinking about adapting the environment, think about the sensory needs. Um, think about identifying the learning needs, doing assessments, putting interventions in place. Um, and just making sure that the school knows the child, knows the needs and is putting the right, um, interventions in place. And very much this might be our group of children who have got a diagnosis of autism or are waiting for a diagnosis when they've neurodivergent profiles where they really can't manage some of the sensory needs or they can't, they really struggle with managing whole groups or big classes and they need to have smaller interventions. So that would be the focus of them. You might use, involve the SENCO, you might involve my team, the Educational Psychology Service. Bridge Outreach could be offering support about how to adapt the environment. Um, and, um, also other services like, um, the Children Disabled Children's Team, really thinking about the support that those children need to get them into school so that they feel that their needs have been met. Sorry, we can move on two slides now. I've forgotten to say move on. So that might be another function. Another function might be because there's something at home that is keeping them at home. And it might be to do with, they want to avoid their separation anxiety. There's key, key adults who, who they don't want to leave or they might be concerned about. They might be, um, they might be living in homes where there are real challenges or, um, adverse childhood experiences or domestic violence. That actually they feel safer if they're at home with their family. And then it would be a very different intervention. Then we're kind of really trying to support them into school and supporting the family at the the same time. So again, we've talked about bright futures and early help, supporting the family to put systems in place, incentivizing the child to be at school, but also so they feel safe and, um, that they know that, that, that, that they can be away from their parent without, without too much, um, distress, I suppose. So it's about making sure. And then it's putting, again, it's the pastoral leads or heads of year in school who are doing the support, um, when they come into school to make sure that they feel safe. And their needs are being met. And then the final function, um, if you go to the next slide, please. And the next slide. And the next slide. Um, this is when, um, and the next slide. Sorry. Um, this is when, sometimes actually when, when young people don't find school very motivating and they're more motivated by what's going on outside of school and they might, because they might have better friends outside of school or they might like the activities. And this is because they're not finding school motivating. So this is when we've got to make school enjoyable, fun, support, identifying what their needs are and making sure that it's offering something that they can feel motivated to do. So this is, again, we're using the school attendance offices, the learning, the attendance mentors that possibly might be quite, quite important to really engage them in schools. And eyes will do an emotional wellbeing work as they are also support workers who can help young people see the benefit of going into school and help them think about longer term outcomes and thinking about their sort of futures, about the importance of being in school. So, so, so this summary is just really to explain that you can't just put the same, the right, the same intervention in place for everyone. You've really got to understand the needs of the child, what is impacting on them not attending school and making sure that you, that, that the schools and the professionals around them are, are putting the right support in place and the right adaptations for them so that they can be in school and feel safe. So these, so, so, so the next slide, please, goes on to thinking about just explaining what the key principles are of the protocol. So it's kind of the, the first bit of the protocol really just talks about attendance, issues around attendance, anxiety and, um, thinking about autism and transition times, all the times where we might see more emotional base score on attendance. And then I'm just going to kind of whiz through the rest of the protocol. So the key kind of important things about intervening early, really knowing the child as early as possible, knowing what their needs are, use as many resources that we put into the protocol, to get the child's voice, to hear the views of the family, to really see what's going on. And sometimes it doesn't work immediately. So you have to persist and use and keep going to try and understand what's going on. Have a team around the child, have, so that families can feel safe and respected to come in and meet with the professionals who are supporting. So it's working collaboratively and ensuring that there's this trusting and respectful relationship. And I hear some of the comments that are coming. It is only going to work if schools, professionals and parents work together. And then the assess, plan, do cycle, which is one of the visuals here. It's understanding the needs, planning the intervention, putting it in place and reviewing it. And this constant assess, plan, do cycle is what works in all aspects of putting interventions in place. And making sure we recognise the key kind of transition times when it could, with some of these things you might think everything's going well and then transition times we might see sort of anxiety increasing and we have to make sure the support is in place. And the key part of quite a lot of the protocol is lots of resources, checklists, tools that school staff can use and audits in order to train up their staff, make sure that we're using the right materials and frameworks to put in place. We're trying to prevent schools from having to reinvent the wheel and we're giving them all the provision and resources we can. And so the protocol is organised really by looking, we've talked, I think it was a place to be, talked about whole school approaches. So we're thinking about that, so there's a whole section on that. Then there's a section about early intervention, getting the child's views, putting initial plans in place. Then if attendance continues to decrease what we do, a more targeted support, which professionals might get involved in, keeping the team around the child in place, but including additional professionals until, if attendance becomes very entrenched, we think about more specialist support and we might be thinking about sort of alternatives to education or flexi schooling. So the next, I'll just whiz through, because I know it's getting a bit late. Yeah, because I do want some time for it. Yeah, so I'll just go through the very last, they're really just showing you those sections. So the next slide, that's showing you the checklist that's in the protocol, those different areas and the decision points at which you might want to change the kind of support that's coming in place. The next slide is showing the whole school approaches, particularly thinking about the IMARS, which is the Islington Mental Health and Resilience framework that schools can use, or the trauma-informed practice approach, which is really the whole school approach about understanding children's needs and those various audits to make sure that there's training in place for all staff. So the next slide is an understanding of needs, both around attendance, about neurodivergence, about literacy, about learning, so that we've got well-trained staff to support the needs of the children. And then the early intervention, which is the next slide, is information about all the resources that you can use to try and capture the child's voice, see how they're feeling, and to really make sure we've understood, in order to put the first plan in place. And that is something that the child and the family are very much involved in creating, and hopefully that will work. We don't want it to be moving up the next steps, we hope early intervention will be the response that is needed, but if they do need more targeted support, we would involve more professionals. It might be that my team would get involved, or more specialist camps would get involved, and hopefully we keep the interventions in place. Yeah, and I think the New River College, some of the New River College outreach staff are really, they've got engagement mentors who might become involved at this stage, to really go into the home and understand the needs of the child. And then the final is when it's very much more specialist, and I think we really do have to start thinking a bit more about alternatives to coming to school every day, although that's what we want, but some children it's just not going to work. So we sometimes might need to give them flexi-time or alternatives, we've got some little computer bots that we're trialling to try and, for some time, a child can stay at home but still access the learning at school, which we've been given to trial. And those are the sort of things in place, but this is when the children's, their needs, their mental health needs are really quite severe, and what we're trying to do is avoid them from just becoming disengaged from all aspects of life. So if they can do positive activities in the home or in the community, that's a way of getting them back into school and to feel more positive. So that's really generally what's in the protocol, I'll leave you to read the rest in your own time, but the next steps really is to kind of share this with the partnership board, share it with children, and find resources particularly for children and parents, so that we're kind of making it a resource that will be accessible and useful for all stakeholders really. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open it to questions. Claire? That was super helpful. And the theory, it sounds great, but I think from the committee's kind of perspective, and like when we're scrutinising, I guess I'm sort of wondering whether or not you have the right amount of resources. So I guess, like towards the end of the year when we put forward recommendations, it's all about, we've heard these great things, actually this is what the council should be investing in kind of going forward. So I guess sort of my question is, so for example, because I don't know, you know, New River College Outreach, I don't know how many there are, and whether or not there should be more. I don't know if you have enough resources, because, you know, because I, you know, as Ilkay said, you know, as councillors, you know, we hear that there isn't enough targeted support. However, you know, we might just be hearing about, like the 1%. So I think it would be really helpful to hear from you what numbers, when you're saying about your team, because I'm not aware how many outreach people there are at the New River, and whether or not you feel you need more targeted support help in order to address kind of the crisis that we perhaps kind of have at the moment. And, sorry, just to include, and the Isildon emotional well-being workers as well, like, are they restricted because of resources when, yeah, as well? Everything is restricted by resources, and I think, I mean, I think, having worked in lots of local authorities before, we are very rich in support. We do have a lot of provision, but I wouldn't say, you know, my team is, we don't just do that, we do a lot of other things. I mean, I can provide you the numbers, I won't tell you off the top of my head. Yeah, I mean, I can certainly tell you what my team numbers are. I don't, we can share it, I'm sure we can share it. But I think, you know, there is a lot of need in schools, there's a lot of pressure. Nick could tell you more about, you know, how schools are really having to manage. We are looking at how to sort of use our time. So it's more about systemic building capacity, supporting staff, supporting the well-being of staff, so that they have the capacity to support the children as well. Well, I think we do quite a good job with the resource that we've got. There is an increase in demand, though, so I think we would always be saying we could do more if we had more. But I think we've got, I think we've got a wealth, and I think it is about making sure we get the right support at the right time, so we don't sort of scatter gun and get lots of professionals involved with one child. We really think about who should be involved for this child at this level, at this stage of need, and making sure that we distribute the resources we've got fairly and directly. Sophie? Yes, thanks, Jill. This was a really informative report, and it was really helpful to see how things should proceed and, like, what good practice looks like, which is fantastic. What I wanted to do is just, and again, it might not be a question for you, it might be back to the school's team. What we heard in our, when we visited the youth centre and what we heard in the focus group with parents is there seems to be quite a lot of cases where there's nowhere near that good practice being followed, and in fact it's almost the opposite, where, you know, we talked to young people who said that, you know, there was bullying and schools weren't addressing it. There was, you know, children who'd had effectively really traumatic experiences, and, you know, they didn't even know who they could turn to in school. We heard from, you know, we've heard from parents, you know, where schools have been, you know, extremely unsupportive. We've heard from parents where, actually, rather than this sort of flexi-schooling opportunity being a really positive thing, where education can be dialled down to the level that really works for the child, actually being used more sort of punitively, where schools are effectively withdrawing education from the child against the parents' wishes, really. So, you know, all of those things, just that feels like we've heard, we've seen a lot of these examples where schools are not following the best practices you've outlined. So, my question is, like, how do we all work together to address that? Because it feels like there is a gap between this great model you've outlined, and clearly sometimes that is happening, but a lot of times it's not. So, how do we address that? I think, Anne, it's very fair what you've said. I completely agree that we're not seeing the best practice across all schools all the time. I think this, I'm really hoping, and I'm working very closely with Gordon, who's the head of New River College Outreach Support, to really embed this, to make sure that when schools come to securing education board to say we can't meet the needs, they're demonstrating that they're using some of this protocol, that they're saying we've done this, we've had the TAC meeting, we want to see evidence of the plan that they're putting in place. Where is your return to school plan? So, I think we have got a way to go. I think there is not great practice across the schools, but we hope that this is a protocol, and alongside what Katie's doing, really, that we're starting to kind of model the practice that we want to see in Islington, that we do want to listen to the voice of the child, hear what's going on for them in school, and make the adaptations. And Candy is planning, like, mass training to make sure that schools are adapting and putting in place the sort of SEND support, the mental health support. We've been leading in my team on the senior mental health lead training, so we've been embedding that across schools. We are hoping to see impact of this, and one of our steps will be to see over the next year how, once we've sent this out to school, is this making a difference in some of those practices, in when we see referrals coming in for EHC assessments, that we're seeing evidence of them using the protocol and using the checklist, and they're taking up the offer for training and things like that. Do you have a quick follow-up? Yes. So, that sounds brilliant, and I can see you guys are working really hard to try and make sure that this happens. I wonder whether there's a way, though, to hold... You know, is there a way to hold schools more accountable? For example, are there some metrics that can be developed to just really understand, you know, whether schools are following this or not, so that we can hold them more to account directly? Because, obviously, you having that conversation and really pushing them is one thing, but, you know, at the end of the day, that's a conversation, right? And maybe there's some ways, by using metrics and data, we can demonstrate that they're not following that practice. I was going to just add to that, because I think that was my general point with this report, is actually accountability on the schools. Because even reading that kind of push to school or that pull to school, if the school setting isn't welcoming and are seeing children who are persistently absent as a problem and they do want to just off-roll them to New Roeva College, no matter how good this protocol is, if it's not implemented, then there's going to be no change in attendance. And I think, are we being candid with schools, with specific schools that don't have good practice? Are we, do we know, have we identified those schools that don't have good practice? And echoing what Sophie said, how do we hold them to account when it does become as serious as a child just refusing to come to school because of the school setting, not because of the other factors that we've kind of discussed today? Because I feel like there's a lot of good support available. But also from the feedback from, like, you know, some of the evidence gathering, they did point out some schools that they just could not, you know, work with for the children. And following on the point around sometimes parents don't consent to their child being to another school. I think once it gets to Gordon, for example, the outreach, I think it's just far too late at that point to put interventions. Once it's got to a point where, OK, your child needs to now go to, you know, alternative provision or there's an outreach, there's, it's probably too late at that point for intervention. So I think we, as a committee, we would probably want to see a way where schools can be held to account if good practice is just not being followed. Yeah, I'm going to use my vice chair, I guess, position. Yeah, privilege. Thank you. Yeah, privilege. I think I want to go back to probably a year or two ago when we had the idea of the federation of schools. I think some schools actually did really work hand in hand together and there was good practice within Islington. And I think from that, I don't know why we can't take some of that good practice into what's going forward now and looking at how we do look at a different school approach. Because I know that, I remember, John, when you first joined us, you said that obviously it's the schools that we have to work with, which we understand. But it's sort of like a triangular where we have schools, parents, children, young people and other stakeholders. So I'm just wondering, going forward, can we not bring some of that good practice from the federation school practice approach and using your head, you know, you've got the headship where they meet and just trying to hold people to account a bit more because I think going forward it is going to get worse. And just going back to the report, hearing about, obviously, that approach to having some kids using these AI and bots and trying to get them to be engaged in school still, we're going to have an issue when it comes to policy because the government's now saying something that maybe we won't be able to control in that respect. So we do need to be mindful of what we're doing here in Islington. And then it's not going to tee up with what the government's then saying because then we are having that culture of blaming parents and then children and young people being left out on the limb. So I just want to put that on record. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And thank each and every one of you and this committee members for recognising the outstanding piece of work that's been led by Jill and her team with the support of others across the local area. And I think we would all agree it's only going to be as good as the implementation, isn't it? Otherwise, it's going to be a waste of time. This provides a framework. It provides a framework. And we're at that stage where there's an intent now to look at what works, to bring a programme together, to now work with our schools and settings with view to moving from intent to implementation. And hopefully further down the line we'll be able to look back and talk about impact, but very much we're at the intent stage. Jill's great work provides us with a framework. But it's about the we. And it's about the we and how we're going to work together as all sector leaders, all education system leaders, whether we're in school or a setting or scrutiny members, parents, carers, how effectively govern us, how effectively can we implement this framework? So, absolutely, Chair, I think it's something that in the future I think it would be worth, if in agreement with you, to come back on the forward plan to maybe see how things are progressing. But we really are at the intent stage, so it's quite early. But absolutely right, without the effective impact and input from our universal settings, which is our schools, then this won't deliver. But it's at the intent stage, and I think we recognise as an intent piece of work, this is a very, very good piece of work, and it gives us an opportunity, if implemented effectively, to really make an impact. Thank you. I'll take the final question from Anastas, and I'll move on. Thank you, Chair. If I can just bring it back to our schools, and we haven't got as many pupils, but we've got more space in the schools. And in the report, there's been a mention about kind of the intention of having these calm spaces. So I do want to know if schools are actually implementing them, and how impactful are these calm spaces? So we're just about to embark on a major capital works programme. 32 of our schools have put in successful bids now for things like reflection spaces, sensory gardens, but very much thinking about neurodiversity at the forefront. So those bits have been evaluated. We're looking... And so we're starting to roll. It's going to be quite an ambitious, multi-million pound programme to input these, accompanied by, you know, training, engagement, and in a way, that's the... You know, that sums the leverage to get some of the practice embedded around that, but around physical transformation of the environment. So we're quite excited about that programme, that prospect. And any of you who are governors, I'm sure, will know. I know... I'm already... Herbal Councillor Zammet about how excited she is. So that's... You know, it's all part of a... You know, there isn't any one thing. There's a number of things going on, really, to try and, you know, pull all of this, you know, programme together towards more inclusive... More inclusive schools who can adapt, you know, better to the increasingly diverse needs of our, you know, of our community. Unfortunately, we're always chasing... You know, we're always chasing the... You know, the game. I mean, it's difficult to get ahead of this. Thank you, Candy. That's really good to hear. I wasn't aware, and I wonder if all schools were aware of it. But I'm sure... Yeah, to have the opportunity to fear them, that's really good, because I know that having that inclusion room or that space really helps children. And I was surprised when some of the schools that, you know, I was working in didn't have that space and the difference. So that's really, really positive. Thank you. Can I take a question... Any questions from a member of the public? No? Thank you. If there are no further comments, can I ask that members note the report? Thank you. Can I... Moving on to the work programme, can I ask members to note the work programme? There has been a few changes, minor changes, just moving some of the previous items to the April one. So, everyone happy to note the work programme? Thank you so much. If there are no urgent matters or questions regarding the work programme, then I'll bring this meeting to a close. Thank you all for attending. Our next meeting is scheduled for February 24th. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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