Transcript

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first Children's Services and Education Select Committee of the new council year. A few housekeeping issues. The public and the press are able to attend this meeting in person or watch the meeting through the webcast. In the unlikely event that there is a technical issue with the webcast, the meeting will be paused until this is resolved. Agenda papers have been published on the council's website in accordance with the usual practice. I have no announcements as such to make, but I would like to take a second to thank Councillor Leslie Clark and the attendance review group for the work that they have been doing on the attendance review, which unfortunately I had to withdraw from after a couple of meetings due to a bereavement. So I would like to say thank you to Councillor Clark and the members of the group who I know have been working incredibly hard on that piece of work, so thank you. Apologies for absence. I have Councillor Anita Kranner, Councillor Denise Summers, Councillor Sade Addo and Zoe Williams. I don't know if we have any more. No, that's all. So we'll move to agenda item number two, and that is appointment of vice-chairman, and I would like to appoint Councillor Ade Osbogan as my vice-chairman for the Children's and Education Select Committee for this council year. Thank you, Ade. Thank you. Declarations of interest. Do we have any declarations of interest? Please raise your hand. I'll start to my right, Councillor Osbogan. Yes, I would like to declare I'm a governor of schools within the county. Councillor Bates. School governor. Councillor Blaymeyers. I have a child at first-hand school. Councillor Clark. School governor, and I also will have to leave just after four o'clock. I'm awfully sorry. Councillor Darby. School governor. Anybody else? Councillor Turner. Thank you. Also school governor in Buckinghamshire. Any other personal or pecuniary interests in relation to any of the agenda items that any member wishes to declare? No? Thank you. Then we move on to agenda item number four, which is the minutes. Within the agenda, we have the minutes of the committee meeting held on the 7th of March and 15th of May 2024. Are there any comments on the accuracy of the minutes? No? Are you therefore in agreement that these are a true and accurate record of the meeting? The minutes are therefore agreed. We also have the action addendum to the minutes detailing the actions taken. All those in favour of the meeting? Opposed? The motion carries. The meeting is adjourned. So we move to public questions. We've not received any public questions. However, we have received a question from Councillor Stutchbury, who is not a member of this committee but joins us today in relation to item seven, the joint targeted inspection report. So we move to item six, children's services transformation program update. And I am pleased to invite the officers to introduce the report on the transformation program. Thank you, Councillor Ward. Thank you, Chairman. So good afternoon, members. I'll just introduce the paper and then my colleague, Erin, will talk in a little bit more detail. So we've previously shared our thinking behind our transformation program phase one, which had a focus around the MASH, the multiagency safeguarding hub and the integration of early help and social care teams to create multidisciplinary locality support teams and there are 21 across our county. It's fair to say it's been a large program of change and there have been extensive consultation exercises with the staff affected and indeed with partners including schools, health colleagues, safeguarding partnership and the voluntary and community sector. One of the key principles behind our transformation program was to reduce the handoffs for children who were referred into the MASH and we are confident and are already seeing a reduction in those handoffs. The final thing I'd like to say before I hand over to Errol is just that within the paper you'll also see some positive early feedback from colleagues working in locality teams who have already noticed the difference, the practical difference that working in a different way supported by our practice methodology is having on the way they view their own practice and the difference they make in supporting children and families in Buckinghamshire. I'll hand over to Errol, thank you chairman. Thank you John and good afternoon everybody, it's good to see you again. It's good to be back to provide this update to you as well. There's been some helpful conversation in my previous outings here so I look forward to further questions and comments after this presentation. As I say, as John has said, pleased to be back to really report on the progress and the completion of phase one of this large scale transformation program in children's services and the report that I'm going to assume that you've read sets out effectively the activity that took place in phase one. It recaps on the background and also sets out the plan for the onward phase of transformation and the areas of work that will be covered. But as John has just introduced, the key themes and activities within phase one was very much around, as it says in the report, the front door, strengthening our front door, making sure there was only one and that included the alignment of both early help and social care processes into that single point of access and ensuring that there is that effective oversight and decisions made in the mash so that families receive a more timely and targeted response to need and ensuring that the thresholds are appropriately applied. But the key principle, as you will recall, when I came here to set out the plan for phase one was very much around the formulation of our 21 locality family support and safeguarding teams of which are now in place. They went live on April the 2nd and we have now moved to that model. And those teams sit under the director of children's services, who sits to my left, Richard Nash, who may want to comment later on. But if you remember the business case, as John has already mentioned, was around amalgamating those frontline case holding teams to really help family support and safeguarding teams into those more, into a more effective and efficient model of service delivery for children, young people and families. And it was to fundamentally address that key principle of reducing those handoffs between different teams, different social workers, et cetera, depending on that need. So this is the beginnings of ensuring that we have the foundations in place to deliver consistently good services to children, young people and families, which as you know does not solely sit with the local authority. It also involves many other partners, including our health partners' education and so on and so forth. So this first phase was very much around creating those conditions for our teams to be more locally aligned closer to those communities, but also having those conversations with local partners around the development of service and how we meet those needs on a more local basis. And as I've mentioned, partnership is critical. And as outlined in Working Together 23, it's essential that all partners understand their role in providing those services, providing services to meet those needs for our children, young people. So and as John said, I'm really pleased that there are early signs. On page 18 of your pack, you'll see that we're already getting some early examples of where this new model or remodelled service is effectively benefiting children and families that we are working with. So because of the closer working arrangements, the reduced delays and the combined expertise of our family support staff alongside our social workers as well has really proved beneficial. And there's a few examples as well, where we talk of family support workers as champions around issues such as special educational needs and domestic abuse who have worked alongside with those families in conjunction with the social worker as well. So some real benefits in terms of how we're working. And we talk later in the paper as well as reference to the work undertaken to bring the service back to within its financial envelope, and some steps to manage the recruitment. And I've outlined some other activities there as well. So the locality teams, the basic principles have been achieved in Phase 1. And as I say, I'm pleased to see some positives, not just from the way we're working with our families, but also some comments from the staff who are in those teams, talking about how much improved it is to working that way. The report then goes on at page 22 to outline next steps for the onwards transformation phase. As I say, it's a large-scale programme, so we have to consider the wider service areas as well. But also some legacy actions in terms of ensuring that the locality model is embedded, and there's lots of conversations continuing on with our partners around how they are aligned to our locality teams. And I'm pleased to say that there have been some positive comments around that, particularly making those links on the ground with, for instance, health visitors and locality teams and so on and so forth. And some positive conversations with our schools' colleagues as well, who, as I've mentioned in the report, are offering up spaces, rooms for touchdown opportunities for our staff in those locality areas, but also conversations around joint delivery of programmes and courses and training as well. So there's real potential there, early days still, but again, some positive noises in relation to the onwards move forward. And as I mentioned, the wider service review of other teams that were not included in the phase one of the programme. So the onward phases of the transformation programme are very much around looking at those wider teams to consider opportunities to either align or amalgamate other teams, and that will form part of the wider service review. Placement sufficiency, as we outlined on the last occasion as well, is very much around ensuring that the plans for our in-house children's homes and our fostering, our foster care offer continues to progress to ensure that we can keep children closer to home, where there is a need to, where they need to live elsewhere. So that big programme of work continues. And the work stream of special educational needs. This is a, in itself, quite a significant piece of work that will be taken forward in conjunction with our colleagues and Michael Francis, who's the Director of Education, who you have met previously. The majority of this work will be overseen and governed by the ASCEND Partnership Board, but elements will fit within this transformation, not least the restructure, and that's to enable the service to better respond to the increasing demand for support, as you've heard much about previously. And workforce sufficiency being the final work stream that will continue to drive forward, because we want to ensure that our locality services and our teams are, are, continue to be resourced, and that we have a sustainable structure to continue to meet the needs of children and young people moving forward. So the onward programme, we will continue to brief the lead member in terms of progress, and the whole programme is governed by the Children's Transformation Board, and obviously, by invitation, we will be back to provide updates as and when required. So I will pause there. Thank you very much. Actually, I'll hand it. If that's okay, Chair, good afternoon, everybody, Richard Nash, Service Director, Children's Social Care. Just a couple of quick points. The change that Errol has spoken about is not easy to do. It's incredibly complicated, and it's quite hard to articulate all parts of it, but I'm sure you'll understand what I mean by that to carry on business as usual and change is difficult. I think it's really important that we go on record to thank Errol and his team for their incredible hard work to make this successful. Our colleagues in human resources as well, who had to do an awful lot of work with our staff, and staff in my service who put in incredible amounts of hours to make sure that April the 2nd, which is the first day of this new way of working, was successful. It's early days, but it's absolutely clear that we've done this in a safe and really positive way, and we're quite excited about the opportunities this is going to give in the future. So I'm incredibly grateful for numerous people, people in lots of hours, particularly at weekends and evenings, to make this successful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. I think the Committee will appreciate the update on the Children's Transformation Programme. It is no doubt a huge piece of ongoing work that will involve and inform members about work in their local area in a clear way, and hopefully utilise their knowledge as well, and partner contribution more effectively. It brings efficiency and pace to local work, and enables an early identification of needs, and the benefits I have no doubt will be huge for our children. And again I think as a Committee we would echo that thanks and appreciation to all the staff that have worked incredibly hard to bring this forward. So I'll go to Committee members if you'd like to raise your hand. If you have any questions that you'd like to raise with officers, I should take a list and then go round again. Thank you very much for the report. My question is going to be honing in on the Early Help Partnership. Can you just describe the remodelling you've done, what's the current structure like? Yep, thank you. So the Early Help Partnership, as I mentioned, this is a shared endeavour ensuring that our services are out there, and as early as possible to meet the needs of children and young people, and that includes our health partners, police and community colleagues and so on and so forth. So the Early Help Partnership is chaired by representatives from each of those agencies, including health, that is chaired by a senior police officer as well. And effectively it looks at all the opportunities that we could have put in place to provide services earlier on to avoid the necessity to escalate into higher tier services. So that incorporates everything within the universal service area, and as I mentioned, things like health and parenting programmes and so on and so forth that are delivered through our children and family centres as well. So the Early Help Partnership is very much around developing that approach, and it's not a service, it is an approach in terms of providing early support in order to meet the needs earlier, because if we get that right in our communities, then there's more chance of avoiding the need for higher tier services later on, i.e. social workers and so on and so forth, into the more higher tier concerns. So the Early Help Partnership is around structuring what the approach will be, how we work together in those local communities, what sort of services will be offered and delivered within the communities as part of that Early Help offer. And how's that approach implemented once it's identified, how do you implement it, what's the next step after that? Well it's implemented in various different ways. It could be implemented via schools and what they are able to offer in conjunction with partners. It could be offered as part of our approach within those family centres and the family hub in relation to anything from certain courses that are provided at the moment, so Little Talkers for instance is something that's delivered within our family centres, and often that could provide really invaluable support to families with young children who are developing speech and language. It also provides others with opportunities to provide advice and guidance within that community hub. This is very much around developing, as I say, an approach where everybody is effectively doing what they can with the resources that they have to provide support earlier in order to avoid concerns escalating within families. So that's providing advice and support at the right place in the right time. And that's not just, as I say, a council endeavour or a council resource. Early Help, early support could be provided in schools, it could be provided in GPU surgeries, medical centres and so on and so forth, youth centres, etc. So there's a variety. It's very hard to encapsulate all of it in one short sentence, but it's a whole approach which involves all of our partners to make sure that we provide services earlier to meet those needs as early as possible. Thank you. Councillor Bates. Thank you. Thank you for that report. I can hear echoes in your reorganisation of the rapid review we did into the social workers a couple of years ago, and Councillor Dormant was involved in that as well. Some of the things that they told us then, I can now see you evidencing in the action, and that's really, really encouraging, this idea of working much more locally with the communities and having fewer handovers of information. That's brilliant. Can we connect this to the information we already have on the communities situated in our opportunity bucks wards? Is there an indication that those wards have a much higher level of need, a more frequent access to these, the multi-agency hub? I don't know whether there is a connection. Help us out here. That's a great question, Councillor Bates. Thank you for that. And funny enough, Richard and I were having that conversation just before we walked in, because that's certainly something that we need to monitor and keep an eye on, because nine of our teams, I understand, cover those 10 local opportunity bucks wards. So it's a really helpful statistic, and it's something we need to keep an eye on. I'll pass over to Richard anyway, who oversees the teams, as you know. Thanks, Errol. The short answer is yes, and absolutely, and that's something that we need to keep developing and talking about and utilising all of the opportunities so that we provide the best possible, collectively provide the best possible support for children and young people in Buckinghamshire. Thank you. That's really interesting, because I think it's very easy for us to assume that if there's poverty, there's automatically children in need, and we shouldn't automatically connect those. But it may be the case in some areas that those two things do go hand in hand. And I think, you know, we do need to make sure that we do monitor that. I've got a second question. In the report, you talk about looking for locations for people to meet. So I have got one suggestion from my ward, and I'm sure that, you know, if you talk to ward councillors, they may be able to suggest other places that are suitable. Thank you, Councillor, and I really appreciate that. And yes, we've taken up other offers that have come forward, because we have to consider all sorts of opportunities within the community, including library schools, et cetera. So I'll be very grateful for that, because it will be really helpful in ensuring that we are more aligned to those communities. Can I just come back on the first point as well around need? That's something that we'll continually assess in relation to, and getting closer and having our staff and workers there working closely with health visitors and other disciplines as well. That needs analysis will develop, and that will inform what we look to the voluntary community, base sector and other partners to provide in terms of that delivery of services. So really helpful. Thank you. Councillor Blaymeyers. Thanks very much for your report. It's great to hear that you're already seeing that families are benefiting from the remodelling of the services and the changes that you've made. Just wanted to find out, now you've got smaller teams, do they provide the same capacity to meet demands? Also, in terms of agency social workers, how much have you managed to reduce the workforce by, and how many long-term agency staff have you now managed to convert to permanent jobs? I'll pass to Richard. Thanks, Erin. Much appreciated. Thanks for your question. In relation to the staffing piece, there's different levels of agency staff in different teams. There is absolutely the capacity, because we're able to work more efficiently with the children and young people that we have. So we always knew that having a separate family support team, a separate assessment team, and a separate health and protection team meant that work wouldn't progress as quickly as it needed to, despite the best efforts of our excellent staff and that we had to create a way of working where a piece of work comes into a team and potentially stays there until it's finished with the same social worker attached to it. There has been lots of changes of staff because of moving from one system to another, but we already know that there are many less children in the system because we're working more effectively already. So right now, one of the things that if you'd have asked me at the end of March, Richard, what are you most worried about? One of the things I would have said would have been capacity. Is this going to work in terms of the numbers? So far, absolutely it is. And the caseloads of our social workers are more manageable now than they've ever been before. That's quite a big blanket statement. There are some exceptions to that, and there's some work to do in relation to supporting our court team, for example, in terms of resources, there has been an increased activity in care proceedings, which is unrelated to this. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you, Councillor Clark. Thank you, Chairman. We've recently, in another place, been looking at absenteeism in education, and there's a new Department of Education guidance which shows that perhaps we don't have sufficient staff to actually provide the service that we need to. Do you see that guidance being difficult to actually implement when you're doing your transformation? It's a really good question, and thanks, Councillor Clark, for asking that question. So our initial assessment is there will be challenges as the guidance is introduced. That said, a DFE facilitated workshop led us to believe and have confidence in our self-assessment that the opportunities within transformation and multi-agency teams working more locally in and around schools, and appreciating that attendance and supporting families to have their children in school is part and parcel of good family support. So as we mature the locality arrangements, and as we think, as Errol said about the Sendry organisation, we'll start to see where are those other opportunities for join-up around support. What we haven't got is additional money to create a new team to just support absenteeism or school attendance, but we're also in parallel working on what's the campaign and the messaging with schools to support families to attend school. And so there's lots of work going on around the how do we build a campaign, how do we support an integrated model, support families to get their children into school. Could I just come back on that? During our work, we've actually found that parents don't seem to look at education as they did before, and do you see your teams, especially your MASH team, being able to accommodate what the Department of Education seems to have levelled at local authority, rather than, you know, and as always the departments give you all this work to do without any extra funding. Do you see your MASH team being able to cope with possibly the actual work and requirements of this guidance, or do you just look at guidance as guidance, like planning? I'll respond if I make Councillor Clark thank you for the question. So the MASH team, the Rotary Agency Safeguarding Hub, deals with new enquiries about children and young people who live in Buckinghamshire. I don't think this particular additional task given to us by central government in the way you describe is going to impact upon them particularly. It's really about with the issue of children and young people missing education and not being at school is one factor that we've been dealing with for some time, because it will be one part of the scenario potentially for a child and young person. So we're already in that place. The additional duties that we've got that you're clearly very aware about is the piece that John was talking about in terms of we need to keep thinking about how do we develop that offer and how do we work with schools and communities to make sure. I recognise exactly what you just said about there are some families who seem to be feeding back to us that education is not as important as we know it to be, and that's a change that's potentially since Covid that that's come about. So as an issue for an individual child and young person that could appear on our radar for a number of different reasons. It might be the sole issue or it might be one of the many issues for a child and young person. I hope that helps. Yes, the Attendance Review Group has provided some really detailed and informative information that they've picked up as a result of the review, but it sounds very much from listening to John and Errol and Richard that we're already dealing with absenteeism because it is a symptom of other issues and problems that we are already working with as well. I think your answers while acknowledging the challenge really do give us quite a degree of confidence. Thank you. I have Councillor Hussain next. Oh sorry, Councillor Darby. Did I miss you? Councillor Darby. Thanks very much, Chairman, and thank you very much for the report. It's all very encouraging. Looking at the locality safeguarding teams, obviously you've got smaller groups of professionals, and so I just wonder whether there is any sort of resilience issues when you've got, you know, you might just have one of one type of professional in a group, and what happens then? Do you swap about, and does that cause continuity issues? And, you know, it's great. I mean, we've got these lovely, lovely examples of things that have got better, and I would just say that if I were an outsider reading that report, I would say, well, what would have happened in examples one to five if we didn't have this new structure? How would it have been? Would it have been that all these things would have taken longer, that people have fallen through the cracks? The report doesn't really flesh that out for me, and I'm sure it's all good. And again, you've got all these lovely comments, and I just wondered if there were any negative comments and how you'd reacted to those? Thank you, Councillor Darby. I will hand over to Richard, surely, anyway, but just because I think he's jumping a little bit on this one. But ultimately, you're absolutely right. I think it's always resilience in the system is really important, and as you know, and as I've mentioned and John and Richard have mentioned in the past around the fragility in relation to recruitment of social workers and EPs and so on and so forth. So that continues, and we are in the same landscape, sadly, with that. So you're absolutely right to raise that in terms of resilience of our teams, because it only takes one or two social workers in those teams to go off sick or leave, and we have to consider. As part of the modelling, what we did was ensure that the management and the oversight of these teams had a better oversight of the need and the demand within each of those teams in their areas, so that if there is a need to shift resource from one to another, dependent on demand, whether it's something within their gift to do so as a service manager or a head of service who oversees that particular team. So there is more flexibility, I would say, in this, because there is that closer oversight. We're able to also scrutinise better the data in relation to what's coming in to those teams, and as I say, it's now to Richard and his heads of service and service managers to then take a view on where can we look at where there's perhaps less demand and maybe move some of the results over. So that, I think, has provided us with that additional opportunity to manage that level of demand. I can't recall the second part, but I'm going to hope Richard can, so thank you. Oh, negative comments. Thank you, John. Negative comments. I think it's early days, and please don't think that at any point we've asked staff just to tell us all the good stuff. Absolutely, we'll continue to engage with them. Demand is demand still. There are, as Richard has referred to, still social workers and family support workers who are dealing with really complex work, and I think some of the issues are very much yet to be played out. The early days are positive. It's not to say there aren't negatives. We'll continue to engage. We've very recently asked for further feedback from our staff to tell us how it's going. Richard and I did a session with locality north and south staff. It was generally positive, but we've asked to be kept updated with regards to what they're finding on the ground, so I'll leave that there. Thank you, Councillor Richard. Thank you very much, and thank you for your questions. So a couple of comments to me. The social work is the social work. The assessments remain the same. They remain as tough and as complicated as they've ever been. The way in which I see the locality team is we've created the right circumstances for the best work to happen much more frequently and consistently. So in answer to your question about these examples and what would have happened before, we still could have achieved those things and those examples, but they wouldn't have been as frequent, and it would have been despite the system, not because of it, and that's the thing that has changed. We're still reliant on us delivering the right sort of support to our staff, that we're able to recruit the right sort of staff, and that we have professional standards that we hold. All of those things remain important. We continue to talk about resilience, because you're right, if you have smaller teams and somebody goes off sick and someone else is already scheduled to be out of the country abroad or whatever, what do we do? We have got the way in which we, Errol and colleagues, with all our agreements structured, the localities, they're in the quadrants, so we can borrow staff from A to B. The critical part of that is how do we manage change for families and have the least amount of change possible? And I'm also working on trying to be persuasive with the organisation that we have some staff that we have not attached to any of those teams that we can use to make those sorts of natural things that occur in life more manageable for those individual teams. So it's right to point that out, but that potential downside of the locality model is absolutely dwarfed by the potential and the upside, and I'm really confident about that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Hussain. Thank you. It's a comprehensive report, so I've got a few questions, but I'll try to tone them down a bit. One is this front door system makes absolute sense, but there's a danger in becoming a pinch point, and do you feel that demand if and when does increase that you can either expand the front door or you're secure in your confidence that it won't become a pinch point, because whereas before you had loads of different ways of getting in, you've now got one way of getting in. That's the front door, one door, and I agree with it. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm just saying it has a danger of becoming a pinch point. The other one is you're depending on smaller teams. That makes sense again, but what you seem to be saying is you're changing the nature of these teams, and my question to you is are these teams empowered? Are they empowered to make decisions? Are they empowered to do things? Are they empowered to jump a couple of layers to get things done, or do they have to go through the same systems to get things done, because if that happens, then I would say that you'll soon come up at a standing stop, and my last point would be is the feedback is good from staff, but we don't see any feedback from users or families or anybody who is at the front edge of the service, so what is their point of view? Are they happy that they're dealing with smaller teams? Are they happy that they've got fewer people to deal with or what they're asking for is getting done? So I'll keep you at that. Thank you, Councillor Haslam. So in relation to the first point you're making about a pinch point and one front door and demand, so what you've described is part of my job and responsibility. I'm confident that won't happen, that hasn't happened, and we've got the ability to understand when it should happen. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow morning. You don't know, nobody knows, so if the workload doubles, then we've got to be able to still manage that in the best possible way, so in those circumstances I would deploy the resources that we needed to resource. There's no choice about that, and it's always been thus, and I don't think this has necessarily changed that too much, so I'm really confident about that. In relation to are our staff empowered to make decisions and do the right thing and those things, yes they are, but the statutory responsibilities of the statutory service still remain. We have to operate within the law, as you know, we have to operate within statutory guidance, and that dictates certain things at certain times, but what is absolutely clear is the relationship between the social worker and their line manager to make decisions and get things done, and they understand what that means to them and what the limitations are, are really a strong point of this way of working, so I would say yes, but an observer of family may have a different view at times. I think that's always the case if one is providing a statutory service that a family didn't ask for, that there's an inherent problem with that, and that's always been the case. I think Errol is going to pick up on your last one about feedback. It's very brief, Councillor, it's in the work plan, absolutely, the teams came into fruition in April, there's a period of embedding, but you're absolutely right, it's really important that we get a sense from the users in relation to what they're feeling, seeing, hearing, in relation to the service they've been receiving from our team, so that's a work in progress, we are working in conjunction with our family hub teams who have regular contact with families attending programmes and so on, so we're seeking their views, and obviously we're working up a programme and mechanisms in which to survey, if you like, children, young people and families across all of those teams, so thank you. Thank you, yes, and Richard, you made an interesting point when having user feedback, that it is a service that families didn't necessarily ask for or want the intervention of, but also with the transformation as well, are we in the situation where the user experience is a new experience at this point, compared to, say, perhaps a family, and we would always hope that we don't get referrals, but a family that perhaps were known to us maybe two years ago? I think the first point around what families will feel, certainly, is that whole issue of what we set out to achieve, that key principle of reducing those and-ofs, mentioned earlier on, around the issue of delay and the transfer to another team and back again, that's something that we have eliminated now, and I think the benefit that I've seen and heard from practitioners who are in these teams is working alongside a family support worker as a social worker has proved really beneficial, because they can also, they have access to a wealth of knowledge around community resources, and at that point of step down from the social work allocation, they can support them and signpost them and continue to support them in accessing other services at a more universal level as well. So that's one of the clear benefits that we're hearing from families to their workers at this point in time. Just coming back to the council's point earlier on, I think that's something on my next appearance we'll provide further information around what does come back in terms of feedback, but those are some of the early indicators. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. Councillor Jones. Thank you, Chair. Congratulations on this report. Change isn't easy, and obviously it's going well. My question really is kind of HR, really, is did you implement a change programme for the staff? Is this about really the support the staff are getting? They work in a very pressurised service, as you're well aware, and some people cope with change much better than others, as I'm sure you know. So did you implement a sort of formal management of change programme, and if so, have you got formal support? I'm thinking of external mentors or somebody like that, or is it done internally, or do the managers highlight difficulties with staff? Really it's the staff end of this, how it's been managed, and how staff are coping. Thank you, Councillor. It's a really important question, and I appreciate it, and I think obviously a valuable resource being our staff. We've got to ensure that we bring them with us in this change programme, of which initially it was very much around that key, which is communication. We set out very early on, at the beginning of February 23, the proposals or obviously the rationale for change, and we asked for views from staff, and we had numerous engagement sessions, workshops. John attended, Richard attended, where we would talk through the as is and the potential to be, seeking their ideas. They're the experts in the field in terms of delivering the service, so we had to hear from them. So where we are now is very much shaped with some of the views. They weren't, as you fully understand, all positive, because as you're absolutely right, change and uncertainty brings about some anxiety and so on and so forth. So there were internal staff reps on hand who were very supportive and helpful in listening to some of the feedback. We had a transformation email inbox as well, where people could share their ideas, worries and concerns, and we worked really closely with our HR colleagues as well, who did a fantastic job in providing the access points, if you like, for any concerns, and we consulted with them. I met with several, and our program team and HR colleagues also met face to face across the county to hear those worries and concerns, and they were helped through the process. So we'll continue that on where necessary as part of the onward phase, but yes, I'd like to think that we did a decent job in hearing what our staff's concerns and worries were, and we were able to answer their questions. And do you have feedback from the staff if they feel satisfied that there is support, enough support in place, or they're getting the correct type of support? Yes, there are the survey, and we have our general surveys, sorry, I'll pass that. I was absolutely right, the transformation program under his work stream delivered all those things that he said, but staff support is business as usual, it was happening before that happened, and whilst it happened, and he's effectively handed the baton back to me because we're now into business as usual. So it's incredibly important that we get that right and we work with our staff about it. The purpose of Errol and I meeting or giving an opportunity for all of our local team staff to meet with us last week, and we did two sessions of two hours each, was to hear from them about those things, and we talked to them about our view of how successful they'd made to start, what the data is telling us about that, and gave them an opportunity to talk about the work and the support they need. Because as I said earlier, they've still got to knock on the door of households who don't necessarily want them to be there and ask really difficult questions to ascertain the safety of children as set out in our legal duties, and that is always a challenging thing to do, and that's always something that requires the right level of support, and I speak about that every opportunity I can because I don't want anybody to lose sight of that, it's really important. So that will be a continual theme, it has to be, and we do activity around quality assurance to monitor the staff received supervision, and we're about to do a piece of work on that, and right now I was planning that this morning with colleagues. We look at the management oversight on case files, I personally read case files all of the time and just dip in and find out and make sure that what I'm told is happening is happening. And so that support is multi-multi-layered, and the training offer comes into that, and the work that we're doing with our staff about practice methodologies that work. I could talk all afternoon about it, I won't, but it's layered, and I think it's an excellent question because it's something that we're really focused on, thank you. That sounds really positive, and you're absolutely correct, you've got to take staff with you, you're all a team, it's all got to work. You mentioned I think earlier there was quite a lot of staff turnover, if I picked that up correctly, are you analysing why there is that turnover, is it to do with working conditions, or do any of them feel it's lack of support, or is it they're moving on or retiring or whatever? When I was referring to turnover, it's about people now doing different jobs than ones they were doing before. So we had 21 locality teams, we needed 21 managers, so we had to find them from within the staff team. Staff needed to choose where they wanted to be, and it's absolutely right that the individual members of staff before transformation could make an active choice as to what part of the future they wanted to be involved in, including not being part of it, and some people chose to leave the service, not many, but some did. So we've done that period of change, and now we need to attach to that our plan about workforce and recruitment and retention. I think the support thing that talks to the retention piece, I mean our data around sickness absence as a department is really, really strong, and in compared with other parts of the council, we have a very good wellbeing offer, we do those things. It's still the case though, there's too few social workers out there, and we've got to work really, really hard to get them in, and we will be taking forward our new version of the social work academy very, very soon, because we've had to adapt that to our needs now around the locality team. Thank you, that sounds really positive actually, and it's all about consolidation as well, you're quite right. So thank you for sharing that, and we'll maybe pick up on that later to review and see how it's all going again. Thank you. Thank you. Richard, you mentioned a new version of the social work academy, something that I know committee's taken quite a bit of interest in since the budget committees of this year. Is that something you're able to expand on now, or for a future meeting? I can say a couple of things now, but maybe to get into the details of future meeting, and perhaps when we have that all mapped out, we can say. The academy was successful, it enabled us to recruit a number of newly qualified staff into the service. I have to be mindful, and we have to be mindful of how many newly qualified staff we can manage and absorb in the system at any one time, because they need support, and they deserve that support, and we kind of have teams that are wholly staffed by newly qualified staff, we need experienced staff as well. So that's partly why there was a pause, there's also a pause because of the transformation, we knew what was coming of course, and we wanted to make sure that the way in which we go about attracting newly qualified staff in reflects our need around locality teams and all of that learning. So we're working on it, it's really important that we go again, and by the time that we start, which I suspect will be later on in this calendar year, the teams will be able to absorb another intake of newly qualified staff. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Clerk, and then Councillor Bates. Thank you, Chairman. In your letter that you've given us a copy of from the Care Quality Commission, and obviously you've got your response, because that's got to be sent within less than a fortnight now, how are you going to answer some of the criticisms on page 38, particularly the second paragraph, the third paragraph, the fourth paragraph, and the fifth paragraph, and the sixth paragraph? How can you show or demonstrate that you've actually taken on board what's in those paragraphs? Chair, I think we might be moving on to the next part of the agenda, do you want me to respond? Yes, we're still on, oh sorry, Councillor Carr, we're still on agenda item six. Did you have any other questions on agenda item six? Sorry, I didn't see the agenda item six. Okay, Councillor Bates and then Councillor Matthews. Thank you. We see we've got two new children's homes opened, another one due to open in August. On the one hand it's sad, isn't it, but on the other hand it's really exciting that we are in a position to actually offer the best we possibly can, rather than those children being placed out of county, and I think that the difficulty with making sure that we look after them if they've gone out of county is much, much harder, and it brings a whole new level of challenge in. So you're talking here about the placement sufficient to be about a further 10 children's homes over the next three years, what's your vision for that, how's that going to work? I mean, is it targeted at particular areas, particular age groups, particular needs, it'd be really interesting if at this point you can flesh that out a bit, I'd be really interested, thank you. So I'll start on that question, thanks Councillor Bates, so it's a helpful question and we reflect on the profile of need of the children looked after population as we see them, and you will already know that one of our homes, one of our existing homes, is a parent and baby assessment facility, and we're looking at how we might interact and trade with other local authorities one of those spaces there. As part of our next phase going forward, part of the 10, we're looking at smaller homes for those children who have the most complex of needs, and we built the business case and part of the principles around the use of unregistered placements, which we were trying to reduce and keep as low as possible, and as we move into this next round, we're starting to look at, given our experience thus far, the head of service talks about whether we could develop an assessment home so children would go into a home and be assessed about what their permanent arrangement looks like because as we've seen from trying to find placements elsewhere in the county or the country, some of those providers would like to have an observation or have an assessment of the child in a residential setting before they agree to offer a placement, so we're trying to keep it dynamic. The other thing I would say is we are working regionally with other local authorities, our neighbouring local authorities, to see if we can collaborate further based on their profile of need, and also the final thing I would say is how do we bring our health ICB colleagues into the commissioning of some of these facilities going forward, so once we secure the building, how do we build the costs and meet the costs of the appropriate support for those children, because you're absolutely right, the benefit of having that many children's homes in our county is our core principle of being closer to home, they're in our place, so if we can get the right wraparound support for them with our health and children's services colleagues and education, then hopefully it's more stable and those children have the best possible life chances possible, so I suppose the answer is it's fluid, we've got plans for smaller homes for more acute need and some three to four-bedded children's homes as well as the more traditional model would indicate. That's really helpful actually, it gives us a much better view of what the future might hold and the route we're travelling down, thank you very much. Thank you, yes, and yeah, it really sounds quite dynamic when you're mentioning the use of, or the facility of assessment facilities as well, I'm assuming ensuring that children are placed in the right place. Professor Matthews. Thank you for your report, it sounds a really positive move forward and I hope it really works out really well. I've got a couple of questions, first of all, are all the 21 teams fully staffed at the moment? And then will there be a key contact point in each team for the local ward members in that area, so that we can engage with the team and also facilitate the engagement with the local community groups, because we know a lot about where they are and what they do, and it would be helpful to be able to make that connection. Sorry, thank you, thank you, Councillor. In answer to the first question, across the establishment there are seven vacancies currently at this point in time, as mentioned earlier and in the report as it outlines our workforce efficiency piece, that is very much around selling Buckinghamshire is a bit of a unique selling point in terms of all the positives that we see in the future and hoping that people will be attracted to come and work for us and that one day we'll be fully established and outlined in the report, obviously what we're doing around that, in particular our agency staff and so on and so forth. In terms of local ward members, the intention very much of those locality teams is very much around making those links and those important links in those local areas, so the points of contact effectively and the benefit of having those smaller teams is that they're available, if you like, in those local areas, so we are making those links, so I believe as part of this pack, the structure chart was also sent to somebody, Katie, I'm not sure if you can correct me if I'm wrong, you would have received that, and within that there are the names of the head of service and the service managers who are the pivotal points of contact that I would suggest for yourselves, as you've raised. Thank you. Thank you, that's very helpful to know. Thank you, members, do we have any further questions for officers on this agenda item? Please raise your hand now if there's any further questions? We do not then. I'd like to thank officers for a very thorough report and for very thorough answers to our questions as well on that item, thank you very much. So we'll move now to Agenda Item 7, which is the Joint Targeted Area Inspection, and again, I will be handing over in the absence of our cabinet member to our officers to introduce and present this report, thank you. Thank you, Chairman, so I'll introduce the item and then Richard and Errol, as we did with the previous item, will do a double and a triple act where appropriate. So on the 8th of January, as we returned from our Christmas and New Year break on that Monday morning, we received a phone call from Ofsted to say that they were coming to Buckinghamshire to undertake a Joint Targeted Area Inspection of Buckinghamshire and onsite during the week of the 22nd to the 26th of January, 2024. That was the field work when they were actually here in our county. Up to that point, we were required to submit a number of pieces of data and information and evidence that they could start to use to develop their key lines of inquiry. Onsite there were three Inspectorates, Ofsted, which was the lead Inspectorate, Care Quality Commission, I know we struggle saying this one, His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Rescue Service, thank you, I always struggle, I tell myself that, so there were the three Inspectorates onsite. We were very clear that it was an inspection of the multi-agency arrangements, it was not an inspection of Buckinghamshire Council's Children's Services Department or Directorate. So we worked very quickly as a partnership to stand up the appropriate arrangements and to work on a self-evaluation that we presented at the first morning on the 22nd of January. And it was fair to say we recognised the strengths and areas for development in our partnership. There had been some as referenced in the report, some changes in personnel, certainly stability amongst our health ICB partners had changed relatively recently and that had stabilised. And we were very honest about our plans to stabilise the partnership but then subsequently mature the partnership so it took its responsibilities for the safeguarding system for children in the county seriously. You'll see in the report, and I'm sure this is where the questions will be, areas of strength which we're very pleased about and then equally what needs to improve and as I say many of those we recognised and work is already underway and had actually been underway in terms of making some of those improvements. The current status of the action plan, because the report references the requirement to submit an action plan as Councillor Clark referenced by the 26th of June. That draft plan is currently with the executive leads of the statutory partners and the independent chair of the safeguarding partnership for sign-off. We are absolutely clear that we will submit it on time to Ofsted by the 26th of June and just for further information, Richard Errol and myself and other colleagues in children's services will have our annual engagement meeting with the Ofsted regional director and his team on the 18th of July. So I suspect this will feature as part of that conversation about the progress we've made since the inspection, how well we know ourselves, what we're doing well, what do we continue to need to sharpen our focus on. Thank you chairman. Just a quick comment for myself, so this is the 10th further published inspection piece of activity from Ofsted since November 2019 when the service was found to be inadequate. You will see the content of either the monitoring visits or action inspection reports, in my view continual improvement and progression. Inspection is a stop-the-clock exercise, there is not an inspection that ever happens where there is not something that needs to be improved, that will always happen in the future. It's about whether or not we're going in the right direction, whether we've stood still or whether we're going backwards. I would suggest very strongly is the children's social care which is only one part of this inspection because it was about health and police and schools as well. Our part in that, particularly around the strength of the MASH, the strength of exploitation hub which we run are really strong qualities as well as our ability to make sure children are safe and that's what we come to work to do. So whilst I absolutely know that there are areas of improvement and I cannot say they're everybody else's, we have to share that, we will deal with that through the Safeguarding Partnership Board because they hold the ring in terms of responsibility around the impact of partnership work. Some of that discrete stuff sits with me, that's my area of responsibility but I would suggest that as a service we have got an increasingly strong track record in relation to inspection. Thank you. Thank you John, thank you Richard. That's an interesting observation that where there is always an inspection there will always be room for improvement and I think that's quite a good ethos actually if we keep that in mind and we're constantly striving for improvement. I think that's quite a sure footing to move forward on. Committee members, if you'd like to raise your hand, I have Councillor Clark for this agenda item, Councillor Blaymeyers, Councillor Dormer, Councillor Hussain, do I have anybody else? Okay, Councillor Clark would you like to speak first? It's again the question on page 38, there's a lot of criticism here yet having spoken about transformation in the service, how are you going to answer those critical points on page 38 in your letter that you're putting together that you will get to the Director of Children's, well the Director of Children's Services will respond as you are the lead, the principal authority I think they call you don't they and they have to always level this at somebody but how do you feel that you can answer those criticisms on page 38 with what you've actually been telling us today when this was something that was looked at in January? Thank you Councillor Clark, thank you Chairman, so as Richard highlighted this is a moment in time so it's important to note that the inspection occurred in the week of the 22nd of January, that is two months prior to the going live of the locality arrangements and in fact we spent quite a bit of time with the Inspector, lead Inspector from Oxford and the team talking to them about we've got these plans in place, smaller teams, practice methodology, focus on throughput, quality of practice, management oversight but of course Ofsted say it's about what we see here and now it's not about if we'd have come three months down the road we might have seen A, B and C so a lot of these actions the team are already aware of and we're building our evidence base of the effectiveness of the arrangements through the locality work in which Erin has already shared with us so that would be my opening remark, would you? We've said previously I think that we meet with Ofsted every year, we have what they insist upon as an annual conversation, the one that happened last year in the summer, we told them the timeline of our transformation and we told them why we were having that transformation and that was particularly linked to things around consistency to do with assessments. In their wisdom they decided to come and see us before that transformation, in fact they got in the way of that and I told them that point, in all seriousness it was really unhelpful but they can do what they feel they need to do. The quality and timeliness of children's assessments has already improved as a result of the transformation, we've got data to see that and I saw some today and that will put that right in a large part but it is part of our business as usual, the service is only as good as the last piece of social work that we did, if we employ a newly qualified social worker who doesn't get it right that piece of work might not be as good as we want it to be, we have to keep addressing it and it's a continual activity. I'm not concerned by those, and they're not criticisms, they're areas for development, they're areas for improvement, I'm not concerned by them but we know about them before they came and we will continue to do what we've always done, which is to focus on continually improving and bringing our staff with us so that we get the best possible outcomes for children and young people. Thank you. And again it mentions capacity doesn't it on page 36 in the second paragraph, it says something about, but this was acknowledged during the inspection with an immediate plan to add capacity, so they saw that you were putting into place more people or changing the way that you delivered the service. It's in the third paragraph Dan. Yes I've got it, so that started around health, so our health partners provide a person an individual into the MASH, and it says health practitioners are not always able to attend strategy meetings at the MASH due to capacity issues, this was acknowledged in the inspection with an immediate plan to add capacity, that's a reference to our health partners. Thank you Councillor Clark, Councillor Ozoboggan would like to ask a question at this point. Yes thank you very much Chair, well I do agree with you with regards to improvement and always having to do that, now can you by any chance share the previous findings, because I think as a committee for us to be able to help you, it would be helpful if we could compare the areas for improvement here with what's been found before, you know I do also take the fact that the inspection was done in January before a lot of things have been implemented, but it would be helpful so we can compare that, I'm not sure if that's something we can bring back, even if we can't discuss it now. I can respond if that's okay, so this is the first time that back in the MASH children's service has experienced a joint targeted area inspection, that's the catchy title of this particular inspection activity, each inspection activity has different frameworks and they change from time to time. So by looking back on the Ofsted reports website and you put in Buckinghamshire and the local authority, you'll get every single report they've published and or letter, but it's not comparing apples and apples, they're looking at different things each time. The point I was making before, if one does take the time to read all those words, you will see that each time chronologically that Ofsted have come, there's improvement and that was from a very low base of course back in 2017/2018. If I understand you clearly, we were initially assessed as inadequate and this is a new inspection and there are areas to improve hair whilst areas of strength have also been identified. Now what I'll need your help with is to know why we were ranked inadequate before and compare that to what we've improved on hair, that we have strengths and also areas that we need to improve on. That we would know if areas that were identified in 2017 are still needed improvement. Everybody can do that for themselves and I don't mean that rudely, it's a public website, you can read the reports and draw that conclusion. If one reads the report of the November 2017 inspection, it's a completely different landscape. That was described variable practice across the board in every areas and that was what I found when I came here. So they're completely different. We've got a very secure base in terms of keeping children safe. We don't have children not seen. We get out there and do what we need to do. This is about continual improvement on top of that and obviously as a service when they next come and provide a judgment inspection, those lovely words of outstanding, good requires improvement to be good and inadequate. We want that to be as strong as possible and we are currently working towards that eventuality. They may come and see us in 2025, we don't know and we need to be ready and prepared for that. Children's services, we do not focus our day-to-day work on pleasing Ofsted. We do what we know we need to do for children and young people. It happens to be the same thing. If we get it right for our children and young people, Ofsted will see that and we will get the outcome that we need. Sorry for the back and forth. I'm not disputing the fact that the objective of the council is to do the best for the kids or the children, but I think if the regulator highlights certain things, I think those things should be looked at. I'm sure you are looking at it, but what as a committee member here I would like to say is based on your history and legacy, how we've improved from where we were before. I can see this report as a standalone or this letter as a standalone, I can see the areas for improvements here, but as a committee document it would be very, very helpful if we can see what you've done, how you've improved, and based on the January to March steps you've taken, what additional steps have been taken, because this inspection can come any time before 2025. I think Councillor, as my colleagues already pointed out, the Ofsted website tells the story from 2014 all the way up to our off-site inspection, re-inspection 2021. You can see the journey that's been taken since then. I suppose querying back really, what additional information would assist over and above what's already been published by Ofsted themselves, which effectively tells the story as to where we are now, the improvements that we've made. I think it's fair to say that, as I totally agree with Richard, our focus absolutely on getting it right for children and families is primary, the primary issue, and we certainly anticipate that the onward journey of our transformation and everything that we seek to achieve there for children, young people and families will tell a further story when we re-inspect it in perhaps 2025, and again, something that we published on the Ofsted website. We can see the journey from inadequate through to what we hope to be a good service for children, young people and families. Thank you. I would say, in summary, the published reports on the Ofsted website provide a narrative, if you like, of the journey that the council has been on, and I think, I suppose, the litmus test will be, as we are post-transformation, will be the next report that's published. That's our focus, about getting it right for children. We've got to focus absolutely 100% on ensuring, again, the right for children, and what comes from Ofsted will come from Ofsted. Thank you. Councillor Bates, then Councillor Blaymars. Would you like to go first? Okay. No problem. Councillor Blaymars. Thank you. Thanks for explaining that you're aware of the criticisms in the report and that you've used some that have already been dealt with. I'd just like to know a little bit about some of the specifics, just if we could hear a little bit about some of the specifics. So how you're going to improve multi-agency training for staff, how are you going to improve significant delays for some information, what sort of decision is being made about a family, how are you going to deal with the minutes needing to be distributed faster, and how are you going to improve the quality of some assessments which aren't always good enough due to the variability of the managerial support at the top? So I don't know if you could just give us a few specifics. The last one I think I've commented upon, and that's linked to our transformation, so about consistency. The other ones are ones that relate to our partners rather than children's social care primarily, and so how that's going to happen is through the Safeguarding Children's Partnership Board, and they have responsibility for delivering that. We talk to them about the activity they're going to do to do it. So this is a completely different inspection, the ones we've discussed around this table before, because it's from three different inspectorates, and it looks at things other than and including children's social care. So there are activities for others to do, so it's really important that our health colleagues provide the right resources to the match, for example. I can't make that happen, I have to ask them to do it, and we do that through the Safeguarding Board. John, I don't know if there's anything. So the Safeguarding Partnership is about to go through some changes as a result of Working Together 2023, and we're currently helpfully, in my view, working through a process with a DFE advisor about how we move from the current arrangements to implement the new arrangements. It affords us the opportunity to fold in these areas for improvement, what needs to improve, for example, the multi-agency training informed by a full needs analysis, into those new arrangements and the revision of the leadership of the Safeguarding Partnership, because that's a change required to be implemented by the end of the year, will, as Richard has said, with the exec partners, will monitor those improvements and the implementation of the changes required in Working Together 2023, and part of that process is how we use performance and data around children to hold each other to account, and we were at a session this morning with the DFE advisor talking about how we get into that place where we can have honest, challenging conversations about how we make improvements to support children and families. So, have you got strategies in place for all of those criticisms, and are there other strategies for all of them, and you'll be able to report back in a few months and tell us where you've got to with addressing all of those issues? Yes, so once we'll submit them, as Councillor Clark has, we'll submit the plan, the action plan, by the 26th of June. What normally happens, then Ofsted will write back and say this is fit for purpose, or actually we have you thought about X and Y or we'd like to do a bit more work on Z, but let's assume they write back and say this plan is fit for purpose, we'll then monitor it through the Safeguarding Partnership arrangements, because it's an inspection of the safeguarding partners, not the local authority children's services, and of course, as Richard said, they'll pick it up in our annual engagement meeting, which is on the 18th of July this year, and we'll keep that conversation going, but the key thing to note is the progress of the actions identified in the action plan will be the responsibility of the Safeguarding Partnership. What we can absolutely do by invitation is we can A, once Ofsted sign the document off, we can share the document, and we can report back in due course the progress against the specific actions, and maybe we could invite our Health and TVP colleagues to attend, because that might be useful too, because then you'll get more of the sense of it's a partnership and some specific questions or areas are related to one agency or another. That sounds really helpful. Thank you. John, could I ask, do Ofsted tend to come back in a timely fashion once you've submitted your plan? It's not going to be something that delays the implementation or is it? My honest reflection is usually it's within, I think, 15 working days, given we have our annual engagement meeting on the 18th of July, I suspect we'll get something either immediately prior to or they'll mention it at that meeting, Chairman. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Councillor Bates. Thank you for that. I think it feels like, you know, you're a third of the partnership here and we're grilling you, and you can't answer for the other two-thirds, which is a little bit unfair, but hey, that's what Ofsted does sometimes. I'm intrigued by some of the things in here with respect to schools, and there's some really good statements in this report about schools are alert about this, they're happy with the communication, all sorts of really positive things, and yet, it says in the what needs to be improved bit, the involvement of schools and colleges in formulating the partnership's strategic direction. That seems a massive ask to me. I don't know how you feel and what kind of expectations you have about how schools could feed into this partnership. So I think, if I may, Chairman, at the time of the inspection, we did try to push back on this, because we had a gap in terms of our service director for education, we had a vacancy, and we had an interim who could have provided some information to the inspector prior to their departure, and they never made it an issue or a request, so they didn't really spend an extensive amount of time through the inspection process talking about education. So we were somewhat surprised, however, already, for example, there is an established education subgroup of the safeguarding partnership. There is now also, in the safeguarding partnership arena, an executive head of a secondary school, and I think where we could make improvements is the involvement of the primary PEP, primary executive group, and special schools and think about how we both feed forward into the safeguarding partnership on behalf of education, but also how we feed out to the education, 270 schools, the messages from the safeguarding, so it's a two-way process, in my view, and Michael Jarratt, our service director of education, is in that conversation with our head teachers and in the education subgroup, so again I'm confident that we will get the infrastructure right around the subgroups, and this morning at the session with the DFE advisor, Michael was there and we talked about at the session next week, let's build from other examples around the country good practice around the involvement of education. That's really interesting, thank you. As I say, I think it's quite a big ask on top of everything else that is required of the schools to be involved in strategic direction. That's a whole new level, isn't it? So that's really interesting, you're talking about putting a structure together, thank you for that. Thank you, I have Councillor Dorma and then Councillor Hussain. Thank you, Chair. Just turning to one of the areas of improvement, timeliness and consistency of social work assessments, to what extent, I'm guessing the adoption of co-pilot will reduce a lot of those and alleviate a lot of those issues, just wondering to what extent it's been adopted and how widely used it is at the moment, and if there's a timeline across that. If I may, in terms of co-pilots, Councillor Dorma. So we are in the early stages of looking at the potential of AI and co-pilot, we are seeing evidence from our local authorities, I think Barnsley being one of their early trials, and it's just to be clear in terms of the usage, we are exploring opportunities to alleviate some of the administrative burden as opposed to ensuring that we don't want AI to necessarily be making really critical decisions. But we are actually looking at the processes and working with our ICT colleagues to look at the potential of reducing some of the, as I say, administrative burden. So what that means is, as we see potentially within our customer services, the information that comes from a telephone call that can be summarised quite quickly, turned around and provide a response to the caller to say, this is what you've told us, this is the information you've given us, but then that information to be taken and analysed by a human and an appropriate decision made. So we are at the early stages of looking at that in the rounds of our front door and also in relation to some of the early EACP processes as well as a potential moving forward. But we're, again, early stages, working very closely with Microsoft, but we have a working group and a board of which I'm on, and we're keeping eyes on that as part of the transformation work too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, AI is a term as a broad church anyway, so it's more along the lines, I mean, I was thinking more along the lines of just pure transcribing of meetings. Absolutely. And then that's where obviously the time saving. This is what we were talking about with the report two years ago, wasn't it, and how we felt that that was an opportunity to free up social workers' time rather than spending three or four hours noting down meetings afterwards. Absolutely. It's certainly got some positive potential. We've just got to test that it's safe and obviously comply with GDPR and various other issues. Yeah, well, I think GDPR is probably the biggest issue, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. And in terms of the consistency across the social worker assessments, I mean, I guess it's difficult because given the sensitivity of the topic, you don't necessarily want to operate on a stencil-based response because obviously that works against potential uncovering of various issues and challenges. But at the same time, how do you sort of go about squaring that circle in terms of ensuring you're getting all the information there but not sort of closing off various aspects so that you're missing various things outside the regular sort of stencil approach? I think you're referring to the one-size-fits-all scenario, which it doesn't, honestly. Exactly. Well, that's the challenge you've got because you can't prescribe how you want reports to be because if you were, then you could potentially miss things. So how do you balance that? Well, I mean, it comes very much down to the expertise and the experience of our social workers and the training of our famous support workers and so on and so forth. It's every case on its merit, isn't it? And ultimately, our training of our staff is very much around working in a very strengths-based model, ensuring that we are assisting families in the best way. But it's about the skill in the engagement, eliciting the information and analysing that information, identifying the best way in which to meet those needs as part of the work that we do on an everyday basis. You're poised, Richard. Did you want to come in there? Sorry, I'll hand over. I didn't want to interrupt you. In addition to what Errol has said, we've put out good practice guidance about what a good assessment looks like. We go out of our way as managers to talk about what to aim for. We make sure we induct staff well. That's why we have a social work academy, to get people into that rhythm. But of course, as has been recognised in this conversation, every single child and assessment is going to be different to the next one. So it's anything from our colleagues in the children's disability team doing assessment of a young person who's got significant speech and language issues. That slows that assessment down. It won't be the same as assessment done in another team. And part of really what we need to do is to be really confident about the types of assessment we produce, why we do it, how we do it, have quality assurance layers on top so that we can double check and check again that everybody's on the same page. And when it comes to inspection, being really clear with inspectors, you're not going to see every assessment being the same. And it's probably daft to assume that. So would you say that when they're saying that, would you say that's harsh what they've said there, or in terms of their findings, or is it? I couldn't possibly comment on that. What steps are being taken in terms of, I mean, mentioned twice in the report, on page 38 and above as well, at the top of page 39 was in terms of linkage across and information sharing. What sort of steps have been taken to encourage that and also to improve the information sharing between cross agencies? So one of the best ways forward and part of the conversation that John referenced that we had this morning was about multi-agency audits, making sure that our partners understand they have a grip and control on the quality of what their staff do in their name and how that translates into pieces of work that we can escalate where we need to. And we make sure that we ask our partners for the right stuff in the first place and hold them to account to get things back. So what the report talked about is requests going out by children's social care staff in a timely way. And sometimes that's not coming back as quickly as it should. And that's the bit that we need to continually work with, with our partners. Gotcha. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Hussain. I fully understand that this was kind of done before the transformation kicked in, so to say. So it's basically a criticism of the old model rather than the new model. But one of the areas that it does point to, and I think it probably will carry on, is education and schools. How do you involve them? How do you get information from them? And I know how difficult it is and how busy they are and how difficult to get information from them. And the other thing it looks at is in the health sphere. Has this area been affected by the cutting of, and I use that word advisedly, of health visits and health visitors? I remember when my children were born, we saw them for the first three months almost incessantly. And it was a great value to my young wife, the first child, so to speak. But now it's all done by the phone or the internet or come and talk to us. And I do feel that there is a gap that then the council has to pick up afterwards when it sees there's something not happening. Whereas before it could have been nipped in the bud, bear in mind the new model of early intervention, stopping future difficulties. Thank you for the questions. I'll try and deal with the first one in terms of the involvement of education. So as I answered Councillor Bates's original question, we're very conscious of the challenges in schools and school leaders often talk to us about more and more layers of expectation being placed upon them. However, there have always been expectations upon schools to cooperate around safeguarding arrangements. What we've got to ensure is that we find the right arrangements structurally to involve them at a strategic level, but to continue to remind them of their duties from a child case-by-case basis in terms of completing multi-aging referral forms and being part of a team around the child type arrangement. But also one of the challenges to us was how we might incorporate into our MASH the education perspective into an assessment for a child. And Richard might elaborate on some of the conversations we've been having around children with additional needs and how we can support assessment at the front door in the MASH. But what it isn't about trying to achieve is a representative from all our schools sitting in the MASH because you'd have - well, we wouldn't have a building big enough. It's about how we use that educational perspective to inform the assessment of the child about what needs to happen next. That was your first question. I think the second question was about - do you want to come in? We'll do the health - do you want to lead that for your first one? Thank you. Let me just respond about your point about health visitors. This report and our own quality assurance processes tell us that we've got a really strong story about how we manage the highest risk around unborn children, and we can't do that on our own. It is about working with health services, not necessarily health visiting, but staff in similar roles within health. So that is strong. If there are pieces of work that we come across where we think there might have been an opportunity missed, we'll talk about it, not in a finger-pointing way but in a learning way and try - and feedback. It's not something that's huge on my worry list right now in terms of health visiting. And just to make a quick point, if I can, around early help, whilst all of those things around early help are points really well made, we have to also recognise we work with mobile communities so people move into Buckingham shire, and there are instances where they then appear on our radar. We have missed the early help opportunities because they're new to Buckinghamshire and we have to intervene in a really serious way. So that will always be the case, and there may well be parts of our communities that are more mobile than others right now, particularly around things to do with struggles around housing and homelessness, and other local authorities moving families into our locality too. So there's a number of things, a number of moving parts there. If I may add, Councillor, just to triangulate, I met with our health visitor colleagues, a lot of them, in Wickham yesterday. It was an online presentation I did around localities. They certainly referenced the issue around busyness and obviously sharing of information and the timescales around that, but they cited mainly around the complexities of what they're seeing and vulnerabilities in those areas as being the main challenge, but also equally like ourselves, citing some of the staffing challenges that they're experiencing as well. So I think it's a bit of a combination of all, but I think the key point I wanted to make is that we are regularly having conversations and now it's a part of transformation, ensuring that we're making those links between our locality colleagues and those health visiting staff as well, to ensure that there's better lines of communication around demand. My issue was the fact that I'm, the council is trying to transform itself and trying to bring a new model across which we're helpful and we're finding working. My issue is, my question is, others aren't. So, you know, they're working as they are. You can't tell the health people what to do. You can't tell schools what to do. You can't, I mean, the school I was a governor on, I had two people who literally just dealt with safeguarding. Other than the school I was a governor on, it was a part-time job of one of the staff members. So that's the difference that the council has to deal with. And my issue is, where does the strength of the council come, or influence the council come, where it can point out shortcomings in partners to say, look, we're having to pick up the pieces here because X, Y and Z has not happened. Or because, and sometimes this is a difficult kind of finger to point, because they have shorter resources as well. And they've been, you know, they have budgets as well. So that's my question. How does that work?

So my response to that question, Councillor Hussain, would be through working together

1. And the session this morning, interestingly, talked about the statutory guidance. And in the statutory guidance there are words like must and should that are applicable to all statutory partners. That's education. That's health. That's the local authority. Where we need to get to as a safeguarding partnership, a bit like monitoring the improvement plan, is holding each other to account for our statutory responsibilities. So that if we are doing a multi-agency piece of work or a multi-agency assessment or indeed the multi-agency audits, all of our partners are around that table and participating. And if they're not the exec of the safeguarding partnership, it's having that conversation and holding each other to account. >> The only reason I say that is if you read the last paragraph, is Ofsted are holding us to account as the principal authority. So even though there may be shortcomings elsewhere, we're the ones who are holding the baton, so to speak. >> And often that's the case, because both TVP and the ICB, the integrated care partnership and terms of value police, have a patch that is greater than the specific place that is Buckinghamshire. We are the council that has responsibility for the county and the statutory role of the director of children's services for Buckinghamshire council has a place, responsibility, not a broader one across TVP or ICB boundaries. Thank you. Do I have any other committee members that would like to ask a question on this item? Councillor Osiboggan. >> Yes, thank you very much, chair. In the December 2021 report, the Ofsted report, one of the areas for improvement there was the quality of social workers direct work with children. Now, the January 2004 report, it talks about the timeliness and consistency in the quality of social work assessments. Now, based on my last question, on my earlier question, I do acknowledge that as that January, the transformation hadn't started. Can you tell us how, with the transformation in place now, right, this aspect of social work assessment has been addressed? Yes, so one example of that is the practice methodology that we have invested in and have rolled out in terms of training for staff. So that's around trauma informed practice, motivational interviewing and ensuring that our direct work with children, young people and their families is really effective. We know from our QA activity that that is starting to bear fruit and we will continue to do that. So that would be one example of how we do that. All of our improvement is all of the time. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop before an inspection and it doesn't stop afterwards. We don't wait for a plan. We continue. And that's part of business as usual. So if there are no other questions from committee members, I would like to invite Councillor Robin Stutchbury, who has a question for officers. Councillor Stutchbury, I know you're familiar with the format, but you have three minutes speaking time from when I pushed the button, if you'd like to tell me when you're ready. I should definitely use my three minutes. Thank you very much. I was around when the multiagency was set up. I also have been reading all your Ofsted reports since 2013. So I understand Richard's response totally in that sense. I've seen them all the way through. But the question which I put to you right in which you said no, none of this is plagiarism, because it was put in miles before the questions today. The HMRC, the Care Quality Commission, in the Ofsted report published on the 14th of March, 2024, in regard in the inspection of Buckinghamshire Safeguarding and Children's Partnership, recognised there has been significant change. The statutory partnership in the BSCP, over the two years, there are areas which need improvement. These are listed within the report, which you've all seen and followed and read. The consolidation of the performance information data and the data following understand the most previous issues for families. Effectively, the subgroup of the safeguarded partnership, multiagency training informed by the full statutory needs and analysis. The involvement of the schools and colleges in formatting the partnership strategy and date and direction. The timelines of consulting enquiry of social workers and work assessments. It also goes on with the quality of constituency and the timelines of the information sharing between partnerships, agencies involved in safeguarding of children. Now that's in the report and you've all seen those. I do recognise that it's a very broad enquiry and the matters indirectly all related to your specific thing, which you've premised in your answers today, which I obviously respect. What the question would be around that is what work's being undertaken to prioritise these matters, the needs improvements, and how will you be timeline the work and be undertaken in partnership going forward within the view to reporting back to the progress to this committee at a future date. While I was asking the question, I do recognise that there has been some statements about the strengthening of CAMS, which has been made in the report, which we must be fair, and the report gives that children's fees, mental health, triggering care, were struggling and their emotional and mental health were there, which is truly positive. Let's be truthful, that's truly positive. And the improvements in the Thames Valley, including efforts that have taken to reduce a significant backlog, which is very good, as well as the combination efforts of social care and mental health and mid-wifery service to ensure unborn, newborn babies are safeguarded, which is really, really significant. You should take credit for that. And most importantly, the joint approach for children at risk of sexual exploitation and those being exploited. And I say that because back in the day when this offset board came out, there was a damning report on that, and you're showing how you are improving, which is credit to you. The treatment of the retaining of the question... Time, Councillor Stutchbury, do you want to just reiterate your question? Yes, I obviously will do, but I think the written question is long enough and the interruptions are good enough. The retainment of my question, how will these partnerships go into approach of the areas questioned, which are above? And I think it's fair enough. You had it in advance, so I expect you've got a reasonable response, because you've had time to actually think about it rather than being sprung on you. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Councillor Stutchbury, for the question and certainly for the advance notice. And I'm reading this out on behalf of Councillor Cranmer, who is the lead member for Children's Services. Before I do, can I also thank you, Councillor Stutchbury, for acknowledging the strengths recognised in the report, which are, as you say, improvements and evidence of our continuous improvement. So specifically, the answer to your question is, following the joint targeted area inspection of the multi-agency response to identification of initial need and risk in Buckinghamshire, to determine that Buckinghamshire Council, on behalf of the local area, should prepare a written statement of proposed action responding to the findings outlined in the inspection outcome letter. The multi-agency action plan is currently being drafted with representatives from the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children's Partnership, Health and Police. Work is on track and we are confident the action plan will be submitted to Ofsted prior to the 26th of June, 2024 deadline. Once we have received confirmation from Ofsted that they are in agreement with the content of the action plan, this will be shared with members of this select committee. Due to the multi-agency nature of the action plan, it will be the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children's Partnership executive that will be responsible for maintaining oversight of the progress being made against the six priority areas on a quarterly basis. This will include providing where appropriate scrutiny and direction in order to secure the improvements required and challenging the pace and quality of progress in terms of both their actions and their impact. Representatives from the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children's Partnership executive will be able to provide updates to the select committee upon invitation at a future meeting. Thank you. Can I have a copy of that by the end of that? Thank you, John. And can I just ask Councillor Stutchbury to confirm? I understand that the written answer to the written question has already been sent to you. Can you just confirm that you're in receipt of that? Not to the best of my knowledge, Chair. Okay. Can I ask then that we can double check that and make sure the answer to the question as written by the cabinet member is forwarded to Councillor Stutchbury? I'll take that action away immediately after the meeting. Thank you, Chair. We move on now to agenda item number eight, which is work programme. Apologies, I should thank officers for the interesting and informative report that they provided to us and for the answers to the questions and the question that they answered and the written answer that they're going to provide for Councillor Stutchbury. So thank you for that. We will now move on to agenda item number eight, which is our work programme. And we have attached the draft work programme. And at this point, I will hand over to Katie Dover. Thank you, Chairman. Yes, so members have had a copy of the select committee draft work programme for the next council year. It's been worked up with Councillors and officers. And it can be amended or added to during the year if you so wish. So happy to take suggestions for other items. And just to say that we'll be looking to undertake a more detailed piece of work in the autumn this year, given the time scale with elections next year. And in addition to the work programme, we've taken on board your suggestions for detailed briefings. And we have two lined up. One is on education admissions, which the date's just been received for that. And that's the 16th of July at 5.30pm on Teams. And the other one is about how education attainment is measured and the officers will deliver that in the autumn. So thank you, Chairman. Thank you. And of course, if members have any suggestions regarding the work programme or for officer briefings, do please email them in to Katie. Councillor Blome-Myers, did you want to speak? I was just interested in talking about level one apprenticeships as a possible area. Just wanted to know whether there was any interest at all in that as being a possible area. Just think about whether that's an area that the officers feel is at all, would be at all helpful for us to look into in any way. I'm conscious there's a shortage locally and nationally. And children who come out with one exam or no exams can't get an apprenticeship because they're not eligible for anything apart from level one apprenticeships and there aren't enough. So they just can't access apprenticeships. So I just wondered if that's an area that you feel that we might remain some shape or form may be able to get involved in or help with in any way. So I think it's quite a broad topic in the first instance. However, if we were to be very specific or try and narrow the scope, there might be an opportunity for us to work with members on a piece of work. So I was thinking in the back of my mind, some of our more vulnerable children, children with additional needs or children, young people, should I say, in opportunity books. So if we were to narrow the focus, that might make it a little bit easier to make it more accessible and we could explore that. Should we take that as an action away from this meeting chair? Well, I think we're open to suggestions from other committee members. Councillor Clark, I have next and then Councillor Jones. I don't know whether you also have suggestions. So perhaps Katie could collate them via the minutes. Can I just answer that question? I just wanted to come back to John if that was okay. Just to say that I understand that the government is doing a consultation to level 1 apprenticeships and I just don't know if that's something you're involved with and whether that would be at all helpful or to be linked in or perhaps you're already linked in. I think I'm speaking on behalf of our service director for education. He's more than likely linked in and so my reflection would be it's very broad, as I said, but also maybe after the 5th of July, we could have a conversation about government policy and the implications and opportunities for children and young people in Buckingham shire that we might maximise as a local authority. Thanks very much. Councillor Clark? Excuse me, sorry to interrupt. Is it okay if I leave? Absolutely, thank you for joining us today. Councillor Jones? It was just a suggestion regarding the apprenticeship programs. Apprenticeship programs generally come under further education and I'm thinking it might be useful for us to have a better understanding, and it is a political football, I totally accept that, if we got somebody from the college who deals with apprenticeships levels one and how the progression from level ones to two because they certainly will have an in-depth knowledge of government policy and how it relates to the schools because they take pupils from schools for work experience in the college, etc. So just really a suggestion that might help inform the committee a bit more. I think if that were one of the areas we picked up, one of the things that we have done through the deep dives that we've done has been speaking with schools and educational partners on the area that we're looking at. I'm wondering if Councillor Clark might like to come in at this point and offer any sort of update to the committee on the progress of the school attendance review so we can hear where we're at with that one. Thank you, Chairman. I think everybody who's been involved in this has found it incredibly interesting and amazing how our schools cope with the different ways of ensuring their children and their pupils attend, and it's been incredibly, well, incredibly interesting I can say. We've looked at schools across the piece, so we've looked at special education needs school, we've looked at primary schools, we've looked at secondary schools and we've looked at grammar schools, and they've all got different bits and pieces that we feel that we could bring together. And we're working with the education team and we're complementing their work. We're not going to beat them up with, you know, because this is something that we need to work together on. Out of 237 schools across Buckinghamshire with over 80,000 children, there is just under 16,000 children not attending school properly, which is quite staggering when you think about it. The guidance, as we spoke earlier, hasn't really taken into account what they're expecting from the special needs schools and that will be something that we'll bring out in our review. And there have been some absolutely wonderful, excellent examples of how schools have coped with issues. And again, that will be something that we'll bring to, well, in the report. But we also need to ensure that our pupils recognise the opportunity of education, free at the point of delivery, because not many countries offer that. And I think we've really got to point out that in some countries, I'm thinking of America in particular, it's not unusual to see children not being able to go on to further education because their parents can't afford it. And I think also parents need to recognise that they owe it to their children to ensure that they do attend and that partnership has got to be between the school and the parent with a proper outcome for their child. And I think it's been incredibly interesting. Thank you to everybody who's taken part. That's the education team members, school heads, admissions officers and everybody that we've been working with, and particularly Katie, because as always, she's there with a dustpan and brush. And it's been really wonderful to work with a can-do person. And I think just bouncing ideas off each other, it's been wonderful to work with you, Katie. Really good. So thank you for that. And I've just found it very informative and incredibly interesting. I did ask not to be on this committee and I now realise I'm enjoying it too much. So that's my update, Chair. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you again, Councillor Clark, for the time and the work that you've put into this piece of work. I recall from the very early meetings, the numbers really were quite staggering to us, weren't they? And hopefully Councillor Jones, from the update that Councillor Clark has provided, it's a sort of model that we can use in looking at other areas where we do speak to the schools, we do speak with our officers and we do speak with, following up on your suggestion there, that we speak with all parties that have an input to that. Councillor Hussain and Councillor Darby. On the work plan, we're talking about it now. Something prompting from Councillor Jones, which is, because I used to be on the board at Ellsbury College, before it becomes a college group, is the offer for further education, but is very particular, because only the schools offer A levels. None of the colleges do. This is because they were pointed towards it by government, believe it or not. So I wouldn't mind a report on post 16 to 18 education in Bucks, if that's okay. Do you mean a report or for us to do a piece of work? A report first, and then if the committee feels that there is a piece of work to be done, then it can be done. But I'd just like a comparison, because in my community especially, because of the nature of the education system in Buckinghamshire, they're finding that they are coming to 16 at certain schools, and then need to redo or improve their A levels, so to speak. And in Bucks, you can't do that, unless you stay on the sixth floor. In other words, redo the GCSEs to get better grades to be able to do A levels, et cetera, et cetera. That used to happen in my time, but it doesn't happen anymore. So I wouldn't mind having a look at that. And I'm getting complaints quite a lot of, you know, they haven't gone to Oxford or Westhearts or Milton Keynes to redo their GCSEs, and then go on to do A levels. So is that because within the schools that we've got, they can't, if you like, stay on longer and redo their GCSEs? Or, you know, naturally being a young person, the stigma related to being, I don't know, 18 years old in a class of 16-year-olds. Can I just interject? It's a combination of two things. One is, if you don't do well at GCSEs, whereas before there was a safety net, in that you could at least have one more go at them. That doesn't happen anymore. It does. It can do. It's a discretion of the head teacher. That's what I'm saying, discretion of the head teacher. You've got a cohort. Well, no, not necessarily. I understand that you're saying that you, that ability to be accepted on a course. If you have, I think, even some colleges, I think if we do find a label, you do, there are some pathways for some students, because there is an obligation to keep them in education until they're 18. I can tell you that, again, parents, I'll give you examples. Head teachers are very reticent to redo, because it means resources to do GCSEs again. I'm not talking about A levels or post, BTECs, et cetera. I'm talking about doing what you're supposed to do, the exams are so surpassed at 16. All I'm saying is, there's no safety net anymore. Is it worth looking at, to see what we've got on offer in Buckinghamshire? If Councillor Cairney's correct, then I'll bow to that. But my experience of that, especially in Aylesbury, is not. I think it's certainly something that Katie can take away and ask, do some groundwork for us, before we move forward with that, I think. And that's the purpose of looking at the work programme and areas that we want to deep dive now. If Katie takes our thoughts, our notes, does some groundwork, liaises with officers, and then we, you know, we've got a base, we've got something to work off, and some direction that we might choose to go in. Councillor Darby. Just going back to apprenticeships, if we are going to be looking at apprenticeships, can we also look at employers as well, because it is a partnership between educational establishments and private providers, and employers. So I think we need to look at the whole picture, not just the picture as far as our educational establishments are concerned. Do we have any other members that would like to comment or input onto the work programme, or indeed, possible ideas for future briefings? Or perhaps there could be some things that we've raised today that perhaps we might not do a deep dive on, but we might be able to, in order to expand our own knowledge, take a briefing on from officers. Councillor Hussain and Councillor Cagani. One briefing on the 11 plus management, because remember the term we went through about four or five years ago, and it seems to have settled down now. I'm getting less issues. I still get the usual organisational issues, but I'm not getting the same level of complaint I used to get. So I wouldn't mind saying what we've learnt, and how it's settled down, and how the relationship between the council responsible for running the 11 plus, even though it's the academies who are responsible for it, if you see what I mean. We can absolutely provide a briefing note, because I think we've had two successful years following the year prior to those two years, where we had the challenges, but the implementation of the new arrangements, which were checked and challenged throughout the first year following the challenging year, has proved that it successfully ran the same arrangements last year, and that worked again. So we can provide a briefing note for members. That's not a challenge, thank you. Yeah, I think a briefing note may actually be the way to go, rather than having a team's meeting on something like that, because it is an implementation exercise, as far as the council's involvement. So it's something that can be put into a briefing note really quite succinctly. Councillor Kayani. Thank you. Mine's around alternative provision, and this question might need to be finessed a bit, and maybe a report on AP and the uptake and the cost of that to the county, and which children are falling into alternative provision, where potentially they should be in a specialist setting and not in AP. Are you proposing that as potentially something we could look at as a piece of deep dive work? Or maybe a report first to look at what the AP currently looks like for us, the cost to the county, and the children that are in those settings. So I would suggest perhaps rather than a particularly onerous piece of work at this point, again we ask AT to liaise with officers to do some ground work, to see whether that would be something that would be a viable piece of work for both parties to do a deep dive piece of work on. And we'll weigh that up with other members who of course have their own suggestions with what we decide to take forward. So is there anything else that anybody would like to say on work programme or briefings? No. With that I'll move to agenda item number nine, which is the date of the next meeting. The next meeting will be held on Thursday the 5th of September at 2pm here in the Oculus at the Gateway in Owsbury. Thank you all for attending today, and the meeting is now closed. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]