This meeting was a broad overview of Children and Young People services in Lewisham. It considered reports on the performance of services for young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), the performance of children's social care and Lewisham's Safeguarding Children Partnership, as well as looking at what Lewisham's young people are doing after the age of 16. Please note, this summary only reflects what was scheduled to be discussed in the meeting, and does not describe any of the discussions or decisions that were actually made.

Children's Social Care Annual Report

This report was an update on the performance of children's social care in Lewisham in 2024. It described how the service was divided between Children's Social Care (CSC) and Family Quality and Commissioning (FQC), and outlined the work each team does.

In 2023/24, children's social care in Lewisham was re-assessed by Ofsted¹ as ‘good’ across all of its services. The service has experienced some stress due to national issues with placement costs and staff retention, and from participating in the national Families First for Children Pathfinder scheme.

Families First for Children

Lewisham is one of 10 councils participating in the government's Families First for Children Pathfinder. The Pathfinder is testing new ways of working in 4 areas:

1. Multi-agency safeguarding: this work has included strengthening the role of education in safeguarding children and appointing a recently retired Head Teacher as an Education Safeguarding Consultant.
2. Family Help: this work has included integrating targeted early help and children in need services, and establishing multi-disciplinary Family Help Teams that include staff from housing, health, and domestic abuse services.
3. Child Protection: this work has included establishing three new multi-agency teams focused on child protection, and the redesign of child protection conferences to become more family-led.
4. Family Group Decision Making: this work has included recruiting staff to co-ordinate family group conferences, and is supporting staff to work more with the wider networks of children in their care.

Children in Need

The report says that the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH), which is the first point of contact for people requesting support from social services, is performing well and meeting its target of making 90% of its decisions within one working day. The rate at which children are being placed on child protection plans is falling. The main reason for children in Lewisham needing child protection support is neglect.

Children in Care

80% of children in care are regularly visited by social workers, and 90% of their reviews are held within the required timescales. The report says that Lewisham is performing well when compared to other councils on its use of foster care and the stability of placements for children in care. Lewisham has a legal duty, known as the Sufficiency Duty, to provide enough accommodation in the borough for children in its care. The report details how Lewisham has been trying to provide enough suitable accommodation, including:

• Supporting more children to live with family and friends under special guardianship orders. 280 children were being cared for in this way in December 2024.
• Trying to recruit more foster carers. Lewisham currently has 70 mainstream foster carer households.
• Seeking Ofsted registration for bespoke care placements.
• Developing new in-house accommodation. Two units, Northover and Amersham will provide places for 13 young people. A proposal was made to Mayor and Cabinet in September 2024 to develop more accommodation in existing council-owned buildings.
• Working to resolve issues with delays in payments to providers and inaccuracies in the council's accounting system.

Care Leavers

Lewisham has 640 care leavers. A motion was passed at full council in May 2024 to recognise care leavers as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Lewisham is working with the Drive Forward Foundation and Lewisham Works to help care leavers find employment, education or training.

Summary SEND Local Area Inspection and Updates to the Refresh of the Local SEND Strategy

This report was a summary of the findings of the recent Local Area SEND Inspection of Lewisham, and provided an update on the refresh of Lewisham's SEND Strategy. The report is asking the Select Committee to note the progress made by Lewisham on SEND and that the inspection outcome was a strong one.

SEND Reforms and Inspection Outcomes

The report explains how the changes to SEND introduced in 2014 have not been working well and have left many councils, including Lewisham, with growing budget deficits. The report notes that Lewisham was recently judged to be providing inconsistent experiences and outcomes for young people with SEND. Inspectors identified the following as strengths:

• Children and young people are involved in decisions made about SEND.
• Support for children in care.
• Joint commissioning of services.

The inspection found three areas for improvement:

1. Preparing young people for adulthood.
2. Quality assurance of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).
3. Waiting times for assessments.

Refresh of the SEND Strategy

Lewisham's SEND strategy was originally launched in 2020, and the Council has been running a programme of events to inform its refresh. The new draft strategy says that:

Lewisham is an inclusive community that is welcoming of all and has the knowledge and skills to meet the needs of children and young people (0–25 years) with special educational needs and / or disabilities, to enable them to play, learn, work and champion their aspirations.

Parents and carers would like the strategy to explicitly mention parents and carers, and to focus on understanding and acceptance of neurodiversity. Young people with SEND have said that they want the strategy to address safety and acceptance in the community.

Post-16 Destinations

This report is an update on the activities of young people in Lewisham after they leave school. It is asking the committee to note Lewisham's responsibilities in this area and the work that is being done. It says that Lewisham has a legal duty to track and support young people into education or training. The Government uses a measure called 'NEET' to measure how well local authorities are doing. NEET stands for 'Not in Education, Employment or Training'.

Activity Survey

The report says that 98.5% of young people in Lewisham were participating in Education, Employment or Training (EET) as of 1st November 2023, up from 97.3% in 2017.

NEET and Unknowns

As of June 2024, only 1.9% of Lewisham's young people were NEET, which is lower than both the London (1.9%) and national average (3.5%). The report explains that Lewisham is also tracking the number of young people who are 'Unknown' - those whose activity the council has been unable to ascertain. Lewisham's 'Unknown' figure was 2.4% in June 2024. Lewisham's target is to keep the number of NEET young people below 2% of the 16-18 year old cohort, and to keep the 'Unknown' figure below 5%.

Travel to Study

The report details how many 16-18 year olds travel outside the borough to study. In June 2024, 64% of Lewisham's 16-18 year old students were travelling outside the borough to study, mainly to Bromley, Greenwich, Southwark, Bexley and Croydon.

The Baseline Team

The council's Baseline Team tracks the activities of young people in Lewisham and provides support to those who are NEET or 'unknown'. The Baseline Team runs a drop-in service in Lewisham Shopping Centre. They also provide one-on-one support to young people, and run two careers events per year. They work with a number of other council teams, including the Virtual School, Youth Justice, SEND, and the Exclusion & Reintegration and Safeguarding Team. The report notes that:

Keeping Unit 19 open and staffed to continue to deliver statutory duties is a constant challenge with a small staff team.

Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) Annual Report 2023 -2024

This report was a summary of the work of Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership in 2023/24, and did not require the Select Committee to make any decisions.

Partnership Structure

The report describes how the Partnership is governed by a Strategic Safeguarding Leadership and Assurance Group and an Executive Partnership, and how it operates a number of sub-groups to focus on specific topics like child exploitation. The LSCP also works with the Tri-Borough Partnership, which is a partnership of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley councils. The Tri-Borough partnership ran three training courses in 2023/24:

• Unconscious Bias and Cultural Competence in Safeguarding Children.
• Domestic Abuse and the effects on Children.
• Modern Day Slavery and Child Exploitation.

Partnership Priorities

The LSCP's six strategic priorities for 2023-2025 are:

1. Child Exploitation.
2. Neglect.
3. Think Family.
4. Voice of the Child.
5. Measuring Impact and Outcomes.
6. Anti-Racist Partnership Approach.

The report states that:

Effective collaboration is a strength of the LSCP and we will continue to work in this way to meet the needs of our children, young people and their families.

Select Committee Work Programme Report

This report was about the work programme of the Children and Young People Select Committee. It recommended that the Committee review its work programme and suggested a number of topics the committee might consider scrutinising. The work programme included two topics scheduled for discussion at this meeting:

• The post-pandemic environment in schools, including validated school standards data.
• Tackling Race Inequality in Lewisham Schools (including exclusions and managed transfers).

The Committee was also asked to review the forward plan of key decisions made by the Mayor and Cabinet. This included a decision about the contract for Lewisham's Substance Misuse and Sexual Health Service for Young People, which is run by the Social Inclusion Recovery Group and is known as Insight Lewisham.