Transcript

Life. First of all, housekeeping. There's no fire drill expected today. In the event of a fire alarm sounding, everyone present is asked to leave by the nearest exit and assemble at the top car park, reporting to a member of the building management team. Staff will be on hand to guide you to the nearest exit. Can please everyone ensure that your mobile phones are either switched off or on silent. In line with our guidance on the use of social media, I'm happy for anyone attending today's meeting, including members of the committee, to use social media if this doesn't disturb the business of the meeting. Today's meeting is being webcast to the public and a recording will be made available online afterwards. I'd also like to mention this meeting allows for participation by video conference via Microsoft Teams, and that some attendees are participating remotely. For those who are remote, the chat feature is disabled. Its use would limit the transparency and open discussion we aim to maintain in a public meeting. For those officers who have joined the meeting remotely, please use the raise hand function to indicate you'd like to speak, and please do mute your microphone and turn off the camera when you're not speaking. So for those officers and members who have joined us in person, can I ask everyone to speak clearly and directly into their microphone. When called on to speak, press the right hand button of your microphone and start speaking when the red light appears. Please remember to turn off your microphone when you're finished. If you're sharing a desk or microphone, then you need to press the right or left hand button, depending on what side of the microphone you're sitting on. But I don't think that's a problem today, because I think we've got quite a lot of space. One other note. When we scrutinize the Adolescent Service, we need to be cautious about referring to information which is in Part 2 in the appendix for the Adolescent Report. If we enter Part 2, then I will need to read out a particular statement, and we will need to ask members of the public to leave the meeting. I don't think we will necessarily need to do that, but can I please ask everyone to be cautious, because Part 2 contains some case studies, and it would be inappropriate to discuss that information in public. OK. Just a couple of announcements. As everyone is probably aware, an Ofsted ILACS inspection. ILACS stands for Local Authorities Children's Services, started on Monday of this week, and will take place over three weeks. Field work commences in week two, which is next week, and will involve Surrey County Council staff, as well as parents, carers, children, and young people, and partner agencies. It's important to clarify that ILACS has a very specific remit, what we would normally characterize as children's social care, the experiences which relates to the experiences and progress of children in need of help and protection, children in care, care leavers, and the impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families. And our last ILACS inspection was in March 2022. I think it's important to note that the scope of ILACS does not include SEND, which is inspected in the Joint Ofsted CQC Care Quality Commission SEND Area Inspection. And the last SEND Area Inspection in Surrey was in September 2023. So I think it's important that we understand what this inspection is about, and it is separate from a topic which we often discuss in this committee. There's another comment that I'd like to make, and that was that I think many of you will have seen the Surrey County Council submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee investigation into the SEND crisis. I mean, I was quite disappointed that I only learned of this submission because I was sent it in an email from a resident. It wasn't actually provided to the Select Committee, which I think is disappointing because it's a subject that we are very interested in, partly because it's of significant interest to many of our residents. I think this submission makes for very interesting reading. Actually, I personally, and I can't speak for the rest of the committee, but I personally agreed with many of the points made in the submission. But I was also struck by some contradictions between some of the points that we made in that submission and the current lived experience of parents and carers of children with SEND in Surrey, as reported to counsellors on a daily basis. The submission talks about the system overprivileging affluent parents who can afford to pay for legal support. But unfortunately, I see Surrey's process as encouraging just that. It's not our intention, but that's what happens. The submission regrets the adversarial relationships between families and local authority. Yet this committee's task and finish group report on parent and carer experiences emphasized how prioritizing communication and co-production would resolve many of these issues. And what's most frustrating to us is that communication and co-production, which are within Surrey's ability to resolve, have still not been adequately addressed. And we are two years, it's almost two years now since the SEND end to end review was set up. The council has invested 15 million over three years, and EHCP timeliness has improved significantly, as has performance and annual reviews. And this is to be celebrated. But communications are still often poor, and parents often don't agree with the EHCNA, the needs assessment, or the final EHCP, because the information in the document is incorrect or missing. And I think my final point is that we make the point in the submission about overprivileging affluent and articulate parents. But actually, it is the most disadvantaged children and young people who are likely to suffer in the current system, because it is their parents and carers who are not in a position to make a complaint, don't know how the process works. And so their parents are not equipped to fight for them. So I really do hope this dichotomy between what we say and what we want to happen and what we do is actually resolved in the very near future. It continues to be a matter of significant concern to this committee. Moving on to apologies for absence and substitutions. We have apologies from Maureen Attawell, who's unable to join us today. Frank Kelly is joining us remotely. Hi, Frank. As is Julie Oldroyd. I hope Julie's there as well. Julie has sent her apologies. Oh, right. Julie has sent her apologies. That's fine. So online, we have Frank. Can I ask if any members have any interest to declare? Okay. Thank you. Excuse me. So we're now on to questions and petitions. And we've had a bumper crop for this meeting. Oh, apologies. I need also to ask members to approve the minutes of our meeting on the 3rd of December 2024 as a true and accurate record of proceedings. Does the committee agree? We agree. We agree. Thank you. So now we move on to item four, which is questions and petitions. As I said, we have a bumper crop. We have three public questions and seven member questions. The questions really reflect the fact that we're in that period of the year when key students have a number of questions. It has a true and accurate record of proceedings. Does the committee agree? We agree. Thank you. So now we move on to item four, which is questions and petitions. As I said, we have a bumper crop. We have three public questions and seven member questions. The questions really reflect the fact that we're in that period of the year when key stage transfers are happening. And the decisions are, well, key stage transfer decisions are being made. So most of the questions relate to some aspect of key stage transfers that affects children and young people. I just remind everyone that answers to the questions are in the supplementary pack on the website. And I recommend reading that supplementary pack if you haven't already. A great deal of interesting information is in that pack. And I thank all of those who asked the questions and all of those who responded to the questions. Because I think there's some really valuable and insightful information in that pack. So thank you all. So questioners may ask one supplementary question which has to be relevant to the original question. And we'll start with the public questions. Now, I understand that. Okay, Sarah Moran, who asked the first question, is not attending. Amanda Lazenby, I believe, is joining us remotely. And the third question is from Catherine Adam. But Catherine wants to come in person, but I think she's been slightly delayed. So we will, oh, right, Catherine, then we will take them in that order. So first of all, Amanda, and second of all, Catherine. So Amanda, do you have a supplementary question? Yes, I do. Thank you. Good morning. I'll ask this very quickly because we've got some building work going on. So if drilling starts, I do apologise. I just wanted to say thank you for the response which I received by the monitoring officer. However, I do strongly dispute the figures quoted in the reply, but I actually received the response at four minutes to five last night. So I wonder if the chair would allow me time to evidence this in writing as soon as I'm able to unpick all of the numbers quoted in my reply. Thank you. I'm happy to do that as long as the cabinet member is happy to take the request in writing. Thank you. OK. Yep. Lovely. Thank you. Thank you, Amanda. Catherine, do you have a supplementary question? Yes, I do. Thank you. Can you hear me? We can. Light and clear. Good. Thank you. So going on for my question in relation to the Cullum Centre. And after I read the report, the review of SEN up to 2030, it was obvious that the place, more places were needed for SEN children. And I'm therefore just wanting to know why only two places were offered for the Cullum Centre for 2025-26 when the council knew that the need was only going up and other places were offered for other years. So other years have got four to six places. And for my daughter's year, it's only two. Thank you. Can I ask who will respond? Thanks, Claire. Thank you, Mrs. Anders, for your question. And I hope that the information that we were able to provide you was helpful. With the agreement of the chairman, I don't have the necessary detailed information about the makeup and the spread of children in the Cullum Centre at Hingley Wood School. So I'd have to go away, liaise with officers and the SEND admissions team and find that out. Would it be acceptable to respond in writing? And of course, I'll ensure that you're copied in. Certainly. Is that OK with you, Catherine, that we send you a written response as the cabinet member doesn't have all of that information immediately available? That would be good. I've got a tribunal coming up, so it would be good to get an answer for that in the next few weeks. OK, right. Thank you very much. Thanks, Catherine. Thanks for your question. So we now move on to the member questions. We have four member questions from Catherine Powell, one from Mark Sogdon and two from Jonathan Essex. I believe Catherine Powell is online. Catherine, would you like to ask us your supplementary question? Thank you, Chair. I'd like to start with question one and I'd like to thank you for your response. I am concerned that nearly 12% of children didn't have a named school by the statutory deadline. However, I'm also concerned by the contradictory information I've received from two mainstream secondary schools regarding children that have been allocated to their school, where they have stated they cannot meet need and the school was not their preference. Can the cabinet member please advise if she is happy for the schools to correspond directly with her on this subject, with myself and the Chair of the Select Committee to clarify the situation and that she considers changing the information that is tracked so that for the September 2025 cohort, we can see how many children where the school said they could not meet need but were allocated there, either never attend the school or within their first year becomes severely or persistently absent. Clare, would you like to respond? I think it would be really helpful in this case if the member would pick these particular cases up with the schools, the specific schools and the specific cases involved and I will forward that on to the service for answering. Obviously we don't want to take up, it's inappropriate to discuss specific children's cases in this committee. So the best thing would be to come through my office in writing and we can take that further. But obviously decision making is always done objectively and on the basis of evidence and needs to be consistent across all schools. We can't be looking at individual cases and taking those in a different way. It needs to be done consistently. No, I think that I think that sounds quite quite reasonable actually. Catherine, are you happy to send the information to Clare for her to respond to it? I will ask the system. If that's OK, Ciao, I will ask the schools to do that directly to Clare with you and I on copy. Thank you, Chair. OK, thank you, Chair. Rachel. May I request that as the Executive Director and Accountable Officer I'm copied in as well? Of course. Of course. Can we arrange that as well, please? Can you ask Catherine, can you ask the schools to do that? I will definitely do that, Chair. Thank you very much. Do you have a supplementary to question two? I do. I'd like to thank the Cabinet Member for the response and ask whether the information regarding the situation for the September 2024 cohort could be provided offline as of the start of the September 24 period, detailing how many pupils were allocated to which type of provision, including how many pupils did not secure a type of placement for September 24. Claire. Claire. Claire. Yes, I would. I'll be happy to follow that up and ask the service to provide that information. Of course. Although the Council could have asked for that in the first place, I could have had it available today. I suspect sometimes you get the data and it kind of prompts another question, which I guess is the purpose of the supplementary question. Every week we send out to all members information about last year's key stage transfer and indeed now that we've passed the 15th of February this year's key stage transfer. We say which children didn't have a school place immediately and were named by type and where we're still waiting to place. And we have steadily shown those numbers reducing since last year and we will share the same information on the same basis very transparently with members this year too. If in that information that we're sending out, we're not sending the information that members specifically would like to hear, and obviously we can't send individual child data out in that, but we are sending numbers and cohorts and who is being placed in which kind of settings constantly. And so I would really welcome feedback so that we can fine tune that because it seems to me that if we are sending weekly information about that, we ought to be able to meet the communication needs of this group. Can I just clarify that because I've never received that information. I don't think anyone has received it. No, I haven't. My very sincere apologies. I had understood it was more widespread than that. It goes from my inbox, so you would think I should know. I will go back and cross check with the team. Sure, no problem. So can we have one? I have just looked at the last week's update for the key stage transfer 2024 post 16 learners. There is just one learner who was recommended specialist provision where the case officer and the family are still working to find a continued learning or vocational employment pathway for that young person. That's one young person. I think that answers your question, Catherine, but it would be great. It would be great if we could see the information and I think and I understand that you didn't realize. I see no reason not to because I thought I've been sharing it all this time. I really do apologize. I'm very embarrassed now. That's no problem. But I also think I think it'd be helpful, you know, if it didn't address the things that that were of real of real interest to us. Could we please provide some feedback when we receive the information? Just in case, you know, I'm sure it's pretty comprehensive because most of the information that you send out, Rachel, is comprehensive. But, you know, if there's something we feel we're missing, please, can we respond to that request for feedback? OK, Catherine, can we move on to your third supplementary? Thank you, Chair. And I will very much look forward to receiving the information from Rachel on to on question three. Again, thank you very much for the response. Can I just be reassured that this group is specifically tracked? You know, the 7% that are NEET is specifically tracked by the service. And I'm assuming that if Rachel is issuing information on PACE 16, she's probably doing the same on PACE 19. And maybe it's just that we don't see it. But if there is some more detailed breakdown that's regularly shared, it would be useful for it to be shared with members. Thanks, Claire. To save Rachel the effort. The key stage transfer data that is circulated weekly does not apply to PACE 19 because that's not a key stage transfer year group. And the Council has different responsibilities for those who are over 19. But, of course, they still have education, health and care plans. They still have annual reviews. And if they are looked after, they will still be under the auspices of the virtual school in the post 16 cohort. And yes, are individually tracked in that way. Thank you, Claire. Last question, Catherine. Yes, thank you for the response. I assume the service is tracking the number of appeals that have already been lodged against allocations advised to parents on the 15th of February. And I'm just wondering if that information could also be shared on a regular basis going forward. Please, Claire. This is a question I've asked myself of the service. At this point in time, because we're only two weeks away, it is very early to say. And they really, this needs a little more time in order for parents to be able to lodge their appeals. But this is something I have already asked the service for. And as soon as I have the information, I will be happy to share it with the member concerned. But I think that will take a few more weeks before we have a full picture. Could I just ask a point of clarification? Have you asked Claire for that information, you know, on a regular basis? Or is it at this point in time? Is it the post 15th of March or the, sorry, or post the 15th of February or post the 31st of March? No, I've also post the 15th of February for the service, ask the service if they're aware of how many families have felt that they want to lodge an appeal against the name placement in their child's EHCP. Thank you. I can understand why you want to wait a few weeks before that becomes clear. Absolutely. I think it's the service is saying it's too soon to have a full picture. And I think that sounds sensible because families will spend quite a lot of time thinking about it. So, Catherine, I think those are all your questions. And hopefully you will. Yes. Is it possible to get a like a weekly or bi-weekly update on that information? Because I'm hearing quite high numbers of people have already gone to appeal. There is a time limit within which a parent must submit an appeal. And I think it's only fair to the service that we wait for that time limit to expire so that that is the definitive number. And then we will actually know by the number of figures rather than anecdotally this, that or the other. And of course, parents might go through mediation or through the Madra process between now and then. And those appeals, those issues might be resolved without the need for going to tribunal. I mean, I think that that seems reasonable, actually, if we can wait until the last when it would just. Can I just check when the last date is that parents have the right to go to appeal? I mean, if it's months and months away, I guess it's more of an issue than if it's simply, you know, two months away. So parents might appeal either a refusal of a request to assess or something about the education, health and care plan at any time. It's not just the key stage transfer that might generate tribunal appeals. And one of the issues for us is going to be to separate out the reporting in relation to key stage transfer for any other appeals. So I would think within a couple of months of the key stage transfer date, we will be clear about the volume of appeals related to key stage transfer. I am certainly willing to commit to sharing that information. I'll need to discuss with the service the reasonableness of the frequency with which information is updated. So there is nothing on which we report publicly every week. And I think that that is a burden on the service that is unreasonable. But I would consider whether monthly information or quarterly information would give the most accurate representation. And we'll come back to you on that. So I'm very happy to look at it. I think I mean, I think that would be really helpful, actually, because I think, you know, I think there are a lot of urban myths around. And it'd be nice to understand, you know, what the perspective of the service is. So if we could have a monthly or if we could have a quarterly, I think that would be very helpful. Okay, thank you very much for your questions, Catherine. Thank you, Chen. And now we have some questions from Mark Sugden. Mark, I understand that you have a couple of supplementary questions, and I'm happy to ask those on your behalf. Yes, if you could, because my voice is very close. Just one, right. Just one. Thank you. They are linked. So there is a question of clarification. Mark asks, are all the 20 places at the Cullum Centre, over time, Surrey County Council placements? I don't know the answer currently, but I can find out. There would be reasons why they might not be, because schools anywhere might accept a placement of a child from anywhere. But there are a range of sort of admissions requirements and restrictions in force at any time. So I would need to investigate that and come back to you with a written answer. It's also an interesting point, isn't it, because the Cullum Centre is run in conjunction with the National Autistic Society. And I wonder if that brings any admission specifics with it. So it's an interesting question, actually. So Mark, in response to that question, are you okay if you receive a written response to that? Yes, I am. The question I would like to ask as well. Does Surrey County Council have a set number of placements each year, regardless? I'm sorry, is that that we couldn't hear you particularly well, Mark? Is that the second question that you have written down? Yes, yes, yes. In which case, if it's okay with you, I'll ask it on your behalf. Is that okay? Yes, thank you very much. No problem. Mark asks, as a supplementary question, if there are no pupils aging out of provision in a particular academic year, and the number on roll is 20, does that mean that there would be no placements made by Surrey County Council for that academic year? So I think the answer to that as structured is, yes, that's correct. If the number of places is fully allocated and no children leave, then we wouldn't be able to allocate to that setting in that year, unless we made some other alternative arrangement. I mean, in some cases, and this happens quite a lot post-key stage transfer, we may identify a group of children with a particular need, and we will start discussing with the school or setting whether they can accommodate, you know, a bulge class to support children with that need, or make additional provision. So in some certain circumstances, we might be able to negotiate additional provision at a school or setting. But in principle, if all of the places are full and none of the children move on, then there is nowhere that we can allocate children to in that year. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I just follow up on that? Because I think it's useful information. Do we sometimes negotiate at an additional place? Can that sometimes happen, you know, outside of the group that you're talking about, you know, which would, you know, potentially create, you know, a significant cohort? Are there circumstances in which we might be able to negotiate, you know, an addition of one or an addition of two? Or does that just not happen? This sort of thing happens quite a lot. And with children with additional needs, it will depend on an absolute multiplicity of factors, including the other children at the setting, including whether it's an existing specialist setting, which we're asking to expand, or whether it's a mainstream setting with additional resource provision, which we might be asking to stretch. And much of it will be a question of what additional resources a setting might need to be able to support that young person. So we will have places available in any year to meet certain types of need. We will allocate children to those places. And then, as I was describing, I suppose we have some children where we have identified the type of provision that is needed, but we don't have a place to allocate them into. And I was referring earlier to the fact that we then work in relation to these, all of these individual children, to identify the right place that matches the need on their EHCP. We do that cohort work as a priority because obviously if we can find, you know, if there are eight children who share a need and share a sort of broadly a geographical location, we might be able to make provision very local to them, which works well. And so those are the kind of discussions that we have. But there will be children, either whose needs are, you know, unique or very complex, where the search for a placement might go on for a long time, or where they're not that unusual or complex, but in a sense they are the child over and above the available places. And then, of course, our discussion with schools or settings is on an individual basis. So there isn't a situation where we would find ourselves saying, well, there's only one of you, therefore there's nothing we can do. We would always be engaged in a discussion. But there are some sort of fairly clear restrictions about how, whether a school can or can't exceed the number of places it's got. And there are also some more grey areas, I would say, where part of what you're considering is the impact on the education of other children in that setting. And that's when you find yourself taking into consideration and around everything else that is going on in that school or setting. I'm sorry, that was a bit of a complex argument. No, but it's helpful to understand. Thank you, because, you know, it's important to understand what these things are really cut and dry or whether, you know, there is latitude. But of course, there are, you know, multiple, multiple factors to be taken into account in that. Thank you for that. Jonathan Essex, do you have a supplementary question? Thank you, I do, but I'd like to start by thanking for the tabular answers provided. Two brief ones, if I may. Can I just say, one supplementary. One for the first question and one for the second question. Yes, please, otherwise we're here all day. No, the first one is the tables A and B of the places it maintains specialist scores. And for maintained mainstream scores with same units. Is it possible to provide a comparative table in the same way by type of provision and by borough and district area for the numbers in independent, non-maintained independence? Please. Claire, can I ask that question of you? Can I say, I'll see what we can do? It's presumably from exactly the same data source as the others. It's the missing bit. So it's quite to show where all of the other children aren't in the first two categories, basically. Yeah, I'm not trying to say no, I just, as you described it, that sounded quite complex. I'm sure the data is there and I'll just work out what it will take to fill in that gap. I'm not trying to resist Jonathan, I'm just being careful not to commit to something when I don't know. Do we know who all the independent schools are? Well, we know where our children are. Well, true. Fair point. Fair point. I'll leave that one with you then, Rachel. Second question. Thank you. This was for the question called M7. So I was confused by the answer, so I had to Google to see what the difference meant. So my understanding is not in school means that not in school 100% of the time, whereas fairly absent is not there 50% of the time. So the report by the virtual school starts by providing a figure of 2.7% of the number not in school nationally. And in essence, what I was hoping that you might provide is what the comparative number is for Surrey. So what you've answered is what the comparative number is between Surrey and national for severely missing. I wonder if you might be able to provide that for not in school. My understanding is the way it's broken down nationally is between those not enrolled in any school, those receiving unregistered provision, and those enrolled at a school but not attending. I think my suggestion of referring to a table earlier in the same report was unhelpful, because it was a table about something different. So my apologies. Who shall I address that question to? Claire? I'm not sure that I completely understand. I'm just wondering whether the answer that Jonathan is looking for is partially answered in the recommendation section where the Cabinet response is to, I'm looking at the data in the main agenda on page 40, where there are more tables. Okay, so my confusion is this. On tables 40 and 41, there are tables which I understand are tables of those children who are severely absent from school, but thereafter follows an annex which looks at the situation specifically for looked-after children, but the looked-after children has a national comparison to those not in school, which is different from the previous section, and it doesn't provide a comparison. It starts off by saying the national situation is this, and my question in my mind was, well, tell me what situation is in Surrey then, so I can be assured that the situation in Surrey is as good as, if not better than the national situation, which I'm sure it is. But just the way the report was written, I could see the national number, but I couldn't see the comparative Surrey number in that annex one, which starts on page 42 about looked-after children. Chair, if I may. Please do, because I'm still trying to figure this one out. What I will... I think it's a question of dates, because the figure of 2.7, was from 2023, and the figures that we have been looking at before. It seems to me, I think that's what the difference in date is, but I could be, I think that, to me that seems to be what the, where the discrepancy arises, but, you know, I'm genuinely not sure. Rachel? What I will undertake to do, because I don't think we'll work it out in this meeting, is take the report back, and review wherever we have got Surrey data, or national data, and ensure that where we're collecting the same things, and a comparison is possible, that both of the figures are supplied. And if for any reason we're not collecting the same, to make that clear. And so I think where we are collecting and contributing to a national data set, then it seems to me obvious that we have our figure, and the national data set has the national data set figure, and we should be able to compare them. We oftentimes can't compare a Surrey figure, a current Surrey figure, with a national figure, because the national figure is not bang up to date. And sometimes we collect information in Surrey that isn't part of a national data set, and therefore there may be no comparator. But anywhere where we're collecting for a national data set, then we ought to be able to provide both figures, and I'm happy to make sure that we have done so. Is that all right? Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I think this was a discrepancy in the report that we received in December as well, because I noted that this table was also in our December report, when we were catching up with children not in school. And, you know, I assumed it was because the information hadn't been published at that point, but there is a discrepancy between 23-24, which is we have information for Surrey children, but the national average seems to be based on 22-23. So I think there's just an error in that table. And the national averages lag always, and national averages in relation to school information lag even further, because the school year is shifted back. So in other words, we are in 2025, but we haven't started the 2025 school year because it starts in September. So by the time you're reporting on 25-26 school year information, we're likely to be well into, on a national basis, well into 2027. But we will have had our own Surrey information sooner than that. So there is often a year for which we can describe Surrey information, but we don't yet have a national comparator. And that will always be so. But as I say, wherever we've got both those data points, happy to make sure they're there. Thank you. Are you okay with that, Jonathan? Yes, I might have just said the really simple version, which is if you take the question I've asked and just miss out on the middle bit and just read the first sentence and the last sentence, it says there's a national figure of 2.7. What's the equivalent figure for Surrey? That's effectively what I was asking. Just so when we read the reports, as you've said, we can always be able to say, that's good. I'm confident that Surrey's in a good place. And it was not easy to do that from this particular report that was shared. That's all. Thank you. I think, I think you've really clarified the question. So that's really helpful. Thank you. Okay, so we move on now to the item five, which is recommendations tracker and the forward work program. And that's on pages 19 to 24 of the main pack agenda pack. I believe we are up to date with recommendations and in terms of the forward work plan. I'm proposing that we review. We have a session to review the forward work plan in April. In the meantime, I'm going to propose that we are looking at the impact of local government reorganization as well as reviewing the response to the outcome of the current Ofsted inspection. And we schedule those both into our current work plan. But as I say, I will arrange a session in April so that we can thoroughly discuss what our priorities are and when we want to do what particular topics. We now move on to item six, which is the cabinet response to select committee recommendations, and that's on pages 35 to 48 of the pack. So the cabinet, we're looking at two sets of recommendations here because it's been a while since we've had our last select committee meeting. So we're looking at the cabinet response to budget or budget recommendations, which went to cabinet in January and which I spoke to and our recommendations on alternative provision, which went to the cabinet. Also, I think they actually went to cabinet in February and which I also spoke on. So if I just summarize the position. So cabinet responded to our budget recommendations in January and noted the majority of our recommendations on the FY 2526 budget without comment. We were reassured that frontline roles would be exempt from recruitment controls, but we remained concerned that the voluntary. And charitable sector and charitable sector on whom we're increasingly reliant to deliver services may not be able to withstand the impact of increases in the national living wage and in national insurance. Because the inflationary increases provided by Surrey County Council may not be sufficient to close the gap. And I think that is a continuing concern to all of us. We understand the rationale for prioritizing statutory demands over discretionary spend on early health and preventive services, but we are concerned the inevitable results will be increased demand for statutory services. More left behind. More left behind diminished well being and actually higher downstream costs. So that was what we took to cabinet in January in February. The cabinet responded to our alternative provision recommendations. When we'd originally scrutinized alternative provision in February 24, we were concerned that Surrey was not adequately fulfilling its responsibilities and we made a number of recommendations which were accepted. In December when we reviewed progress, we recognized that there had indeed been progress, but we were disappointed that it was taking so long to implement some of our recommendations and on that basis we made some further recommendations. The cabinet members' response described a large amount of activity underway to address the issues, but we still don't have the parent handbook that we hoped would be available in June 24, nor is there a list of approved AP providers that parents could access to identify what might be appropriate for their children who are languishing at home without any education. And I think we feel strongly that part of the issue that we have in this area is that distraught parents just don't know what to do or who to turn to. They really do need the help of a handbook to understand who is actually responsible for what, because it's really not clear at the moment. I mean, it's taken me quite a long time to read all of the various documentation to figure out what the position actually is, you know, and even the latest guidance from government isn't that clear in some circumstances. So I think the concern that we have is that, again, communication and information for parents is not a priority amongst the activity and the plethora of activity in this area that's underway. But I am, however, very pleased to say that the cabinet member has assured me that an update on both the parent handbook and the list of approved provision providers will be provided in the near future. So thank you for that. Next, we move on to a motion which was referred to the Select Committee by Council in December. So we're now looking at Item 7, and we're dealing with pages 49 to 52 of the Agenda Pack. So, as I say, the motion was referred from Council in December to the Select Committee for the purpose of consideration and making recommendations. So the Select Committee is asked to consider the original motion entitled Taking a Broader Preventive Approach to Children's Services, as referred by the Council at this meeting on the 10th of December, and the motion is in the name of Councilor Jonathan Essex. So, the way in which we're going to tackle this is, I will ask Jonathan to propose the motion. I will then ask Liz Townsend to second the motion, assuming Liz is still the seconder. I will then ask the cabinet member if she would like to respond, and we will take it then from there. Jonathan, would you like to propose the motion? Thank you, Fiona. I'm not going to propose to repeat something like a for-council speech, because I've already done a short speech at for-council on this, and the motion was designed to be a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin motion, setting out the information at the start, and then a course of action at the end. So, what I would hope to do now is just to reiterate the overall importance, I think, for this. I think that it's important that we deal with the issues at hand today to make sure our children are well protected, and are not in care, and not in need, and they're supported all the way through their journey through life. But also that prevention is a good way of reducing the pressures on the service in the long term, and providing the best outcome for our young people. The spirit of this motion really was looking at longitudinal studies which had been published, highlighting the value of prevention activities. And the hope I had was in the same way as we have community libraries alongside normal libraries, that we have youth provision now provided by the voluntary sector. In this case, instead of that provided directly by Surrey County Council youth workers, there might be an option for the family centres, which retrenched their numbers and their focus on prevention. So, go back to less of a postcode lottery, and more of an everywhere based provision, not by matching up money we don't have, or putting requests to government which we maybe don't expect to be realised, but taking a similar approach that we've taken in other areas where our mandatory or in-house provision is supplemented by the goodwill of our communities and those who are at work across Surrey in these kind of spaces. But to inform that, what we hoped there might be value is doing is just having a report that set out the evidence base for prevention, and particularly this motion referenced work that's been done by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and a repeated set of studies over the last year or so, highlighting the value that family centres have as just one part of that whole spectrum of prevention work that could be done more of. But rather than, as it was originally proposed, that the service would produce a report for cabinet, it's now been referred to us as a select committee. So, it seems that the task is on us rather than the task is on the service and cabinet to take a lead on this item at this time. So, I propose that we respond to this motion in the way that the cabinet member and the cabinet effectively have requested by referring it to us. And the way in which we're proposing a way forward through discussion with the chair, our expert support in Julie and Liz, my co-proposer of this, was to do a one day of scrutiny. So, rather than having a long, drawn-out task group where we have lots of things on lots of different days and then we spend months at it and then go away and write a report and then produce something in oodles of time, we just spend one day, we get all we can together in one day. All the committee members that want to partake can come along for that one day if they're available. And we can interview a set of people within the Surrey family, beyond the Surrey family, those who've done research and those who are recommended that we approach by the service themselves. And we bring that together and set the recommendations in a short report that can be shared to cabinet. And then I wouldn't expect to be implemented in the short term because we're going to a unitary situation. But I would hope that it might be able to be landed in a place that's a place of being well received and maybe a useful piece of information, a useful set of suggestions that might inform the way in which children's services is reformed in either two or three unitary councils at some point in the future. I think the chance of finishing this and expecting implementation to progress within one calendar year just before we change is probably now beyond the realms of reality. So that's why I think that different approach might be taken. And we are proposing a date either in June or the 1st of July to do that one day event. And then we can rustle something up as a collective effort and then share it with yourself, Claire, and your team, Rachel, for due consideration and response, if that's an appropriate way forward. I may let Liz chip in with anything she would like to add and then look forward to Claire's response. Thank you. Thanks, Jonathan. So Liz, a seconder. Would you like to respond now? Yes, please, Chair. I'll just respond now briefly. And I support the scrutiny in the day option being proposed now. I think there's been quite a long time where some of us within the committee here, or if not all of us, felt that there had been the Sure Start centres and cancelling that programme had been of some regret to us. And whilst I do acknowledge the Family Centres are doing, you know, really great work, I do still think that we ourselves have felt, especially me, coming from a rural area, have felt the loss of those Sure Start centres where parents could pop in and they were much more accessible, dealing, reacting to hyper-local issues as well, perhaps being a little bit more agile. Now, with me and Crowley and Newhurst, my division, you know, it's a long way, really, to the Loseley House Family Centre, and I think that's a matter of deep regret. But what has been really interesting, and Jonathan's mentioned, is the wide-ranging impacts that are being seen from the Sure Start centres and the Institute of Fiscal Studies, their reports have been really interesting. I mean, I'd urge members of the committee to look through them, because there is some fascinating stuff, and hopefully we can look at that in the scrutiny on a day. But even around things like, you know, crime, it's within the motion there, Jonathan's put some details about, you know, crime, but also the impact on special educational needs. And in the long term, there are reports within the Institute of Fiscal Studies, one of their reports, that, you know, that that had a big impact on identifying children at a younger age, and then preventing them, really, from having to enter into what we now see as quite an adversarial system, which I'm sure that all of us, you know, want to change and want to make much better for children and families. So I, too, think that this is a really good opportunity to do this now, despite the looking at having unitary authorities, because I think we've got an awful lot of local knowledge within this room, within the teams, and I think it would be great to capture that before, you know, that moves on into much, you know, probably a different shaped organisation. So I think that would be, that would be really good. And so, yes, I definitely support this, you know, I think it would be a really worthwhile opportunity to look at this subject, which we have referred to quite a few times in this committee. And I hope that, you know, we get the input from the outside organisations and internally as well, and that they can make the day as well. So thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Liz. So I'm going to propose that, with Jonathan's agreement, we tackle this review via scrutiny in a day. If that is agreed, then we would plan to report back to Council on this way forward at our next meeting on the 18th of March. And following our scrutiny of day session, we would obviously report our recommendations back to Cabinet. So can I just check if that's an acceptable way forward for the Cabinet member? Claire, I'm so sorry. I forgot to ask you to contribute. Process broke down at that point. Please do contribute before we decide exactly how we're moving forward. Thank you, Chairman. Actually, I'd like to also thank Councils Essex and Townsend for what they've said. And I think the proposal to do this is a really good and thoughtful one, and I welcome it. And for those of us who've been on this Council for some time, I'm looking at Councillor Townsend. He will remember that this Council used to hold things called rapid improvement events, which was kind of improvement in a day, bringing all partners together into a room and really working things through. And they were great days, really productive and thoughtful and positive sessions. And I hope that something like this would be like that. Absolutely, I hear what you say about our new family centres and the work that's been done to recommission those, to make them really alert to local need and to work closely with communities on the ground, because a one-size-fits-all in Surrey just doesn't work. And our local family centres have to deliver a consistent level of service. But it also needs to be appropriate to the particular area and the particular families in which they work. And I do feel that our Early Help Board and the Early Help Work is really getting to be able to do that. Clearly, funding is going to be an issue that you will want to talk about. And we have been given the Children and Families Grant this year to enable us to shape our work. And you're going to hear, I hope, all sorts of different examples of work that is going on in the ground. The families' first badging of our Early Help Service. But within that, how other strategies interplay in the Early Help and Preventing with the very youngest families in our communities. But the one thing I did want to say was that in November last year, the government published its Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive policy statement, which is setting out the details of reform of the whole children's social care system and giving pointers to early help. And that's been followed up with a recent Families First Partnership Programme document, an initial guidance document, which is promising further guidance for local authorities in the spring of 2025, but is instructing local authorities to start developing more plans from April and beyond for early help. There have been national pathfinder areas which have worked very hard to build these early help systems in place. I know that Matt and Sue and Adam and colleagues are very closely connected into those pathfinders, the blueprint of practice and the work that they have been doing in order for us to adapt and extend our Families First work here in Surrey. So it will be important to hear how that works. What we know is that it's guidelines at the moment, but I think the expectation is that that will all be formalised in legislation for how those services should look. So it's important that we can keep that at the forefront of our, well, of your thinking. You're going to hear later today examples of the intensive family support service and also the adolescent service, which are very new services, which have been very much developed in that mould, taking on board a lot of what communities need, what the, how services should be adapted to meet users' preferences and taking that into the way that they have been, the services have been formed and they've been co-designed across. And the underlying principle here is that this is not the council working in a silo on its own. These are true partnerships, partnerships with all other statutory agencies, but also very much in line with the voluntary community and faith sector, which is strong, as we know, in Surrey. And we have over 90 different charitable organisations working with the service countywide to help to support children and their families. So in conclusion, I absolutely welcome this. I really hope that I'm going to be able to be invited to join on the day. And also that we have such skilled and experienced and committed officers working in this space and that I'm sure they will be only too pleased to share the work that is being done, the full range of services that are available for children and their families. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Claire. Well, I think that there's a level of enthusiasm for the scrutiny of the day. So with the agreement of all members, we will arrange this as scrutiny in a day. Agreed? Agreed. Thank you very much. Thank you. So now we move on to item eight. Sorry, Jonathan. Yeah. So just briefly, I'd just like to thank the Cabinet member for her response. And I'd like to note that on the recommendations, there was two. One was the right to government. And I suggest that we leave that to the end until we've got some recommendations. And then in terms of the actual scrutiny of the day, we discussed two possible dates. I wonder if it might be appropriate to circulate those possible dates to all the committee members and also to the Cabinet member to see which one would be most suitable for everyone. I think that's a good idea. And ideally, we'd do it sooner rather than later so that we can ensure that as many people as well are able to come along and contribute. So thanks, Jonathan. So now we move on to item eight, which is we finally get down to the main subject of today, one of the two main subjects of today, which is scrutinizing the new intensive family support service. And here I'm looking at Agenda Pack pages 53 to 64. So just by way of introduction, like the adolescent service that we're also looking at today, the intensive family support service is a new service introduced in 2024 in response to the joint targeted area inspection into early help in March 23, which identified the need for a local whole family approach to early help. As its name implies, the service is designed to offer support to families who are struggling in the hope that with intensive support, they can recover their ability to cope and don't need to fall into statutory services, which is always something to be avoided, if at all possible, because quite often the outcomes aren't what we would choose those outcomes to be once people have to make use of statutory services. So our scrutiny today will look at the role of the intensive family support service, how the service is different from other existing early help preventive services, how it interacts with and complements other services in the family early help arena, and how we review performance to check how effective the service is. So the witnesses for this particular topic are Claire Curran, Cabinet Member for Children. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, Maureen Attawell, who's the Deputy Cabinet Member, and who's specific remit is this area, is unable to join us today. But we also have input from Rachel Wardell, the Executive Director for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning, from Matt Ansell, who's the Director for Safeguarding and Family Resilience, and from Adam Thomas, who is Head of Early Help and Family Support. And I think, Adam, this is probably your first experience of the Select Committee. So I'm not sure what I can say other than welcome. Oh, my apologies, Sue. Your name wasn't on my list. I apologise. I'd also like to welcome you. But I think you've been here before, Sue. You have. You have, yes, right. OK, so now I think I'd like to ask the Cabinet Member if there's anything you would like to say. We have all read the papers. I think they were really helpful papers, actually. I certainly learned a lot from them. So I don't think we need to go over any of that material specifically, because I think our real interest is actually in inquiring into some of that information. But, Claire, is there anything that you would like to say in advance of starting our questioning? Thank you, Chairman. Well, I know you've introduced the Intensive Family Support Service, the rationale. One thing I would like to say that this service was established because to meet a recognised need across the county, that its way of working is very much a partnership one, looking at the holistic needs of families. It works very much in terms of developing a consistent and lasting relationship with the family, rather than having to expose lots of different handoffs and handovers, and being able to really work deeply and help families to overcome problems. I'm very glad that Adam, Sue, Matt are here today. I'm sure they'll be able to answer any questions that members of the committee have. Thanks a lot, Claire. We actually have quite a lot of questions, but, I mean, that won't surprise you. And would you believe the first question is mine? So my question is really about capacity. So the business case for the Intensive Family Support Service proposed 40 family intervention workers, supporting 800 to about 865 families each year. The latest information we have is that there will be 32 family intervention workers, that's 8 less than originally planned, with the aim to support 900 families, which is more than originally planned. Between April and December 2024, 121 families were supported. Now, the service was in start-up in 24-25 and below establishment because it was obviously gearing up. But based on the evidence to date, is it realistic to expect this smaller team to support as many as 900 families each year, to the extent intended in the business case? Does this put the number of families that we can support or the depth of support at risk? Who would like to address that question? I'm happy to start, and then I'll probably hand over to Adam, who's got some of the more sort of specific details. So I think fundamentally, the numbers that were outlined in the business case, as we've started to develop the service, what we are seeing is that we're wanting to work for longer periods of time with families to ensure that we are able to support their needs and they don't escalate. So as the service has developed and as the practice has developed, we are starting to understand how we want to work with families, and this will impact in the number of families that we'll be able to work with because obviously the longer a practitioner stays involved with a family, obviously we don't want to overload our workers. And so the throughput of work, as it were, the throughput of families, may not be as quick as what we perhaps originally had envisaged. I think what's really important now is to understand this in the context of where we're going next. So the previous discussion around the motion, we as a local authority, as all other local authorities, have a responsibility to submit our plans for the new government's plans around early help by the end of June. So fundamental to those plans and as a basic requirement, the government expects local authorities to be bringing together services at the targeted end of early help, our intensive family support service, and families that are supported on a child need plan, so families that are in our family safeguarding teams. So fundamentally, from April 26, we will be moving to a different model of practice where the intensive family support service and our family safeguarding teams will be starting to amalgamate them. And that is all based around the government's listening to and learning from family voice, which has been around families saying they do not like having to retell their story, and that as their needs change, they get escalated into a statutory team, they have to undergo another assessment, and that creates change and the change of worker right at the time when their needs are becoming more challenging. So one of the things that we will be doing from what we're doing now, but we'll be very much informed from the work that hopefully will come from the scrutiny day, but a lot of other work that's already happening within the partnership, is thinking about how we're going to be working with families in the new structure that the government expects us to deliver. And so we are looking at all of our resource, and we're looking at all of the numbers of families that we support in both intensive family support and our family safeguarding teams, and really be thinking about how we're going to structure the workforce in a new family help model, which is what the government expects. So whilst it's really important for us to understand the investment that this council's made into the intensive family support service, and also the amount of families that we can support, that business case was always based on knowing that this was coming down the line. The government's agenda started with stable homes built on love, and they've developed their thinking and their policies in more recent documents, which was referenced by Councillor Curran, and knowing what was coming down the line, we wanted that investment into a sort of intensive service, because we knew we needed to be able to then develop that into what the government are expecting, which is a family help model of practice. So I might not have addressed your specific question, but I hope it sets the context to where we're heading as well, and Adam will certainly be able to provide some perhaps more detail of the numbers in terms of what we're working with at the moment. Just before we come into Adam, can I just and really target those families, and the assumption is they come with children, those families mould, but almost there. And so, you know, we've moved from, I think it'd be interesting to understand this, you know, we've moved from the model of early, of Sure Start, which was much more universal, and now, you know, we can always see the funnel narrowing and narrowing and narrowing, and I think what I heard you saying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, is that in the time in which we set up the intensive family support service, the latest direction from government is actually to be even more targeted than we might have planned to be? Is that correct? So, central to all of the planning and thinking, and there's been nine local authorities that have been the pathfinders around the country, is to ensure that a family help model will not be successful without really strong partnership early help that sits with it. So, this isn't about developing something that sits in a local authority separately without also looking at what exists in that wider universal and early help offer. So, the two are critical together, and that's what our early help strategic partnership board has been working on, how we work together as a partnership around early help support for families, which isn't just a local authority's responsibility. And there's a really strong, which I hope, again, you'll see through the scrutiny day, commitment to that in Zoe, and it's one of the safeguarding partnerships' key objectives, one of the three key objectives. What the government agenda around family help is, is to stop families that effectively step up and step down too many times. So, families that are on, as you described perhaps, are on the border of a statutory intervention that then require an assessment. That assessment doesn't result in any further support or intervention, and then pass back down to an early help resource. And then six months later, they're referred back in. So, the intention is to stop that happening for families, and the intention is to put the support to practitioners in one place. So, when families' needs are changing, practitioners feel supported enough, comfortable enough, to have the right support from a range of different professionals to be able to hold that family and work with them, rather than passing them somewhere else. So, the intention is to put the professional support into families at different times, but for them to have one key worker that stays with them, and so they're not passed to different teams because their needs are changing. Thanks for that. I know Rachel wanted to come in, then I was going to come back to Adam, because I am still interested in the numbers. You know, because I, when we had the funding from the last government under the Troubled Family Scheme, they were expecting us to provide support for around 800, 900 families a year. So, you know, I'm kind of interested in how the numbers, you know, what government's expectation be. So, please, Rachel first, and then I'll come back to you, Adam. So, I just wanted to say a little bit about the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently on its journey through Parliament, because that speaks to what Matt was alluding to around current policy. And to answer your specific question about whether it's making us more targeted, which it isn't, what it's doing is blurring the line between the statutory service and the non-statutory service so that it can do what Matt has described, which means that a non-social work, an alternatively qualified practitioner, can hold on to the work with the family into the space, which would traditionally have needed a social work response, and potentially sort of out of that space and back into the early help space. So, it kind of, it actually lengthens and strengthens, I think, the connections between our statutory services and the wider early help function. There was a bit of the jigsaw missing, which is where the IFSS currently fits in, because that kind of higher level but non-statutory work wasn't well served before the creation of the service. But now that it exists, as the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill becomes law, we'll find that we do have that continuum of support, which we describe in our documentation, at every stage of a family's needs. And the kind of separation, such as there is, envisaged in the new legislation, comes much higher in the tariff, which is when a child needs a child protection intervention, and there is provision in the bill for multi-agency child protection teams. But even at that point, the intention is that you wouldn't lose your worker. You'd have additional oversight from child protection specialists, but there would be fewer handoffs right across the chain. So, just that it was worth explaining where that's sat in the legislation. I mean, I have to admit, I think the thing that I didn't get before was the potential collapsing of the safeguarding or the merging of the safeguarding and the intents of family to collaborate because they're effectively one and the same. Thank you for that. That's right. And currently, of course, they are separate because the legislation hasn't yet changed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Mark, did you want to come back before I go to Adam? Yeah, really briefly, is that we're obviously in the very, very early stages of that. We haven't moved to that position yet. And we are, as I said earlier, we have a responsibility to provide DfE with a outline plan by the middle of June, I think it is. And we're working on that at the moment. With the anticipation, Rachel and I met with DfE colleagues a couple of weeks ago, that local authorities will be moving to the new way of working from April 26. So there is going to be a need for ourselves and the wider council to consider these government changes alongside what we also know around local government reform and how the two things will work. I should have turned my microphone off. Adam, would you like to come back and talk to us a bit about capacity? Sure, I can add a few things. I think a lot of the kind of wider context has been answered already. Having the intensive family support service, it doesn't mean that we can, it puts us in really good stead for everything that's coming in terms of what we want to plan for moving forward. A really key part of that is the interface between the early health workforce, particularly in IFSS, but in the wider targeted areas as well because they talk to each other, and the statutory teams. So before, we commissioned most of our targeted early health work, didn't we, through the family centres and other services. Now we've got this service in-house. We're creating a much closer interface so we can have that statutory oversight where we need it, where families, where the needs of families are potentially escalating. We don't go through a kind of process where we're referring up, having an assessment necessarily, coming back down. We can have conversations a lot easier and a lot smoother, and that's a real benefit of what's in good stead if we're going to bring things together even more moving forward. I think you've asked about numbers as well and about the business case. We'll give you an answer to that. So I think it's fair to say there are questions around the original business case and the numbers. We were slower to recruit this year than was forecasted, and the reasons for that are included in the report. We've had some really successful recruitment very recently, so we will be going into April this year with 24 family intervention workers and eight senior staff, and that will give us a full-time equivalent of 28 staff who will be working with families. So there's the figure in terms of the staff numbers. And I think it's just really important to just remember the context. So in the business case, it talks about things around things like cost avoidance and we had the payment by results, which was part of the Supporting Families Grant 2022 to 2025. We're not in that place now. We're not going to have payment by results moving forward, and we've received the funding for that this year already. So in terms of the expectations from the DfE, in terms of the amount of families worked with, we're going to wait to see what that looks like moving forward because it's a new government now and it's going to be a new set-up. Thank you. That's really interesting. I mean, yeah, I appreciate that you can't say how many families that the government may expect. I mean, do you actually expect government to suggest how many families you should be supporting? Because, you know, if we look at the stats, you know, I can see that you're in start-up mode and that obviously, and you're learning quite a lot. But by comparison with the aspirations that we had in the past, this will be many, many fewer families. And I just wonder if, you know, this seems an even more targeted approach than we had before. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the key there is to realise that any targets that we have or expectations is around the whole system. It's definitely not just the intensive family support service. So Early Help is the wider partnership. We've done a lot of work over the last year to improve our data sets and we can share data sets with our partners as well. And I'll talk about that a little bit more. It comes into some various other questions. So any reporting that we do back to the DfE is not just around IFSS. It's around the family centres. It's around all our different partners and that are providing that. And, of course, everybody contributes to that. I do understand that. I suppose, you know, from the perspective of a counsellor, what we're concerned about is how much capacity there will be to work with the families who need that. But I'm not going to hold us up on that point because, you know, I don't... You know, my conclusion from this is that we will be... And I absolutely take your point. You know, it's a whole pathway approach. But actually, you know, it seems to me that we will be potentially able to support many fewer families. And as a counsellor, that's a concern. But I'll go on to another question, actually, because, you know, I don't think there's anything we can do to resolve that because, as you say, there's quite a lot of work going on at the moment and, you know, expectations may clarify later. Please do come back, Matt. And so just one final point around that. I wanted to reassure this committee that by this council investing in the Intensive Family Support Service, it really supported a potential risk that we were all sitting with as local authorities. So there was no clarity from central government about the ongoing Supported Families Grant, which had previously funded our family support programme. So we were in a position throughout last year not knowing what the future of that grant would be. So the investment into the Intensive Family Support Service that's in our establishment-based budget has safeguarded the fact that we've now got that service funded and supported. Government have now confirmed a one-year Supported Families Grant. The Early Health Partnership are working together to develop what already exists within the system, to not create new things, but to use that Supported Families Grant this year to make sure that we enhance the services that we have in the system already. So that funding is being used directly for families in the Early Health Space this year. Now, we won't know what the future of that funding is because it's only one year. So that's why we've intentionally not developed new services. What we're doing is, with the partnership, agreeing how we're going to use that funding to enhance and support existing services for families in the Early Health Space. Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, I absolutely understand the explanation. And I know there was uncertainty because of the end of the supporting, whatever the last grant was called. And I guess my kind of interim conclusion rests there. I think we will have much less capacity, but we'll wait and see. It's a concern. I really need to move on to other questions. So thank you very much for that. Chris Townsend. Thank you, Chair. In a way, we're trying to find out what the positive difference is, how to understand how the IFS is making that difference of the 154 referred to by IFS, by the C-SPAR, between April and December last year, which is just over 50% of the whole number. Before the IFS existed, would they have been escalated directly to the statutory service instead? And what would have happened to the other 120-odd who were stepped down to the IFS by the statutory assessment teams? So just get an understanding how effective being. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so I think this flows really nicely from the previous conversation that investment in IFSS is additional funding and it's additional capacity. And before, yeah, the question is, where would the families refer to IFSS now? Where would they have been referred to previously before we had the additional capacity and additional funding? And I think it's fair to say these things are never an exact science. And however, you know, the most likely alternative would have been, I would say those families would have been referred into the family safeguarding team and most likely would have had a child in need plan. And I think that's equally relevant or applicable really if it was through the C-SPAR, the single point of access, or from the assessment teams where the social worker would have completed their child and family assessment and then deemed it appropriate that actually... I think it's that we would have... I would have expected that the families that we're working with now previously would have been directed to a child in need plan in the statutory teams. Port, the tentatively showed at its early days a correlation there. But I think it's... Yeah, I think... Yeah, now you've reminded me, yeah, I remember the correlation. I mean, I'm always a bit dubious about correlations that work... that fit together quite so well, but, hey, that's just my prejudice. Apparently, the next question is... Oh, sorry, Matt. I think just to support Adam's point is that what the operational teams will say to us, the assessment service, for example, is that they've got another option for families. So rather than thinking that they have to move it into a long-term family safeguarding team, they're able to talk to Adam and his team about that intensive family support. So I think it needs a plan, which is what we want, if that's appropriate for that family. But I also want to sort of place a note of caution there as is that we need to always look at these percentages and these figures alongside any demand change. So we may see child need figures or child protection figures go up in the future and that may be because there's just more demand in the system. And we have seen that over the last four or five months a sort of 20% to 25% increase in front-door activity. Yeah, you have to be careful with bottleneck scheduling. You may get unintended consequences elsewhere. Barony. What impact has this service had on school attendance? So schools form an integral part of the team around the family, which is what is created for every family in an early health or intensive early health service. And so improvements in school attendance and engagement is monitored. We monitor it through the supporting families framework, which is the national framework in the Department for Education. And that's how we monitor that through our data sets. So looking at the data on this for IFSS, 50 children supported by IFSS in the first three quarters of this year were identified as having some form of access need around surrounding education. Out of these 50 children, the data shows that 40 out of the 50 were recorded as having their educational needs either partially or fully met. And that's the terminology we use on our data sets. systems looking at the framework, hence why I'm using it here. Moving forward, we all want to work together to improve educational attendance and this support, as per any early health services there to help families and children in mainstream school and electively home educated and alternative provisions. So, could you repeat that figure again about the partially and we met bit? When we monitor our data outcomes it's through a framework called the Supporting Families Framework has 10 domains. I put it in the report actually, it's in the report. And in the education section there's various metrics just how we record the improvement. Now, the main way we record the improvement is by talking with the families, the team around the family, the action plan and that sort of thing. If we just want to look at sort of the data and what the data is showing us, 50 children in IFSS in the first three quarters were identified in that framework as having a need around educational attendance or engagement and 40 out of 50 when that intervention had finished and had their needs met or partially met. Right, so on the partially met and that's the bit I'm interested in. What does that mean? Yeah, I mean it could mean... In terms of attendance I mean because that's what I'm interested in. So, the educational needs are partially met but were they attending school? I can't give you... I can't drill down to those figures any more for you here today but I'm really happy to go away and look at that more. My interest is... Is the service... Are there barriers to the service or something that's not getting across the line into school? So, just to say a little bit more about the evaluation of the service against those supporting people requirements. So, it's not going to measure exactly what you're looking for I think, Bernie. So, because the way that we count attendance obviously is the kind of... the proportion of the school sessions attended by any child and when we're engaged through the IFSS with a child or with a family looking at all of those domains some of them may not have an attendance requirement at all. You know, they may already be attending at well above 95% but they still need an IFSS intervention for another reason. In other cases they may have something kind of catastrophic happening in relation to education and they may be missing education entirely or having persistent absence and in those cases an improvement from you know, from an attendance of below 50% to attendance of above 70% would be regarded as a successful outcome of the intervention but it wouldn't meet the kind of, you know good attendance standards that we might otherwise measure. So, we'd... Adam has said he'll go away and find some more information for you but that wouldn't be what those interventions would be measuring typically they'd look much more closely at what was going on for the child and family and how much they had moved in their personal journey if that makes sense. Thank you. Next question, Donna Riley. Thank you very much. I think the question that is technically down there has possibly answered that the team is now at full complement which is good news and I just would like to say before coming to a different slightly different question the performance of the team over the last 18 months that's been established is very good and impressive as shown in the graph on 15 and the text in 16 and also if I may say so the summary good practice in a page the appendix is really interesting and bears fruit bears testimony to the work that the team is doing. So my question then in a way is first of all in terms of the budget for 18 and 19 paragraphs 18 and 19 my baby calculations and I'm now going to be embarrassed shows a sort of I think a 15% increase in the budget which is given these inflationary times is good and that just reinforces the point I make the question I have though is and I think it's from what Matt was saying that the direction that the council has been taken is because that's the way government that's the way the you know the the trend that was being set already so my question then is are our authorities labouring authorities doing the same as we are are we in Surrey County Council are our IFSS team advanced in other words are we a pace setter in this with other authorities in as much as I mean there may be figures to quote it but I'm just sensing a feel as to whether you know the work the good work the excellent work that's been done by the team in the last 18 months is that kind of path for the courses you would assess for what other authorities are doing are in some way we're really ahead of the game I'd be interested in that I hope the answer is yes well I'll say a couple of things and then Matt will fill in in more detail so in thinking about what the government's plans are for children's services everywhere there are some specific local authorities which are described as pathfinders and they have had additional support from government and they are testing various different models of this way of working and this authority is not a pathfinder so we're watching them with interest and I guess they might be described as the ones who are kind of doing the sort of trailblazing or pathfinding work in this area and what we have done is we've identified something that was definitely a gap in our service provision we've plugged it into a space which kind of is part of it's very clearly part of the government's thinking so we are acting on what we're seeing those other local authorities doing we're reflecting on our own unique situation here and responding appropriately I would say by putting that sort of piece into place and we are I think we're definitely doing something interesting and positive and Matt and Adam want to say more about that and there will be other authorities next to us who didn't have the same gap would have had gaps in different places there aren't any local authorities who've got no gaps at all and so all of us in our different ways are now responding to what we're seeing the pathfinders doing what we know government wants us to do and what our own local circumstances are so I think what we're doing is terrific and not everyone will follow us but not everyone will need to thank you would you like to come in as well Matt I guess just to add is for Rachel's point so we've worked really closely with those pathfinders been talking to them regularly listening to going to various forums and listening to how things are developing the challenges barriers pitfalls etc so we can learn from that but also what Rachel was describing was that we did have a gap and that's why we wanted to invest in an intensive family support service and the vision and what I hope is achieved over time is that what that will enable is a freeing up for our more earlier help services in the county whether they're voluntary organisations to work with families at an earlier point because what some of those services were saying was they were struggling with families that had more complicated needs so for us to develop an intensive family support service which is an indistinguishment investment enables us to work with perhaps some of those more complicated families which enables other partner agencies other organisations to work with families where we want them to work at that earlier point so actually the creation of the intensive family support service and what it will move into in terms of a family help model as long as we continue to work really carefully with the wider system should enable them to work appropriately with families at that sort of what we call a level two sort of place and will give us as an authority with other partner agencies which is really important part of the government agenda it has to be a partnership model but to work with those families that have perhaps got some more complicated needs thank you now Jeremy hi this is about paragraph 31 and I think I'm directing this at Adam you might like to know that councillor and myself are now councillor governors of the SAP so we see this from the other side Bernie don't we so will three family intervention workers joining the school-based needs teams be enough given that mental health is one of the highest needs of families referred to in the IFSS where are the teams based and how will their culture how will their work be prioritised across the county and finally is there a strong culture of partnership working because from my own experience working as a social worker several years ago it was a partnership thing which was the most difficult part of my role to be frank with you that was children in need by the way so all for you thank you so this example was included in the report really to show the types of things that we can do better to integrate with the wider workforce for children and families we are yet to have confirmation from SAVP about the funding for those posts but we're in conversation with them about that so if we can set this up it'll be a great opportunity to mix the clinical specialism of those staff members working in the school space and each teams in SAVP with the expertise that we have in our multidisciplinary workforce and our expertise around working with whole families and that persistence and that seeing the family context there I think it's a really obvious kind of marry up that we can do I think the question of is it enough I think the best answer really is that it's a good start and what I'd hope really is that it could be a catalyst really to help integrate those particular services even more and I don't think we can underestimate the impact it has when actually we co-locate some of that good practice and the expertise can be shared and fed through the wider services so first off the conversations were about three staff members joining the three different area teams in SAVP in terms of the wider workforce and integration I just wanted to say recently driven through the adolescent service actually we in February we jointly facilitated three workshops between Surrey County Council SAVP and Surrey Heartlands and we brought services and practitioners together across three areas around the county and we spent the day really exploring together how we can work together closely and just breaking down those barriers so we're not referring families through lots of front doors to get the support we need actually we can get that working really closely it's it's just a really positive example of that and there's all kind of buzz there in the rooms there about people wanting to work together and collaborate certainly you mentioned you're still waiting to hear from Surrey and Borders about the funding so when did we apply for it when were you expecting a response from them you know is was there a planned time scale where are we on that time scale and how does it impact what we're trying to do that we haven't heard back from them so we can fulfill our core functions in the intensive family support service now we've got this in-house service I really see it as a platform that we can build from and there's a question later coming about partnership working through another pilot through the Surrey Heartland about obesity in children and we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have this so obviously we know that mental health for children and for parents and our families that we're supporting as a priority so this is led through conversations with our colleagues in SAPP and yeah we've had it was suggested by them actually and so we're exploring that through we're working through that I included in the report really to show the aspirations of what an example of what we're working towards does that make sense I think actually if I am right about this I think funding an SAPP you see we're deeply sceptical about whether we actually manage to acquire all of the funding that we often hope to acquire from SAPP with the timeliness that we hope for because we're talking about the health service which is a completely separate animal with completely separate agendas so I think Bernie am I right in thinking that you'd be interested to know whether and when Surrey and Borders do actually provide the funding to provide the roles that we're talking about here do you have any sense of when that might be have there been any positive indications because you know we hear a lot about conversations with SAPP we never know whether we actually acquire any of that funding or not whether it gets allocated or not if we can have the funding confirmed for next financial year then that's great either way whether we get funding or not this is a key area that we want to seek to integrate in and we'll seek ways to do that regardless if we can have funding and recruit some staff to actually just be based in those teams then that's fantastic but so I guess those three roles aren't necessarily you would hope for funding for those three roles from SAVP but even if you don't get it you're going to try and find a way of delivering this anyway am I right sorry Matt I know that Matt wants to come in as well right thank you so I think what Adam's describing and I understand some of the concerns around confirmation of funding from our colleagues but what Adam's describing is intentional of how we're trying to work so if we want families to experience good partnership working that needs to be replicated and all that systems strategically and senior leaders like Adam need to have those conversations put a lot of his time and effort into developing relationships with those colleagues so yes we want the funding yes that would be amazing if it doesn't happen what Adam will do is find a way to sort of change what we want to do slightly differently so we still get that sort of work happening in a slightly different way but it is our absolute focus that we want to ensure that the intensive family support service is a multi-professional platform for families and children obviously thank you thank you thank you Mayor Culper I omitted one of John's questions so I'll come back to him now John please you're forgiven this this is what the commercial break question is it's not directly related to the IFSS but since you raised it in the report I'll just ask you a general question in paragraph 21 talk about discussions funding discussions with the family centres regarding their increased inflationary costs I appreciate this is not about the IFSS but since you put it in a paragraph I'm taking the indulgence of just querying about that has some sort of agreement been reached with centres about their concerns as you probably are aware family centres can apply for an uplift as part of their existing contracts so the commissioning staff that we work with have actually drafted a working document that's being shared with family centres now this will enable them to highlight the needs that they have and request an uplift for 2025 2026 is there to support the centres individual needs really and what actually they each require so we are starting that process now to be able to address those potential increasing thanks very much do you have a ceiling per family centre or even for the whole family centre for all of the family centres do you have a ceiling or are you going to look at their individual requests funding ceiling commissioning are pulling together a formula by which we can do a fair and transparent process which will be looking at what their costs are for the coming year and I don't believe there is a ceiling as such but obviously we'll be looking at inflationary costs that they will be occurring so we wouldn't be giving them more than inflation I would imagine Well only in a general way to clarify that we have made some provision within the NTFS for inflationary pressures and that's the headroom we've got across inflationary pressures right across the service so the family centres can have their needs met within that but we will have other competing demands I'm sure on inflationary pressures as well so that's the piece of thinking that has to be done in the round always and am I that isn't that great any longer but it's about 3% are those that is that the sort of that sort of that's the sort of figure across the board that feels about right Fiona but my memory of the budget isn't concrete either so I'd need to double check but that feels about right yeah I just think 3% in the current environment could be very challenging given you what I said earlier you know in respect of you know increases in national insurance and increases in the national living wage so I completely agree and I think that there are financial pressures and inflationary pressures in every single bit of the service our own in-house provision as well as what we commission externally so the balancing act that we're doing is a really careful one and not everyone is going to get the funding that they desire including our own services it's really clear so you're right no I do understand that John are you happy with that shall we move on Chris Townsend next questions with you yeah we've talked families have been mentioned all over the place and rightly so but the issue there is is how will parents and carers involved in designing the processes that affect them is directed into working together guidance just to carry on from that the same guidance emphasizes the importance of stability which I think you've touched about already for the child and long-term relationships with those helping them which I think we notice sometimes doesn't work how's this working in practice and where are you sourcing these people with these multi-agency skills because there may be not that many around and how will you ensure a high level of attention amongst those family intervention workers so how will parents and carers involved and how are we going to ensure we have the settings family support service thank you so I'll move through both questions and the answers so first of all all parents are consulted on as part of the referral process to the intensive family support service like all our services for children and families so it's not statutory or a mandatory offer and therefore we really work with parents as partners in this work and throughout the whole process of our engagement and our time working together was it a survey or did you interview them well we I mean we engage with parents you know throughout the whole process the skills we use around motivational interviewing that's the skills that we develop across the whole workforce and the children and families and that's a really great way to enable staff to be able to sort of empower parents in their decision making because they're the ones that are moving forward long-term obviously with their lives and their goals and our early health assessments and our family plans they're jointly formulated with parents so they'll be discussed with them in meetings with parents and they'll be the key drivers in that for them and for their families as mentioned in the report family group conferencing is also now more available to more families also in the early health workspace which is which is fantastic and this is really a great way to help families lead on their own problem solving with their wider family network because that's a really sort of positive step forward you mentioned you mentioned working together guidance and just in the context of the new bill coming family group decision making is a key part of that and so I think we're going to see lots more of that across and that's something exciting that we can develop together just some wider points as well we always seek family feedback during the periods of support with them and afterwards we collate that feedback and we can share some of that feedback like we have in the report for this just a nice point really we involved young people in all of the interviews for the intensive family support service and that was really challenging some of our perspectives as well and that was a great thing to do I totally agree in terms of staff retention and we want to prioritise those trusted relationships consistent relationships for children and their families and I say over the years I've been managing various different early help services I haven't seen there to be high issues around staff retention in those workforces and we don't struggle to fill our vacancies in the IFSS we don't struggle to receive really high quality applications from people from different disciplines and so we recruit a whole range of great backgrounds there I think in terms of retaining staff I think we've worked hard really this last year and I can speak really for IFSS but to just have a really positive culture for staff when they're joining us and to really look at kind of a quality induction for staff so they come in they feel really welcome to Surrey and they see where they fit in the wider workforce I think that's really important and we've also developed a new kind of staff induction and training pathway for them so that we can do a kind of inventory really of where the training needs are for each individual staff member and that's been a really key to sort of induct and launch the intensive family support service that consistency with the families and the people they're involved with because that's one of the things we hear about different people is that a key play as far as you're concerned and we can ensure that consistency I think it's inevitable that staff will move on so I think the way to kind of mitigate that is firstly families will often meet sort of another member of the team as well maybe for a first visit or something like that so sometimes there tends to be a connection made with some of the wider team as well but obviously there is a lead practitioner for that family and for the children that they get to know helpful is to know what organisations what touch points there are so where IFSS especially fits in with say the children's crisis service you know those family intervention workers we spoke about earlier you know the school based needs team the children's well-being practitioners and the primary mental health teams there's lots of different organisations it would be really good to know how they fit within the whole framework and what touch points they have on meeting those outcomes for families so that's sort of one part of my question that would be really helpful to know and the other thing is about on page 61 and it's been mentioned before about working with other external organisations and you mentioned about the complications with excess weight as well that service and also other you know 31 32 there's some examples there of working collaboration working and opportunities for multidisciplinary working and I just wondered is there are there any more other opportunities you perceive that are in the pipeline or that you see if you would like to develop as well and also whether you anticipate that local government reorganisation will have any impact on those different pipeline or existing or new pipeline working sorry that's a long question or questions I think I think it's great insight and a great question I think I think a few things I'd say early health by its very nature is multidisciplinary and it's really important to remember that it's always a network of support for families it's not one service and it's certainly not the responsibility of it you know it's certainly not coming from the county council it's a multidisciplinary network of partners and one of the really positive ways that this is overseen and driven is through our early health strategic boards and this really coming on from strength to strength and is co-chaired by our chief executive from the voluntary sector as well and we get a lot of engagement from active participants and we have representation there from Surrey and Borders from the school-based needs teams and various providers so we're talking about these things at a strategic level and I've described as well we've started to talk about how we want to just try and get the workforce just really kind of working together side by side and we're doing that through the joint events that we've been putting on for practitioners to learn what each other does what the services do and I think yeah now we have this in-house intensive family support service I really do see it as kind of a platform or a catalyst as you like that we can move from and expand in we wouldn't have been able to do the complications with excessive weight pilot with Surrey Heartlands as quickly and as effectively as we have done if we didn't have that service in-house so I really look at that framework and I see those 10 domains and I think we've got opportunities to collaborate in terms of our data and to share the richness of what we're seeing through our data and the data of our partners so we can look at that and that's a key driver for us particularly moving forward as we make plans for reorganisations as well but I look at those areas and I think these are all opportunities to improve our collaboration and integration and I think that's all the more important isn't it in challenging fiscal climates nationally as well I would just say I'm not going to talk about local government reorganisation in depth I'll leave that to people up that end of the table if you can talk about it in depth we'd like to hear I would just like to say one thing though and that is that I mean from my personal perspective I think it's really interesting from an early health perspective and the children's perspective that we're seeing whole scale kind of transformation through the children's and schools bill coming at the same time as we're seeing local government reorganisation and therefore I think the challenge for us and the opportunity for us is to make sure that we're really pushing whatever reorganisation looks like that children and families are at the heart and centre of that and we've got the opportunity to do that at the same time haven't we but I'll leave more to them so the only bit I was going to add is that when we set up the early health partnership board one of the objectives was to think about our data so we had had a couple of workshops with around 30 sort of strategic leaders and operational people delivering services and that was one of the key things that came out how can we get a data set that's shared and we are some way to achieve that the board this week there was some really fabulous data shared around emotional well-being and mental health support for children and the fact that that data has come into that board not as individual partners information but joined it makes much the conversation that then flowed out of that and the actions that was going to be taken were much richer and much more focused on what needs to happen for children and their families so I think that that goal of and I don't think we'll ever be in a position where we've can say we've satisfied ourselves and we've achieved it it's perfect but the goal and one of the strategic aims of that partnership board is to have that shared data so we can really think about what the needs are of families in Surrey and respond to those needs in the right way I don't know if Rachel wanted to know no thank you thank you that's really good to hear and being able to collect that data is obviously really important time and time again we've heard about fragmented data and how that can hold services back and also families get fed up perhaps the same thing to different parts but coming back to the touch points that we have it would be and I know it will be like a spider's web it will be lots of things going in different directions but it would be helpful particularly I think well for me and I can't speak for the rest of the committee to understand how those different just where they touch each other not particularly I don't need to know their responsibilities or anything but just how they touch each other you know whether or not you know what different areas whether it's mental health whether it is to do with other services you know adolescent services or whatever but it would be good to have a picture of that if it can possibly be made at all whilst I appreciate it is fairly complicated I was going to bring Claire in here but the first thing I was going to say was have you seen the family's first mosaic I mean you could die trying to figure that one out I mean you know really how anybody is supposed to understand what on earth have a chance oh Liz Liz really I mean if you can't sleep one night sorry Claire thank you actually I was going to refer to the mosaic and say I think that is an example of the really rich offer that there is no one person is likely to be dipping into every tile simultaneously but one thing I did want to say and this is a bit off the cuff and it's in response to the question about local government reorganisation and exactly what Adam said about ensuring that what we have at the end of the organisation is better than what we have now I just really wanted to draw members attention again to figure two in paragraph 33 showing the family outcomes framework and the different areas that are covered in that framework and just to reflect how much easier it will be within a unitary organisation to be able to deliver on many of those things such as improve mental and physical health if we have access to leisure centres and playing fields secure housing if we were also the housing authority as well as the deliverer of social care and coordinator of early help financial stability if we are able also to be in touch with revenues and benefits data and information and really be able to identify and target the right families and crime prevention and tackling crime through the community safety partnerships which sit much more within districts and boroughs at the moment so I was just really thinking that once we are an integrated unitary authority actually working with families and delivering the outcomes in these different areas should be so much better so much easier and really be a much better richer and comprehensive service for families and that's just all I wanted to reflect on sorry I think it's a really good point Claire I think the problem is though I don't see at any point in the next 10 years that we're likely to have the level of funding you know in place so I take your point about the unitary because I think you know it will it should make things easier but one of the issues with housing is that you know we just you know and we're not investing in social housing to the level that's required so you know forgive me I absolutely take your point but I don't see in the next 10 years any additional funding coming downstream that would allow us to improve things significantly which I think is a real pity because I think it will undermine some of the benefits that we will undoubtedly achieve with the unitary authority absolutely sorry I'll get off my soapbox now so the last question on intensive family support is worth barely the report twice mentions regular feedback and learning from audits so I was wondering how you're auditing this actually considering it's cross agency and cross departments and maybe third sector may be involved in this as well so that that's sort of and I suppose it's probably too early in the process to have feedback necessarily but if you have it'd be interesting to know what that is and a subset of that is page item 28 on page 61 mentions families that withdraw their support from the system and it does say that some of them it's because their needs have been met but for the rest are they part of the audited information that you are tracking those people who are dropping out of the system who maybe you would have hoped wouldn't have withdrawn from the system and does this auditing help you do that yes thank you so I mean absolutely it is still early days we had some staff starting at the start of this financial year and then the next wave really were coming in September time and so I think in terms of audits what I referred to in the report is the audits that we do for the service so the staff that are employed by us yes they've come from various backgrounds but it's auditing the work of our staff and our service and that happens through regular supervision with the line manager but we have an audit process where all the team managers will select a child and family that's been supported by IFSS and they'll work through with the practitioner and they'll go into the files and look at all the support and look at the quality of the assessment and the plan as it meeting the needs so I think really as we'd expect most of the feedback from the early audits really sort of centre around the inducting staff so it's about just building up the quality of the recording information I think we've recruited staff who have lots of skills and expertise in supporting families we need to make sure they're using the systems properly and recording the right things in the right place it's it's more about the data you're getting from other agencies because in my former role with adults and health working multi agency there often was a real issue getting the support from the other agencies and considering the whole point of this is bringing things together and when I my real interest in asking this question about auditing is how if you like it joins up with monitoring the performance of because you know there's a weakest link somewhere outside our our staff how do we know that and I think really the way that we do that across the system is through the early help strategic board and as Matt described in more detail really investing in that data so that we can you know we use the supporting families framework as being described as our kind of basis to work from you have to have something to work from but investing in the data sharing the data sets is the way that we're going to be able to do that I think we're still in early days but for example we had the early health board this Tuesday actually this week and we took the theme of mental health and well-being as our data set and we cross reference some of the mind works data with the data that we've got in house as well we looked at that as a partnership so it's through that mechanism that we'll be doing that and we'll keep developing that moving forward yeah how do you track the ones that you say here that some of them their needs have been met by virtue of that I'm presuming there's some whose needs may not have been met and how do we track those because that could be a bit concerning if they just drop out of the system without us knowing what's happening to them yeah I think I mean absolutely it's just always putting the safety and the well-being of the whole family and their children in mind whenever there's a change in their support if families do want to not have support for the intensive family support service or any other early help service that's up to them what we need to do in those circumstances is weigh up and balance is the child safe if they're not safe then we'll speak to statutory colleagues if the children are if there aren't statutory concerns I think the best we can do is to inform the referrer and the wider partners that are still involved with the family like the school predominantly and other practitioners as well and just make sure that families have the information that they need to access wider support maybe in their local communities as well for the families Matt do you want to come in just briefly on the point of audit work so I mean it's the same as in our statutory teams really so all of our early help space are multi professional and all the partners hold each other to account the early help work reports in and up to and is accountable to the executive of the safeguarding children partnership where things are talked about so if there's challenges in our work with working with particular partners that's the form which we take things to an executive level but also through the safeguarding partnership we do deliver a programme of multi-agency audit work which is what I think you were talking about and although the IFS hasn't been sort of scrutinised that yet because it's relatively new it will be so we do partnership audit work around our child needing child protection space and we will start doing it around our intensive family support space which will give that richness of looking at an intervention with a child and family from a partial perspective and pulling themes together which again will then go up to the exec to full consideration thanks very much so I think if there are no further questions then I think we will move on in fact we'll move on to a break oh sorry Jonathan sorry I'm just being lost a little bit in this discussion about some of the boards and partnerships and so forth and early help board of Google the families and can I make a suggestion because because we just a moment Jonathan can I make a suggestion please which is that whatever you request could we please have a diagram in writing so that we don't spend the time discussing it here but we come back to it because I'm not sure we'll get to the bottom of it you know but not by having by not having a diagram in front of us so the the early help strategic families first strategy refers to not an early help board but an early help strategic partnership board so I'm just checking if that's the same thing it says it's co-chaired by Surrey Care Trust which suggests there are lots of organisations in it so in setting out these kind of papers on a new initiative and then I think you've referred to a safeguarding partnership and you've referred to an early help partnership as well which I guess is then distinct different from the early help partnership in trying to allow us to scrutinise these kind of areas it would be really useful just to set the context within which your new piece of work sits in this case the IFSS and how it fits in with what's there already so that we can not only have that deep dive into what we've been looking at but really try to understand how it fits into the wider context and sometimes that's not easy to do through the reports that we've got and I think that is a very good point actually because you know we seem to have I mean this is I don't know what's the animal that has lots of tentacles not just an octopus there's something else that's even more extreme than an octopus but this feels like you know this feels like it has many many tentacles and from the perspective of a select committee it is difficult to figure out how even those tentacles fit together and provide governance or provide direction so I do appreciate what you're saying Jonathan Rachel I know you don't want to go down a rabbit hole chair so I'll just say a few things the first thing is there are more than 250 statutory duties in relation to children for a local authority and a very significant number of those can only be delivered in partnership so it is really complicated and we're never going to be able to render the multiple connecting points in a very sort of simple two-dimensional way so I expect we'll come back to this conversation often we have services which are ours the county councils but all of them in the interest of children and families have multiple interfaces with external partner organisations one place where we have a standing partnership is the safeguarding partnership the safeguarding children partnership the Surrey safeguarding children partnership you'll hear it called a number of those things but it is one entity SSCP Surrey safeguarding children partnership and that is a statutory partnership and it has three priorities currently one of which is early help one of which is neglect and one of which is adolescence and those three priorities have a subgroup or a partnership board or however you want to describe it attached to each of those priorities because we have a multi-agency interest in delivering against those priorities so where you and again you will find the language is a bit sloppy sometimes they'll be called a board sometimes they'll be called a partnership sometimes they might just be referred to as a meeting but it is the coming together of those organisations and entities around that priority on a multi-agency basis and early help is held in that way so we have some early help functions inside the council but in that partnership space it's kind of co-owned together under the umbrella of the safeguarding partnership and we've got a fighting chance of being able to map that I think so we can certainly bring that as part of context to future meetings just very briefly chair it would be useful to see who's the membership of those organisations as well as part of that thank you so I think what would be really helpful is the suggestion of understanding you know survey safer partnership board are to understand the diagram that you've just described but I think in particular if we could have that before our scrutiny in a day session I think that would be really helpful because it would give us some background in understanding who all the various parties are so I don't think we need it immediately but if we could have it for that day I think that would be really helpful I mean I can't describe to you because you're in the thick of it I can't describe to you how difficult it is for people you know who only put their toes on this from time to time to actually figure out who all these various entities are I mean it just it seems you know how on earth anything ever works you begin to wonder but anyway are you okay with that Jonathan if we have that for the scrutiny in a day I think that's true yeah that's really helpful and knowing that the partnership and the board are the same thing it's a partnership board is really helpful too because different people are referred to the partnership and both throughout this meeting and only now at the very end I've realised you're talking about the same thing so clarity is really helpful if we're to understand what you're telling us you know what you're doing all day long we dip in and out of this and we have completely different day jobs so it's harder sometimes to understand what you're telling us thanks okay so I think that comes to the end of our session she looks tensively around just checking I'd like to thank all of the witnesses very much I think it's been a really interesting session we have some actions that we request to be included in a follow-up report within the next 12 months because we'd like to understand how the service is developing over the next 12 months so we'll be interested in outcomes performance against KPIs the extent to which the service has contributed to savings in statutory services and feedback from partners and it feels like that's the sort of information we'll be interested to understand in 12 months I mean I think I speak for everyone when I say that this has been you know a very interesting session it's a very very it's a it's a you know it's a really positive development you know I think it sounds very positive my own personal concern is absolutely around capacity and I just wonder how many families we will be able to provide this support to and that's linked to a concern about whether family centres will be able to do they'll be able to continue with the capacity that they have given the funding issues that I mentioned earlier so when there is information about capacity and what you feel the capacity of this organisation this scheme this service will be I would be really interested if you could let us know because you know I think I really do have a have a concern there so whilst I'm very very supportive of what you're doing and of the really really positive outputs and outcomes so far I do worry about that capacity and what the what the implications of it are but thank you for such an interesting session and a really excellent paper and can I also say since Sue's here today how much we enjoyed our visit to the Elmbridge Family Centre so thank you for that it was very illuminating it was very useful it was an excellent session and we really enjoyed it so thank you for that we'll now take 10 minutes break so if everyone could come back by 20 to 1 please thank you to welcome everyone back to the second part of the select committee today you'll be reassured to know that this is not a committee of two halves of the same length I think I think after break our session should be shorter than the previous session so what we'd like to look at now is item 9 on the agenda pages 65 to 84 in the agenda pack and that's the Surrey Adolescent Service this is another new service introduced in 2024 in recognition of the fact that adolescents represent the largest growing age group of in need of child protection and care these these young people often face complex often have complex needs and vulnerabilities including poor mental health exploitation and trafficking I think all of those all of us certainly who are parents are aware what a critical phase adolescence is and there has been increasing recognition over the last couple of years of the impact of COVID on this particular age group so our scrutiny today is focusing on what the service does what's different from previous provision why it was changed the benefits of the new of the new approach which are apparent so far and the benefits that are expected so in addition to the witnesses that I've already introduced we also have Jan Smith who's the service manager for adolescent I know adolescent central missing and risk is actually the central hub but yes it's quite a mouthful but I appreciate Jan that this is your first select committee so welcome so we have a number of key lines of inquiry and our first question oh I'm sorry Claire I do apologise you know I'm following I'm following my notes and forgetting actually that I would like to ask you I mean we've all read the report we've had a long discussion at the pre-meeting about the report so I don't think we need to go over the report but yes it would be it would be interesting if you could provide some context as an introduction to this session please and my apologies for neglecting that that's quite alright thank you and as you said Matt and Jan are here to speak to the report and to answer questions from the committee you heard earlier I think from Rachel or from Matt that one of the priorities of the Surrey Safeguarding Children's Partnership the statutory board is safeguarding adolescents and it had been recognised I think across the service over a period of time that this was an area of work which really needed bringing into sharp focus to to react to and meet the need the very specific needs of this group of young people very different from looking after and safeguarding very young children and and adolescents bring a whole range of different and wider issues to the table so having as the committee has listened to the reasons behind the development of the intensive family support service I think this service too has come have been created to fill a very specific very specific identified need it is a multidisciplinary partnership service again working outside the outside offices just of this council and bringing in expertise and from elsewhere and particularly you are going to hear working alongside the police and that is involved remodelling the service again it is a service which is very based on relational work building consistent relationships with young people and being able to hold on to that and to be able to work effectively with them I think it is a very interesting topic and I imagine that our discussion this morning will be as wide range this afternoon will be as wide ranging and uncover such a lot of detail as we had this morning thank you very much Claire can I just remind everyone that we should not make any reference to the appendices on this report because if we do we stray into part two and I don't think we need to do that in order to tackle the questions that we have in front of us I would like to do a bit of a turnaround actually because unfortunately Chris Townsend has had to leave us but I'd like to I'd like to ask Rebecca if she would like to ask Chris's question which was number six and I realise we're departing from the order but I think it would be good Rebecca if you were in a position to ask Chris's question as he's not here thank you very much can I ask you perhaps to take that one first because I'm conscious that you're going to have to go as well on behalf of Chris where do you envisage the weak points are in this complex multi-agency sorry yes that is the correct question isn't it yep are in this complex multi-agency service is there an issue of interpreting and sharing data what is the strategy to deal with any search challenges and how will success be measured thank you well thank you Chris is absent for that question so I mean it is a complex multi-agency environment that we work in and I think part of my role and my role within the central hub across the piece is as Surrey in the Surrey County Council and as partners we all have a duty to safeguard some of the most vulnerable by that very nature it is a complex environment we operate in because we all want to work together to achieve really positive outcomes for those young people and bringing those people together so it is a multi-agency partnership and Surrey is a big county council and cross education police and what the challenge within that then is identifying the right resource and the right service at the right time to support that young person and we are doing a lot of work around that and doing a good job in terms of identifying those different services different peoples within our multi-agency partnerships to build those relationships and to really understand the nature of the service that different services can offer and education offer on particularly young people and actually what is the capacity and how can we respond and how can we support that access so it is complex I like to be strength based rather than look at what the weaknesses are and I think some of the complexity complexities around those partnerships are when you are building relationships with people and those people change so how do we then ensure that those good relationships we may have developed and we know that we can contact them quickly and get a response how do we ensure continuity of that relationship when they move on and that we have those handover meetings and we do that work so those are the probably the areas that it is where you have those personnel changes and how you continue and provide continuity with different providers whether it is in education health in terms of navigating our way through that but the strength is the multi-agency partnership because what we are starting to see through the developments we have put in place and the changes that we have made in the last six months is a real emphasis on that partnership taking responsibility for actions and for progressing some of the issues and concerns we have for young people so as previously it might have just gone into ether we are now holding those agencies and partners to account through our strategic meetings to say actually you said you would do this please can you follow up and action so we are in a really strong position as we are developing those partnerships but I think in terms of multi-agency it is the person and how they change and how they be challenged and fitting the right service at the right point in time making that plan so that is the first bit is that any questions on that bit from you want to sort of the second part of the question so the issue around interpreting data how do we go sharing information sharing data again really really key and what we do I would say generally data sharing is not proving to be an issue because actually we have safeguarding children that is a kind of it is that metric which says actually if we are seeking to safeguard children and young people appropriately then we do have a duty to share that information and there is lots of legislation that supports that in terms of how we progress that and ensure that we are all understanding and really clearly understanding the needs and concerns for that particular child where we do have those potential issues which is around third party sharing and how we have got strong governance around that and we do work with our information governance colleagues around actually how do we ensure effective information sharing that is within the bounds of information governance and we have got a good example of that of how we work with the IG team and data around actually having our police CMU colleagues sergeants in those teams who want to have that real time access to active work we are doing with young people so we have gone through all the right channels we have gone through IG and now we have been able to give them access to our systems so that is proving a solution to what was initially a problem where our police colleagues were saying actually it would be really good to know live time that young person has gone missing what are you doing about how can I access that information work with information governance and now provided a solution where they are just about now to get that access to our EHM system so I think there are challenges around it but we work within the confines of the legislation don't see any problems on a day to day basis because of vulnerabilities that we are supporting where we do see some of those wider third party issues work with governance and try to find solutions around that so it is often seen as a challenge but actually I think we provide good solutions to that and work with our colleagues to overcome those yeah and I suppose the success is measured in terms of that bit where we've got partners coming on board supporting and we're not we are sharing information so we respond and don't get any surprises about actually we didn't know that young person was missing young people I was just going to ask you know at the core of all of this I think is a safer plan so I mean who bore that there is consistency of the way in which that well consistency of the circumstances in which the safer plan is developed and consistency of the data that goes into that safer plan okay so yes thank you we do have it's a safer plan now we've developed this is a new plan that we've developed again in the last six months because prior to that we didn't have a consistent tool within children's services for safety planning so we took that decision because we didn't see a consistency and what we now do we have part of our structure around meetings to support practitioners and professionals around the development of safer plans is we've got one team manager who oversees all the safer planning across the county so sits in all our effectively QA scrutiny meetings that look at those safer plans look at the quality so what they're able to do because it's one individual that sort of supervises and oversees that whole process ensures that we've got consistency of practice consistency of what goes into those plans and is asking those right questions and saying actually you haven't got X, Y and Z please go to those partners please ensure your plan is updated and involves it so we've got the really good we're not there yet but a really good process and structure that says enables we can have assurance that we've got consistency across the county that we're not seeing different practice happening elsewhere so that bit and then in terms of the data that sits within those safer plans largely those safer plans are response to how do we support and engage with a young person who is either at risk or experiencing extra familial harm so that will look at locations it will look at their networks and look at peers and so we have a system that sits all behind that that is focused around multi-agency meetings that will get social workers youth justice practitioner community safety antisocial behavioural units to all come together to discuss and talk about the child or children that we're worried about in the community to collate all that information and say well actually what are the issues what are the concerns that we've got so we've got that complete picture and we understand actually one of the key concerns is that news agents that's selling alcohol underage well what are we doing about that as a system okay we'll go to licensing and they'll go and do a little visit in the closure so I think we've got in terms of that information sharing around all the different elements we're developing and got in some ways fantastic thank you and thank you for the report it's really interesting and obviously you know it outlines a very broad range of services within the report and also again lots of partnership working which is sometimes difficult to understand you know the different again touch points there the different organisations and partners that are involved but one thing that would be helpful is if we could outline the main objectives for this service and also what the anticipated outcomes might be very broadly the anticipated outcomes and I notice obviously it's the sorry split up into the different quadrants and it would be also I don't know whether or not you have this information like mapping what services are there at the moment because again I'm from a rural area I know I always say this but we haven't really got any youth services available in my my division other than obviously the very valuable voluntary services that you know voluntary clubs you know like football rugby cricket and all that which are all run by volunteers but nothing sort of formal from Surrey so it would be quite helpful for me to understand you know the geographic perhaps mapping and I know the numbers you're anticipating obviously building up those staff numbers within those different quadrants but I'm over to you sorry do you need me to repeat any of that so the objectives and sort of the anticipated outcomes is the main thrust of my question and then mapping perhaps what's available thank you sorry apologies so I mean you can distill it down very simply in a sense it's about how we can keep children safe and supported and in their own home so that's you know we all know that actually if we can manage to do that and support that outcome that prevents you know lots of other things happening so that fundamentally that's what we're about in terms of those bits I think you know building from that overarching purpose of what we're seeking to do or how do we go about that well where concerns are identified so where it comes through the ceasefire comes to the front or how do we intervene at the earliest possible opportunity but not only do that but do that in the right way with the right practitioners and the right services so how can we make sure that we're responsive to those needs provide that the right support I mean it's a phrase often used right support in the right time well what does that actually mean well how can we engage with that family with that child that young person with the right practitioner that's going to build a really good connection that's going to get to the heart of the issues and provide that direct support to them so actually we can intervene early and some you know really succinct short work might be all we need to do or it might be that actually know there are complexities here which we need to develop that longer term relationship and you've mentioned partnership already but again it is that element of those multidisciplinary partnership teams that sit alongside that as well so I think you know we when we reviewed the service and looked at the whole range of stuff we did sort of 18 months ago there's a recognition sometimes that perhaps social workers practitioners it was being seen to them to do everything and it wasn't that partnership response it felt you know talking to those social workers okay well why is everything on me to do this work and so again the key thing we want to achieve is to recognise that it is a multi-agency partnership around these families and how can we get those right services to come in and support and work alongside and what work can we do to engineer and support that engagement because it's you know you can give them a letter and say we need to go and see this service and actually the chances are they won't go and do it or come and take you to that we'll book up an appointment we'll go along and introduce you to them and if we do that work and we work in partnership and closely with those partners then we know we'll get better outcomes and better engagement through that and I think I sort of mentioned on this already but recognition for Surrey you know there's a you know you mentioned it there's an awful lot of resource out there but actually how do we all share that collective responsibility understanding that our adolescent young people who are experiencing extra familial harm or experience harm are some of our most vulnerable and it's my job to go around this is our most worrying this is my most important concern you need to be helping us in terms of that support so I think that's you know very broad brush folks in terms of what we're seeking to achieve as an adolescent service moving forward and that focus I suppose and it is again we talk about relational work and I try to get it into this report it's very difficult that that concept of what it means to be relational and in our work with families and young people to build that because that's the heart of any good intervention but also what does it mean to be relational when we're working with each other with different professionals and services and that's about being curious. It's about doing the right thing and treating each other professionally and with that right help and most to be curious within those situations and really not just think oh I've done that email and I've sent that thing now and I'll just let it go because I've done my bit. Well actually I haven't done your bit because you haven't checked out that the family have understood the DA support is over there. So I think that's the outlines of what we want to see. How do we know when that's been successful that we're achieving outcomes around that? Well we want to see fewer young people being in need of a child in need plan or CP plan so we want to see that earlier intervention so we want to see that coming through so we're doing more support early preventing that escalation but then when we do escalate that we have to when we do see increasing need we're responding with greater level of resource. so I think that's the biggest outcome but also the things that is really great to hear in terms of and it's sometimes difficult to put down on paper so it's that feedback we get from families about the difference we're making and for our practitioners that's the biggest thing how we do that how do we know we've been successful in terms of those outcomes and I just I'll do one little reflection for you if you don't mind you know how can we motivate staff around that and support them to do that good job when I did I was talking to a family about a year ago and they were talking about an intervention they had three years ago prior to that it was just part of we do missing return home interviews and the practitioner had done the return home interviews and said well do you want a bit of extra support around parenting and they thought yes that would be great and she did an hour's session on parenting three years ago I then spoke to the family three years hence and they still remembered that session still actually said we use that every day and it's been fantastic and I think for our practitioners in terms of outcomes that feedback we get from families that says actually you've made a difference to us even that little bit of work that you did because sometimes I think practitioners forget the little things they do so that for me is a success that's how we measure outcomes it's saying we've got to give them tools to families so I think overall biggest thing is there's reduction in escalation but that we're seeing families feedbacking to us about the impact that we're making on their lives and we've got a whole other range of outcome measures in terms of visits you know are we doing things in a timely way and all that stuff but actually that's helpful helps us to understand the work we're delivering but the key outcome is then seeing those parts of work they're getting further support locally but they were not seeing that re-engagement so for me it's those sort of metrics that really help us understand that we're doing a good job sorry so you quadrants so you want to back quadrants service localities mappings and number so we have you obviously changed a bit there's a bit there's further questions around realigning around three areas in terms of mapping of services and what those look like there are you know there's stuff out there in terms of sorry use matters those bits in terms of websites where those things are located and those services are each district and borough now has a locality based team so you've got a group of professionals that are located within those different districts and boroughs not many many it's about six or seven but so they are there to support within those localities and to provide them that access to other resources locally I appreciate your concern in terms of a more rural neighbourhood and what's going on a little bit out of my purview in terms of adolescent services and what we look at and that's made up probably a various probably not within the policies and the confines of what we're looking at here the other bit you mentioned was around teams locations I think and staffing numbers in each of those teams so there's a map on the document I think that gives indicative numbers I did we have just checked with our colleagues in HR and we are roughly at establishment you know so in terms of numbers within the adolescent service we are where we should be obviously I think our recruitment and retention we it's about I think this is about 16% the average for CFL is 10% so actually we're in quite a good place in terms of generally you know vacancies occur they always occur and have occurred within line of what we would expect in any given year and we manage those so I think you know generally we get passionate workers it is a particular skill wanting to work with young people and we generally find that when we have social workers or practitioners that want to engage in that work they're generally fantastic and want to work with us so actually that's generally it's a positive thing aside from minor bits when people do leave and go to replace them that takes time but overall we've got a good spread of staff across the whole of the county and effectively our establishment in those areas minor sort of general vacancies and churn we have ground staff does that is that covered all your elements is that online yeah that's great thank you very much it's really comprehensive answer and obviously it would be really interesting going forward to see some some more information about you know the how things are progressing just about the district and boroughs and the locality I think probably you know being a borough councillor as well with a different hat on I'm not sure how accurate reflection that is of the work that the district and boroughs do so it might be different across different district and boroughs so maybe that might require a little bit more digging into I mean if I may we do an off you're right there's different we have part of our role is that linking with those community partners so I go around all the community safety partnerships we link in with all those local services and you're right understandably there's a different reflection across the county in terms of just resourcing at district and borough level and then how that impacts but we do all we can to support and engage around that and support our colleagues in district and boroughs in terms of understanding the needs of young people and how we can respond effectively to that thanks I was going to bring Jonathan in because I think Jonathan you had a question but before I do that can I just ask a question I mean and it's really picking up something that let's talk about I mean you know you don't have centers for critical mass in rural areas so and I just a very short answer to this so how much more difficult is it to deliver what you want to deliver in a rural area than in an urban environment I used to manage Tangeroo's district council in terms of our services in that area so that was a very rural area I think the complexity lies in travel time is the main complexity in terms of getting out and seeing young people and we did some analysis around that and while it's so that's probably the challenge in terms of it but when here I'm talking about our one-to-one work we will do with families and young people is going out into families and meeting women and meeting young people in in their locations so it's it's I wouldn't say it's a huge difference obviously it will be slightly as if all your families are located on one estate your travel time will be easier in terms of that but it's something that we manage and we manage within teams where you'll have individuals that might be focused so if I use Tangeroo's as an example you might do most of your work in Caterham or you might do in Oxford or you might have more of your families down in Lingfield so we manage it in that way to make sure as efficient use of time as possible so I think that that bit in terms of our work and one-to-one obviously there's a difference in terms of access us to get to wherever it is to have your GP appointment or to go and see your mental health or whatever it is it's going to be more challenging in a rural area thank you Jonathan did you want to come in I think I don't oh well I've answered everything I was going to ask so thank you that's a first by the way yeah okay so I'd like to record that as a first the next question is mine is actually was was the lessons learned report produced prior to amalgamating because we recognize this service is an amalgamation of much more disparate services before so was there a no lessons learned report produced prior to amalgamating no wrong door so I I mean it's not been in my preview but I spoke to my colleagues around it so I suppose it was there was there was a report done that reviewed and looked at the lessons learned and I suppose the the issue around you know the progression of no wrong door because it was and they may be important to understand it was a front franchise as no wrong door was what was being explored and looked at effectively lift and drop a franchise from another local authority into sorry and I think that review process looked at that and then that decision of all the elements that we liked about the franchise model but there are elements that we didn't so that decision was then to progress the the strengths from that and the staff and the skills have been developed into the new edge of care service so I think the reflection would be certainly there was that review there was understanding of what were the strengths and how can we then build and develop a specific and what has been transpired to be a really effective model taking the lessons from no wrong door some of the resources some of the things from that but then also how can we develop that model ourselves that is fit for Surrey and does what we want to achieve which actually provided really bespoke really intensive support to young people to help support them and keep them in their homes and that plan and that program and build on those lessons learned and and you know that impact so yes I think there was there was that review in that period and then I don't know if I can actually point my finger to an actual report I was going to say maybe at that point I should ask I should ask Matt because no wrong there no wrong door came from North Yorkshire didn't that which is obviously a predominantly rural area but but I'm just interested in you know I mean I'm kind of interested in the specific I understand that you've taken the best bits the bits that worked but I'm I'm kind of interested in what the lessons actually were there from no wrong door about what we specifically what to do and what we should not do in the new service that perhaps we had we had taken as part of the wrong no wrong door model so when we as a partnership decided that we wanted to do something different with our adolescent response we commissioned as a partnership a review of all of our and that was led by an organization called future voices and and within that they looked at our work around no wrong door now alongside that at the same time we were having conversations with North Yorkshire who obviously are a partner in that work around the model how we progressed that in Surrey and asked how far we along around the fidelity of the model because one of the things that if we wanted to progress with no wrong door we had to prove fidelity to every aspect of the model and as Jan said there were many positive things about that but there were things that we wanted to perhaps do differently because the specific needs of Surrey and and the commission report that future voices did for us looked at all of our data and looked at our needs sort of needs analysis of adolescence in Surrey so I think the two things came together at the same time so we've been doing this wider review of adolescence and we were also having to make the decision on whether we were going to progress with the no wrong door model and we came to conclusion as a leadership team that it was right for Surrey and we were going to progress in this way and the specifics of aspects of it that we wanted to take forward was around that sort of ability to wrap around a child and family in a really flexible manner and if one of the things about no wrong door was when families are in crisis have an opportunity maybe for a child to come into a placement for a small period of time while we work with the family but there were also some restrictions around the types of families that we could work with under the full fidelity of the model and what we wanted to do is we wanted to work with families a lot with families where we could see progressing needs progressing at an earlier point I think that's the big change change and the lead person who was leading no wrong door is the person that's leading on our age and if she was sitting next to me what she would say is that when we were making these changes she was sceptical and a year down the line she can see the massive improve what she said she can see the difference that we're making at an earlier point to families so I think it's been a good decision for us to sort of take control of it and make sure it's a model that's right for families in Surrey and what I would say is that one of the other sort of drivers around the sort of the new adolescent completely what Jan was saying is around prevention what we also knew was is that we were seeing too many adolescents coming into care in quite an emergency situation which was a not good for them and b costs the council a lot of money and so we wanted to make sure that the adolescent service in its new functions was able to a where where it's right and safe for children keep them in their home you know make sure they belong there and belong in Surrey and and avoid them when to come into care unnecessarily and we are seeing the benefits of that so we are seeing that the the central hub that wraps around this of the teams that are the the operational teams can deliver sort of quite responsive support to families which is helping them and stopping children coming into care unnecessarily we are by no means there yet that's still probably our biggest challenge around our placement sufficiency around teenagers and the complexity that they bring for us when we're thinking about care arrangements but what we are seeing is a real body of learning about how we can intervene with families and and this and what Jan was talking about is some of the feedback that we get from families about what made the difference and we're feeding that back into the system and the service so we can continually sort of develop that sort of responsive edge of care offer for families and and I could probably provide outside of my answer some more specific detail from Debbie who was the service manager from no wrong door around these specific lessons that have been taken forward so I could do that in writing afterwards I think I'll be really I think that'd be really helpful actually to understand because you know I think I think we we have a concern as a much more than perhaps they used to be so I think that would be very interesting I think it's interesting actually that you know you're saying that one of the key learnings really is as a as a contrast between perhaps what the no wrong door model which was developed free covert was was potentially proposing interesting so yes it would be interesting please to have that feedback the next question is with Bernie amateur obviously we've been educated into the quadrants that we're working in and the footprint of this is different so a work in one area might actually overlap the quadrants up to quadrants order line that's what said I was just wondering given how you know you have to work with quite a number of different individuals and departments that might have you which are locked into those quadrants whether there is a well you know how it works for those individuals who you tap into who are in a different quadrant necessarily and what issues you might have in view of the fact they don't work along the lines of our quadrants and I do understand it's coming to do with the police getting involved with this items but nonetheless how does it go so yeah you're right we took the decision because our key partner around how we are safeguarding was the police senior teams and working with them and we recognize that having a really strong partnership with them as we do now was one of the key outcomes we wanted to achieve and part of their reflection work with them was because they work on the we were three division police divisions across Surrey is they were having to attend multiple meetings and because we were working across four quadrants that was often they were doubling up on the number of meetings they would have to attend so we looked at that and then we looked at the structure we put in place and so moving to three areas in terms of adolescent services what that has actually done is overall reduced the number of meetings so because instead of a multiple of four you have a multiple of three so actually for those partners that have to attend meetings from different areas and potentially would have done in terms of health other service would have attended different quadrant based meetings because we're not all aligned actually equally are we in terms of different providers so we were reducing overall that that burden of meetings and then again further by reviewing the work we did actually again further reduced some of the strategic meetings that partners would have to go to so moving that to a divisional basis in the three areas has had a positive impact because actually we were able to say well you've got less meetings to come to so please do come along to this meeting because we've given you some easy ones to come to that aside obviously when you're moving for Surrey and children services you know there was a quadrant model but we also the decision was made and taken around actually moving away from to more service so we now got you know Jackie Clements this is my boss and she's for adolescent services across the county so that structure is mirrored across Surrey so that has created a difference as well and we've got our children as well and we've got our children that's after care leavers again they they're similarly aligned differently and so again the probably the biggest not challenge it's been for our business support colleagues about how they support us so that may not be the answer so so but what we've done with them again it comes back to principle okay I know this you are working on different areas but actually you've got now less support to do and it's working with those key colleagues in those business support functions around actually they've allocated an individual and we've got now a sort of core group across the county that support our key functions and that's working really well so we just had to take a little bit more thinking time because the work actually because we've gone from three from four overall there's sort of less work in the sense there's less meetings for them to minute and support so that's and we've just done that work taking it through thoughtfully and actually that's now while initially it was like a little bit well how's this going to work actually it's working well and the payoffs and benefits that we're now experiencing and working in that I think that the strengths of moving to that model is far outweighed some of those disadvantages we might have had previously on a quadrant basis on a quadrant basis I think there's yeah there's as many new there's teething problems but we work with colleagues through those to support that so everyone's working well Thank you John O'Reilly Thank you paragraph 40 about recruitment and when I hear the word challenging that can be a euphemism for all sorts of wickedness and nefariousness I mean seriously I mean how serious is the recruitment challenges in certain parts of the county maybe you give us good news that you're back up to compliment but the worry is obviously that the service will deteriorate or not be as effective as it could be because of absence of staff and you know within that within the team or teams how many of you are if you like new recruiters people just come in as opposed to sort of existing colleagues transferring to the service so yes I have got some sort of specific numbers for you across the piece so since June last year so when that's when we made the change into service we've had 24 new permanent starters coming to the adolescent service okay and that's effectively 16% of our total of our total workforce 16 okay one six so if you look at that but then if you look you know any any transition period any period of change is going to you know it's going to bring about opportunities for people and as I said earlier if you look at CFL sort of retention recruitment figures across the piece that's I think it's 9.8% but I think it's like 10% so actually we're not that far given we've gone through quite a significant period of change we're still six months Yeah we're halfway through the year. so if you look at that but then if you look any transition period, any period of change is going to bring about opportunities for people and as I said earlier if you look at CFL retention recruitment figures across the piece I think it's 9.8% but I think it's like 10% so actually we're not that far given we've gone through quite a significant period of change, we're still six months, half way through the year that feels okay in terms of that, the numbers in terms of how we're retaining and new staff coming in so that's a bit, if we look at in terms of our establishment, I mean effectively we've got about 150 and we've got about 150 people in post the actual numbers is this gets complicated because we've got part time so we've got 149 people in post the establishment is 144 but that represents whatever the people doing a bit so to say. The overall picture I would like to say in terms of adolescent services is very positive, we recruit really well we have, you know, we've just recruited a new person into my team absolutely fantastic, really skilled really dedicated practitioner really wants to work with adolescents so I think that within adolescent services we get people that are passionate about working for young people and want to come to work in Surrey they see the new model as well and see the different opportunities that we're doing something new that's not necessarily being done in other parts of the country and that's seen as a real strong selling point when they see that and see the transformation we're making so I'd say the picture is rosy but the challenge is obviously, you know, when people leave it takes sometimes four months to get a replacement and that's where the tension comes, isn't it, about how you reallocate, you know, the work with young people Thank you very much, that's reassuring I'm sure colleagues will be pleased with your optimism and the fact that you're on track as it were that's most helpful I mean it may be easy to then follow on that to my next question which I think is the final question in paragraph 57 you talk about you've already established or developed a task dashboard so, quote, that we can ensure key performance metrics are being made and we're measuring the impact so there is a structure in place but you're saying, you know understandably is evolving and we are confident as it becomes more refined it will become a vital tool in helping us clearly understand the impact quality and direction of our work which is excellent I mean are you able to put a bit more flesh on the bones as to what those measurements are those KPIs are and in the sense for us as elected members are there any not all of them but maybe two or three perhaps four or so that you would stand out as key performance indicators of success that we will be able to share with in the sense of with us as elected councillors we've been listening not to focus on the subject I'm particularly passionate about which is about missing as one of our key so I would talk a little bit about that but I suppose what it does do give an example around missing hopefully gives a context understanding of the approach we're taking more widely across our performance metrics so we have a statutory duty to respond to provide what's called return home interview to young people within 72 hours of them returning home following being missing so that's something we have to report on as a statutory responsibility what we recognised what we did on creation of the new missing team when looking back over our old data we A recognised that we weren't I should put this our tabloids report weren't quite accurate in terms of what we were reporting so we reviewed the forms and the data collected in that and then also reviewed our tabloid reports to ensure that actually as a manager were responsible for this am I 100% certain that I know those young people that have had a return on interview within 72 hours so I can now say that yes I now know that I am confident that the way the form is now designed in our tabloid reporting means that actually we're hitting that metric which is really key critical because the longer we call it it's a point in time where we can make contact with a vulnerable young person and get to understand some of those key things and respond really quickly so that's the performance metric side of things how we can be assured we're getting the data what do we do with that and what's our benchmark well we just know from research we've done and looking at nationally in terms of that picture 60% is generally seen as for a return home interview completion rate within 72 hours so the expectation is that of all the return home interviews that are conducted 60% of those will be done within 72 hours and you can understand the rationale around that as you might the child could be on holiday the family it could be the first time and the parents aren't reading that but they're not that worried so we can come in a couple of days time it's those sorts of dynamics so 60% is the national sort of average around that we're currently sitting at 69% for that 69 so in terms of work sorry because it's here and you're over there sorry so 69% and we're reviewing that on a monthly basis and that will go up and down in terms of the volume that comes through but then that's a really good news story from my perspective that actually we see this benchmark it's a new team we've only just revamped the form in October we've only just got the new Tableau report in January but already we're starting to see that improvement and then there's a lot of data that sits behind us which then enable us to support those practitioners and the services that perhaps aren't doing their return home interviews in a timely way how can we help and support them and get to a position where every young person at least is contacted has some discussion or we understand why that discussion hasn't taken place so that's sorry I've gone on a bit but that's detail I suppose around that's the approach we want to take around AR data and then what does that mean so that's in terms of missing we obviously across the adolescent services whether you're familiar with the supporting families agenda that was a national agenda the 10 outcomes around that so we're still using that as a performance metric moving forward about those families that we're working with that achieve some of those 10 outcomes whether it's not being involved in crime reduction in drug use those key metrics so again that's live on the dashboard and then we can track progress in terms of the numbers that we're hitting for that in terms of the performance in those areas so that's around strengthening families we have got wider dashboard metrics around timeliness of visits you know are assessments being done on time are we having multi-agency TAF meetings are those being done on time so we've got general performance metrics around what we'd expect to see from those and we've got sort of benchmark data this is a number I haven't got those off my head apologies that we would expect to see a number of visits in time frames so we've got those much broader range of metrics around that is that enough? well you know you asked the question listen John John is a numbers man so if he's so if he's saying he's happy yeah I would take that so well and I suppose the final bit is looking at our development work of what we're doing around that and particularly around when we been talking around extra familial harm so that's a new range of concerns you have around young people so we've just actually had a meeting before this meeting to agree what that process and what that form is going to look like in terms of LCS but through that form we were able to pull off a lot of data and metrics that help us understand for the cohort of young people that are being assessed and vulnerable to risk of extra familial harm the types of harm that they're experiencing so we can pull off that metrics from this new form we're doing and then the other things in terms of the timeless and the key we've got a strategic oversight group for extra familial harm and the key thing they want to see is where we have a young person that's deemed to be a high level of concern around extra familial harm are we seeing that risk reduce that level reduce and how long are they with us in terms of that and to be driving that performance to see a reduction in that so that's something we're looking at doing in this year now once the form is done we've got it on there we can start to build the metrics around that so we've got an awful lot of data around that thank you so much for that that was really helpful and informative can I just ask the same question that I asked the IFSS guys earlier this morning or maybe yesterday I can't remember the time goes so quickly when you're enjoying yourself and that is this is again a kind of new initiative that's not the right word but this is something developed just as the IFSS was and doing a great job are other councils are we again a pace setter on this is this something that Surrey is trailblazing or that's not to be disparaging at all but are other local authorities our county councils doing broadly what we are doing with the same results I mean I always ask these questions in the hope often justified that Surrey is ahead of the pack rather than just with the pack so yes we are ahead of the pack I would say that would be my succinct answer I think we had there's an organization called National Working Group who are sort of contextual safeguarding experts across the country and we met with their sort of one of their regional leads the other day and he was commending myself and Rob Wyatt who's my other colleague and you know and Surrey needs to take the credit for this so actually his review of local authorities across the place you don't see many authorities that take the view I describe my role as I go around I'll agitate people to say why aren't you doing enough to support some of our vulnerable young people and that's basically my role to make sure that we as a network as a system are doing all we can and he says not many local authorities have given your professionals or practitioners the time the space to do that so that was a you know it was a great I said another job and sorry before I was doing this but involved in Tuggy support but actually that decision to have that real focus doesn't happen everywhere and what that does do it means that myself my colleague Rob Wyatt who looks at the sort of neighborhood context it's our passion what we want to do but actually it means that we are able to really be practice leads in that area so that's really positive there are similar models out there in terms of things we're doing but what we do do and what we've spent a long time doing preparing around this is research into what does best practice look like to really understand that we mentioned future voices they come alongside and we worked alongside of them in terms of that understanding and research around data research that we undertook around understanding what our families are saying and how can we respond so more importantly to me is are we doing something that is responsive to what our partners and what our families, children and young people are saying they want to see developed in Surrey and one of the key things they said we want practitioners that are curious and are interested in us that take that time don't just come in I want to go back to my RHI return home interview experience previously it was just a form and it was seen as a tick box you don't really care you're just doing what you have to do but actually now our practitioners are curious they're really understanding that so that is really good practice and seen as good practice so I think I would be confident that Surrey is definitely doing things differently I think we have the annual review and they are really interested in and I won't go on about it but our local intervention work so it's having that view we talk about extra familial harm that's the harm that's occurring in the community and again Surrey is taking the step to resource that in terms of Rob my colleague goes in we'll go into that community we'll talk to young people about their view of the harm that's happening we'll talk to businesses we'll talk to districts and borough environmental health licensing community safety police schools to gain that picture to understand what is really happening and how can we build safety for our children in those areas because they've got every right to be in that play space we need to disrupt that adult that may be coming into seeking to harm them so we're doing that and that's something that they are really interested in that resource and that approach isn't being taken everywhere and that's something that we're definitely able to say using phrases Rob you says I don't understand which is great so we must be at the forefront in the sense around community guardianship what does that mean a whole range of things so yeah it's exciting times in terms of adolescent services the decision around Central and what we're doing so yeah it's good thank you and well done to the team thanks Jan and also Matt oh Jonathan you always you always manage to come in you always manage to come in at the end is that your fault right if it's very quick quickish quickish sorry it will have to be very quick it really will this whole thing look I've read this report backwards upside down it's complicated messy you've got an organisation picture on page 67 which I found very messy but yet it seems to work you know you've got no wrong door which is being embedded which seemed to be something which we needed and Matt said why but then I'm sort of trying to understand some of the sort of loose ends page 48 which is the last item IFFSS talks about a family being referred into it due to lack of school attendance and neglect in this report at the end on paragraph 60 you talk about children missing education as a priority and you're working with virtual school but then earlier on Matt said that early help adolescence and neglect I think were three different subsets of the children's safeguarding partnership board thing so could you just outline a little bit what you're doing in this work developing this work with virtual school and indeed maybe there's something in writing just to clarify to us because I am losing it a little bit on this what the neglect team does and how that's different from what your team does and that's different from what the early help and how they all fit together because it feels like if someone's missing school it could fit in any one of the three teams but your report mentions it's in your team so maybe you could mention that briefly sorry chair that's a bit rambling so we will certainly as we sort of promised earlier provide a diagram that sort of outlines what the sorry sake of and children partnership and we've got this to hand what their priorities are and the boards that are responsible as Rachel said for overseeing those priorities and those boards are made up of practitioners professionals from all different partner agencies what the IFSS and the adolescent is an operational service that's delivering to some of those priorities I guess when we get a referral into our C-SPAR there's within the adolescent service we've got early preventative support but also that referral depending on the nature of it could end up in our intensive family support service so the key is what's the primary reason for the referral if the primary reason for the referral is that there's a child in the family home that we're worried about harm that sits outside of the home extra familiar harm it would 11 yeah 11 so so if the primary reason for the referral is there's concerns about harm outside of the family home and the child that child that's experiencing that harm is over 11 that referral will be sent to our adolescent service one of our key principles is around family work so within that if within that family there's three other siblings that are younger the adolescent service will also look at those but look at it as a whole family and support the whole family if that if there's a referral of a 12 year old that comes into our C-SPA and the concerns are around how the child is experiencing neglect due to their some of the parenting that they're receiving at home that work would sit either in our intensive family support service or if the concerns are such as it comes through our front door that's how it's differentiated yeah that does make sense and I wish you good luck on the off-step inspection because literally in the past sometimes things have been it feels like a little bit too neat and tidy and now it feels like you know it's a little bit more messy and complex and maybe that's the way to deal with these bigger issues and these bigger problems and I feel every confidence that you've got a grip on this thank you thank you I think we'll conclude the session there I think it was really interesting I think you know this is probably something that we'd like to the same sorts of things we talked about IFSS so you know what outcomes are you seeing you know what's your performance like about against the dashboard the voice of partners the sort of challenges that you're experiencing and what you're finding out amongst adolescents in Surrey there is one thing that so I think it's been an excellent introduction and thank you both for that there is one thing that really still bothers me though you know you have an establishment of 144 people and the Intent Family Support Service has an establishment of I forget what the management is but on the grind we've got 32 people you know that's a hell of a difference I don't suggest you know that we discuss that now because I'm sure we could be here from now to doomsday but it does bother me it kind of feeds into my concern about the and I don't and I don't by the way I don't I don't actually regret any one of those people that you have but it does feed into my concern about whether we have enough capacity in the Intensive Family Support Service you know 32 very well say 40 32 whatever against 144 that's a lot Matt please do I can respond really quickly and hopefully it makes sense so the Adolescent Service is what I was describing earlier in terms of what Intensive Family Support and our Statue teams coming together is already so we took our targeted youth service that was an early help teams and we put them together into one place so the establishment reflects the work with adolescents in both the early help targeted space and also our statutory response so they are already together in one service because that's what we want it to be so in a way when we start thinking about how we're going to do that for our other half of our work we've already got the model there because we've already done it and when we bring our Intensive Family Support Service together with Family Safeguarding the establishment will be very similar to that so that's why it looks different at the moment that's a really helpful explanation so thank you because I would have worried about it otherwise you know I mean have we got such significant problems with adolescence and sorry that you know we need that kind of size of establishment so thank you very much so we just have a couple more items to complete before the end of the session the item number 10 we're looking at the Ofsted reports into children's homes I've got pages oh apparently this is on the Ofsted report I was going to say something about it oh sorry would you like me to say something about it and then you ask your question what would you prefer no it's because we usually whiz over it and so I just wanted to make sure that I didn't whiz over it because I'm on to page 97 which might be the page you'll run absolutely so we're we're on pages of the agenda pack of 85 to 104 so we had one children's home inspected in October 2024 and judged as outstanding up from good in February 24 and one that was newly opened in April 24 inspected in December 24 and rated requires improvement to be good so the report on the children's home race that is outstanding was very uplifting I mean it was wonderful to read and a huge testament to the registered manager and her staff who would deserve our congratulations and also our thanks for the work that they're doing and I really want I really want them to be aware of that and I will write to them to say to say congratulations and to thank them because I think getting outstanding is very impressive in a children's home so the only concern I have on the other children's home I think you know that it's a very recent children's home I was really quite taken aback to read the staff have not been able to find education placements for the young people in that home that really worried me and I really wondered what the virtual school were doing on this because I would have thought that that would fall into their read and also concerned that a young person in the hospital was without a supportive member of staff with them so I think the lapses in the report do suggest the need for stronger management and leadership and I'm kind of surprised that this wasn't recognised internally but I have to say that given the improvements we've seen over the last 18 months in children's homes I'm pretty confident that the next inspection will report progress so I want to stress that the report this is the new home that it does say that the children are happy and cared for and I want to stress that but behind every organisation is management and the thing that bothers me about this is five comments on the report it was seven but you've covered two one is procedures for staff to take are not clear in all circumstances and the plans do not capture agreements made about the expectations of this agency then it says it mentions about the child not being accompanied to the hospital which as far as I'm concerned is a basic function that should have been done if you're looking after children no parent would say oh off you go we'll have our cup of coffee and watch the football and you go off to hospital this child went off to hospital unaccompanied which I think I have a problem with however then it goes the next paragraph manage to understand the role of local authority officer and involve them when there are allegations against staff and then this is it however this is not always done in a timely way in line with the provider's policy and then the whole of that it says these shortfalls it's quite a long paragraph at the end it says these shortfalls weaken the system for protecting children from unsafe staff practice and protecting the rights of staff so we're not just talking about the children we're talking about the rights of staff and then if you go over the page this sort of business about the staff gets on again because to paraphrase the next two paragraphs really the staff were being left at sea in terms of instructions and not being clear so to give an example leaders have not have not ensured that there has been consistently good enough management oversight in a period since the home was open changes in senior management the departure of deputy managers and sickness of the registered managers have impacted on this now this is really the point I want to get to because if you read the whole thing together I imagine I mean as you know getting people to work in these places is like hen's teeth and it would I'm picking up a sense of very poor managerial skill which makes staff then feel nervous because I think if you if you if you not sure what's happening not sure what you're supposed to be doing there's not a clear line of line of sight when you you know you start to feel well I'm doing my bit but is everybody else doing theirs and then you get another home and you'll go there because you can get jump ship any time you like in this role you know so my what I'm suggesting here is that I think unless we are clear about what's going on in that home unless we're clear about the management having improved out of all recognition or even perhaps a staff change at that level I would want to I would personally want someone to keep an eye on this because one of the things we know that children don't like is constant staff change and you know if it is a deep seated problem that the whoever runs this organization is not insisting that the people who run it have strong management training because this all seems basic management training staff then they're going to have the constant change over which is very bad for our kids when you start seeing regular recruitment change sickness and absence that often is a red flag I'm wondering Rachel would you like to comment on it yeah I would so I mean I think we would agree that there's that what this report describes is not good enough and not the standard that we want any of our homes to operate at and although we recognize some of the challenges that that home was facing because it was relatively new it was its first post registration inspection the staff team was still developing and that does make it more difficult for all members of the staff including actually the manager to have certainty you know about who they can rely on who they can't you know what that should look like nevertheless we we would have wanted there to have been a better outcome and I'd like to encourage this scrutiny committee to be more circumspect I think about calling for staff change so this is anonymized by a number but we know and the workers in that place will know which home this is referring to so effectively there has been you know this is a public meeting a suggestion that we ought to move on the manager of this home what I know in this select committee doesn't know is that the manager is a manager of another home as well which has been evaluated as good and I also know that the return visit has already taken place the assurance visit has already taken place to this setting and although the outcome of that is confidential until the publication of that report I do know that it already shows improvements so so I I kind of I fully endorse the concerns and I am absolutely confident that the service has taken them seriously and addressed them and I think in the wider context the news is better than this report makes it sound and I would be troubled if any of our registered managers felt that the select committee was a place where their job security was discussed in that way for all the reasons that you've described which is these are very difficult people to hold on to we want to support them to have a good career here in Surrey and we want to support them and their colleagues to be stable in the setting I hope that provides some assurance about where we are now I think it does and I mean I can't speak for Barony I think that you know it did come as a bit of a surprise I have to that my concern was over the education of these young people sorry and I forgot to address the education question but we as a leadership team actually would agree that that is a significant issue for a small number of children who are either in our care or are on the edge of care and what we find is that when children are still at home but they're struggling at home not having a good educational placement can be the catalyst for them needing to come into care because they're not anywhere else they're only at home when children are in our care and they are in a placement if they're not attending education regularly that's a challenge for you know whether it's a foster care looking after them or it's a children's residential home and so matching children into an educational placement is a focus but it is also very difficult because these will often be children for whom education has been particularly challenging securing a placement that meets their needs has been challenging some of them may have previously had suspensions or periods of absence some of them may for mental health reasons be struggling to engage with school provision and so the challenge to us which is the right one in the inspection and in the report and in our day-to-day practice is to keep looking and to keep fighting for that child or those children to secure an educational placement and the virtual school is right in that space so because for every child that is in our care and indeed they've got wider they now have a wider remit but for every child in our care that is what they're working on constantly but it is far from straightforward just to get a child into a school place and that's even when they are in our in-house residential provision in county and so I know that this committee also knows that that's made more difficult if a child is out of county because we're then negotiating with another local authority's schools about their placements but part of the reason we're trying to keep children here and keep children in our own in-house provision is to try and make it a little a bit easier but I completely acknowledge that it's a huge challenge a better outcome for the next inspection report and I think based on as I say based on the history of the last 18 months you know I think there's every re-believe that will be the case the last item on our agenda is to note the performance overview we're looking at pages 105 to 120 item 11 I just have one comment to make on this and that was it was the level of sickness among social workers I was really very struck by that you know we're talking about a quarter of all of our social workers both well interim about well spread over vacancy posts interims permanent staff of about 25% and even taking those vacant posts into account 25% and you know two and a half years of I absolutely understand how difficult it is to recruit but it is worrying and I'm worried because of the repercussions because a foster carer foster child had had 10 different social workers in in the last three years and was now no longer willing to engage so I I I this is not a criticism you know I'm just wondering you know nothing else that we can do about this because it it's it's it's both very difficult for the social workers it's very difficult for the service if people are having to go off ill so quickly so frequently you know I I don't I don't underestimate the effect that it has on their lives to to to fix or even alleviate so it's not it's not a criticism it's just a I wasn't actually quite shocked if I'm really honest should I be I just said quietly to Matt I don't think so and he said you want to say that a bit louder so so so I am we ought to probably go back and bring the service sickness absence and for children families and lifelong learning but I didn't look at that I mean obviously any sickness absence is to worry about and in particular the long term sickness absence for a smaller number of staff you know because that's indicative of some real health but in a kind of a fairly straightforward way I I think that that's level of sickness absence overall is described probably pans out as relatively low in the search and I'd need to go back and double check the averages. So I think if you exclude the vacant posts, it's about 33%. But I'm looking at the amount of absence, therefore... Per post. Yeah. And considering that the absence, there is no absence for those other posts at all. So only 108 of those people have had any kind of... Yeah, but we've only got, I think, what, just over 300 people? And 108 of them have had short-term illness? Have had some kind of... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and so the average, therefore, is 6.9 days across that 108. And when you averaged it out across the 300, which is, you know, the overall number, including people who've had no sickness absence at all, that obviously drops very significantly. And I think when you compare that against the sickness absence across children, families, and lifelong learning and across the council as a whole, I don't think that will look adrift. So I will go away and check it. Because clearly, if we're sharing data just in isolation and creating an unhelpful impression, then that's not great. But I do think my instinct when I saw it was not, oh, my goodness, it was, oh, okay. Well, I think you've probably answered the question then. But, you know, I mean, I looked at it and I thought, good grief. But from your perspective, the question, you know, I think it's, you know, it's also worrying, you know, that we're quite a bit adrift from the number of permanent social workers we would choose to have. But that just seems to be how it is. Matt, I think you wanted to say something. Maybe you're going to come in and say, don't worry about it. You know, we're not concerned about it. There's nothing you need to worry about in those statistics. I think this recruitment retention space has supported us really well with that. And we are seeing improvements. And we are, you know, we are going to be two of the big pieces of initiative around the market supplement and the international social. We've also got an extended ASYE intake this year. I actually am feeling in the service that stability is improving. And when you see and talk to people, that's the sense as well. So it's been a really difficult space because of all the reasons we know about recruiting and social workers nationally, but also some of the challenges we have locally in Sarri. But I actually feel that we are turning the circle with it a little bit and we're seeing better stability, better retention. And we're starting to sort of see some of our key teams in the safeguarding space get more permanent staff. And then the last bit I'd say is that there's some national changes around the requirements of agency social workers, which is meaning many more of our agency social work staff are thinking about coming permanent because of the national changes that the government have implemented. Well, thank you for that reassurance. It was certainly helpful to me. I don't know what everybody else felt when they read it. Claire? If it is helpful to anybody, I have just Googled average sickness rates. In 2024, average working days lost per staff varies across the regions. The region with the highest level of sickness absence is Northern Ireland at 9.6 days and Scotland at 9.4 days. And the regions with the lowest levels of sickness absence were London at 6.0 days and the southwest 6.7 days. So I would say from looking at this and the 6 point something days of short-term absence, it would be about average. Thank you for that. Okay. Yeah, I think you've answered it and reassured us. Okay, so that brings us to a close. Thank you very much, everyone. Data analytics meeting is Wednesday, the 16th of July. Thank you all. Thank you.