Transcript

There's no one bringing the social services you can't find. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO]

Thank you very much, Chair, and good afternoon to all committee members. Purpose of this report this afternoon is to provide this committee with an update on the progress made in relation to the duty on this local authority. Under section 22 of the Child Care Act 2006, which requires local authorities to ensure as far as is reasonably practical, that sufficient childcare is present to meet the local needs of parents. The most recent childcare sufficiency assessment was shared with this committee. Almost two years ago now, the full childcare sufficiency assessment is reduced every five years and the action plan, which is derived from the report, is reviewed annually. Today, we share an update on the action plan that outlines the progress made to date by the department. So the action plan outlines what is being done to meet the needs around the six areas of accessibility, flying start, wash medium childcare, recruitment and retention, sustainability and out of hours childcare. As you can see, there's a breadth of work occurring to support these goals. That's not to say there are not challenges we face with less funding available for the local authority and other partners to support the sector. It becomes even more important that all partners continue to work together. The strength of the partnership that exists in REX and provides confidence that the work of the action plan can continue and facilitate opportunities for creative solutions to be explored. Continuation of working towards the aims in the action plan will support the childcare sector through these challenging times and will hopefully ensure that REX and has a sustainable childcare market to enable ample childcare spaces to be available. So happy to take any questions. With me this afternoon, to my left, we have Rhianne Thomas, who you're all familiar with, the senior head of children's services. Also, Jo's, we have Rebecca Roberts, who's the prevention and service development lead, and also we have Lisa Atherton, who's the family information service assistant manager. So they're all in hand to answer the questions in the support. Do you like a virtue? Rhianne, would you like to say anything or any of the other officers before we start? Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Chair. We're going to bring in Becky, who was written the report alongside Lisa. Just to go through just key elements from the action plan, as you'll see, there's two documents in front of you, both the report and the action plan. The action plan is what provides more detail to the board today in relation to what we are doing and the breadth of kind of work being undertaken, but is it also outlined? It's a number of the challenges that face the sector at the moment, and I know there's a sector that continues to be stretched and under a lot of pressure since COVID, and that is really important that this action plan is used neutralised effectively to ensure the stability of the market going forward as the child care is fundamental and ensuring that parents can return to work, but that early education for children and promoting, you know, the issues that we have been seeing within society around speech and language and abilities apply. This is the first step of that for children before going into the statutory educational state. It's for our bringing now, Becky, who will be able to provide a little bit more of an overview. Yeah, so as Rihanna's indicated, there are quite a number of challenges within the child care sector currently, and I mean, those were present prior to COVID, as I exacerbated a lot of those challenges, but what I wanted to really highlight was the work that's been going on within the team, really to try and address some of these challenges and what we've been able to do on a local level to try and support the sector more effectively. So in some of the initial elements, on page four of the action plan, you'll see that in regards to child care supply, our numbers have actually remained relatively static within rex and which is quite an achievement over in comparison to other local authorities. Now where you see there has been a small decrease in numbers that's usually associated with, for example, child care settings that operate on one school site amalgamating to become one child care settings. So it might seem like a decrease in provision, but actually that provision has been maintained. It's just that that registration has become one registration as opposed to two. You'll also see there with the child minders that we had a slight decrease, but again, the team are working with five pre-registration child minders, so hopefully those child minders will be back on board with us soon, and we will again have topped up that provision. Some of the other areas as well that the team have been working with, so again, don't want to talk too heavily on grants, but we are aware that the funding available to us as a local authority to support child care settings with elements such as additional support workers to support children with additional needs. That funding, it's not sufficient for what we have available, but what we're trying to do is to look at what other avenues are out there, so the team will be working really, really hard to work closely with welfare rights, for example, to look at what other funding alternatives could be available for those child care settings access or those parents to access to ensure that there is provision available for their young people. We're also looking at what training opportunities we can have available and what we can provide as a team to support settings with strategies and embed impacts best practice, so it's not always necessarily the need to have a one-to-one support worker, it might be just about changing some elements within that setting to make it more accommodating for that young person and adapting the ways that the staff in the settings might interact with those young people to help to support with that. Another element that I really wanted to highlight as well is the close working relationships that the team have developed with other internal organisations, so Flying Start, for example, we've got a huge work expansion plan ongoing with Flying Start, but we work really, really closely with their pewson and the other Flying Start colleagues so that we can work alongside one another to make sure that that can be rolled out effectively across the maximum. We also work really, really closely with our education colleagues, other education colleagues, but also in particular with our early years ALN colleagues as well. In addition, we've also worked really, really hard to develop working relationships with external partners, so again you'll see through the report that we work really, really closely with representatives from Colum, so that will be the early years team, the mid-admaethrin, PAC, NDNA and Clovii Plant, and it's really, really key that we have that close working relationship so that we can continue to support our child care settings effectively across the board, and also to tap into their resources, as again we've highlighted grants of a concern really within this sector, but we're trying to establish what else is out there that we can use effectively to continue to support the sector if funding is required. One of the areas where we do have a significant amount of grant funding is in with the capital programme, so originally that was linked in with the child care offer, that we actually lobbied our government in regards to that because originally that was specifically for three to four year olds, we teamed up with our colleagues with the local authorities and with the Colum partners and said well that's quite a narrow age range, there are children outside of that age range that really do need to have access to some of this funding to what child care settings needs to have access to some of this funding to support children of a wider range range, so either younger or older after school clubs, for example. So you'll see there that the team have supported with quite a significant portion of funding, sorry, I've now scrolled too far down my page and I've lost, yeah, thank you, yeah, sorry. So you'll see that the team have supported in the last financial year with 60 applications from child care settings with a total of 525,606 pounds being awarded to child care settings and that's, those are across the board so that can be child minders, it can be nurseries, it can be after school clubs, wraparamp provisions, we aim to support the wider sector in terms of that with that funding, with access to that funding. In addition, we are also trying to keep our training directory and access to our training courses at a reasonable level, we're very conscious of the cost of living and the increased demands on the sector in terms of their sustainability and what they can afford, but also they have their own duties under the National Minimum Standards to ensure that their staff are appropriately trained and we want to ensure that they are able to maintain the quality of their provision as well. So we look very, very carefully at our training directory and again we work in collaboration with FlyingStar Early Education and the early is ALN team to establish what is, what are the best options, we also work very closely with the play team as well and we revise that training directory every year, we will have a look at the priorities within the sector to establish what we need to take forward but we also ensure that we maintain those mandatory training options as well and try and ensure that those are kept at an appropriate level in terms of costs so they maintain that affordability. And in relation to Welsh medium childcare, we work very, very closely with Midyard Mather in but again we look at options of how we can ensure we can effectively and actively promote Welsh medium childcare within Raxson. Some of the things we've done is we've worked very closely with Coli Cambria because we're very conscious that some of the anecdotal information that's come back to us is that there's some young people that are looking to move into childcare don't necessarily have the confidence in their Welsh language skills to work within a childcare setting. So some of the things we did was to ensure that when we've attended job fair events, we have had a Welsh speaking table so we've utilized staffing within FlyingStar and early education and Midyard Mather in on those tables so they've been able to have those informal conversations and kind of develop that confidence within those young people within the college so that they have that awareness of what their skills would need to be in terms of their Welsh language so hopefully we can help to support them, to filter them in through to work within Welsh settings within Raxson. I think I've covered everything that I wanted to say but if anyone's got any questions please do ask them. I'd be up to committee members first, any questions from anyone? I've got a couple of questions if no one else has. On the top of page 41 it says about recruitment and retention and that there are 16 job vacancies. What is the turnover of people and more qualifications are required for these jobs to be filled please? It's 15 your page? No, that's fine. In terms of those qualifications it will be very independent on the settings or settings within Raxson. There are individual settings, they own their own businesses, you feel like some of them may be charity based, some may be self-employed, some may be a limited company. In terms of those vacancies it will be dependent on the job requirement. It may be a level 3 in CCLPD, child care learning, play and development or it might be a level 5. It just depends on the requirements of the position. For example, with the inflinestar the requirements within that post will be slightly higher than they are within a universal provision. And then you mentioned problems with funding, what's the mainstream of funding that you get now, is it Welsh Government or is it, whether you answer the question please? Yeah, so our main funding streams are Welsh Government funding streams, so a lot comes through the likes of families first. We do have some funding that comes through the child care offer. We have in the last two years we have lost two funding streams that were available to us that we were using to support this sector. So one was the early years integration fund which we found out at Christmas was going to be stopped and the year previous we lost the child development fund which again was another funding stream that we were utilising to support the sector. But what we have done is try to look at how we can maintain what we have within the team. So as soon as we were made aware of the cuts in certain funding streams we looked at how we can streamline certain things so for example with our training we utilised some of the funding to develop an online e-module so that we could maintain that as a training option within the team in the longer term because we were aware that we weren't going to be able to commission another service to provide that or we weren't going to be able to necessarily have a member of staff that would be able to provide that but we didn't want to lose that as an option for the child care sector. How come I didn't see harm, sorry? I just wanted to ask about how sure we are, that important qualification of how effective this is and it's spread to the most, the poorest and most honorable families. I know that flying star is very deliberately aimed at that and to a large extent early at the excitement but the potential closure of sparkles nursery in Karpark is major event and obviously that's come out after this report has been written out I guess but I'm quite concerned that's a major loss to the whole field really for years but in general the reason for having flying star and so on is the recognition that the poorest families find it most difficult to afford child care and makes it more difficult for them to take part in employment and so on but also other ways in which it supports young families. So I just wondered how confident I use it, there's sufficient support in areas and with families that experience difficulties and considerable properties that we are supporting them equally with other families better off. I think Malcolm, the team put a lot of effort into their social media campaigns to call out and contact parents directly through a number of mean, through letters, through the portal and so there's a number of ways and offer that support and likewise to the providers as well and we have regular provider events, I think there's one planned for next week and that's an opportunity to share those issues. For those though there is also an element of us making sure that providers come to us when they need that support and when they've got issues that they come to us in a timely manner to ask for that support because that's how we are the most effective really isn't it is about ensuring that people come forward in relation to the support that we provide to families. We offer a number of drop-in sessions and we're in the well-being hub, we're in a number of areas, we publicise that on Facebook with a picture of the team because we know it can dawned and it can be to go to a new place and think who am I looking for so we put a picture of a member of our staff team with their name and welcome them into those areas and we go as two people's communities. So in relation to how we're progressing that I feel that the team are quite robust in that area. So if there are ways within people's communities, within people's wards that you feel that we're not seen as much then please do let us know we are currently working with Welsh Government on some new marketing campaigns and we're a pilot area alongside another local authority and Wales to get us out there even more than that at the moment so we're free and there's a number of free resources that we're going to be given or have been given that we are getting out into our communities at the moment but it's a two-way communication style as well I wanted to say and we are relying on providers to come to us when there is an issue, come to us when parents are struggling to pay their fees and we will work with families to look at is there a grant funding, is there additional support for them and how can we support them so we do require people to come to us as well. Thank you Rhianne, is there anything you could send out to Councillors who have social email accounts that they could advertise the service on and within community councils as well. Absolutely yes we've got lots of information that we can certainly share amongst our Councillors and amongst community Councillors and just to add really to what Rhianne has said that we do get out and about into that community as much as we can and we do link and contact with all sorts of different organisations and places so we do do outreach in the likes of our health clinics and we go into schools a lot as well so we're willing to go anywhere and everywhere that will have us to ensure that parents are getting the support at the earliest opportunities so that we can ensure that in terms of support of particularly around child care or anything really that they are getting that information at the earliest possible points and thankfully as Rhianne mentions there we are part of the world's government pilot around marketing at the moment which means that we are potentially in places that we wouldn't usually be so backs of buses on radio a leaflet drops through people's letterboxes and we've got a range of resources that we're able to share amongst communities as well so yes thank you. Just to add as well just to add as well just in relation to information and where parents and families can access sources of support I just wanted to bring in there about our award-winning well-being portal as well so that's an online digital service that parents families can access and they'll be able to tell their story just the once and then they'll be able to access what relevant sort of support systems that they need through that. Thank you very much so please ensure that you send the information out to all Councillors in all community council clerks please. Are there any non-committee members got a question? May Derrick. I can't see a yellow hand Trevor sorry. Trevor not for the first time you're on the edge you know you put yourself on mute. Always live in life on the edge. Page 39 looking at some of the training courses that we've done I noticed there's quite a lot more people than the pediatric first aid than the safeguarding. I just wondering if we're confident that everybody that needs to do the safeguarding courses are doing them and I'm just wondering who took the drama course because it seems to be the most popular course in the book and I think officers would like to comment on the courses and we're making sure that all the people delivering the childcare had taken the appropriate courses. Thank you. Yeah so in relation to the courses what I will say is that these we were able to utilise some Welsh government funding to run a lot of these courses at a significantly subsidised rate so in regards to the discrepancy under normal circumstances our pediatric first aid course is our most expensive course so I think why we've seen such an increase in figures in regards to that one is because the style care settings have taken the opportunity at the really heavily subsidised course fees and booked as many of their staff on as possible which is really really positive to see in regards to the drama based safeguarding training so that's not a statutory training but what it was was actors acting out scenarios and putting safeguarding concerns into real life experiences it's a really involved course what we've actually been able to do with that as well is have a recording from that so that the afterthought team are currently developing that forward so again we'll be able to utilise that moving forwards so while safeguarding it's imperative that all childcare settings and all childcare staff have that safeguarding training we're very conscious that while a lot of the staff understand the concept and understand the reality when they're trying to put it into context when they're presented with certain scenarios they're finding it they can be very often be well what if I'm wrong and we want to ensure that the question is well what if I'm right so by providing this type of training be like providing those real life scenarios and having that real interactive experience what we're hoping is that that will support those childcare settings and the staff within them to develop the confidence in regards to what they need to do when those safeguarding concerns arise and just to come in and just to say that that is a way of working that the safeguarding board we're actually exploring in relation to how we take forward safeguarding training with certain other local authorities using VRAs as a way of training strategy social workers because actually it provides a far more real life scenario and has a better outcome in relation to practice at the end so I think the name doesn't give it doesn't help in the understanding of it but it's a different way of learning and particularly for a cohort of professionals who maybe don't understand safe gun it's not their bread and butter and can become overwhelmed and this is really delivers it in a great way for them just to follow on from that that um well this was the training that we delivered last year we do have our training program again for this year where we do have a range of safeguarding training again on the agenda and we are confident that the sector will have kind of all undertaken the training that they need to meet the national and animal standards and the timeframe that they do and it is worth pointing out as well that we are not the only training provider to settings can access their training from whoever they want to and it's just that we're able to offer it as a subsidized rate okay thank you very much any more questions from any counselors at all I can't see any hands up so if not we'll move on to recommendations I've written out a recommendation if you'd like to listen to it we the safeguarding communities and we'll be being scrutiny committee thank the officers and lead member for the positive report today considering the opposite obstacles faced by the department and look forward to a future report maintaining the present levels of service provided throughout the country butter is that agreeable to people of proposal and secondary proposed second all those in favor please show thank you that's unanimous thank you officers uh I would well enjoy what you can of the sunshine that's left okay thank you

• Thank you.

Transcript

Okay, good afternoon, everybody. Cruise your acaba foot. And welcome to the hybrid screening of the safety communities and wellbeing scrutiny committee. I am Councillor Derek Wright, Chair of the committee, and we'll be chairing today's meeting. As this is a multi-location meeting, we have a number of members present in the room, as well as others who are joining remotely. If anyone wishes to speak, please raise your hand physically to be noticed. Could remote participants please raise their virtual hand to indicate when you wish to speak? When it is your turn, I will say your name, you will need to unmute your microphone. Please switch off your microphone when you're finished or the horse will switch it off for you. As well as members of the committee, we also have a number of non-committee members in attendance. These members are entitled to speak and ask questions when invited to do so, but are unable to vote on any of the items. There are a number of officers in attendance, including the committee officer, who will be acting as Zoom host for members who are joining remotely. This meeting is being recorded and will be published as soon as possible afterwards. Please can I ask remote participants to make a note of the meeting ID, which will be of assistance if you experience any technical difficulties and need to join the meeting by telephone. It is important to note that the microphone in the room will be unmuted at all times to enable remote participants to hear what is being said. It is therefore imperative that you only speak when you are contributing to the meeting, as the other background noise will be clearly heard. All microphones of those attending remotely will be muted during the meeting when they are not contributing. Please ensure that mobile phones are switched off and that any background noise is kept to a minimum. If you need to adjourn the meeting at any point, you will be informed of a revised date and time. If it is short adjournment, you will be able to rejoin the Zoom meeting, otherwise a fresh appointment will be sent out. In the event of an alarm sounding, you must evacuate quickly as possible using the nearest available marked fire exits, and congregate on Fluenty sub-green in front of the main Guildhall reception. If it is safe to do so, you should evacuate through the main doors of the meeting room and leave by the Guildhall reception front doors. Moving on to item one, apologies for absence, Dave. Can you record the apologies?

• We have Bill Blackmore, Krista Chiles, Alison Tynan, Alec Davis, and Rondell Roberts.
• Thank you for that.
• Oh, Kate Wilkinson as well.
• On Kate Wilkinson. - Is on the 10th.
• Thank you.
• All through the minutes of the previous meeting. Now I'll do on the 10th of April. We've only got page one, page two, page three, page four, page five, and page six. Could I ask for a proposal of the minutes being a correct record? Propose the enemy, seconded by Brian, all those in favor, please show. That's unanimous. Thank you, everybody. We move on now to declarations of personal interest, Claire.
• Thanks, Chair. With regard to item five, I'm declaring a personal but non-prejudicial interest. I'm employed by a kind of partnership who operates sparkles down our street and not involved directly in the childcare facility. Thank you.
• Thank you. Are there any other declarations, please? If not, we'll move on to item four, the work program, Dave.
• Thank you, Chair. Just to say that we're entering the last three months of 23, 24. The report regarding an update on grants originally set for April and now be taken alongside an item on early help partnership at the September meeting. And also the social care budget will be considered again in October. In June, we have a report on child poverty and also a report on unpaid carers. And in July, we have our usual meeting with Betsy Cadrolder and the Welsh Ambulance Service as well. Just to say as well, we'll be looking at the work program in September and could have just asked that Councillors consider this. And obviously, if there are any topics they wish to raise to complete a topic selection form, if possible. Thank you, Chair.
• Okay, and just to add to that, if you could, if you're thinking of putting the form and if you could get it in by August so that all the relevant officers and lead members can get sight of it before it comes to the meeting. Okay, any points to be raised on any of those issues, please? Nope, okay. I received an email this morning of the lead member for education, saying he's got to leave the meeting at 5.15. So the committee in the pre meeting decided they would be switching the agenda item round. So we'll take item six first and item five second. That's been agreed with officers as well, prior to the meeting. So, Phil, over to you.
• Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much for a accommodating meeting on that point. I'm joined today, Bob.
• Well, could you bring the mic a bit?
• Yeah, I was going to say it was a bit far away. Is that better? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'm joined today by officers, Donna Dickinson, the head of prevention and support, and also Gareth Stacey, assistant lead player and officer at playing youth who's the author of the report. So I thank Gareth for buttoning the detail into the report for the committee's consideration today. We had the pleasure of presenting to you last year on the duty placed on all local authorities by the Welsh Government to ensure that we address place efficiency duty, to ensure that all our children in Raxham do access and entitlement to a valued access to play. The report does contain a reference on page 49 to a children's place action survey that we did present to you last year. It's just included just for context, for the committee, a further survey for 2024. Gareth will elaborate on, it's actually going to be commissioned at any time soon. So we'll have more up-to-date data on children's satisfaction. And also, I believe the 2021 figures that Gareth will elaborate on, were probably skewered by the impact of COVID. So as we move further away from that, hopefully we'll see a different set of data coming forward. Since we last met, we've been fortunate to have received the monies from the City of Culture 2025 bid that we put in, legacy money, that we used to commission a report, which is attached as a pan C2. We commissioned play whales to actually carry out that work because, as everybody's aware, it is our intention to submit another bid for City of Culture 2029. So obviously, we want to enhance the content of that bid as regards play. So we thank play whales for their input through that report. Myself, Gareth, I've recently had a meeting with Chris Smith in planning because now the local development plan has been approved. There's about seven and a half thousand plus new houses to be built over the foreseeable future. And those are going to be creating new communities where we want to ensure that those communities, the children living in those new communities, do have access to areas of play, which are just formal swings and slides. It's actually places where children can use their own imagination, just as I hope we all did as children ourselves. Without the input of adults so that children can truly live a child's life. So that is a discussion that we've recently commenced with planning and, again, Gareth can elaborate on where we would like to go with that piece of work as well. So those are two pieces of work that we'll be focusing on as we go forward and also carrying out another child's play satisfaction survey. I won't say anymore, but I'll pass on to Gareth and Donna to make their presentation and then we're happy to take questions from the members. Thank you, Chair.
• Thank you very much, Phil. Good afternoon, everybody. And thank you for the opportunity to come and speak again this year. I was here last year presenting the full place efficiency assessment that we undertook in 2022. So it was agreed as part of this update report was you've all got a copy of this report and it's my job to try and add a bit of colour to it, I suppose, and highlight the bits within it that I can elaborate on and, again, age you with any questions that you might have. I realised I was here last year talking about place efficiency, but I think it's probably worthwhile for me just to give you a very quick overview about what place efficiency is. So it was part of the children and family's measure in 2010 and whilst government, it's a statutory, the whilst government imposed that local authorities need to assess where the children have sufficient opportunities to play within their areas. We quite often think about when we say children's play, it's place schemes, it's play areas, but what came through really strongly about the place efficiency assessment is that it's part of children's everyday lives. When we talk about children, we have to talk about their opportunities to play. When they've got time spacing permission to play, they will play. So the whilst government are very keen, quite rightly based on UN CRC legislation that all children should have the sufficient opportunities to play. So that's within their everyday lives whether they're walking to school, after school, local fields, informal spaces, formal spaces, and it goes one step further in the place efficiency due itself. It says that anybody who works with children or makes decisions that affects children's play has a responsibility to try and support them to play. Ensure what that means is we all have a responsibility to support children to have sufficient opportunities to play. I'll touch on the word sufficient shortly. So the reason for the report, again, it's just to update yourselves with the action plan and the actions we've completed progress during this year and to talk about the next steps in which we're going to be taking because the full place efficiency assessment is due to be submitted to government whilst government in June 2025. So we're about to start that process now. And what we're seeking really from this group is support the service areas within the authority, recognize the importance of children's play and the impact they have on making decisions. So when I'm working with a whole variety of departments, as I'm sure you can imagine, for members to help them understand that it's their responsibility. It's not just the responsibility of the play and use team, which is our team. They'll kindly touched on the survey that we undertake. So we undertake a survey every three years because that provides us with the baseline of what children's satisfaction is with their opportunities. Because the term sufficient is quite subjective, what's sufficient to me is different to somebody else. So we need to try and establish, go and speak to children and find out are they satisfied with their opportunities to play. So every three years, we undertake a county-wide survey with year five children to gather a baseline of what they are saying within their everyday lives. So within for added contact within the report, we touch on the 2021 survey, which as Phil noted, it was a decrease from 2018 in, decrease from 2018 in 2021 of satisfaction levels. And it was overwhelmingly, the feedback we got from children was due to the impact of COVID during 2020. It very fresh in their minds, they weren't allowed to go out, they weren't allowed out for an hour. Inevitably, that's had some consequence. We will be undertaking the survey later this month with all schools. It'll be open for all schools to complete. Very grateful to head teachers and teachers within schools who support their children to complete these online surveys to give us a really strong baseline of data about children's play. And that will inform our assessment in 2025.
• When we come to the action plan, plan then as a reminder. In '22, we established 13 priorities. I won't go through them all individually, but that as a local authorities, what we need to be aspiring to, to us as a team or anybody working towards place efficiency, their work needs to fall within those 13 priority areas. And again, I just wanted to highlight as well for 14 on the report is the assessment reaffirms that one of the key factors within place efficiency, since its inception, it's been the role of our team and its functions. So we are kind of, yes, it's a corporate duty that everybody is responsible for, but we are responsible for the coordination and pulling all that information and data together. During this year then, in relation to the action plan, I just wanted to pick up on a couple of work streams and projects, so we've secured regular play provision in the city centre, so based off the back of the city of Culturebid, I'm sure aware of the hemlash street green space that's been developed. We are now delivering weekly Saturday play sessions within providing a green space within the town centre for families to come and attend, have a bit of fun and reclaiming a bit of the town centre space for families. The shared values for the play workforce is a project that's been ongoing for a number of years now, which we've brought to this committee before now, around working with various teams and services across the department to establish a shared understanding of children's play and how we value children. Hyper-local neighbourhood research into play, so again, relating to the action plan, this is, we've been very fortunate to be involved in a research project with Gloucester University, with one of two local authorities within Wales who are doing this, it's about taking the concept of play sufficiency and applying it to a more localised level, so working with a smaller community, finding out what life is like for children and thinking of ways in which we can improve that with the support of community residents. Collaboration with the arts team and play the movie, so that was another good example of play sufficiency in action. I think three adventure playgrounds ourselves, the T-Power Arts team and seven artists will collaborate on turning the T-Power gallery into a play space for the film released, which kind of demonstrates the beauty of play, if you like, and silliness and the nonsense of play and what children get to when there's no adults kind of telling them what to do, and then also be remiss to me not to mention the training that we undertake, whether it's accredited and non-accredited, across the play workforce across rexel. I wanted to just highlight the community play schemes, so this year, 24/25, we've got 11 community councils commission us to deliver play schemes within their communities, the details within the report. What I would say is we, as a team, we deliver community youth clubs as well, and play schemes, if there are any community councils who are looking to invest in children, they're more than welcome to get into it with me, and we can have a conversation about potential models that we could adopt and have some provision within the communities, and then we've got just the facts and figures about sort of delivery of play sessions, and we're looking at over 6,000 visits during last year alone. Playday, which I'm sure you're all aware of, is the annual event we hold each year. Last year, we had over 30 partner organizations, whether that's Third Sector or Local Authority Services, who helped deliver this free event for children and people, and that event is taking place on the 7th of August this year. Phil touched upon creating a capital of play, so as part of the city of Culture of Bed, there was this aspiration to become a capital of play, which obviously we embraced, which resulted in the appendices of the report we commissioned and the actions which we are sort of undertaking as part of that, which provided with a bit of a blueprint of what a capital of play would look like. And then, finally, in terms of the main body of the report, is the 2025 Play Efficiency Assessment, so as we know, it's a statutory duty, needs to be submitted in June 2025, we're undertaking the process starting this month, and as 4.24 says, as a corporate responsibility, it's vital stakeholders are engaged, and so they do contribute towards the Play Efficiency Assessment to provide an accurate picture of the affordances of barriers that children face. But more than that, it identifies areas of strengths and weaknesses within the authority and provides us with priorities for the next three years going forward. I just wanted to highlight 5.2 in terms of the budget, so there is, as has been presented, is the action plan that we need to submit annually. We are funded, the play and youth support team are funded through grants, predominantly families first, the childcare and play grants. We do receive money from whilst government, through the Orwell's Play Opportunities Grant, however, as it says, it's quite on an ad hoc basis, so sustainability of the team is something to be considered moving forward, as we are solely dependent on grants. All our play work provision is dependent upon community council funding as well. That's what, it's local community councils funded local community provision, and I think that is about it for me. Thank you.
• Donna, would you like to add anything to that?
• Just like to thank Gareth, for his giving a really good outline of where we're up to with play. I think Gareth's point on the budget is one that I would like to reiterate. I think every time we bring a report to scrutiny, we've had this issue ongoing for many years, that the play team itself is solely funded on grants, and I think you can see from the report, the vast amount of added value they bring to recism in terms of their support to other organisations, the work in the communities, the work with schools, is absolutely massive for what is a small team, and they do excellent work in the ASMR community councils, and support in the provision that's delivered out there. I think as Gareth also mentioned, Gareth's responsible for community youth provision as well, and so youth and play provision completely rely on each other, and it was a model we introduced in 2016, which was to try to have a smoother transition from the play provision into youth provision, and that's created a whole load of other opportunities for us, really good for children, as well as they can build sustainable relationships with the staff who roam both youth and play provision. I think, and finally, I would say, the obviously recsum play team and with its other play partners, I say we've got three adventure playgrounds, there's a lot of play happening across the county, but in terms of creating space, there's more work to do, but have an excellent reputation, and it's one I know that we really value in the department, so I know it is valued by the council as well.
• Thank you, Dona, thank you, Phil, Gareth. Before I move on to questions, could I do a bit of an advert for the play team, but it provides some play in Kevin for the children who are not in school at that time, and also there's a youth club funded by Kevin Community Council, which both are well attended, and it's exceeded the expectations that we've achieved, and our numbers have gone up within the play teams in the youth club as well, year on year, so I'd promote any community council to consider bringing these teams into that area, and if they want any recommendations, then our community council clerk will surely give you that recommendation. So move on to questions now, Brian.
• Thank you, I'll give you the good path first. I think it is a very good report, but I wanna come back to a couple of things that you touched on, one city of culture. The other is the play capital of Wales, it's being Rexham. Probably the most important one from there is what you touched on in relation to grants. All this good work that's going on in the document could fall into a very big hole, because as you know, grants have become extremely difficult to get, particularly, particularly, since the boundary changes, you're probably aware of that, and I just wanna know what your plans are, and in particular to Glenborough Valley, 'cause I know they're struggling, and we wouldn't want to be losing one of them fantastic areas that we've got, and I'm looking to film now, perhaps film, I have to put his hand in his pocket to try and help some of these places, but it's a big burden just relying on grants, and not gonna be there forever, particularly now, as you said yourself, it's a struggle, and as I said, it's been made harder with the boundary changes, and I just wonder what you're looking at to probably recover is probably the wrong word, but to help the likes of Glenborough Valley, and other play areas that we've got, because I know how many people, I know how many children go through Glenborough Valley, it's the most, it's one of the most proud areas in Rexland, in Kaya, and the team there are excellent, excellent, I would never run anybody down there, they do a great job, along with their volunteers, which have many of them are parents, and it'll be a shame if it faces a difficult decision later on. Thank you for the report, it was, as I said, most of it was very good, but a lot of that work has quickly gone down the sink. Can I just touch on Glenborough Valley?
• Yeah, so I completely agree with you in regards to Glenborough Valley, so a couple of years ago, we, as the playing youth support team, were delivering the play session down at Glenborough Valley, it's got quite a long part history, hasn't it, of funding, so we stepped in as a playing youth support team to deliver the community council funded sessions two years ago. Alongside that, we worked with an organization called Rexland Playing Youth Partnership to support them to secure funding for the delivery, and what we managed to do was hand the adventure playground over to the third sector organization to deliver it. Now, I know, in recent years, they've struggled to secure external funding through various streams. I am in communication with the trustees of WY. And we are discussing plans in which to secure Glenborough Valley because it would be disastrous if we were to lose that provision. So we, as a playing youth support team, will do everything in our power to support that organization to attract further funding to sustain that playground.
• I'll just come back for that.
• I know it's difficult, but I thank you for your response. It does put a bit of light at the end of the tunnel for the likes of Glenville Valley and other play areas. I dare say there's other areas that are struggling as well. It's unfortunately, Glenville's incredible values in my ward. So anyway, thanks very much for your report.
• Well, we don't need subject. I'll come to you on to add anything to that before we move on. The screens are smaller, can't see your hand if it runs up or not.
• I can feel it, you know, OK.
• Yes, please, if I could.
• Yeah, all the two are welcome.
• Yeah, well, thank you. Well, first of all, thanks to Gareth for another excellent report. It's really good to hear all those things they do. And I agree entirely with Donna about the fabulous value for monies that they provide out of a pretty small team. I just wanted to touch on also what Donna has said about the hugely important decision with State Nothing. I think it was 2016, was it that long ago? The Rexham made to join the play use parts of two of the young people's services in Rexham together. And it's been hugely important. And actually, I always pay tribute to Donna because I think she was the main driving force for doing that and seeing how important that was. I mean, it's still work to be done on that. But we're, something I've been advocating for years and years across England Wales. And it actually makes no sense to keep them separate. But it was a, well, one of the number of decisions that Rexham has made, which really puts Rexham in the lead in Wales. And in some respects, it competes even with London, really, in terms of the strategic decisions we've made and the investment we put in it, even though as both Donna and Gareth have reminded us that that's all coming externally. So yeah, I could never thank Donna enough for having that sort of vision, really, and driving that through, which wasn't entirely popular at the time. I just want to pick up on what Brian has said because it is so, so important. I mean, there are three of its playgrounds in Wales, Glenvowie's, Glenvowie's one of them. And they're all located in areas that supply more than half of the children going into care in Rexham from those areas. And precisely those places where we need to try and prevent children going to care, not least because I'm sure none of us would say that's the best thing for children to happen to children, and sometimes it's unavoidable. But a third of a million each, on average, you can see that you don't have to invest in awful lot. If you can just prevent one child from going to care, you've saved a vast sum of money and a lot of heartache. So I agree with the gas description. It would be pretty disastrous if Glenvowie closed, but that's the most likely option at the moment because there's no funding apart from the Type I Community Council's funding, which is not enough to keep it going. Anyway, near it's an important building block for its funding, but not enough for saving it. So for the council to lose a really important preventative measure like that would be, in the circumstances we're facing, completely bonkers. I mean, really seriously just unsustainable really. So I hope we'll do all that we possibly can to make sure that doesn't happen. And certainly, yeah, I'll be doing my best to try and make sure it doesn't happen. Thank you, Malcolm. I don't think there was any questions there just to support the work. Do we move on to recommendations, most of the... Trevor, sorry. Sorry. Sorry if you can't see my hand. I'm very quiet and shy in the corner as usual. A couple of questions, you mentioned working with community councils. I can see in the report, perhaps I missed it, which community councils we're actually working out. Did you mention seven outs of 26, which doesn't seem to be very big take up? If I could just ask you on that first and I'll come back to you afterwards. Hi, yeah, it's 11 community councils. They're not listed in the report, so you're testing my memory here now. I can try in there. So we've got Kevin, Coyote Poyce, Rose and Johnstown, Exclusion, Kia Park, Gurssel, Acton, Offer, Brumbo. I can find out for you if you give me two minutes. Don't care if community council actually pay you to bring youth workers up. If you've worked, sorry, is youth work, there's another 12 community councils who contribute towards youth work as well, which obviously will carry out the one. So basically, are we going around these community councils and saying, hey, we're not working with us. We really need to change that because I think it's quite important. Would you come out to different community councils and, you know, talk to the councillors and express the need to get involved with things? Yeah, we absolutely would. As Donna mentioned with the combined team, we can cater for children aged from five up until, you know, young people with 24. You know, we've brought quite a holistic service where we can happily go meet members from local community councils to talk to them about our work and what that could mean for children in their communities. I think I'll invite you up to the Keirig Valley. We've got a three councils meeting coming up. That would be ideal for you to come and address three community councils in one go there. Just looking at page 75, we've got a list of weaknesses. Now, then one of them you mentioned that we all have a responsibility. And the last but once is there's a reliance on support from first on support by council officers rather than by department. I just want what you mean by that. I was wondering if you'd go through all those weaknesses one by one and just elaborate a little bit. Obviously funding. What are we doing to establish some funding because the grants are drying up. Are we looking for other sources of funding? Are we badgering Welsh government to get support? Are we telling them how important it is or what's been left out because they're failing to support it? We mentioned third sector, play work providers. There's lots of organizations about scouts and ground needs guides. There's no mention of those in the report. Are we working with these organizations? So yeah, have a look on page 75 and if you don't mind going through the weaknesses there and just give a brief update on each one and what we're trying to do to overcome them, please. Thank you. Okay, no problem. So if we look at the weaknesses then, so I mean, it's been discussed about the relying on Welsh government grant funding, which is diminishing. As with the second bullet point about the third sector providers are too, it's been the nature of the way in which we've been funded as a team, the way in which the tech organizations are funded. And I mean, the answer, you know, it's a golden question with, I don't have the golden answer for you in terms of where that future money is going to come from. I know from working with the open access play providers across Rexham, they are diversifying funding streams in terms of renting spaces out, which they normally haven't done in the past, looking at different funding streams, which can fit the model in which they want to deliver. So I know that that's taking place. The, there does not appear to be a clear vision of what the capital play looks like. I think coming back to when we put the bid in for city, city of culture, there was confused messaging around what play was and what a capital play would be. The purpose of this commission is to establish what a capital play would look like. So that kind of addresses that. But the confused language and understanding, at one point, it was, it was touted as part of the city of culture bid that Rexham were the capital of play. Now, that language, I don't think is helpful for us as an authority, aspiring to be a capital of play is something different than declaring to be a capital of play. So I think there was that language wasn't clear when we first did the bid, which, which now we've re-addressed. The part about reliance on support by council officers rather than department is constantly reported on through place efficiency research across Wales is that we as an apartment have got very good relationships with officers within certain departments, who we can call upon, they understand what we're trying to achieve. But the fragile nature of, well, I mean, local authorities at the moment is if that, if that officer leaves that post, we lose that connection and we're back to scratch working with those local authority officers itself. In an ideal world, we would be working with or heads of services would have an understanding of place efficiency and what it entails because people in the head to services and more strategic roles tend to be in those positions for longer. So I think that point alludes to the loss of relationship when an officer leaves a loss of knowledge, a lot of understanding of what place efficiency is. The final point about teenagers and children don't feel safe in the town centre. That was based upon research that was undertaken by play wells speaking to children and teenagers. In addition to work we do with our youth clubs is that children don't feel safe and they don't feel welcome, the majority of children. Due to many different factors which are, you know, have been reported in the press over the previous years, whether it's ASB issues, substance abuse, children don't feel, or haven't felt secure in the town centre. Whether that's changed since the writing of this report, I wouldn't be able to tell you. If I can just come back on one thing, Gareth, I had a chat with a young lad in the village one day and I engaged with him and I said, how nice it was to be having a chat. It was basically an adult conversation with a 12 year old and he said, you know, Trevor, he said, a lot of adults these days don't want to talk to us children, they just see us as a nuisance and it's something we really need to change. But thank you for your answers and we'll invite you up to our council meeting later in the year. Thank you. Donna, do you want to come back on something first? Yeah, just pick up two things actually. Just go back to your original point council of eight and the other thing that the playing youth development team can do is if we've got any with some community councils, if they've got willing volunteers who want to deliver a play or a youth provision, we can also provide training and support with that and I think we've had those incidents happen. We were a community council hasn't funded, but they've had volunteers who have supported it and may be a put in just a small amount of funding to support that. That's another option. Coming back to the grant fund and it has been a perennial problem. We did try to, in terms of core funding to the play development team back in 2016 Markham mentioned it when we went through the reshaping process that I'm sure many will remember. We did try to address this and what we were looking to do was try to put some core into the play development team so that if we ever found ourselves in a situation again where budgets were very challenging, which is obviously where we are at the moment, that we'll be able to at least keep some infrastructure around play and youth because having the play and youth development team means that you do have the ability to continue to develop. But what would be hit would be our ability to do as much as we do currently. So I'd like to think that as we look at the city of culture bid or whatever happens there that we have a real conversation really around how we do actually as a council support the delivery of play. You know, you can only do so much on grants and they do an amazing job of grants and we may continue to get grants forever more, but it is precarious as what I would say, but as I say, I think this comes up every year when we bring the report to screw to me. Thanks Donna Brian. Sorry. Thanks for that Donna. Probably makes the question I'm going to ask probably a little bit bigger. You've mentioned, you mentioned grand funding, you mentioned community councils. Have you mentioned that I'm going to mention it again the city of culture and capital capital of play. My memory plays me right if we go back to the first bit that we put into the city of culture. I think we've got to look at some council, I've got to look towards their reputation as well. And so it comes onto my main question mentioned that we're funding comes from with Kaya, not Kaya and community councils and grants. But there's like some county, but a council put into into play, apart from offices. I mean, on the ground now. Currently, the play side of our youth and play development team is funded through grants. And we have a core budget, some money going into youth, so into our community youth provision, as well as community councils contributing. So I think that's the difference is that historically there has always been core for youth provision. But historically, players always been grant, and then obviously with reducing budgets, et cetera, it has been difficult to secure funding for the play development team. And that's the reality of it. And as I said, we've discussed this year on year, and it has been difficult to be able to core fund any of the play provision. So we've got the team's running it, but the team itself, and all the play officers are co funded to deliver. Let's go back on the. Sorry. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for that. I'm with talk about city of culture. I dare say that play is probably going to play a very, very big part in the next bid. And you've got to look at the core funding. Otherwise, city of culture bit isn't going to look very good if the grant funding is basically ceasing. So you're in the seats today, but I know Phil's there. I know he's he can go and talk to people. So please, Phil, look. And I know it's difficult coming from me to ask asking to be able to look for funding to go into play, but it's one of the most important thing in places like care and other areas that provide. Plus my places like that needs to be looked at because grant funding is a day in a day in on the feet. Thanks, Brian. Are there any non committee counselors want to ask a question before I move on to recommendations. Anybody? No. Okay. Has anyone got any recommendations or shall I read out the scribble. Somewhere in the recommendations that should be touching on the funding. If you if I read it out. Okay. Item six recommendations. We the safeguarding communities and well being scrutiny committee thank officers on the lead on the lead member for this report. We know the improved amount of children taking part in the surveys year on years since 2012. Also, the satisfaction ratings are excellent considering the recent pandemic. We ask officers to do everything possible. To keep the Grembro Valley pay scheme, they're going concerned to maximize the number of children allowed to play there. Also, within the recommendations, would you please consider the involvement of elected members in any consultation you may need within their wards. Is that acceptable? Where? In the Grembro Valley? Well, I figured it affects all such a Grembro Valley. I think it affects all play to be quite to be to be fair. Okay. Any particular suggested wording that you would want. It's going back to what you're saying in relation to Grembro Valley. But for officers to go back and look at the issue of call from the words that affect, they know what I mean. You're happy about it. So, I added to the part two of it, we ask officers to do everything to keep the Grembro Valley pay scheme. I'm going concerned to maximize the number of children allowed to play there and ask WCBC to include core funding as part of this ongoing scheme. Okay. Can I have a mover and seconder for that, please? Moved, seconded. All those in favour, please show. That's unanimous. Thank you very much. Everybody will change places now and bring in the social services. We'll see you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you very much, Chair, and good afternoon to all committee members. The purpose of this report this afternoon is to provide this committee with an update on the progress made in relation to the duty on this local authority under Section 22 of the Child Care Act 2006, which requires local authorities to ensure, as far as is reasonably practical, that sufficient childcare is present to meet the local needs of parents. The most recent childcare sufficiency assessment was shared with this committee, almost two years ago now, the full childcare sufficiency assessment is produced every five years, and the action plan, which is derived from the report, is reviewed annually. Today, we share an update on the action plan that outlines the progress made to date by the departments. So the action plan outlines what is being done to meet the needs around the six areas of accessibility, flying start, launch medium childcare, recruitment and retention, sustainability and out of hours childcare. As you can see, there's a breadth of work occurring to support these goals. That's not to say there are not challenges we face with less funding available for the local authority and other partners to support the sector. It becomes even more important that all partners continue to work together. The strength of the partnership that exists in REX and provides confidence that the work of the action plan can continue and facilitate opportunities for creative solutions to be explored. Continuation of working towards the aims in the action plan will support the childcare sector through these challenging times, and will hopefully ensure that REX and has a sustainable childcare market to enable ample childcare questions, childcare spaces to be available. So happy to take any questions with me this afternoon, on my left, we have Rian Thomas, who you're all familiar with, the senior head of children services. Also, Joe's, we have Rebecca Roberts, who's the prevention and service development lead. And also, we have Lisa Atherton, who's the family information service assistant manager. So they're all on hand to answer the questions within the report. Do you like a voucher? Rian, would you like to say anything or any of the other officers before we start? Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I'm going to bring in Becky, who was written the report alongside Lisa. And just to go through just key elements from the action plan is you'll see those two documents in front of you both the report on the action plan. The action plan is what provides more detail to the board today in relation to what we are doing and the breadth of kind of work being undertaken. But is it also outlined? It's a number of the challenges that face the sector at the moment. I know there's a sector that continues to be stretched and under a lot of pressure since COVID. And that is really important that this action plan is used new to light effectively to ensure the stability of the market going forward. As childcare is fundamental and ensuring that parents can return to work with that early education for children and promoting the issues that we have been seeing within society around speech and language and abilities play. This is the first step of that for children before going into the statutory educational state. So I'll bring in now, Becky, who will be able to provide a little bit more of an overview. Yeah, so as Rihanna's indicated, there are quite a number of challenges within the childcare sector currently. And I mean, those were present prior to COVID has exacerbated a lot of those challenges. But what I wanted to really highlight was the work that's been going on within the team really to try and address some of these challenges and what we've been able to do on a local level to try and support the sector more effectively. So in some of the initial elements on page four of the action plan, you'll see that in regards to childcare supply, our numbers have actually remained relatively static within rex and which is quite an achievement over in comparison to other local authorities. Now, where you see there has been a small decrease in numbers that's usually associated with, for example, childcare settings that operate on one school site amalgamating to become one childcare setting. So it might seem like a decrease in provision, but actually that provision has been maintained. It's just that that registration has become one registrations opposed to two. And you'll also see there with the child minders that we had a slight decrease, but again, the team are working with five pre registration child minders. So hopefully those child minds will be back on board with us. And we will, again, have topped up that provision. Some of the other areas as well that the team have been working with. So again, don't want to talk too heavily on grants, but we are aware that the funding available to us as a local authority to support childcare settings with elements such as additional support workers to support children with additional needs. That funding, it's not sufficient for what we have available, but what we're trying to do is to look at what other avenues are out there. So the team of people working really, really hard to work closely with welfare rights, for example, to look at what other funding alternatives could be available for those childcare settings access or those parents to access to ensure that there is provision available for their young people. We're also looking at what training opportunities we can have. We have available and what we can provide as a team to support settings with strategies and embed impacts best practice. So it's not always necessarily the need to have a one to one support worker. It might be just about changing some elements within that setting to make it more accommodating for that young person and adapting. You know, the ways that the staff in the settings might interact with those young people to help to support with that. Another element that I really wanted to kind of highlight as well is the close working relationships that the team have developed with other internal organizations. So flying start, for example, we've got a huge work expansion plan ongoing with flying start, but we work really, really closely with their pewson and the other flying start colleagues so that we can work alongside one of the other to make sure that that can be rolled out effectively across the maximum. We also work really, really closely with our education colleagues, other education colleagues, but also in particular with our early years. And colleagues as well. But in addition, we've also worked really, really hard to develop working relationships with external partners. So, again, you'll see through the report that we work really, really closely with representatives from column. So that will be the early years team, the midi-admaethrin, PACI, NDNA and clovii plant. And it's really, really key that we have that close working relationship so that we can continue to support our child care settings effectively across the board and also to tap into their resources. As again, we've highlighted grants of a concern really within this sector, but we're trying to establish what else is out there that we can use effectively to continue to support the sector if funding is required. One of the areas where we do have a significant amount of grant funding is in with the capital program. So originally that was linked in with the child care offer, that we actually lobbied our government in regards to that because originally that was specifically for three to four-year-olds. We teamed up with our colleagues within all the local authorities and with the column partners and said, well, that's quite a narrow age range. There are children outside of that age range that really do need to have access to some of this funding to what child care settings needs to have access to some of this funding to support children of a wider range range, so either younger or older after school clubs, for example. So you'll see there that the team have supported with quite a significant portion of funding. Sorry, I've now scrolled too far down my page and I've lost. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so you'll see that the team have supported in the last financial year with 60 applications from child care settings with a total of 525,606 pounds being awarded to child care settings. And those are across the board so that can be child minders, it can be nurseries, it can be after school clubs, wraparound provisions, we aim to support the wider sector in terms of that with that funding with access to that funding. In addition, we're also trying to keep our training directory access to our training courses at a reasonable level. We're very conscious of the cost of living and the increased demands on the sector in terms of their sustainability and what they can afford. But also they have their own duties under the national minimum standards to ensure that their staff are appropriately trained, and we want to ensure that they're able to maintain the quality of their provision as well. So we look very, very carefully at our training directory and again we work in collaboration with flying star early education and the early is a lent team to establish what is. What are the best options we also work very closely with the play team as well. And we revise that training directory every year. We will have a look at the priorities within the sector to establish what we need to take forward. But we also ensure that we maintain those mandatory training options as well and try and show that those are kept at an appropriate level in terms of costs. So they maintain that affordability. And in relation to Welsh medium childcare, we work very, very closely with Midyard Methrin. But again, we look at options of how we can ensure we can act effectively and actively promote Welsh medium childcare within Raxam. Some of the things we've done is we've worked very closely with Coli Cambria because we're very conscious that some of the anecdotal information that's come back to us is that some young people that are looking to move into childcare don't necessarily have the confidence in their Welsh language skills to work within a childcare setting. So some of the things we did was to ensure that when we've attended job fair events, we have had a Welsh speaking table. So we've utilized staffing within flying star and early education and Midyard Methrin on those tables. So they've been able to have those informal conversations and kind of develop that confidence within those young people within the college. So that they have that awareness of what their skills would need to be in terms of their Welsh language. So hopefully we can help to support them, to filter them in through to work within Welsh settings within Raxam. I think I've covered everything that I wanted to say, but if anyone's got any questions, please do ask them. Open it up to committee members first, any questions from anyone? I've got a couple of questions, if no one else has. On the top of page 41, it says about recruitment and retention and that there are 16 job vacancies. What is the turnover of people and more qualifications are required for these jobs to be filled, please? 15 your page. Yeah, no, that's fine. So in terms of those qualifications, it will be very independent on the settings. All the settings within Raxam, they are individual settings, they own their own businesses. You'll be like, some of them may be charity-based, some may be self-employed, some may be a limited company. So in terms of those vacancies, it'll be dependent on the job requirement. It may be a level three in CCLPD, child care learning, play and development, or it might be a level five. It just depends on the requirements of the position. For example, with the inflinestar, the requirements within that post will be slightly higher than they are within a universal provision. And then you mentioned problems with funding. What's the mainstream of funding that you get now? Is it wealth government or is it whether you answer the question, please? Yeah, so our main funding streams are wealth government funding streams. So a lot comes through the likes of families first. We do have some funding that comes through the child care offer. We have, in the last two years, we have lost two funding streams that were available to us that we were using to support the sector. So one was the early years integration fund, which we found out at Christmas was going to be stopped. And the year previous, we lost the child development fund, which again was another funding stream that we were utilizing to support the sector. But what we have done is try to look at how we can maintain what we have within the team. So as soon as we were made aware of the cuts in certain funding streams, we looked at how we can streamline certain things. So for example, with our training, we utilize some of the funding to develop an online e-module so that we could maintain that as a training option within the team in the longer term. Because we were aware that we weren't going to be able to commission another service to provide that or we weren't going to be able to necessarily have a member of staff that would be able to provide that. But we didn't want to lose that as an option for the child care sector. Thank you very much. How come I didn't see him sorry. Yeah, I've already split it up. So, yeah, I just wanted to ask about the, how sure we are that that's important. The qualification of how effective this is, is spread to the most, the poorest, the most honorable families. I know that flying start is very deliberately aimed at that and, to a large extent, early entitlement. But the potential closure of of sparkles nursery in car park is major event. And obviously, that's come out after this report has been written out, I guess. But I'm quite concerned, that's a major loss to the whole field really, early years. But in general, there's, I mean, the reason for having flying start and so on is the recognition that the poorest families find it most difficult to afford childcare and makes it more difficult for them to take part in employment and so on. But also, other ways in which it supports young families. So, I just wondered how confident I use it. There is a sufficient support in areas and with families that experience difficulties and, and considerable policies that we, we are supporting them equally with other families. Better off. I think, Malcolm, the, the team put a lot of effort into their social media campaigns to call out and contact parents directly through a number of means through letters through the portal. And so there's a number of ways and offer that support, likewise to the providers as well. And we have regular provider events. I think there's one plan for next week. And that's an opportunity to share those issues. For those though, it's, there is also an element of us making sure that providers come to us when they need that support. And when they've got issues that they come to us in a timely manner to ask for that support. Because that's how we can, we are the most effective really, isn't it? It's about ensuring that people come forward in relation to the support that we provide to families. We offer a number of dropping sessions and we're in the wellbeing hub. We're in a number of areas. We, we publicize that on Facebook's with a picture of the team. Because we know it can dawned and it can be to go to a new place and think, who am I looking for? So we put a picture of a member of our staff team with their name and welcome them into those areas. As to people's communities. So in relation to how we're progressing that, I feel that the team are quite robust in that area. But if there is, if there are ways within people's communities, within people's wards that you feel that we're not seen as much, then please do let us know. We are currently working with our government on some new marketing campaigns and we're a pilot area alongside another local authority and Wales to get us out there even more than that at the moment. So that we're free and there's a number of free resources that we're going to be given or have been given that we are getting out into our communities at the moment. But it's a two-way communication style as well. I wanted to say, and we are relying on providers to come to us when there is an issue. Come to us when parents are struggling to pay their fees and we will work with families to look at, is there a grant funding, is there additional support for them and how can we support them? So we do require people to come to us as well. Thank you, Ian. Is there anything you could send out to Councillors who have social email accounts that they could advertise the service on and within community councils as well? Absolutely, yes. We've got lots of information that we can certainly share amongst our Councillors and among community Councillors. And just to add really to what Rhianne has said, that we do get out and about into the community as much as we can. And we do link and contact with all sorts of different organisations and places. So we do do outreach in the likes of our health clinics. We go into schools a lot as well. So we're willing to go anywhere and everywhere that will have us to ensure that parents are getting the support at the earliest opportunities so that we can ensure that in terms of support of particularly around child care or anything really, that they are getting that information at the earliest possible points. And thankfully, as Rhianne mentions there, we are part of the world government pilot around marketing at the moment, which means that we are potentially in places that we wouldn't usually be. So backs of buses on radio, a leaflet drops through people's letterboxes. And we've got a range of resources that we're able to share amongst communities as well. So yes, thank you. Just to add as well, just to add as well, just in relation to information and where parents and families can access sources of support. I just wanted to bring in there about our award winning wellbeing portal as well. So that's an online digital service that parents families can access and it's there. They'll be able to tell their story just the ones and then they'll be able to access whatever relevant sort of support systems that they need through that. Thank you very much. So, please ensure that you send the information out to all Councillors and all community Council plaques, please. Are there any non committee members got a question? May Derek. I can't see yellow hand Trevor sorry. Trevor not for the first time you're on the edge and now you put yourself on mute. Always live in life on the edge Derek. The page 39 looking at some of the training courses that we've done. I noticed there's quite a lot more people than the pediatric first aid than the safeguarding. I just wondering if we're confident that everybody that needs to do this safeguarding courses are doing them. And I'm just wondering who took the drama course because it seems to be the most popular course in the book. And I think officers would like to comment on the courses and we make ensure that all the people delivering the childcare and taking the appropriate courses. Thank you. So, in relation to the courses what I will say is that we were able to utilise some Welsh government funding to run a lot of these courses at a significantly subsidized rate. So, in regards to the discrepancy under normal circumstances, our pediatric first aid course is our most expensive course. So, I think why we've seen such an increase in figures in regards to that one is because the starkest settings have taken the opportunity at the really heavily subsidized course fees and booked as many of their staff on as possible, which is really, really positive to see. In regards to the drama based safeguarding training. So, that's not a statutory training but what it was was actors acting out scenarios and putting safeguarding concerns into real life experiences. It's a really involved course. What we've actually been able to do with that as well is have a recording from that so that the afterthought team are currently developing that forward. So, again, we'll be able to utilise that moving forwards. So, while safeguarding, it's imperative that all childcare settings and all childcare staff have that safeguarding training. We're very conscious that while a lot of the staff understand the concept and understand the reality, when they're trying to put it into context, when they're presented with certain scenarios, they're finding it. They can be very often be, Well, what if I'm wrong? And we want to ensure that the question is, Well, what if I'm right? So, by providing this type of training, be like providing those real life scenarios and having that real interactive experience, what we're hoping is that that will support those childcare settings and the staff within them to develop the confidence in regards to what they need to do when those safeguarding concerns arise. And just to come in and just to say that that is a way of working, that the safeguarding board are actually exploring in relation to how we take forward safeguarding training with certain other local authorities using VRAs as a way of training strategy social workers, because actually it provides a far more real life scenario and has a better outcome in relation to practice at the end. So, I think the name doesn't help in the understanding of it, but it's a different way of learning, and particularly for a cohort of professionals who maybe don't understand safe gun, it's not their bread and butter and can become overwhelmed. This really delivers it in a great way for them. Just to follow on from that, this was the training that we delivered last year. We do have our training program again for this year, where we do have a range of safeguarding training again on the agenda. And we are confident that the sector will have kind of all undertaken the training that they need to meet the national minimum standards in the timeframe that they do. And it is worth pointing out as well that we are not the only training provider to settings can access their training from whoever they want to. And it's just that we're able to offer it as a subsidized rate. Okay, thank you very much. Any more questions from any counselors at all? I can't see any hands up. So, if not, we'll move on to recommendations. I've written out a recommendation, if you'd like to listen to it. We, the safeguarding communities and we'll be being scrutiny committee, thank the officers and lead member for the positive report today, considering the opposite obstacles faced by the department. And look forward to a future report maintained in the present levels of service provided throughout the country, brother. Is that agreeable to people or propose on seconder proposed second? All those in favor, please show. Thank you, that's unanimous. Thank you, officers. I would, well, enjoy what you can of the sunshine that's left. Okay, thank you.