Transcript

Welcome, Mr. Davis. Thank you. Glad to be here. This must be one of the first committee meetings you've attended, I would guess. Didn't happen last week, I think. Ah, yeah. I think it's a particularly important meeting, so it's good to be here. Yeah, for things up to date of happening now and also because of history as well, really. So, on other apologies, so, is our finance director actually an apology or is it just a... Xena is an apology, David, that is correct, so I apologise for the duff information, but no, Ian is here, Xena isn't. Right, and do... Apologies from Councillor Sadiewell. Councillor Sadiewell, yeah, okay, thank you. And is there any more apologies? David, I believe you've got apologies from our boss, so from our young people, but Laura Feeney has got a update that they wanted to provide to us and I can't see anyone from our foster carers on, but they may join us later. Yeah, we were uncertain whether they would be attending or not, but I think they didn't attend the last one either, so if they don't attend this time, we'd probably need to make a redoubled effort to try and get someone along and... I'd, in fact, maybe try and find out any reasons behind it or something like that. Okay, so, as I just flick the agenda up in front of me, we've got, this is where declaration of pecuniary interest, where any councillor, unless you're not a councillor, just doesn't appear to apply to you, has got any pecuniary interest to declare, please do so now. I'll give you three seconds, I don't hear anything, I will say not, that's great, I don't have anything to declare either, so we're going to the next one, which is the minutes of the previous meeting, which was held on the 15th of January 2025. I'm assuming that you've all read those and can remember what was in there, is there anything in there that needs amending or missing or anything else? No, David, but just having had a look at the minutes, I do think the Lambeth foster carers were represented at the last meeting. They were? Oh, right. They were, and I can see Cathy's nodding as well, I just had a quick check, so. Oh, they were, I'm just hoping from reading it, did it say there was, does minutes actually say they were there, does it actually? I can see they're recorded on the minutes, but we'll double check, my recollection is the foster carers were at the last meeting. Yeah, okay, okay, that's fine then, yeah, okay, my faulty memory, so. Right, and so, if you've got nothing else to actually put onto those meetings there, can we actually, someone propose those meeting, who was there, to accept as a true record? Yeah, is that my acclimation? Yeah, okay, unless anybody objects. Okay, thank you. Next, we've got the matters arising action tracker, which I believe Cath can actually share that on the screen. I can do, yes, you have the action tracker in your minutes as well, and obviously it looks very small. It doesn't mean we don't have actions from the board, but it does mean that when they turn green, we then take them off after we've reported to the, to the corporate parity boards. You'll see four actions. Can you see my screen? Yeah, yeah, so. The first action arose because we presented the bright spot survey from our children looked after, where members of the board wanted to look further into promoting contact with siblings when they were in care. So we're reviewing our contact policy at the moment to align it with our practice guidance, and we've also got our child friendly leaflet that we give to all our children and young people when they do become looked after. So that they understand their rights and what it means to be looked after as well. Siblings have contact when there's an adult there as well. Sometimes it's not appropriate for siblings to have contact regarding safeguarding issues as well. But we do try and promote it where there is no risk, and I know Teresa and her service at the moment are really looking at that and promoting that. But we will give a further full report on that and include data in it as well. It's future corporate parenting board. And the next one was around a health summary that's all been circulated now and it came with the board papers out to all members. And that's the health summary that our children have to get when they become care leavers and really summarizing the annual health checks. And we are working towards looking at our health passport for our care leavers to boss requested all the dates to be sent out. They have got the dates. Obviously, after this date, we're waiting until full council to agree further dates for the board. So that's been actioned. And also our corporate director, Andrew, has met with participation officer and other officers as well to discuss the mentoring schemes that we have and scoping them out. Not only commissioned through the council, but within the volunteering community sector as well. And we have sent out for a full scope of these and the spreadsheets out with colleagues at the moment to get a better understanding of the wider mentoring schemes and the volunteering community and faith sectors too. And so they're all in progress. Yeah, council oxy, if you don't mind me adding on the mentoring, I think what we we've come to the conclusion. We do have a good offer. It is a varied offer quite bespoke through either the virtual school. There's support from Alison and colleagues in terms of young people and how they're moving into employment and training. We've got specialist mentoring for our unaccompanied asylum seekers. It is about how we pull that all together and communicate it clearly so that young people have an understanding and can buy in as well as to what's on offer. That's great. Does anybody have any questions to ask on that at all? Or any comments? It's great to see that we're tracking actions and that we're keeping on top of them. Okay. So moving swiftly on. Next is the corporate parenting service update, which is on page 9 to 10 on your agenda. Okay, so yes, we we looked at highlights and very succinctly, you know, sort of developments within the service. So, you know, for care leavers, we've looked at, you know, our offer to care leavers who are parents and develop the leaflet for those care leavers outline and what their entitlement around, you know, being parents. We're working with children centres to ensure and assure ourselves that indeed the take up for support for our care leavers is actually happening. And if it isn't as we would like it, then of course, you know, how are we promoting and supporting our care leavers to do this? So that is really going well for our care leavers in prison. We've done a lot of work here to promote their welfare, but to continue to ensure that that is the case. So we've we've looked at developing protocols, particularly with with probation, looking at our again our offer for care leavers coming out of prison. When we go to see them, we're preparing for them as we would do for our children. How do we present our offer to them? What are how are we preparing for for them? So so so we're developing those protocols and with with with our probation. But importantly, what we've done is made good links with with some of the prisons and we're developing and strengthening those links so that we are in touch with them to ensure that we know of our young people. people and at each point in time we are able to access the officers to check on our young people, but also to ensure that our peers are seeing our young people consistently. So that that that bit of the work around that is it's really going well for health. You know, we we've talked about the health prescriptions for a long time and take up is is really again, you know, moving at at a at a pace. Looking at we're looking at an app at the moment with our care leavers around how, you know, using that to kind of access the the the the health prescript. Prescriptions sorry. But but but I think here what what is what is important is, you know, we did assure ourselves about our the health summaries because some of the questions that we were put to me the last time was about. Yeah, you know how many health summaries is this really happening? So Evan and I Dr Johnson and I put put our heads again really worked hard here to look at that process, which is what you have. But that wasn't all we went even further. We did go back to look at a number of of of children to see if those health summaries were on. And yes, you know, for all of the children we looked at this health summaries are on and we've assured ourselves that there is a mechanism to track all of those health summaries. So health are relatively happy and we are happy and we're working hard to kind of continue to to to strengthen that. And and the other area that we're really working hard to strengthen is our SDQ process. And again, that we've brought that to our health oversight group and and we will be monitoring through that contextual safeguarding. We have sorry with your agreement. Council Roxy before we move on. Would you welcome maybe hearing from Dr Johnson as a partner around health? I don't know if Evan wanted to add anything. Yeah, sure. On that particular thing. Yeah. Sorry, Evan. I'm racing. No worries. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you, Andrew. We've met, Teresa and I met before this meeting and everything is fine. We're completely agreed on on the same page with this. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. In terms of contextual safeguarding, again, we do have the multi-agency safety plans for our children and young people. And again, we monitor this through our our performance. We also have our 18 plus risk management group, which which I chair. And you know, Kath is is there with with with me and we monitor spending some of those children. And importantly, we've made, you know, good links with our work group and the services and offer for our care leavers around domestic abuse. So that that again is going well. Keeping in touch. This is a critical point, you know, for all of us. So we have, you know, just over 600 young people who are care leavers and some of them are allocated. Some of them well enough, they, you know, they sort of moved on to to look after themselves. But of course, we do have that duty of care to keep in touch with them. And so we spend time yearly and six monthly sent letters out to again and say, you know, how are you like any good parent? Do you need anything else? By the way, this is our offer. Remember, if you need support, you can always come back. And again, that is that is going very, very well. What we've done in terms of children looked after is we looked at when I started here seven months ago and we've been looking at and monitoring the relationships that social work has built with our children and the level of contact. So for looked after children, you will all know that nationally, you know, we would see our looked after children. If everything is going well, it will be six weekly. We in Lambeth are taking a stance that as copy parents, we want to see our children more. And so we brought that down to four weekly visits to see our children and young. Now, of course, that is a challenge. Some of our children are placed in different places. But, you know, the important thing here is we're saying our children matter, that we want to know about them more and that we want them to build those relationships they need to build in a very, very strong way with their foster carers. And that is going really, really well with the social workers and the visit regularity. We have started to look at our children who have had, you know, three or more placement moves. And yes, we do have 46 children within our looked after cohort. Having said that 46 is too many in terms of changes. We know, you know, some of the reasons for the changes. And we are working with the children, young people and providers and, you know, the multi-agency group to make sure that we limit and minimize the changes for children. We know that from the surveys in the past, children have said one of the things that they detest is the inconsistency and the moving placements after placements. So this is very much to the centre of our minds here in ensuring that placement stability for children is the first thing on our minds and making sure those placements are held together. And with that, you know, we put stability meetings institutes. So, you know, when a placement is breaking down, the job of the social worker and everybody involved, including me, is to come together very quickly to look at how best we can support that placement. And if it is not supportable, then of course we will move. But how do we manage that move and how do we build bridges within that placement to ensure that we hold things together and support those children and young people? So, you know, those are things that we are very much and is very much to the fore of our minds at the moment and certainly as AD for co-preparenting and taking lead in many of these areas. What I have to the fore of my mind is, yes, our children, I always say they are at the centre of everything that we do. What do we want for them is the best, you know, for them. And all these areas are areas that we can improve the life chances of those children and young people. Thank you very much, Theresa. Thank you. Sorry, David, can I just add in relation to the placement moves and you know this, Theresa and I won't say for one minute that 46 is not more than we want. But you do have to unpack the data, as you know, in terms of the national transfer mechanism. So we will have children by the very system. So where we've got unaccompanied asylum seeking young people who present to us, we then need to arrange when we're over our national transfer numbers that those children may move to another local authority, which involves another move. The way we worked with this board, as you recall, because we didn't want children staying in police stations in inappropriate environments. We worked very hard to get local carers, volunteers come forward who we then approved to offer that kind of emergency care. So it's almost unpicking it. The devil's always in the detail. And we also know for a number of our looked after children, it is where they've been going through parental assessments. So the child may well have had to move, but they've moved with their parent. So it may be that they've come into care, then gone into a mother and baby placement. If that placement is then being successful, that child has then moved into the community with their parent. But that all three counts as a move. The moves that we're worried about, Theresa, as you're right, it's where it's showing that there's instability in the placement. There's a placement breakdown. And that's why we're working very closely with the RO service in terms of trying to make sure we have those placement stability and disruption meetings. So we learn. But thank you. And thank you, David. I was going to say, just before I bring Councillor Banton in, it'd be great to have an appropriate time to see if there's a breakdown, breakdown of DAT 46, or some way of breaking it down and giving an idea of which ones, how many we should be concerned of and how many we shouldn't. But Councillor Banton. Yeah, thank you for that. My concern is with 46, are those continuous moves? Is it because some children may have difficulties why they keep being moved? Is that, would that account for some of the figures? May I come in? Yeah, so Theresa, go for it. Yeah, so that would account for some of that. Yeah, because yes, there are unfortunately situations where there are difficulties with children settling in placements. So that that will account for that. But as we, you know, I think, Councillor, you alluded that a breakdown of the numbers and some of the reasons for the moves that would be useful for us to present next time. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I've got Robert there. Yeah, sorry, Councillor Banton. Yeah, I was just gonna add, that's what Andrew's speaking about. And I think the difficulty when you just present something cold like this, for us, we need a narrative. And I think there's a lot to look at there and it won't all be, you know, just thinking, OK, there's, you know, placement is broken down, all these things. Actually, it can be an array of many things. So I think you're absolutely right. And that's the problem often with data, why we want a narrative, isn't it? Because we need to understand that. So, yeah, sorry. Would it help maybe Councillor Roxley if we also bought maybe a case study? Because I can think of one young person and Bob and Theresa, you'll know exactly who I'm talking about, who has had multiple moves, more than three moves. But then you can see where some of the issues are around placement breakdown, violence, contextualised safeguarding moved because they're not safe within the area or there's been a threat to them. So we can set some things out so you get a sense of the range of what we deal with. Yeah, maybe a couple of one where it's of no concern whatsoever and one where there is probably concern or something like that. Yeah, OK. And have we got any more questions, comments or whatever on that report there, which is quite a lot in there. We've got Councillor Adam. No, I think, I think she's frozen. I think, oh, you're frozen at once. Yeah, I have got a great internet connection, but when it's ready. Can you hear me now? A bit distorted, but yeah, sure. You can hear me? Yeah. OK, yeah. So when it's ready, if we could have, if we could have that, if you have to have a look of those young people who are in prison service of what their rights and entitlements are, when it's ready. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. OK. Councillor Adam, I may be wrong. And if it's helpful, Councillor Oxy, I think, and Kath will correct me, have we included that in the corporate parenting newsletter that went out to all members? And if we didn't, maybe that's what we can do. So all members can see as part of their corporate parenting responsibilities. Will do. Will do. I think it, I think it was. I don't think it was. It was. But we can recirculate and it has already been received by some of our young people in custody and we're getting positive feedback as well from the content of it. So yeah, we'll circulate that out. Is that OK, Councillor Adam? We lost part of what you said there, but. I don't. Yeah. You know, just wanted to have a look at that leaflet if it's available. Sure. No problems. I've got Councillor Banton again. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. In the contextual transitional safeguarding, the violence against women and girls services that you're working with Gaia, how many young people who, you know, that need that? I mean, are they aware of coercive control? Are they getting that support? Because some people will be in denial because they're in love, so they will just stay in something. So so interestingly, today I was talking to Rose Parker, the lead lead officer there, and the work we are going to certainly are going to be doing going forward. It's looking at again the numbers of young people who are actually accessing that. So if you say how many at this moment, I have a figure in my mind, but also once I've picked up, but I haven't got specific. I haven't tracked this as in number of referrals, so I'm going to be doing that going forward. And again, I can bring that information back here next time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Any more questions or comments? Councillor Oxley. Councillor Oxley, could I just add around the young people in prison around the corporate parenting newsletter around the extended offer from the independent reviewing officers? So out of 19 young people who are in the secure estate, so they may be remanded or they may be serving a sentence. We have 19 young people aged 18 to 21 and 17 of them have agreed to take up that offer. So IROs are going in to visit those young people and conducting reviews of their pathway plan as well. So again, it's more oversight. I was talking to an IRO yesterday where the PA and the YJS and the IRO, they're the only people that visit that young person in Feltham. So I think that's, that's been an important development and we'll bring back to the board, Theresa, what the impact of some of that work has been as well. Yeah. Okay. Councillor Radham, let's come back in there. Yeah. Yeah. I see you a lot better now. I hope they can hear me better as well. I just wanted to find out about those care leavers who are parents. Just curious, how do we know which ones have become parents? Because not all care leavers have got PAs and it's only those who are in education and stuff. How do, how we know who has got, who's had a baby? Like how do we manage to find out that? We do. We get to know all of them. And another thing is, do we still commission Homestart Lambeth? Do we still work closely with them? Because they're, if they do, they're a brilliant organisation to support those who have got children under five, to, you know, to link them with children's centres, other community services for parents, not just young parents, but parents in general who are struggling, you know, like for various things. So this is a very useful resource. So I was wondering if we do have links with Homestart Lambeth to support our care leavers who have become parents to link them up to community services. So to answer, how do we know those who become parents? Now for all of our care leavers known to us, they are all allocated to a PA. Yeah, we do not have care leavers who do not have allocated PAs. They either have a allocated PA or there will be an allocated social worker. So that one we know. And we then we provide that support. In terms of Homestart, Kath, you may be able to help me there as I am still finding out, you know, some of these resources. Yeah, that we will signpost many of our young people in terms of the resources. We have one I was just dealing with an expectant mum today with the PA and the team manager linking in with the health visitor and us planning forward, you know, when baby comes, what next steps. Yeah, so we do that bit, you know, well. Theresa, I think Brenda might be always about to answer the question for you. We have with Theresa's service, we've completed around 24 audits in March of young parents who are care leavers. So we're grandparents for these children or children to be. And I think that has thrown up that there are there's more we can do, isn't there, Theresa, to connect young people? Not obviously not all of our care leavers live within the borough, but many of them do live within South London. So we do know there's more we can do to be clear of the offer. And that's the work that Theresa's leading with Kath, making sure that we can publicise what that pathway is for young parents. And we don't just mean young mothers, we mean young fathers as well, including parents who may not actually be able to care for their children full time. They're still parents, even if they don't reside with their children. So we still have really good service from HomeStart and our commissioning team have also commissioned additional new services from HomeStart for parents around parents with mental health needs as well. And we still have the offer from St Michael's Fellowship where we commission young parents outreach and that goes beyond the borough of borough boundaries into South London. And we're recommissioning at that moment. And in fact, Kath, one of the young people that you audited is going to help us with some other recommissioning work, which is really positive. So we think there's more to do, but I think we understand the profile of our young parents a lot better now, Theresa, don't we? And now we understand what they need, what's available. We can work out where the gaps are and where we can meet those needs better. I suppose with your permission, David, just to round off, we also do through our health visiting. So again, it's about where young people are identified as being care leavers or care experience. So we've got the enhanced health visiting path again, and you may want to comment. We provide an increase, so an additional setting up home allowance for our care leavers who are parents. I do think you're right, Brenda and colleagues, the challenge. I think what we're not as good at is tracking fathers and it's about how we would know or have that knowledge. So again, those keeping in touch letters that Theresa mentioned, it's writing out to the young people where we're not in contact with them, saying this is support for available and how we signpost them. But I think we've got quite a robust offer. But again, is that communication that take up young people are rightly sometimes quite wary about coming forward to us. Their own experience of being looked after means they don't necessarily want to engage with us once they become a parent and their own fears around what that might mean for the future. care of their own child. So it's how we build some of those relationships and again, the importance of those social workers and those PAs. But with your help, and I think again, I have put in the link to the corporate parenting newsletter. The leaflet is in there and we will continue to share with you also the leaflet and the guidance we're trying to do for our care leavers who are parents. Thank you Andrew. I think we sort of well covered most of the things in there in the report. Unless we've got any more comments or questions. I'd just like to thank Theresa for a report that's managed to definitely get us talking and discussing some really important points. So now we go on to I've forgotten where this I've seen this before this you said we did I think I've seen it in the commercial world was it or something like I can't remember where it came from. Yeah. Lambeth born and made David. It's it's lambeth born and made. Oh I'm born and made. Oh well you know my son although he doesn't fit him anymore has a baby grow that says made in Lambeth on it actually. And there's a little lamb actually. We shall copy him for the payment then on the copyright. I think he actually got it when we register you know when you register a child in Lambeth if you buy so many copies of the birth certificate you get a free made in Lambeth baby grow. Yeah. So I've got some very good marketing there to hang up the income. Anyway, you said we did. I don't actually want to get that up on the screen Cap. I will do. And this is only a quick one from us but we thought it important obviously VOS, our children in care counsellor, equal members and active members of the board. They do ask some really, really great and challenging questions for us which is fantastic. And they do have requests so we thought it was important for us to be able to feed back to our VOS members unfortunately not here this evening when they've got specific questions for us. So we're going to be adding this slide on a regular basis to the corporate parenting board. So at the last board they did say the two VOS members that were here that they weren't aware of the free prescription offer for care leavers. We took that extremely seriously. We went away. We've done further work with our personal advisors in the 16 plus service to make sure they understand who is eligible for a free prescription certificate and what is the process to get a free prescription certificate and get that information out to our care leavers. We're also looking at how best we can communicate out to our wide cohort of care leavers. Obviously our care leavers offer is online. Do young people go on the council website? Do they look at websites generally? I'm not sure they do. We are looking at the moment in different ways and that includes an app which has been developed by another local authority and we're in conversations with them around that too. And then as we mentioned in the action tracker, they didn't have the dates for the board. So as soon as those dates have been agreed at full council, CAIA will be sharing all those so that we can have a range of different members from our Children in Care Council to come to our board and give them the experiences too. So they're the two main things that Voss asked for in our response to them. Yeah, I think the full council meeting referred to there is not this, not tomorrow. It's Wednesday, one week from now. Yeah. So one week from now is the council AGM. So after then we will agree the dates so they can be put in there and I've got two people to ask questions. So I'm just gonna, you know, I've got councillor Adam first. Is there somebody who can help these young people apply for this health certificate? Because I can't imagine them being able to go on and apply for it. Say maybe when they're leaving care, like it's the first thing, you know, when they, you know, transitioning out of care, then it could be done. The PA could do it or the social worker at the end could do it. And then like there could be somewhere in the system as a reminder, like when it's a year is up, then the PA could also help them because they're just not going to do it themselves. I know that. So just if there's support like that, that's possible. If you want to jump in there, Robert. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Just checking my mics on. Yeah. Um, not only the PAs, but also we have the local offer and that's where we draw a lot of young people too. But as you say, not everybody will read that and understand that, but that's where the PA comes in and the service will sort of direct them to that. So, you know, that's something I have to say about our PAs who are very sort of dedicate to the young people that they worked at. These are important because, as you say, health is important. And I know, again, we haven't got anyone from Voss, but at the previous Vosses, I think the people, the young people who have come who are advocates have said quite clearly that's something we have to continuously promote. So you'd you would expect to see in the pathway plan, but also those those conversations need to be consistently add. So it's something trees that can just take back and make sure that we continue that because, as you say, there'll be some young people who will who will be very vocal. We'll go and ask those others may not or may not simply know how to ask. So we just need to make sure that's across the board. Do you want to come back on that, Councillor Aidan, before I move to Councillor Bouncy? Yeah, I totally agree. And is it possible? I don't know, is it doable to ask maybe in a year's time, like how many of these young people have had, have been, have got a health like that, the prescription certificate? Yeah, absolutely. Because just because you've offered to do it for them doesn't mean they will take it out. No, exactly. There will be plenty who will take it out. So if we could see how many of our care leavers have got, that certificate would be handy to know. Sure. I think Kat's going to come on that, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. It was part of our data dashboard for corporate parenting. I'm not sure it is at the moment, but we are reviewing all that. But we should put it back on so that you can see on a regular basis the uptake of our free prescriptions by eligible care leavers. OK, thanks, Kat. And I've got Councillor Banton. Yes. When you were talking about technology and apps, I think that there are organisations where I think Lambeth were probably doing something with coding and maybe helping the young people to develop an app for themselves because they know exactly what their needs are, what they would like to see. So maybe getting someone in to help them to develop the app that they can use and other young people can use, because we think that we know what they might want to see, but they do know exactly what they want. So that would be a way of also, as we are a child friendly borough, of getting the children's voice heard. Great idea. Yeah, I agree. Or at least getting their feedback on anything you might be proposing. Yeah, definitely. Indeed, we will do. And I hate to be the bureaucrat on this, but there is also the time and the cost element of it. So almost Nottingham have done some of that. So speed of implementation would lead us more down towards the Nottingham route. But you're quite right. One size does not fit all, but I'm just mindful of what we're able to do in terms of time, cost and capacity. So it may be something that we need to launch and come back and see how we build on that child friendly consultation approach. What I would suggest is helping them to apply for funding for technology. There's got to be a lot of funding out there and helping them to apply for funding for their app. So they're learning and they're also doing something, they're helping themselves. And I know that there is probably maybe something from the GLA or somewhere that they can get. Or changing lives, that fund, changing lives. That's like £20,000. So helping them to get that because that would benefit future, the children that we look after now and the ones to come. And £20,000 is a lot of money, so. Yeah, we will certainly put it to, and I think Cathy can put it to Voss. We can see whether or not with the Youth Council or others we can combine. It's the capacity to drive that. What I'm trying to make sure is we don't over promise and under deliver because that doesn't help you either. Right. Have we got any more questions or comments on that? If not, then we move on to the actual agenda items, which is agenda item number six. Vision success, children in care council, verbal update. But I think from what we've just said that we've not got, have we got someone in Voss in attendance tonight? We don't, Councillor Oxy, but I think Laura Feeney. Laura was. Oh, you mentioned that before. Yeah, so. Hi there. Hi, Councillor Oxy, how are you? Hi, everyone. I'm Laura Feeney. I'm the Assistant Director for Transformation Improvement and Performance. Forgive me, I do have a bit of a cough. I'll try and shield you from it by muting. But if I might stop flow. So yes, Jordan, who's our fantastic participation officer, has been super busy. We've had two really fantastic reach for the stars events for our over 12s, which was a very glamorous event. And then for our under 12s, we had we took over the Vauxhall city farm. So she's rightly taking some leave and and the young people didn't feel able to come without her support, which is a testament to her and how the relationship she's built up with them. But they have offered feedback and as usual, it's they don't hold anything back, which is absolutely the way it should be. So I'm going to read it out. And then what I'll do is I'll put it into the chat so that we have a record of it for this meeting. Is that OK with everybody? Yeah. OK. So what we've got is they wanted to really talk about the things that they've been busy with over the last year. So we've had the we had the bright spot survey for our children looked after. And on the 29th of January, our young people were looking at the feedback from the bright spot survey and helped to decide what actions should be taken based on what children said. This created the actions on that. You said we did child friendly leaflets, so they really helped out with that. Then we had on the 19th of February an Elevate visit in February. Visions of success. Children, young people were visited by the creative link worker from Elevate, and he looked at internship opportunities available in the digital and creative space. Five members showed follow up, scheduled follow up meetings and were supported to apply for six month internships. So that's really exciting and shows their commitment to their own learning. We had the Reach for the Stars Awards on the 29th of March, which is what I alluded to. That was for our older care leavers and children looked after, which was really exciting. Everyone liked the food particularly. We've got the Life Skills Hubs at Brixton Rec on the 2nd of April. We've had input since January from young people about how the Life Skills Hub should look and what the feel of it should be. And the first Visions of Success meeting was held there on the 2nd of April and we had a housewarming session. They've made plans to decorate the rooms and also talked about the Reach for the Stars Awards and other future events members would like to see. On the 14th of April we had the Stars at the Farm, which was our, we had over 30 children come along with their carers, siblings and friends. Barbecue, bouncy castle, dance workshops. Everyone got a medal, certificate and a goodie bag. Well, that's the children. I'm not sure the adults did get that. Coming up, we've got the Hoodminster play on the 1st of May. The Visions of Success group are very excited to go and see Hoodminster on the 1st of May with Andrew Carter. The play was written by a Lambeth care leaver and they are keen to support. So that's exciting. And this is where they don't hold back. They would very much like the next corporate parenting board meeting to be in person. The young people feel like face to face meetings make it easier to put everyone to be more open and honest. They would also like to the chance to lead the agenda for that meeting if possible. If agreed, please could a few possible dates be shared so as many members can attend as possible. So I think we would like to support our young people to do. I certainly would anyway. So I would just like to add we've had Jordan, our participation officer in place for the last six months. There was a bit of an interregnum in between participation officers and she really hit the ground running. And she's been doing an awful lot of work to hear what our children and young people are telling us and how we can improve their services. Councillor Banton, ask away, but I may not have the answers because I'm only a sad simulcrum of what Jordan would be able to tell you today. No, I just wanted to say that I attended both the Reach for the Stars Award and also I went to the farm on Monday and both were excellent events. So children had, it was amazing. Even people that came to the farm that day, you know, got blessed because there was so much food there. There was a good array. There was a lot of healthy food there that encouraged children. I was seeing children clear the, you know, the the fruit skills. That was really good and eating some of the the carrot sticks and other things that was, you know, it was amazing. They had they were able to feed the animals, pet the animals. And as soon as they came in, you were they were handed a sheet. They were handed some feed and then the younger children. So they went round and did an Easter egg hunt and there were clues there, but they were learning about the different animals, the environment, about how our food is grown because they saw them being grown in different things. And then when they completed that, they took it to the the counter and they were able to choose their Easter eggs. So, you know, the Lamb of staff, you know, hats off to them. Jordan, they did an amazing work. Everyone was safe. Everyone was happy. The parents, the carers, you know, they they had nothing but praise. And then, you know, some of them felt the ones that are outside of the borough were they were saying that they felt they wanted to give their thanks because it was worth the travel worth traveling. Their children were happy that their children and also the children that they were bringing. So we just looked lots of happy, smiling faces, councillor kind, giving out the awards. And some people were really over the out the younger ones, really excited about getting an award. So, yeah, that was brilliant. That's my feedback. Really lovely to hear. Thank you, Councillor Banton. I'll definitely pass that on. I really appreciate that. And it's that's that's great to hear. Thank you. I'm bringing Councillor Britson in there. Good evening, Councillor Britson. Thank you very much. It was just a quick one on their request around meeting in person and meeting all of us, really. And I think we've done some really successful events since I've been on the board where I think one of them was Black History Month. I'm not too sure where people shared about their identity and their background and Astrid was like a really lovely event. But I think if we can build in at least at the very minimum an annual chance for us to come together as a board with VOS, with the whole of us, not just the one or two brave people that are happy to come into this call. Then I think that should hopefully break down the barriers a little bit between the formalities of this in the room. So maybe it's a case of doing one of those formal meetings, but maybe something a bit more social afterwards, just to kind of show them we are nice and welcoming people. Yeah. Good thinking, Councillor Britson. Thank you. Councillor Banton. Yeah, it's just jogged my memory because there was a really lovely event that I attended in the town hall with Councillor Deepak Saliwal, I think of myself and it was children sharing their, their culture, their history, what they knew. And that was, that was really, yeah, that was a really good event. And all the young people seemed really happy. I bought this massive 10 generational family tree thing that I found and allow some people to photograph it because there might be some people, someone in there might be from their generational. Quite a lot of us, Councillor Banton. I mean, I was there and there's loads of us there, not just yourself and Councillor Saliwal. Andrew Parton was there. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. So yeah, so some sort of... There's some great sweets I remember. Yeah. Oh yes. So some sort of be it an event or I don't know if it has to be a formal meeting going through the agenda, but the idea of a VOS takeover of a, of a panel meeting sounds interesting as well. I mean, I'm not sure if we're up to them covering the chairing of it or something like, and suggesting things on the agenda. I mean, have a think about this and say, what do you think would work? Yeah. And with it being in person as well, we need to look at the sort of the logistics of that as well, really. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's something definitely we should do is just someone should look into the best way to, to actually achieve what they're looking for. Kath. And just to add to that as well, we are working with VOS and our youth counsellor to do a full council takeover day with our young people. So VOS will be central to that too. And that's going to be happening in the next kind of three, four, five months time. So counsellors have a think about how you might, you know, see that looking and your ideas. If you have any, please do email me as I'm working with VOS and others to plan that now. That would be great. Yeah. Councillor Roxy, with your permission, maybe if Kath can take it away, have the discussion with Councillor Kine, see how we might model out a VOS takeover. It may mean that we need to put in an additional meeting. Because I'm just conscious given the number of meetings that you have, the agenda is quite tight. So it's how we truly do honour to the young people and let them shape their own agenda, plus keep on track with some of the items I know you have said as a board you'd like to cover. But if you're happy for officers to go away and work something up and come back to you. Absolutely. And I think Councillor Bridgerton's point is spot on. What we tend to do is we bring young people into our meetings rather than actually make the meetings child friendly. So we may have to look at a different time and, you know, something that's social and breaks and all kinds of things. But if you're in agreement, we'll take it away and come back to you. So I said an event rather than a particularly this managerial meeting, because when I was a young person or whatever, probably the place I'd least want to go to would be something like this. Yeah, but so something that would actually have more engagement in it than we could actually give at this type of meeting. Thank you. Is there any more comments or questions on? I'm just going to check the chat there. You posted it there as well. Thanks, Laura. Yeah, that's great. And if we've got no more comments or questions there. The next item is verbal update from Lamba Foster's Care Association. Just to confirm we haven't got someone from there this evening. We haven't. I'm happy. We haven't. I'm afraid. What I will do is I will check with the association if there's anything they're able to put in writing. We try and circulate something to board members outside of the board so we don't lose the voice of our foster carers. I mean, we are running a extensive social media and some people might have seen it campaign using one of our foster carers. But I can see Councillor Bridgson's got his hand up, so you may be closer to some of the details. Andrew, was that, did you say expensive or extensive? Extensive. I would never say expensive. I know Zena isn't here, but I would never say expensive. Value for money, very cheap. Yeah. Okay. Councillor Bridgson. No, I was just, I was just thinking in terms of how we make sure even if the foster carers and young people can't come to these meetings, how we can embed it into it. And I think in the same way we do for some of the committees, literally, whether it's planning or whatever, if you can't make it, often sending a written thing is quite useful because we all read the papers in advance. But obviously we don't make it onerous. Foster carers have way too much on their plate already. But I wonder whether maybe we could just drum it into three bullet points. The three bullet points they want us to take away each meeting would be something that hopefully feels a bit more digestible that they could do for us. And then at least we've got that in advance and we can think about questions and that type of thing. Another point on that is I sat on fostering panel for two years. Sarah Cole is now taking over that in the coming year. So there's things that actually if there's points on there, we can actually go and think about in terms of how they overlap. And in our other roles as well, if that's put down in advance and it comes out with the papers, might be quite useful. So we can make it as as as fruitful as possible when we come to the discussion. Overall, we do. We do have a good attendance from foster care representative, don't we? I mean, it's fairly unusual for them to not have someone here. And Robert, you want to come in? Yeah, I was just going to say, going from what you were saying, Councillor Bridson, it would be good as well. I don't see why we can't be creative and they could, you know, foster carers who are busy and the same with VOS, isn't it? Why they can't just do something on a, you know, on a video. You with me? Just a video call and then send it into us and we can follow from there really, because it is about us recognising that actually, yeah, they are very busy. And you're right, Councillor Oxy, they usually are here, but it would be good sometimes, you know, if they can't come, if we've got that rather than just written because you get a sense of somebody, don't you? When you see them physically on something and you'll listen to that. And the same with VOS, I just think that would be really helpful at times, just so it's coming from them, as Laura did say, if Jordan was there, she can maybe say a bit more what she's feeding back. But I just think sometimes it's important because this is important for us to hear what they're saying. And as we've known at this, you know, they're right when they raise things, they're not afraid to say what they have to say. And sometimes the video, you know, it might mean it's another means to channeling, isn't it? And letting us all know what their thoughts are. So it's just, you know, we've kind of moved on from the days of just teams, isn't it? But we again, apart from meeting physically, which I think is a good idea, but also recognising sometimes why can't they send something in and we we listen to that. Just an idea. Sorry. Yeah, Councillor Adam. Yeah, it's if we could have a different foster carers time as well, because we usually have one person coming and presenting and it would be good to have like a variety of different foster carers coming to talk to us. Yeah, because it's normally Joan, but it's normally Joan because she's the representative of the Foster Carers Association. It's that difficulty a bit like with Voss. So I hear you, but we've almost got to go back to the foster carers and their association in terms of who they would like to put forwards. But we can say in a bit like tonight, if Joan can't attend, who is the backup? Who's the co? Because I hear you, we want to get a wide range of representation more than one single view, but that's the way why it's been that way up until now. Right, so I will move us on now as it's now just coming up to seven o'clock and I believe we used to try and we try and aim to finish these meetings at half past seven. And we've got quite a long report. The next one there with lots of really interesting detail in it. I spent quite a long time reading it on Sunday. So be interested to see what questions or comments people have. So it's the virtual school annual reports on pages 13 to 46. I'm going to assume you've all read every single word as well. So I don't know if anyone wants to sort of say a few words. Sorry. Just sort of present it really and sort of summarise and then I can ask for questions and comments. We have got Pras here. Yeah. Pras is with us. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sorry. Oh my, the top camera bit just was turned off. Just bear with me a second please. Share my screen. Please let me know when you can see the presentation. Yeah, I can see the presentation. Yeah. Okay. So what I've just done is briefly just put in some of the main points out of the report. The report is quite long, so we won't have time to go for every single bit. So I'll just highlight some of the key areas. So generally I'll go through what's on this table. So up here putting the key area of strengths around education, employment and training and areas of development. So some areas of strength here as a whole. Most of our young people attend good schools, good outstanding schools. Attendance pretty good and it's very remains constant for primary and generally lower secondary. The attainments good for key stage one and two, which is above local national CLA averages. We've had a permanent exclusion coming up to 10 years, which is very good. Lots of different pathways, employment and education pathways, followed by our young people. A high number of young people taking level three or equivalent pathways at post 16. And generally speaking, seeing more people progressing to university, including the Russell Group universities as well. So that's in a sense showing that the type of grades that our young people are getting at the end. Areas of development. Some of these things are very, you know, very similar trends seen year in, year out attendance. Generally, the older they are, we tend to see lower attendance. We have seen an increase in suspension rates in recent times. Again, that is more seen at upper secondary level. And the examination on this report for key stage four was lower than local national CLA averages. Just generally. So again, what I explained the table there. You can see this clearly on the graph here. As I said, as a whole, most of our young people attend mainstream schools. And then very small percentage in special and alternative and independent and things like that. And the same thing again around the types of schools they are as well. So again, again, 90% here are in good or outstanding schools. Again, very similar trends that we see year and year out. So it's nothing out of the ordinary here. The co-op characteristics here. As you can see here, this is a comparison of the type of needs our young people and children have here. As you can see from the table, sorry, from the graph there, the bar graph there. Lambeth one being the kind of the brown colour. Much higher than the Lambeth population in terms of SEN support. Or those of EHCP in total, you're talking about more than 50% of the cohort having some form of SEN. Again, when looking at this in terms of looking at national and inner London averages, as you can see Lambeth is quite high up there. Again, from what I've said before, the breakdown attendance here on the table, there's much more clear where we've broken it down to different year groups and stuff, starting all the way from reception all the way down. As you can see, primary very strong and early secondary strong. But as they get older, the percentages get lower. But overall, you know, again, been very fairly constant. There's somewhere between 89 and 91% over the last three years. So that's been fairly constant. And again, not that much different from the national average, just by 2%, sometimes right on it, sometimes just below it. We haven't seen anything drastically different on this. Mentioned suspensions rate earlier. As you can see over the years, there's been times when we've been pretty good. So what we hear, what we want is seeing as low or on the national averages. But however, from 2022 that has gone up. General info here on key stage one and key stage two attainment. Now, first thing to be mindful of all of these things, right? We should not be making comparisons because the numbers that we're talking about is very, very low. So one could equate to sometimes 25%. So you can't start comparing. But generally speaking, key stage one and key stage two attainment tends to be fairly good. When in comparison for the main markers of reading, writing, maths or reading, writing with maths. Generally speaking, above the inner London and national average or sometimes on it. This very similar trends are seen with key stage two. Again. On this graph here, we can see that where we are with inner London actually. So Lambeth is above both national and inner London. Just for anyone not wondering why there is those dotted lines. That is because during COVID these measures weren't. They weren't measuring them by the DFE. Weren't measuring those peer thing those measures during that period of time. So we're going to look at that. The attainment at key stage four. Now the numbers here are bigger. As we know, we have more children coming into care at older ages. As you can see over the years, we have sometimes been drastically above nationally in the London averages. Most of the time on those averages. The examination of 2023 it dropped down, but how again we have to be very careful with this is because the court characteristics is directly linked to results and things. So meaning that what you expect one year could be completely different to what you expect in the other year because of the type of young people that we have in that year group. So sometimes you have a strong academic year group. Sometimes you we don't. But that doesn't necessarily mean that young people are not doing well for themselves. But when we put it into national standards, which we have to present here, that's what that shows. Also, one of the things that we do is we do termly robust reviews of how our young people are doing. just to look at things like, you know, what are the likely chances of predictions, what they're going to achieve and things. And for this exam examination group, our predictions of it was pretty much spot on. The fact that the young people that were supposed to get their grades got their grades. The ones that just were on the border lines of it or the mid grades of it got what they were and the ones that were working at much lower level got what they did. So here post 16, so we mainly when we look at post 16 year 12 and 13, the table here shows the general court numbers and then breaking that to neat and eat. And also the general different types of qualifications that the young people are doing. So as a whole there, what you would know is that post 16 we're quite a lot doing ESO. So this is accounts for unaccompanied minors. But again, as I said before, one of the positives that we having a big jump in those that are studying level three qualifications. But as you can see here, we have the whole range all the way from entry level, all the way up to a level standards. And generally speaking, majority of our young people are attending mainstream colleges or six forms with against small percentages on employment, apprenticeship or traineeships and other forms. So it's a whole, again, there is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of that trend. There is nothing out of that trend. Here, unaccompanied asylum seeking children here. Just again, with the numbers that we're talking about the table, what you can see here is. Generally speaking, you're seeing it as in starting off in year nine and 10 where the numbers are low, but year 11, 12 and 13 swear. The numbers are much higher, especially seen at post 16 year 12 and 13. So that is pretty much the main aspect for our children looked after and post 16 pupils. Is there any questions? Thanks for summarising what was a really good detailed report going into all the depths. It's the sort of thing we really like on the Children's Services Scrutiny Committee as well with the actual in depth digging down in there for people who wish to look. I've got two speakers and I will start with Councillor Bridson. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for the report. It's really detailed and helpful to have a really good overview. And I've one technical part of the question and one a bit more good to get a bit more information on. One is around the age of the data in a sense of some of the data is a bit old or is appearing to be a bit old. So it says it's from 2023, for example, for some of them. Is that because it's school year 2023 to 2024? Or what is that basically? And then secondly, on suspensions, it's from 2022. And I'm conscious that that's the big thing that's had the biggest hike. And then linking to that in terms of data as well and probably jumping ahead to Laura's work later. We don't ever talk about suspensions. We talk about exclusions. And should we be keeping a closer eye on suspensions? Because on our dashboard, we've we've only focused on it. Oh, great. No exclusions. Fantastic. But actually, this seems to be a rising thing. And should we be keeping a closer eye on it? And so and then just generally a second point to that is what are we doing around suspensions? Because it's not great to see that going up and we don't want to turn into exclusions. Sorry, that was about seven questions and more. Right. So your first question there around the ears and everything. Now, when we report on academic results, we always report ear backwards because we have to get things verified. So the summer of 2024 where the last examination took place, that will be in a sense being verified now and it'd be ready for this the summer. We always work backwards, ie one year backwards, just because that's the nature of it. Also around some of the other dates as well, again, DFE work the same way. So we're trying to follow the DFE kind of lines on that when we're reporting it. So those are the part around the ear groups. Now, the suspensions part now that is on the corporate parenting board dashboard, but I think it comes under they're using the term exclusions in there and that should be actually changed to suspension. I think it's a wording rather than so on the dashboard, there should be two areas there. One would say the number of permanent exclusions and one that says number of children that's had fixed term exclusions on it, but really should be suspensions. Hence why. Yeah. So it's actually there present on the dashboard. So those are the two parts around that. Sorry, David, you said one more thing. And then it was just around what are we doing around suspensions trying to improve things? Yeah. So again, when we look at suspensions for each suspension, we look into it. So each we've got people that work for different year groups and things like that. And what we do is we challenge if we feel that suspension is unnecessary. Now, what we can I can safely say is from what I can remember with it, that is a lot of these suspensions. To be fair to the schools have taken place when that's been the last resort. So sometimes when you look at it, you can't just challenge blindly because, you know, you have to you have to look at where the schools are coming from as well. And also the other one area is I have a feeling that the effects of COVID is playing into that because this suspension rate is being seen in local authorities. It's not something unique to Lambus, especially with the vulnerable groups and everything. So I think you would because if you look at the table or the graph where it shows the different suspensions over the years and everything, you see a lot of the times, you know, there wasn't really much of a fluctuation. So I personally think to do with that and then eventually that should level itself out. But, you know, that's something that we just have to see with it. Sorry. It's only just because on the suspensions one, it is significantly out of kilter with the national average national children look after average. So it's more just the fact of if there's any intervention we need to do early intervention now, then realistically, we need to be looking at that now for next year's cohort and what we can put in place. So I don't know whether there's a small scale review that can happen of the suspensions that have happened to see where interventions could have come in or where the local authority might have stepped up. That could have been prevented to see how we can learn for the future. I wonder if there's any work that can be done around that. Yeah, we cannot we cannot look at that. But what one thing I can say is, is quite a lot of suspensions is not nothing that comes as a shock to us because we can see the kind of things that's happening throughout. Because our the advices in my team, they're working with these young people. So nothing is there actually is completely out of the ordinary. It's just that that's what that's why I say our co-op characteristics is very important. We would sometimes will have children in crisis, and therefore certain things happen. And you know, but yeah, definitely looking at it. I'm going to have to cut you short, but very quick. Sorry, I didn't want to mix that up a bit. I totally get that that's that's the point there around. Don't worry, I'll pick it up afterwards with you. That's absolutely fine. Councillor Ox, if it's all right, I know you're trying to move us on. We will come back with something, Councillor Bridgerton. I think that's the best way of us doing this. But do have a look at the data sheet. It is under there, under fixed term exclusions. And I think that would help give you some reassurance. Yeah, thank you, Prasad. Now, I'll just say now it's quarter past seven and I have four councillors waiting to speak. They're Councillor De Silva, Councillor Cole, Councillor Adam and Councillor Banton. And I'm going to take them in that order. And after that, we will then move on. Hopefully we might have to extend the meeting a little bit, but hopefully everybody will be OK with that. So Councillor De Silva. Thanks, Cher. Great report, everyone. I think mine is quite similar to Councillor Bridgerton in regards to the results of GCSEs, et cetera, and what we're doing to help. So I really dislike the term of, oh, we're just on the national average or we're not the worst. I think we need to be striving to be the best and be in the top ten. So my questions are always what can we be doing better that we're getting in there before the children are suffering? And what do we offer as a council to support these kids? So do we offer any additional tutoring for kids that have fallen behind? Yeah, just extra things that we're doing as a council to support these children? Yeah. So we do all of those things. Most of our budgets is spent on tutoring and stuff. Now, something with results, you have to remember something. OK, the variation and the range in qualifications that our young people do at GCSE level, it's not like a normal school. You can't compare those types of things. Right. When the DFE report on data and around this, they normally report on GCSEs. Not all our children do GCSEs. It doesn't mean that they're not achieving. OK, we would have we would we have ranges from entry level qualifications all the way up to GCSEs. We have young people that are working on just barely getting entry level because that's what the level they're working on. And with young people that are working at GCSE level and and not just GCSE level, but working at the top end of GCSE level. Right. But when when the when people report on it, we have to take them all into it. OK, so it's so we're not necessarily reporting like for like with that. And again, when I mentioned before the cohort characteristics, each year can be completely different. For example, the year before that Lambeth was well above all averages and doing very well. Right. Next year's one will again be like that again. It all depends on the type of cohort that we have and we have to work with them for the best that they can get. It's not about trying to go on this. You know, we need to get closer to this or we need to get closer to a grade four or anything. It's about what is that child doing? What? How can they get to their next level? So that's the way that it works with that now in terms of interventions and everything that is all that we do throughout. So we work as obviously we work in academic case over September to July. The first two terms of the academic year is concentrating on interventions. What we can do to help academically the young people from going from this stage onto next. Now that could be GCSEs. That could be entry level. That could be functional skills. It could be on any of those aspects. So just that's generally what we do. I did read in the report. There was a lot of stuff in there about those interventions that you did. Sorry, Sylvia. Does Sylvia want to come back? Yeah, no, I was just going to say I wasn't specifically talking about GCSEs. I just use that as an example, but it's every level I'm talking about. However, they can achieve what their best potential. And the thing with it is the DFV data is based on GCSEs. That's why I'm showing you in that way because DfV don't look at functional skills. They don't look at entry levels and put something out. So when we have to compare national figures, we have to compare national averages, inner London averages, statistical neighbour averages and everything. It's what the DfV produce in terms so that we can compare with it. But that's why I always put that caveat in is that we just have to remember that first of all, the cohort numbers are small, so we should not make comparisons. And the second part around it is the importance of the cohort characteristic. And we shouldn't judge that just because something is lower doesn't mean that young person hasn't achieved because there are quite a lot of achievement there. But it's not always going to be captured by those national data. All right, I'm going to move on now to Councillor Cole. Yeah, thank you for the excellent report. It's really good and interesting to read. My question is about the needs of children who are not unaccompanied minors but have ESOL needs. So do you have any information on whether those needs exist and how they're being met, especially if they're out of London? I think I think from every single young person that we've got that's on ESOL are unaccompanied minors. Right. We don't have anyone who are outside of that. OK, thank you for that. Is that OK then, Councillor Cole? Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Councillor Arden. He had a few questions to get on the appendices when I was looking of the spend. Is there anything under interpreting services? Because I know when you have pet meetings and stuff like that. So the spend doesn't come during pet meetings and stuff doesn't come under your budget. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is normally the social work could organize that. We don't. OK. And yeah, and on the training on the virtual school forums stuff, is it in a way or maybe that's already covered under with the children's social case or the training, but like maybe training on like cultural competency for, you know, carers, foster carers, especially I'm interested in an accommodation seekers. Some seekers, but sometimes you get more cohort of young people from a certain region or from a certain place. So just explaining the educational background, you know, the setup in those countries, what, you know, just to give it a context of where these people are coming from, like a starting points and just things too. So that would help the carers, the, you know, even the teachers that they're teaching, because if you don't know what the starting point is on just lots of that could be useful for those things as well. Good point, Councillor. I was just going to say is actually our last annual conference, the main speaker was about cultural competency and everything. So yeah, it's definitely something that we've looked into and trying to understand, you know, the different types of education that young people are coming from for unaccompanied minors and everything. Because again, just a good point that you made there is we've had young unaccompanied minors who've completely bypassed ESOL as well. So we always have to remember that just because they're unaccompanied minors, it doesn't mean that they are majority are right. But you are always going to get some that bypass it straight away or bypass it very quickly. And we see that ear in ear out. So, you know, it's really about gearing so that the education they're receiving enables them to progress forward with it. Yeah, because there's a lot of other who are not even literate in their own language, you know. Yeah, so it's a whole range of stuff. So it's a helpful information to have for those educational psychologists and speech and language therapists. So, you know, at least they can see there's other things that are at play as well. And it's quite useful for those carers as well. Maybe even just for settling and embedding them in their placements and just seeing what might be more appropriate. Thanks for us. Thank you. Right. I've got Councillor Banton. Yeah. My thing as well was, has any of our young people who have had fixed term exclusions, have they not formed through the governor exclusion first? So where it's an internal one where it kind of keeps the figures low so that child can speak to a governor and a member of, or speak to a governor with their parents and then things can be sorted out before it goes before they get the fixed term exclusions? So not for fixed term or suspensions. Suspensions don't go up to governance level or leave permanent exclusions go up to governance level. And obviously we've we've prevented that before it getting there. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm actually a school governor. So if it in the school where I'm a governor for a they'll have a governor exclusion. So they'll come and speak to us like some inappropriate behaviour and letting a child see that once I've spoken to them, you know, if you've been older, you this would have been this, you would end up on the sex offenders register, but they are not getting excluded. It's not going to go on their record. They just get a chance to speak to someone in senior leadership in the school. So the other than that, after that, it's it's outside and it goes to the local authorities. But that's before it gets there. So I don't know if if we do if our schools do it, but I know that this particular school they do. So we've got a road to where we will speak to young people about their behaviour. I mean, I'm sure that different schools take different approaches with it, but ask a lot of schools we deal with is all over the country. So it could be different approaches in there. One thing is I can say is that any of these suspensions normally it's dealt with a senior leader from the schools who give the information and also do the reintegration meetings and things like that. But yeah, definitely something to our schools about. But yeah, different schools take up different ways of doing that. So Council of Arts and we do encourage schools. It may be a different system, but we do encourage where there is a avoidance of suspension if a child can be internally suspended. So it may be that they have an alternative. So I think it's just the language we're using. But yes, we do. I can reassure we do that before we get to does this child because we recognise our children need to be more in school. We need to be more in school, not out of school. I think going for Andrew saying their councillor. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I think I misunderstood what you're trying to say there. Yes, we do that quite often. And actually quite a lot of suspensions actually is prevented by us doing it when it has happened. It's because something's happened that actually even we can't argue against. That is. Yeah, but you absolutely. We do do that. Sorry. I thought you meant something. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks. I just add them back in. Just to add it. If you could just hold on a second. I need to ask your permission to extend the meeting for 50, up to 15 minutes, 15 minutes, because we're going to hit the deadline at half past seven. So is everyone okay? We will attempt to make it not the whole 15, but there is lots of interesting discussion going on. Okay. Acclamation. Yes. And Councillor Adam. Yeah, just that what Councillor Bantha was saying. Where do we record managed moves? Where do they come under? Do they come under suspensions or are they not recorded? No. They won't. It's not. Managed moves is two schools having an agreement. So it's not, it's in like it's not officially recorded. It's not like exclusion or a suspension or anything like that. It's just, you know, if something's not working out, you know, if it's a newer start, things are sort of things we encourage, you know, with some of our young people, sometimes, you know, they're going for that system and everything. Sometimes a fresh start can change things and it has changed things. Yeah. Okay. If we not get any more questions or comments on that. So thanks so much for a very detailed and very informative report. And if you've not had a chance to read it all yet, I recommend you do. There was some really good details about the really good work that's going on there. That is actually helping make the lives of children really much better and hopefully to do much better in life when they actually leave school. Right. So let's add one quick thing, literally 30 seconds. Just talking about the variation and the qualifications. As I said, we always talk about suspensions and everything, but on one end of it, some of our young people's achievement in the academics is massive. And just say every year for the last four years, we've had a candidate who's got up to interview stage for Oxford or Cambridge. And last summer someone actually got in to Oxford to do medicine. And again, we would have another candidate. So just to just to say that what I mean by range is actually that bad, you know, from nonverbal young people all the way to, you know, like the top five percentile academically in the in the country. So just to highlight that. Thanks for that. And we have next day thing on employment and education training. We actually got a thing on the agenda for that this evening. And it's Sarah on the agenda. Yes. Yeah, we have. Sorry. Can I make a bold suggestion? Because I think we're not going to manage to be able to do it justice within the time we've got left. So maybe with Alison's permission, rather than try and cram it in the end, can we come back to you on this? I think it's been a really full discussion and it would have been unfortunate to have contained it. And I really apologies, Alison, but I think that's probably the better call. I'm absolutely fine with that. Thank you, Andrew. Yeah, I'm just checking some comments from Councillor de Silva in there. Yeah, I'm sure we'll take all that into into consideration. And so going on to the next item off that we've got the dashboard. I think, can you get that from the screen? And it's quite lots of numbers and things like that. Hi, Councillor Oxy. So I can share that just before I do. Yeah, just before I do, obviously, most counsellors will know that I give you the opportunity to analyse it in detail. Last week and we had we had a good showing from counsellor colleagues there so that we can have a really good discussion because I'm aware that we don't necessarily have time for that discussion here. And at the cast point earlier, it's the end of the year. So we've got the March data on here and now is the time that we review the different KPIs. And it's a really good point, Prash. We haven't changed fixed term exclusions to suspensions, even though the wording has changed. So we need to do that. So what I'll be doing is reviewing those, obviously drafting up some different ones, different conversations that I've had over the year with counsellor colleagues and also other parts of the system. And I'll put some suggestions forward and I've taken a note of the prescriptions that we need to have that data we need to have on there.