The Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission is scheduled to meet on 10 December 2025, to discuss budget monitoring for children and education services, the Families First Programme¹, and sexual and reproductive health services for young people. They will also discuss the Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028, and receive a verbal update on behaviour management and school inclusion. The meeting will also cover the commission's work programme.

Budget Monitoring 2025/26 - Children & Education Services

The commission is scheduled to review the in-year budgets for the Children & Education Directorate, looking at management actions taken to address overspends or underspends, and progress on delivering agreed savings.

A report included in the pack, Children and Education Finance Update 2025/26, forecasts an overspend of £7.5m before reserves, and £3.5m after reserves.

Children and Families Services (CFS) is predicted to underspend by £0.6m after the allocation of specific ring-fenced reserves and the application of 50% of the Social Care Grant. The main areas of overspend relate to the Directorate Management Team (£0.8m), Looked After Children & Leaving Care Services (£0.3m) and Young Hackney (£0.2m).

Hackney Education (HE) is forecast to overspend by £4.127m on the general fund. This includes increased costs for EHCPs and education psychologists (£1.369m), pressures on the SEND Transport Service (£0.975m), and pressures in Early Years (£1.442m) due to not meeting savings in respect to the reconfiguration of Children Centres in previous years.

The report highlights that unit costs in different placement types have significantly increased since 2019/20. For example, the average weekly unit cost for LAC Residential placements has increased from £3,725 in 2019-20 to £7,059 in 2025-26, a 90% increase.

The report also details savings targets for Children's Services and Education in 2025/26. These include £500,000 from the transformation of the C&E directorate, £250,000 from the consolidation of the Children's, Education and Health commissioning function, and £2.550m from a review of Children Centres.

Risks to the service include the cost of living and inflationary pressures, and the potential impact on the cost of service delivery. There is also uncertainty around the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) high needs accumulated deficit, which was £19.1m in 2025/26.

Management actions to reduce the overspend include reductions in the number of high cost placements (£0.5m), a review of the top 30 high cost placements (£0.3m), a Foster First Approach (£0.5m), and review of agency spend (£0.2m).

Families First Programme

The commission is scheduled to review local plans to reconfigure children's social care services in Hackney as required by the Families First Programme. The Families First Partnership Programme provides guidance for the transformation of local children's social care services through early intervention and multi-agency collaboration.

The report included in the pack states that the Department for Education (DfE) has asked all local areas to change how they support children and families. These changes aim to deliver a seamless, non-stigmatising offer of support, combining the strengths of targeted Early Help and Child In Need work into a unified Family Help support offer, with an emphasis on whole-family working.

The report covers how Hackney is approaching these reforms and the work being undertaken across the multi-agency partnership, with staff, and with children and families to make these changes. This work includes the creation and circulation of a video explainer about Families First.

The report also includes an explanation of the links between Early Help and the local Voluntary and Community Sector. The voluntary, community, and faith-based sector (VCFS) is described as an integral and essential partner in the development and delivery of Hackney's Children and Family Hubs.

Next steps for the Families First Partnership Programme include deepening co-design work and developing implementation plans, ready for the start of the phased rollout across Hackney's 4 neighbourhoods from April 2026.

Sexual & Reproductive Health Services for Young People

The commission is scheduled to note the response of the Cabinet member to the Commission's letter in respect of sexual and reproductive health services for young people.

In a letter from Councillor Anntoinette Bramble, Deputy Mayor and cabinet member for children's services and young people, and Councillor Chris Kennedy, Cabinet Member for Health, Adult Social Care, Voluntary Sector and Culture, the councillors respond to a previous letter from the commission, writing that a detailed analysis of access to sexual and reproductive health services for young people (aged under 24 years) was undertaken, and that the data shows an increase in service use among young people between 2022 to 2024.

They highlight key initiatives including establishing a regular clinic at the new Hackney Care Leavers Hub, commissioning a dedicated young people's sexual and reproductive health nurse and quarterly public health outreach to all four contingency hotels. In addition to the weekly clinic at HealthSpot (at Forest Road Youth Hub), the young people's sexual and reproductive health nurse has also started a weekly clinic at The Edge Youth Hub in Woodberry Down.

The councillors also write that Public Health is currently reviewing and redesigning the four services it commissions Young Hackney to deliver, with the aim of integrating these into a more streamlined and effective model. A core feature of the new model is a staged shift away from the direct delivery of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education in schools, and that instead, the service will focus on building capacity within schools to deliver high-quality PSHE themselves, while targeting additional support to schools on more sensitive topics, particularly around RSE and substance use.

Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028

The commission is scheduled to note its response to a previous item on Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028 (13th October 2025).

In a letter to Deputy Mayor Bramble, Councillor Sophie Conway, Chair, Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission, and Councillor Margaret Gordon, Vice Chair, Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission, thank her for attending the Children & Young People Scrutiny Commission meeting on the 13th October 2025 and for the opportunity for scrutiny members to review the Hackney Education Strategy (2025-2028) prior to its approval by Cabinet in December 2025.

The commission makes five suggestions to inform the development and finalisation of the Hackney Education Strategy (HES) 2025-2028:

1. Clarity as to how the priorities set out in the HES 2025/2028 will be resourced, especially as a number of ambitions set out in the strategy relate to services supported through the General Fund (GF) rather than Direct Schools Grant (DSG).
2. Hackney Education should actively recognise parents and carers as 'key partners' in the delivery of high quality education provision.
3. Further clarity is needed as to how this new approach to education planning will be implemented, in particular, how it will be reconciled with longstanding challenges in the education system.
4. Further assurance as to how the HES 2025/2028 will address the educational attainment gap in Hackney and support the development of affirmative strategies to address inequities in local educational attainment and outcomes for children and young people.
5. The HES 2025/2028 supports an approach to school place planning which promotes and protects an inclusive and diverse schools experience for local children.

Behaviour Management & School Inclusion

The commission is scheduled to receive a verbal update on its review of behaviour management and school inclusion in Hackney.

Work Programme

The commission is scheduled to review and monitor its work programme for the remainder of the municipal year.

The work programme lists a number of potential items for future meetings, including:

• Improving outcomes for black children and young people
• Housing Support for Families of Children with SEND
• Post 16 /18 education/training outcomes

The work programme also includes a long list of items unable to be taken in 2024/25, including:

• Children's Social Care Annual Report
• Pupil Movement
• Early Help Strategy
• School Places / School Admissions
• Childcare Sufficiency Report
• Wraparound Childcare
• School Nursing Service
• Childhood Immunisations
• Eating Disorder Service / Foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs)
• Outcomes of Ofsted/ Care Quality Commission Area SEND inspection.
• Kinship Carers.
• Integrated Commissioning (Children & Education)
• Unregistered Educational Settings
• Speech and Language Therapy - access to assessment and support.
• Youth Justice Strategy
• Childcare Commission Report
• Health of Looked after children
• Access to Physical Activity Sport
• Vaping among children and young people
• Elective Home Education
• Role of Young Carers

Minutes

The commission is scheduled to note the minutes of the previous meeting held on 13th October 2025.

The commission is also scheduled to note the actions of the previous meeting (15th September 2025):

• An update on the Affordable Childcare Commission
• To provide any equalities impact assessment which was undertaken to support the reconfiguration of childcare banding fee structure;
• An update on the recommendations from the Ernst & Young Report to reduce costs of children's centres.

The update on the Affordable Childcare Commission states that a project group was formed in October 2024 to address the Commission's recommendations, with delivery led by a Strategic Delivery Officer. Oversight is provided by the Interim Head of Policy & Strategic Delivery and the Head of Early Years, Early Help and Wellbeing.

Three task groups of officers were formed to progress the delivery of recommendations, each relating to three specific areas: Business Needs, Recruitment and Retention, and Property and Housing.

The update notes that a key achievement of the Commission's work is its success in fostering collaboration between various Council services. Some examples of specific work and achievements include the Early Years service working with the property team to examine the property needs of settings on an ad hoc basis, and the Best Start Family hubs providing valuable services for babies and young children.