The agenda for the meeting includes a review of the staffing position within Children's Social Care teams and a presentation of the proposed Youth Justice Plan 2024-2026. Additionally, attendees will be asked to consider the work programme for the Committee for the coming year.

Children's Social Care Workforce Development Strategy

This report was requested at the previous meeting of the committee, held on 11 July 2024. It provides a summary of the current staffing situation within the Children's Social Care teams at the council. The report explains that the council has been experiencing problems recruiting and retaining permanent staff in recent years. There are currently 242 permanent social work staff in the department and 193 agency workers. The report pack includes an explanation of the strategies the council is using to try and improve the situation:

• Rolling adverts for experienced social workers and team managers have been placed on the council website, and London Social Work for Children website.
• Targeted recruitment for team managers, using the FLiP Framework developed by YPO, and a supplier called 3D Recruit Ltd.
• Absorption: The council has been trying to encourage agency workers to take permanent positions by offering an absorption scheme. This has led to the successful recruitment of a permanent team manager in the 16+ service.
• Lambeth Social Care Academy: The council's academy supports practice and career development for social workers and managers and is responsible for training newly qualified social workers.
• International recruitment: In 2024, 13 international social workers began working in Family Support, Child Protection and 0-25 Service teams. The report also provides an overview of the financial pressures facing the department. For 2024/25, the budget for Children's Social Care was £30 million. However, the forecast spend for the year is £31.3 million, due to the reliance on agency workers.

Youth Justice Plan

The report pack contains a presentation and the full text of the proposed Youth Justice Plan (YJ Plan) for 2024-26. The YJ Plan is required by the Youth Justice Board, and receipt of the Youth Justice Grant is contingent on the council having a plan in place. The plan sets out how the council and other local agencies, including the police, will work together to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour by children and young people. It includes details of the services that will be provided, the resources available, and the targets that have been set. The plan highlights seven key risks to the successful delivery of the proposed plan:

• Finance: Securing funding for the next three years, as some grant funding sources will cease after March 2025.
• Workforce: Recruiting and retaining highly skilled youth justice practitioners and volunteers.
• Cost of living: Managing the impact of the cost of living crisis on children and families.
• Governance: The need for greater partnership accountability and contributions to address the underlying causes of offending behaviour.
• ICT: Ensuring that staff have access to an effective case management information system.
• Partnership: Ensuring that the six recommendations made in the most recent His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) inspection report are met.
• Practice: Embedding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in all areas of the work undertaken, and ensuring that data is used effectively to track performance improvements. The plan also highlights a number of successes in the work of the Youth Justice Service in the previous year. The service has:
• Reviewed and updated all of its policies and procedures.
• Delivered a restructure to ensure that resources are being targeted effectively.
• Ensured a strong delivery of the court service, by monitoring court congruence, and introducing regular meetings with the five borough consortium.¹
• Successfully recruited volunteer panel members who live in Lambeth and represent the communities that the service works with.
• Introduced a system to improve the number of victims offered restorative interventions. Since the implementation of the new system the average turnaround for a victim to be contacted after a referral is five days.
• Maintained the low levels of reoffending rates for children and young people in the borough.

The plan also highlights a number of challenges the service faces.

• First Time Entrants (FTEs) to the criminal justice system remain high in Lambeth. The plan acknowledges that knife/weapons and robbery-related offences are the most common offences that lead to children becoming known to the Youth Justice Service.
• Only 37% of children known to the Youth Justice Service were engaged in suitable education, training or employment at the end of their intervention. The plan notes that 50% of school-age children and 30% of 16+ young people known to the service were engaged in suitable education, training or employment at the end of their intervention.

Children's Services Scrutiny Sub-Committee Work Programme 2024-25

This report sets out the proposed Work Programme for the Committee for the year 2024-2025. The report pack contains a list of potential future items for scrutiny. These include:

• The Youth Strategy.
• Children and accommodation, homelessness and the impact on young people.
• Reducing adverse children’s experiences and neglect.
• Feeling safe and supported - children and young people in care or those needing support, continuity issues, and not repeating their story.
• Prevention and how services - council, services, stakeholders - work together.
• Modern forms of abuse outside the scope of the IICSA Action Plan, such as county lines.
• Children not accessing full-time education and COVID-19 impacts.
• Persistent Absence - to include a breakdown on absences due to mental health, missing children and those going on holiday throughout the half-term.
• Remands in custody for young people.
• Corporate Parenting - Care experienced people and progress on the protected characteristics.
• Fostering and Placements - Recruitment, vetting, ongoing inspection regimes, how children were able to raise concerns and subsequently how these concerns were taken forwards and dealt with.
• Children’s Services Budget Scrutiny and key pressures.
• Post-16 progression and destinations (educational and life achievements). The report pack also includes a log of actions from previous meetings that have yet to be completed. They include:
• A request, made at the meeting on 9 March 2023, that officers provide data on workforce data for staffing at all levels, including head teachers, within maintained schools.
• A request, made at the meeting on 23 May 2023, that officers provide data on how many Children and Young People within pupil referral or exclusion units were on the CAMHS waiting list and the support provisions in place for them whilst on the waiting list.
• A request, made at the meeting on 12 October 2023, that officers report back to the Sub-Committee in relation to the use of Children’s Services Assets across the borough.
• A request, made at the meeting on 1 February 2024, that officers review and ensure that the Council has a joined-up, collaborative approach on the eviction process, particularly in regard to asylum and sanctuary seekers.
• A request, made at the same meeting, that City of Sanctuary provide a risk matrix template, particularly in relation to those with no recourse to public funds, which will prepare the council when or if the legal migration act becomes operational.
• A request, made at the same meeting, that officers provide a report on the eviction process, with relevant statistics to outline how many evictions took place across asylum and sanctuary seekers, and how the process is embedded within the system.
• A request, made at the same meeting, that officers provide a further report on the placement and admissions of secondary school asylum-seeking children, with relevant statistics to inform current practice.