The Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission met to discuss budget monitoring for children and education services, the Families First Programme, sexual and reproductive health services for young people, the Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028, behaviour management and school inclusion, and the commission's work programme. The commission agreed to explore the equalities impact assessment related to changes in funding for children's centres in more depth at a future meeting.

• Budget Monitoring 2025/26 - Children & Education Services

  The Children & Education (C&E) services are forecasting an overspend of £7.5 million before reserves and £3.5 million after reserves for 2025/26.

  Children and Families Services (CFS) is predicted to underspend by £0.6 million after the allocation of specific ring-fenced reserves and the application of 50% of the Social Care Grant that the council receives, totalling £20.4 million. The main areas of overspend relate to the Directorate Management Team (£0.8 million), Looked After Children & Leaving Care Services (£0.3 million) and Young Hackney (£0.2 million).

  Hackney Education (HE) is forecast to overspend by £4.127 million on the general fund and be balanced on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG). The overspend on the general fund includes the increase in Education, Health and Care Plan¹ (EHCP) costs for necessary staffing support, including education psychologists (£1.369 million). The Special Educational Needs and Disability² (SEND) Transport Service is also experiencing budgetary pressures relating to home to school transport for children with SEND (£0.975 million), and plans are being implemented to resolve this. There is also £1.442 million pressure in Early Years, largely due to not meeting savings in respect to the reconfiguration of Children Centres in previous years.

  A vacancy rate savings target of £1.7 million has been set for the directorate in 2025/26 (£0.9 million for Children and Families and £0.8 million for Education), and the forecast assumes that this will be achieved or mitigated within respective service budgets.

  One of the main risks for the directorate are related to the cost of living and inflationary pressures, and the potential impact that it will have on the cost of service delivery going forward.

  There continues to be uncertainty around the DSG high needs accumulated deficit; the brought forward SEND deficit in 2025/26 was £19.1 million.

  Management actions of £1.5 million have been identified for CFS and are included in the predicted outturn position. For Hackney Education, the focus of cost reduction measures this year will be through further development of in-borough SEND provision and early engagement work.

• Families First Programme

  The Department for Education (DfE) has asked all local areas to change how they support children and families through the Families First Partnership Programme³, which aims 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 covered 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 included an explanation of the links between Early Help and the local Voluntary and Community Sector (VCFS). The VCFS is an integral and essential partner in the development and delivery of Hackney's Children and Family Hubs.

  Following an intensive set-up and co-design phase between August and December 2025, the Programme moves to deepen co-design work and develop implementation plans, ready for the start of the phased rollout across Hackney's four neighbourhoods from April 2026.

• Sexual & Reproductive Health Services for Young People

  The Commission reviewed sexual and reproductive health services for young people in September 2023 and produced a response to the relevant Cabinet members in February 2024, highlighting a number of key issues, including variability of young people's local experiences of sexual health and relationship education and skills. The Commission followed up with these issues at its meeting in June 2025 and produced a short response with some further suggestions.

  Key initiatives include 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. Additionally, a year-long campaign has promoted services such as the young people's condom distribution scheme, STI testing, and HealthSpot.

  Public Health is currently reviewing and redesigning the four services it commissions Young Hackney⁴ 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. 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 Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) and substance use.

• Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028

  The Commission reviewed the draft Hackney Education Strategy 2025-2028, together with summary findings of the public consultation, at its meeting on 13th October 2025. The Commission produced a response which was submitted to the Cabinet member for Children Services and Young People on 21st October 2025.

  The Commission made five suggestions to inform the development and finalisation of the Hackney Education Strategy (HES) 2025-2028, including that Hackney Education should actively recognise parents and carers as 'key partners' in the delivery of high quality education provision, and that the HES 2025/2028 should 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.

• Behaviour Management & School Inclusion

  The Commission received a verbal update on its review of behaviour management and school inclusion in Hackney. The call for evidence is live on the website and is open until the month of January. Focus groups will be held with teachers, school governors, parents and young people in January.

• Work Programme

  The Commission reviewed and monitored the work programme for the remainder of the municipal year.

  In light of the publication of the City in Hackney Safeguarding Children's Safeguarding Practice Review into Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy⁵, the Commission will take this report at the next meeting on the 12th of January 2026.

  Deputy Mayor Bramble's Q&A will now move to March 2026, and the sand area action report will come to the Commission in March 2026, and the planned item on young people not in education training or employment from March 2026 will have to be deferred, most likely to the next municipal year.

• Minutes

  There were three follow-up information requests from the 15th of September meeting: an update on the Affordable Child Care Commission, an update on Ernst & Young children centre recommendations, and an equalities and impact assessment update to support the decision to change funding subsidy structure for children centres.

  The Commission agreed that it might want to explore this briefly at a future meeting, so that it can get some clarity around those points.

  Councillor Sophie Conway, Chair of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission, noted that the minutes of the last meeting on the 30th October were not ready for publication at this meeting and will be published in January 2026.