ITEM CH3CHILDREN’S SERVICES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 13 DECEMBER 2005Minutes of the Meeting commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 3.20 pm Present: Voting
Members: Other
Members in Attendance: Officers: Whole of meeting: D. Mitchell (Chief Executive’s Office). Part of meeting: Director for Learning & Culture, S. Adams, M. Bowmer, M. Hanaway, R. Harmes; J. Hydari (Resources); M. Lloyd (Chief Executive’s Office). By
Invitation: Mrs C. Thomson (Oxfordshire Governor’s The Scrutiny Committee considered the matters, reports and recommendations contained or referred to in the agenda for the meeting, together with a schedule of addenda tabled at the meeting and the Inspection Report of Children’s Services and agreed as set out below. Copies of the agenda, reports, schedule and Inspection report are attached to the signed Minutes.
62/05. APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND TEMPORARY APPOINTMENTS
Apologies for absence and temporary appointments were received as follows:
63/05. DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST
Ms Geraldine Spencer declared a personal interest in Agenda Item 5 by virtue of her position as school governor. Mr Ben Jackson declared a personal interest in Agenda Items 5 and 6 as a governor of a school and parent with a child with a Statement of Special Education Needs.
64/05. MINUTES
The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 3 November 2005 were approved and signed.
65/05. SPEAKING TO OR PETITIONING THE COMMITTEE
The following requests to address the meeting had been agreed:-
66/05. ‘SELECT COMMITTEE STYLE’ INVESTIGATION FOR ACHIEVING EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
(Agenda Item 5) At their meeting on 3 November 2005, the Committee agreed to explore the potential impact of delegating the Statementing Budget to Schools for children with a learning disability, and to make recommendations to the Cabinet based on their findings. The Committee had identified and invited a number of witnesses and experts to attend the meeting to give evidence. The following witness had been invited:
The aim of the Committee meeting was to scrutinise what the potential impact of delegating the Statementing Budget to local schools would be. The Committee further wished to explore whether the proposals made in The Directorate’s report’ ‘Reducing Reliance on Statements – Proposals to Delegate The Statementing Budgets’ would be the most effective was for the Council to delegate the Statementing Budget. Following gathering evidence from all the witnesses and a lengthy debate (a record of which is attached to the signed minutes) the Committee AGREED to support the proposals to delegate the Statementing Budget, subject to:
67/05. SERVICE AND FINANCIAL PLANNING 2006/07 – 2010/11 AND BUDGET SCRUTINY OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND THE YOUTH SERVICE
(Agenda Item 6) On 15 November the Cabinet had referred the identified budget pressures in the respective service areas, and the choices as to how these could be funded, to the Scrutiny Committees for consideration and advice, on the basis of schedules to be drawn up and presented to the committees by the Head of Finance & Procurement with the relevant service officers, following consultation with the appropriate Cabinet Members. Comments from each Scrutiny Committee would then be collated and fed back to the Cabinet via the Corporate Governance Scrutiny Committee on 12 January 2006. On 17 January the Cabinet would consider Scrutiny Committees’ comments and agree a draft medium term financial plan, budget, council tax precept, virement arrangements, capital programme and borrowing arrangements to recommend to the Council. On 27 September 2005 the Committee further agreed to appoint Councillors Jean Fooks, Zoe Patrick and Keith Stone to undertake budget scrutiny to focus on Occupational Health and the Youth Service. The Committee considered a report (CH6(a)) which was one in a series which informed members on the service and financial planning process and issues for the budget in 2006/07 and the medium term, following the reports to the Cabinet on 20 September and 15 November 2005. It provided general background and an overview of the 2006/07 budget based on information presented to the Cabinet and provided detailed information on the proposed changes to the budget for 2006/07 for this Committee, including capital expenditure proposals. The Scrutiny Committee was invited to consider and advise the Cabinet on the identified budget pressures and the choices as to how these could be funded for its programme area and on the relative priorities of its capital bids, bearing in mind that only £1.0m per annum was available for all the Council’s services outside of Schools and Transport. Members also had before them the ‘Effective Budget Scrutiny’ guide which had been sent to scrutiny members on 20 October 2005. Members questioned the Cabinet Members for Schools Improvement and Children & Young People, together with the Director for Learning & Culture, Head of Service – Community Learning, Head of Youth Services and the Assistant Head of Finance & Procurement on the identified budget pressures and the capital bids. The task group identified to look in depth at the Occupation Health and the Youth Services reported on their findings in relation to the two services (reports CH6(b) and CH6(c)). Following debate, the Committee AGREED to forward the following advice to the Cabinet, via the Corporate Governance Scrutiny Committee:
68/05. CHILDREN’S INSPECTION REPORT
(Agenda Item 7) The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) carried out frequent ‘regulatory inspections’ of Children’s Homes, Fostering and Adoption services, to check adherence to legislation and regulation and the quality of those services. CSCI also carried out overall inspections of the effectiveness and quality of Children’s Social Care Services every 1 to 5 years, depending on performance. Oxfordshire was last inspected in 2002. The inspection was conducted over 2 – 3 weeks and involved interviews with staff, Councillors, service users and providers, examination of files, and some study of documentation relating to policy, planning and performance. The inspectors had made comments and recommendations under 6 headings:
Each of these headings had up to 7 or 8 sub-criteria against which the Council was measured. Accordingly, arrangements had been made for Mr Andy Robinson and Mr Jim Logan from the Commission for Social Care Inspection to attend the meeting to present the Commission’s findings in relation to Children’s Social Care Services in Oxfordshire (a copy of the presentation is attached to the signed Minutes). The Inspectors congratulated members on the outcome of the Inspection of Children’s Services and highlighted the key strengths and areas for development set out in the report. Mr Seymour Aitken, a Lay Assessor on the inspection also attended the meeting. He congratulated Oxfordshire on the progress made on source workers and commented that Oxfordshire provided the best learning care service he had ever encountered. He made the following further suggestions for action to the Committee:
Ms Sue Richards, Interim Head of Social Care for Children had also been invited to present the Council’s Action Plan in response to the recommendations. She tabled a draft action plan which would be put out to consultation to members, members of the public, parents, schools and other stakeholders for comment. A copy would also be placed on the website and a copy is appended to the signed copy of the Minutes. She reported that Performance Indicators had greatly improved and that Oxfordshire now came 22nd out of 150 authorities. The Indicators also showed that 87% of assessments were now completed on time. She welcomed the comments from the Inspectors and Mr Aitken and in response to Mr Aitken’s comments, undertook to put together a package to be put forward to the sounding board. The Committee thanked the Inspectors for their presentation and AGREED to endorse the actions set out in the Action Plan for consultation.
69/05. SCRUTINY REVIEW: GIFTED CHILDREN
(Agenda Item 8) On 27 September, this Committee had agreed as part of their work programme to undertake a scrutiny review of ‘gifted children’ and appointed Councillors Deborah Glass-Woodin, Hilary Hibbert-Biles, Val Smith and Melinda Tilley to the Lead Member Review Group. Councillor Hillary Hibbert-Biles, Chairman of the Member Review Group reported on current progress of the Review. The Group had now agreed on the issues and actions that the review should achieve and had selected a number of schools to visit and prepared questions. It was felt that for each visit, the members should give schools some background information on the purpose of the review and advance notice of questions. The Committee noted the progress on the Review thus far.
70/05. FORWARD PLAN
(Agenda Item 9) The item had been included in the Agenda to enable the Committee to suggest items from the current Forward Plan on which it might had wished to have an opportunity to offer advice to the Cabinet before any decision was taken. No items were identified.
in the Chair Date
of signing 2005
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