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ITEM CH5(a)

CHILDREN’S SERVICES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE – 28 FEBRUARY 2006

Minutes of the Meeting commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 3.15 pm

Present:

The Scrutiny Committee considered the matters, reports and recommendations contained or referred to in the agenda for the meeting and agreed as set out below. Copies of the agenda and reports are attached to the signed Minutes.

1/06. APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND TEMPORARY APPOINTMENTS

Apologies for absence and temporary appointments were received as follows:

Apology from	Temporary Appointments
Councillor Hibbert-Biles	-
Councillor Carol Viney	-
Mr S.C. Thomson	-
Councillor Louise Chapman	-

2/06. MINUTES

The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 13 December 2006 were approved and signed, subject to Minute 63/05 being amended by replacing the text "Bernadine" with "Geraldine" and the text "working with Children with Special Educational Needs" being added to the reasons for the declaration of interest.

3/06. ORDER OB BUSINESS

AGREED: to vary the order of business as indicated in these minutes.

4/06. LOCALITY WORKING AND INTEGRATED SUPPORT SERVICES FOR CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE & FAMILIES

• Would there be one team in every area or would one team support all areas?

• Who was not in support of the proposals to develop locality teams – was it a certain category of person?

• Had the Government provided funding as well as guidance for the setting up of locality teams?
• The Government had put money behind the proposal.

1. support the proposals set out in paragraphs 3 and 14 of the report (CH7) to reduce bureaucracy and time spent in meetings to create greater consistency and higher quality;
2. underline the importance of early Intervention; and
3. ask officers to report back to the Committee in 12 months’ time on how all the initiatives were working together on the ground.

5/06. CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE’S PLAN

(Agenda Item 5)

The Committee had before them a copy of the draft Children & Young People’s Plan (CH5) for consideration. On 7 March 2006, the Cabinet would be recommended, subject to consideration of any comments on the part of this Committee, to make recommendations to the Council as to the adoption of the Plan.

Accordingly, arrangements had been made for Ms Gillian Tee, Head of Children’s Services to attend to give an overview of the outcome of the consultation on the draft Plan and to answer any questions which the Committee might wish to ask.

During debate, the Committee made a number of detailed observations about the various sections in the plan including: greater emphasis being placed on the voluntary sector in the Plan; more consultation being undertaken with parents; more emphasis being given to the environment, including transport and housing; amending the wording around drinking and alcohol to make the Plan clearer; more emphasis being put on gifted children; ensuring that teenagers had a range of leisure activities in rural villages; unplanned teenage pregnancies; deprived areas in Oxfordshire; ensuring that schools knew what was happening and general textual amendments all of which Mrs Tee undertook to take into account when finalising the Plan for presentation to the Council on 4 April 2006.

The Committee AGREED to thank officers for an "excellent Plan" and commended the way in which the Children’s consultation had been carried out.

6/06. CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE’S BOARD

(Agenda Item 6)

In October 2005, the Cabinet, on the recommendation of this Committee, agreed broad proposals to take forward the principle of a Commissioning Trust in the form of a Children and Young People’s Board to improve outcomes for all children, young people & families through more integrated services, strategies and processes, requesting that officers undertake further detailed work in consultation with partner agencies. The Committee now had before it a report (CH6) which reported back on the outcome of consultation, together with the progress thus far in implementing the work programme,

Ms Sarah Breton, Children’s Trust Project Manager had been invited to attend to give a brief presentation outlining the proposals to establish a board and answer any questions which the Committee may have wished to ask.

Ms Breton and the Member for Children, Young People & Families reported that the proposed Board would fulfil the national requirements for "Children’s Trust" arrangements from April 2006 and would provide a strategic overview and ownership of the joint commissioning agenda for children and young people. The Board would oversee the implementation of key service changes to deliver the Children and Young People’s Plan and the outcomes for children and young people in the Local Area Agreement. The Board would report to the Public Services Board, as well as the Cabinets/Executives of the County and District Councils and the PCT Boards.

In order to do this, the Board would use the CYPP as its principal policy framework and would operate principally through the agreement of jointly owned recommendations. It was proposed that organisations retain their own executive powers with individual members working through the schemes of delegation from their organisations.

Members of the Board would include senior decision-makers with responsibility for children and young people’s services.

The expectation was that over time a young person and a parent or carer would join the Board to bring a specific perspective rather than to represent. Work would be undertaken in the next month to agree the best way of identifying individuals. A Sounding Board for Children and Young People and a Sounding Board for Parents and Carers would be established to support the working of the Board.

There had been work to strengthen the capacity of the voluntary sector to work with the statutory sector at a strategic level within the arrangements. Voluntary sector representatives had been elected to develop a "collective voice" for the voluntary sector in relation to improving outcomes for children and young people and it was proposed that the Chair of this group was a member of the Board.

It is further recommended that the Board should agree a programme of work that focused on areas where outcomes for children and young people were of concern. The work programme would be supported by a Joint Commissioning Team of officers involved directly in the delivery of services. Officers would be responsible for reviewing services in collaboration with others and making recommendations for change to the Board. This team would be jointly managed and resourced by the Council and the PCT(s).

The Committee expressed concern over the number of people on the Board and particularly the practicalities of getting them together to make decisions, and stressed the importance of getting parents and children on board from the beginning.

The Committee requested that a diagram be produced to show how locality teams, the Children’s Board, Centres and the Plan were going to join up to eradicate duplication of effort.

Following a lengthy debate, the Committee thanked officers for the extensive work undertaken in this area and agreed to:

1. advise the Cabinet of its concern over the demands placed on lead members and service officers and the potential duplication of existing boards and committees;
2. ask officers to report back to the Committee in September on the detailed arrangements for the implementation of the Board.
   
   

7/06. STABILITY OF PLACEMENTS FOR CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER SCRUTINY REVIEW

(i) Increased budget provision for recruitment and marketing to a level commensurate with other authorities.

Financial year	Approvals	Deletions	Net Loss
04 - 05	49	61	12
05 – 06 to date	31	45	14

• The absence of an effective method of tracking all enquiries and evaluating the results to ensure the process was continuously amended to minimise any inappropriate drop out. The modernisation bid included plans for a dedicated officer to track referrals from enquiry to approval
• There were too many steps/points where prospective carers could drop out of a very lengthy process. Consideration was being given to streamlining the recruitment process and possibly allocating workers to support prospective carers from the initial home visit through to panel approval.
• The structure of the family placement service was being examined to ensure the organisation was most effectively structured to dedicate more time to the recruitment process.

(ii) Developing the current recruitment strategy to target specific categories of foster care need.

• Specific anonymous child profiles were being placed on the County website to target long term foster carers for children and young people aged 10 plus
• New campaign specifically targeting long term carers and all carers for teenagers was planned for this year
• The recruitment strategy included provision for enhanced payments for this group

(iii) Promoting diversity in the attributes required of new foster carers.

We were always aiming to increase diversity in our recruitment. The recruitment strategy outlined the importance of rapid, clear and mindful responses to all applicants. This would allow us to roll out our outreach recruitment plans, successfully employed in other areas, to recruit from BME communities. However the current response and process was not sufficient to ensure all those targeted felt genuinely welcomed and engaged in the process. This again would be helped by the actions listed in (i).

To date the increased budget had allowed for the rebranding of our recruitment materials to include more images representative of the County’s diverse population.

Training for carers on diversity issues and a working group to enhance the information about care and diversity was in place

(iv) Promoting better initial inquiry and contact systems for potential recruits, eg one telephone contact and an administrative (rather than social worker) team.

The modernisation bid included a proposal to recruit a worker who could be the point of first contact for all referrals, undertake tracking of them and supply comprehensive information for carers. There was discussion taking place about whether this should be a family placement worker who had detailed professional knowledge or whether this should be a specially trained administrator.

(v) Introducing attractive cash incentives for successful, including "word of mouth", recruitment of carers.

1. Support the continuation of training for foster carers;

There was a lot of high quality training on offer and continual concern about the consistency of take up. There was currently a two days a week post, which was currently vacant, to co-ordinate the training brief for carers. Despite this, we have a comprehensive NVQ programme for carers and training manuals for adopters and foster carers. Targeting training for carers via the approval process and reviews was in place and setting targets for link workers to ensure their carers attended a set number of courses would help to underpin this. A piece of work to evaluate practice from other Local Authorities and ways of increasing the take-up of training was being planned. The results of this would inform practice developments in this area.

2. Introduce bonuses for the skills acquired with experience and incremental pay scales for length of service, to improve retention.

1. Consider putting emergency short term assessment arrangements in place that allow time to establish the child’s needs in order that the appropriate placement is made, which should reduce the likelihood of placement breakdowns;

The P&I team, which was now fully functioning, and the planned expansion to the outreach services, as part of Placement Matters and operational from April 1st, were designed to support families and carers to allow sufficient time for workers to carry out appropriate assessments before accommodation/placement change was sought. This should also minimise the needed for accommodation, increase the use of kinship care and allow more choice for those who need accommodation.

In addition to these services and the increase in the Attach, DBT and the CAMHS services would all help to support placements in care and at home. Work was planned to streamline the access and delivery of those services.

No specific plans were in place to recruit emergency carers as our most pressing problem was capacity-to-match once an assessment had taken place, hence the over use of IFAs.

2. Develop multi-agency working between Social & Health Care, Health and Education, and central record keeping to enable the Authority to track the child’s movements and monitor its performance on the stability of placements.

1. Adequate respite for the carers;

Three new posts had been recruited to, with the intention of approving and supporting new carers. As had been said, those had yet to result in more carers and therefore more respite. There was a feeling that the service needed to reorganise to create more dedicated time for fostering and adoption services. This would help deliver more carers. A bench-marking exercise was underway to inform a possible reorganisation of the service: the results of this would be presented for consideration by CMT.

2. More breaks similar to the Hill End project for the children;

The success of such projects was not in doubt and it was nice for them to receive national recognition (see Community Care article on Hill End). Plans to extend such group work/ respite activities were planned for targeted groups throughout the establishment of the DBT project for self harmers, the CLA Diversion project (which would be extended to include young people at risk of care), the Residential Outreach project, the work being done by Asylum Welcome and Centrepoint. There was certainly no lack of enthusiasm for those projects but money and staff time continued to be limiting factors.

3. "Ready for Practice" investment for the Social Workers.

• participation groups being run by Centrepoint to give young people a voice
• a Leaving Care Personal Adviser had been appointed to support the Source Worker programme, whose work plan included setting up phone lines and drop in sessions for young people who had recently entered the looked after system.
• the use of Viewpoint, an electronic consultation system

8/06. EVALUATION OF USE OF SCHOOL PREMISES FOR COMMUNITY PURPOSES SCRUTINY REVIEW ("ROOM AT SCHOOL")

(Agenda Item 9)

The former Learning & Culture Scrutiny Committee had undertook a scrutiny review into the use of School Premises for Community Purposes. The Review Group had been appointed to identify local community needs for access to school facilities, assess the degree of non-school usage and report back on key findings.

It had now been over a year since the (then) Executive had agreed the recommendations of this Scrutiny Review and therefore the Committee had before it a progress report (CH9) relating to this Review. Members of the Committee were asked to evaluate this review and reflect on how successful it has been; and to establish the degree of progress in implementing the recommendations agreed by a means of a question and answer session.

The Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement, together with Mr Gerald Hales (Education Officer – Planning) and Ms Sandra Holmes (Extended Schools Co-ordinator) attended the meeting in order to answer any questions which the Committee may have wished to ask.

Following a brief question and answer session, the Committee thanked the Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement for a comprehensive update on the Evaluation of Use of School Premises for Community Purposes Scrutiny Review.

9/06. SCRUTINY REVIEW : GIFTED CHILDREN

(Agenda Item 10)

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 Tilley, Member of the Lead Member Review Group reported on current progress of the Review. She reported that the Group had now visited 5 schools to talk to both children and teachers. The Group had found that some schools held programmes for Gifted Children whilst others merely maintained a list. The Group had visited Westminster College which provided courses on Gifted Children and had also spoken with Professor Geekey from the National Academy for Gifted Children.

Through these discussions, the Group had established that being a ‘Gifted Child’ was not hereditary, but that it was generic completely across the board.

The Group had further visits planned to Cambridge Local Education Authority and a Cambridge School.

The Committee noted the progress on the Review thus far.

10/06. WHITE PAPER : HIGHER STANDARDS, BETTER SCHOOLS FOR ALL

(Agenda Item 11)

The Schools White Paper "Higher Standards, Better Schools for All - more choice for parents and pupils" had been published by the DfES on the 25 October 2005.

The Committee had before them a report (CH11) which provided an overview of the contents of the White Paper, focusing on those proposals which indicated a change in the role of local authorities. Those proposals were primarily associated with the provision of school places in response to parental wishes; the establishment of Trust Schools; and admissions arrangements. An indication was given as to how these proposals may impact in Oxfordshire.

The report also provided a basis for the Committee to consider what advice it should give to the Cabinet in order that it might respond to the three motions relating to the White Paper (reproduced in Annex 1) which the Council on 10 January referred to the Cabinet, via this Committee, to advise the Council at its 4 April meeting

Mr Geoff Jones has been invited to attend in order to answer any questions that the Committee may have wished to ask.

In the event the Education and Inspections Bill had been introduced in the House of Commons at 3.0 pm on the day of the meeting and therefore it was AGREED to defer consideration of this item due to the Education and Inspections Bill being introduced in the House of Commons on that day and to convene a special meeting on 14 March to consider what comments to make on the three outstanding motions relating to the White Paper in the light of the Bill’s provisions. The Committee therefore asks the Cabinet to defer consideration of the motions to the 21 March meeting.

11/06. SCRUTINY WORK PROGRAMME 2005/06

(Agenda Item 12)

The Committee was asked to review and update its 2005/06 Scrutiny work Programme.

The Committee AGREED to add ‘Workforce Remodelling – a joint review with COTO to examine the effects one year on of actions relating to workforce remodelling and the workload agreement’ to their work programme

12/06. TRACKING SCRUTINY ITEMS

(Agenda Item 13)

Report back on advice by this Committee to the Cabinet or Council.

The Committee thanked the Scrutiny Research Officer for an excellent report, welcomed the process for future investigations and noted the outcome of their advice to the Cabinet in relation to Delegating the Statementing budget to Schools.

13/06. FORWARD PLAN

in the Chair

Date of signing 2006

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