ITEM CH3CHILDREN'S SERVICES SCRUTINY COMMITTEEMINUTES of the meeting held on 12 December 2006 commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 2.10 pm. Present: Other
Members in Attendance: By
Invitation: Officers: Whole of meeting: D Miller (Corporate Core). 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 agreed as set out below.
Copies of the agenda, reports and schedule are attached to the signed
Minutes. 52/06 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND TEMPORARY APPOINTMENTS Apologies for absence and temporary appointments were received as follows:
53/06 MINUTES The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 31 October 2006 were approved and signed, subject to the following replacing bullet point 2 under minute 47/06: · A school that was a high flyer was not necessarily the right place to put a vulnerable child – other schools could be better equipped to deal with vulnerable children with problems around emotional behaviour 54/06 SERVICE AND RESOURCE PLANNING 2007/08 - 2011/12 (Agenda Item 5) Members of the Committee considered a report which set out a proposed Medium Term Financial Plan for the Children, Young People & Families programme area for consideration, supported by details of pressures proposed to be funded and pressures which were currently met by proposed efficiency savings and service reprioritisations. On 21 November 2006 the Cabinet had referred the identified budgetary pressures in the respective service areas, and how these could be funded, to the Scrutiny Committees for comment. The Committee was asked to consider and comment on the identified budget priorities and pressures and the choices as to how these could be funded for their programme area. The Cabinet Members for School Improvements and Children, Young People & Families, together with the Director for Children, Young People & Families, the Head of Finance & Procurement, Mr Andrew Tagg (Interim Strategic Finance Manager) and Ms Lorna Baxter (Principal Financial Manager) attended the Committee in order to answer any questions which the Committee may have wished to ask. Following a lengthy debate, the Committee AGREED to forward the following advice to Cabinet via the Corporate Governance Scrutiny Committee: (a) to advise the Cabinet that the Committee believed that Post 16 SEN Special School places were very important and that whilst regretting the lack of Government support for the local Learning & Skills Council, the Committee strongly urged the Cabinet to allocate the necessary funding for this service; (b) to advise the Cabinet of the Committee’s concerns regarding the proposed cuts to post 16 Transport, in the context that: (i) Oxfordshire was an exceptionally rural County and this cut would have a potentially severe effect on Post 16 Education of the Approximately 50% of the County’s population living in rural areas; (ii) Government chooses not to fund the transport costs of its 14-19 Education Agenda; (iii) and (iii) above would be a compounding problem in future years, especially for rural areas; (c) to ask the Cabinet to lobby Government to guarantee the continuation £1.939m funding and in the case that it be replaced by RSG funding, to ask for a reassurance that it would take Oxfordshire above a floor Authority, as any withdrawal of funding would lead to a reduction is service that would effect the most vulnerable in society. 55/06 EXTERNAL REVIEW OF CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CARE (Agenda Item 6) The Committee had before them a report (EN6) which summarised an external review of the Children’s Social Care Service (since realignment of the Early Years and Family Support Service), which was commissioned by the Director for Children, Young People and Families, in May 2006. The review was commissioned to examine and make recommendations regarding: · the budget and spend issues in children’s social care, a service with repeated overspends in previous years; · the service strategy, including a review of the “Placement Matters” strategy adopted by the Council in 2005; · benchmark and comparator data relating to performance, activity and expenditure. The review was conducted by Tom Jones, an independent consultant with considerable experience, including as a former Head of Children’s Services. Mr Couldrick, in introducing the report stressed that a key recommendation of the review concerned the establishment of services and decision-making structures that replaced the existing, professionally-dominated models, with mechanisms that enabled and empowered families and kinship networks to find solutions for, and meet the needs of, their children. The role of the public services became that of supporting families to make decisions and plans for their children, ensuring that through such an approach children were better safeguarded and enjoy better outcomes as a consequence. He reported that developing this strategic approach
to our work in supporting families supported the Council’s vision to safeguard
communities and helped disadvantaged residents to live independent lives,
and helped to achieve corporate priorities around improving attainment,
reducing crime and anti-social behaviour, and decreasing inequalities. · Oxfordshire’s performance against key Government Performance Indicators had improved steeply in two years. In 2004-05 Oxfordshire rose from 138th of 152 local authorities, to 22nd, in terms of performance. In 2005-06, first analysis suggested further improvement to 11th nationally, and within the top three, against all indicators, of its IPF comparator group of authorities. · Oxfordshire was a low spender on children’s social care services. It was within the bottom quartile nationally, while in its IPF group it is 12th of 16 in it’s spend. This was based on actual spend in 2005-06, which in Oxfordshire’s case was £1.2m over its agreed budget. If the budget figure was taken the Council falls to 15th out of 16. · Oxfordshire had a low spend on family support services – it is 132 out of 150 English authorities and 14th out of 16 in its IPF group. · The proportion of the budget spent on Family Support (i.e. other than on Looked After Children) is 10th lowest nationally. · The number of children’s social workers per 10000 population was also 10th lowest nationally, at 14.7, compared with an England average 27.2, and IPF average of 19.1. · The numbers of Looked After Children in Oxfordshire were lower than comparator authorities, while the types and costs of their placements were average within the comparator group. ·
Fewer placements for children
were jointly funded (Health, “education”, social care) in Oxfordshire
than in other authorities. Councillor Chapman welcomed the opportunity to seek the Committee’s view on this area of work. She endorsed the need for more foster carers and for services to ensure that the correct support was found for children at a very young age. Following the presentation by Mr Couldrick, the Committee asked a number of question, a selection of which are listed below: Q. How were families, who don’t want anything to do with children, going to be persuaded to attended family conferences? A. This was a genuine concern, those parents were very unlikely to attend a meeting that had been arranged by professionals, but might attend if there was pressure from wider family members. Q. How was the Council going to facilitate spending the money? A. The Council needed to ensure that the safety and protection of children currently within the service was upheld whilst looking at prevention. Officers were currently looking at working differently, including leadership methods to lead social workers to use family conferences. Q. There were currently many organisations in the County providing family links – what were the Council doing to ensure that those links were not missed? A. The Council needed to landscape parent support services to bring them in as partners and to commission those services to ensure that the network of preventative services was enhanced. Q. The Council needed to ensure that the strategy papers translate into people’s reality. A. I agree, the speed by which children’s services had been implemented in the past had prevented that happening, although it did happen in a few cases. The cultural changes that the Council were trying to achieve through locality working meant that families would have someone to talk to about how things were working on the ground. Q. How were the Council going to ensure that senior staff could achieve the necessary behavioural and cultural changes? A.
It would be very challenging. The Council had experienced, long standing
members of staff who would find it difficult – not naive about problems
but were optimistic. However, the Council had been awarded 4 out of 4
for cultural change in the recent Ofstead review. Following debate the Committee AGREED to: (i) Welcome the Action Plan in response to the External Review of Children’s Social Care, Service and Strategy; (ii) ask officers to report back to the Committee in six months time outlining progress in implementing the strategy and service modernisation recommendations set out in the report CH6 and the policy shift towards the development of services and decision-making models that mandate family-based decision-making strategy and practice. 56/06 BEST VALUE REVIEW OF SERVICES FOR VULNERABLE CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE: IMPLEMENTATION (Agenda Item 7) The Executive, on 19 April 2005, had received a report from the Best Value & Audit Committee on its wide-ranging review of services for vulnerable children and young people. The Best Value Review had made a wide range of recommendations. A number of these had been, or were being, implemented through the realignment of the Directorates. All of the remaining recommended actions in the Best Value Review of Children’s Services had been incorporated in the new Children and Young People’s Plan. On 27 September 2005 this Committee considered a report which focused in detail on proposals for implementing the Best Value Review in relation to two key developments: · the Children and Young People’s Commissioning Trust; · Integrated Support Services and Locality Teams. The responsibility to evaluate the progress in implementing Best Value Review recommendations transferred to Scrutiny Committees following the replacement of the Best Value & Audit Committee with the Audit Committee. It had now been over a year since the Committee last received a report on this Review. Mrs
Gillian Tee, gave a brief presentation on the progress of the Review thus
far, a copy of which is attached to the signed minutes. The Committee then questioned Mrs Tee and Ms Bingham on the progress of the Review. The following key points arose from debate: · The Council had good arrangements for children who were carers and this was funded through the Children’s Trust Grant. The Council needed to ensure that this support would continue. · The Council need to work with districts to ensure proper carers were not restricted by the planning system. · The Council needed to ensure that it continued to support children looked after in attaining GCSEs. · The Council need to ensure that home study was rigorous. · The Committee welcomed money being used flexibly across departments. · The Committee welcomed proposals for putting in early prevention services and jointly funded multi-agency teams which would provide a single point of service. · The Committee raised concern regarding the understaffing of the CAMS system and the inability this may cause to provide early prevention. Following debate, the Committee thanked officers for the tremendous amount of progress made in relation to implementing the recommendations set out in the Best Value Review of Vulnerable Children & Young People. 57/06 HEALTHY SCHOOLS SCRUTINY REVIEW (Agenda Item 8) On 27 September, this Committee had agreed as part of their work programme to undertake a scrutiny review of ‘Healthy Schools’ and appointed Councillors Mrs Anda Fitzgerald O’Connor, Keith Stone and Jean Fooks to the Lead Member Review Group. Councillor Fooks gave an update on the progress thus far on the Scrutiny Review of ‘Healthy Schools’. She reported that since the last meeting of the Committee, the Review Group had visited several schools: Iffley Mead Special, Banbury, the Warriner, West Oxford, Uffington Primary and St Michael’s Junior in Twerton, Bath. The purpose of those visits, during which the group spoke to Headteachers, staff governors and pupils was to establish the progress that was being made with the Healthy Schools Programme, the local strategies that schools were putting in place, the problems encountered and plans for the future. The Review Group anticipated that it would be drafting a review report in January with a view to the draft being presented to the 27 February Committee meeting. 58/06 TRACKING SCRUTINY ITEMS (Agenda Item 9) The Scrutiny Committee AGREED to note the outcome of their advice set out on the schedule of addenda in relation to the Scrutiny Review of Gifted Children and to forward any comments on the scoping template for the Review of Workforce Remodelling – Planning, Preparation and Assessment Time to Mrs Miller by Friday 21 December 2006. 59/06 FORWARD PLAN (Agenda Item 10) The Committee was asked to suggest items from the current Forward Plan on which it might wish to have an opportunity to offer advice to the Cabinet before any decision was taken. No items were identified. 60/06 SCRUTINY DVD ‘WHAT HAS SCRUTINY EVER DONE FOR US?’ (Agenda Item 11) ................................................................................... in the Chair Date of signing.................................................................. 2007 Return to TOP
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