MINUTES of the meeting held on 25 September 2007 commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 12.45 pm
Present:
Voting Members: Councillor Sue Haffenden - in the chair
Councillor Marilyn Badcock
Councillor Ann Bonner
Councillor Nick Carter
Councillor Mrs Anda Fitzgerald-O’Connor
Councillor Jean Fooks
Councillor Deborah Glass Woodin
Councillor Pete Handley
Councillor David Nimmo-Smith
Councillor Val Smith
Councillor Lawrie Stratford
Councillor David Turner
Councillor Carol Viney
Mr Ben Jackson
Ms Bernadine Spencer (part of meeting)
Other Members in Cabinet Member for Schools’ Improvement: Councillor Attendance: Michael Waine
Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Families: Councillor Louise Chapman
Officers:
Whole of meeting: K. Coldwell (Corporate Core).
Agenda Item |
Officer Attending |
5 |
Director for Children, Young People & Families |
5 |
A. Tagg (Children, Young People & Families) |
5 |
J. Hydari (Corporate Core) |
6 |
A. Smith (Children, Young People & Families) |
7(c ) |
J. T. Hehir (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.
37/07 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND TEMPORARY APPOINTMENTS
Apologies for absence and temporary appointments were received as follows:
Apology from |
Temporary Appointments |
Mr Chris Bevan |
- |
Mrs Sue Matthews |
- |
|
|
38/07 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST
Mr Ben Jackson declared a personal interest at Agenda Item 5 – Presentation on Budgetary Pressures 2008/09 – by virtue of being a parent of a child with Special Educational Needs and a member of CHOICE.
39/07 MINUTES
The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 10 July 2007 were approved and signed subject to the following amendments:
· reflecting that Councillor Ann Bonner attended for the duration of the meeting;
· Minute 33/07 – Scrutiny Work Programme – Young Child Carers (and support for them) – removing Mrs Sue Matthew from the list of Task Group members.
· Minute 36/07 – Call in of Cabinet Decision: Provision of Additional Secondary School Places in Wantage, Grove and Surrounding Villages – adding the words ‘Councillor Waine endorsed Mr Mill’s statement’ after the sentence ‘He added that it was hoped that all sixth forms in the vicinity would work together’.
Matters Arising
Councillor Haffenden welcomed Mr Mark Forder as the new COTO representative on this Committee and paid tribute to Mrs Brenda Williams (previous COTO representative) for all her hard work over the years, which had been grounded in realism, with particular regard to her latest contribution to the PPA Scrutiny Review.
Councillor Haffenden welcomed Councillor Pete Handley (Carterton South West) to the Committee.
Minute 30/07 – Effective Communication To Parents Of Children With SEN: Final Scrutiny Review Report – this would now be considered by Cabinet on 20 November.
Minute 29/07 – Charging in Schools ‘Mini’ Scrutiny Review Evaluation – Councillor Waine reported that a date has now been scheduled to meet with Ms Thomas and Sharron Jenkinson (Senior Advisor Curriculum, Learning and Inclusion) in order to discuss how to make use of further random monitoring techniques.
Minute 34/07 – Tracking Scrutiny Items – Councillor Chapman stated that the Cabinet’s response had stated that ‘Nominating a Member Healthy Schools Champion would be a welcome development’ as a Member Children’s Champion was already in place, adding that she was the Children’s Champion.
Councillors Haffenden, Fooks and Mrs Fitzgerald-O’Connor undertook to draw up a job description for the Healthy Schools Champion in order to provide Members with details of what the role would encompass.
40/07 PRESENTATION ON BUDGETARY PRESSURES 2008/09
(Agenda Item 5)
This presentation had been arranged to allow members of this Committee to have an early indication of key budgetary issues, and was intended to assist their scrutiny of the budget at this Committee’s December meeting.
The Cabinet Members for Children, Young People & Families and Schools’ Improvement, together with the Director for Children, Young People & Families attended in order to outline the budgetary pressures for 2008/09.
Ms Jenny Hydari (Assistant Head of Finance (Financial Planning) and Mr Andy Tagg (Interim Strategic Finance Manager - Children, Young People & Families) also attended in order to answer any questions which members of the Committee may have wished to ask.
Councillor Chapman reported as follows:
· There were a number of positive outcomes to report:
- the relocation of the Youth Offending Team to Children, Young People & Families was a success and the Team was meeting all of their targets. However, confirmation had not yet been received that all of the funding would be available to the service;
- the diversion scheme had worked very well;
- the chill out fund had created a number of opportunities for young people;
- the Youth Service was now managing Connexions and work was underway regarding how officers would commission work in the future;
- the rollout of Children’s Centres across the county was progressing well and there would be additional grant to continue phase 3 of the programme;
· However:
- The funding of placements for children Looked After was still an issue. In her view, insufficient budget had been allocated for Placements, which was why the service had consistently overspent every year. High care placements were very expensive. It was hoped that more funding could be provided for Placements during the next budget round;
- the situation regarding unaccompanied asylum seekers (uasc) (government funding for uasc reduced as they got older and the local authority then had to provide the necessary funds) was ongoing and officers were raising this with the government. Other local authorities were also affected.
A member of the Committee expressed concern that young women were now having to travel to Ealing for abortions, as the local NHS would not fund them.
Councillor Chapman stated that this had been raised at the Children’s Board meeting and was a real concern. The local termination service had been contracted out and young people now had to travel to Ealing or to Reading for terminations. She added that the Health Service had stated that there were insufficient doctors in Oxford to carry out terminations as a number of doctors did not wish to conduct terminations for cultural reasons.
In response to questions from the Committee Councillor Chapman undertook to:
· circulate data on how many unaccompanied asylum seeking children were in the county to all members of this committee;
· provide an update to this Committee once she had received the report on the County’s termination service;
· ask Monica Hanaway to provide an update on work underway to train more youth workers.
Councillor Waine then made the following points:
· A report on Post 16 Special Educational Needs Provision would be considered by the Cabinet on 16 October 2007 which would recommend the Cabinet to consult widely on a range of possible options to be considered for possible consultation and request a further report on the outcome of the consultation in January 2008;
· It wasn’t known what funding was coming through from the Learning & Skills Council (LSC). Another letter would be sent to Bill Rammell MP (Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education) to ask for the allocation of funding to be finalised;
· Review of Primary School provision in Oxfordshire – officers were now moving into a gateway review – a web site would go live within a few days which would provide further detail on this.
The Director for Children, Young People & Families then reported as follows:
· the Directorate was operating within a national context of a reduction in grants and changing legislation and a local context of low taxes, real choice and value for money;
· the key budget issue for the next financial year was that more money was needed for agency placements. The main thrust at Star Chamber would be to obtain the correct amount of money for placements;
· the Directorate’s weaker areas had been set out in the Children and Young People’s Plan, Local Area Agreement Targets and the annual performance assessment:
- attainment at every key stage needed to improve, especially at GCSE level. It was important that the attainment of black and ethnic minority groups and Looked After children was raised;
- teenage pregnancy was an issue;
- substance misuse needed to be addressed;
- post 16 SEN provision would take some time to address;
- the good record regarding reducing the number of reconvictions of young offenders needed to be maintained;
- the proportion of young people not in education, employment or training needed to be reduced;
- attendance, admissions and exclusions: schools were finding this hard as there were tensions between league tables and inclusion;
- it was important that every child in the county received a good education;
- some schools were entitled to set their own admissions policies. This had the potential to result in a group of children without school places. It might be necessary to set up facilities for those children who had not received a school place;
- the Directorate did not have the funds to subsidise non core services (eg buy back services);
- it would be necessary to develop the work of the Children’s Trust;
- there would be more locality working in order to reduce the number of professionals that families needed to talk to. Reorganisation of service provision on a locality basis could be carried out within budget;
- reducing the amount of time spent by officers in meetings was also important to enable officers to deliver core business.
Councillor Waine commented that a change in curriculum had been put in place in secondary schools. A traditional curriculum was not appropriate for all children when they reached twelve or thirteen.
The Director for Children, Young People & Families made the following points regarding educational attainment in response to queries:
· children needed to be happy and have high self-esteem in order to learn;
· education was about more than academic achievement;
· schools also had to address family issues such as poor parenting, broaden children’s experience and boost their self esteem;
· getting the right teachers and leaders in schools was important;
· attainment would be raised by focussing on the individual needs of children and young people;
· all of the nationally set targets regarding achievement had to be adhered to;
· many concerned attainment and the Council was accountable for them;
· the right leaders in schools would inspire teachers, other staff and students, and have sound management skills;
· it would be necessary to have a mix of these skills in a school’s management team;
· large schools were not a problem as long as they had good leadership and appropriate structures;
· expanding existing systems was not always the best option. Different leadership and different organisational styles were often needed when a school expanded;
· it was also important that leaders put systems in place that could be sustained once they had moved to a different post;
· research also showed that those schools who focussed on assisting gifted and talented children raised standards across the board as their general focus was on raising aspirations;
· many schools found parental engagement difficult. Not all parents found it easy to engage with local authority consultations. The best programmes to address the issue of parental engagement were intervention programmes which worked with families.
A member of the Committee asked if funding would become available to support children with special educational needs to get involved in extra-curricular activities outside of their allocated support time.
Councillor Chapman responded that the Directorate received a government grant at present which was passed on to schools. However the grant was time limited and there was the expectation that it wouldn’t continue. The grant was intended as pump priming money for initial set up which the school would continue to run.
41/07 CHILDREN’S CENTRES
(Agenda Item 6)
The Committee had before it a briefing paper on developing phase 3 of Children’s Centres in Oxfordshire.
The Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Families and Ms Amanda Smith (Service Manager Early Intervention) attended for this item in order to answer any questions which members of the Committee may have wished to ask.
Ms Smith reported as follows:
· Phase 1 had covered the first four Children’s Centres which had already been designated;
· Phase 2 had covered developing another 25 centres. This was on track and all the centres would be designated by the end of March 2008;
· For some centres, the services would not yet be delivered out of the designated buildings. The capital project was huge and there was a certain amount of slippage. However, Oxfordshire was ahead of other authorities in the South East region in terms of capital approvals. All of the building work should be completed by next September.
The Committee then conducted a question and answer session. A selection of their questions, together with the responses, are listed below:
· Building works were taking longer than anticipated. Surely officers would have known this?
Ms Smith responded that officers had been aware of the issues and had visited the Sure Start approval offices to move approvals on. Officers had been on track with most of their projects but had been hindered by the fact that the approval process had changed 2 or 3 times by the Surestart Unit and the approval process had only been rationalised in late Spring 2007.
· Were the centres reaching the right target audience?
A national performance management system was now in place. Regular monitoring and self-evaluation was in place for each Children’s Centre. Measures included engaging with stakeholders and parental satisfaction. The Centres had to demonstrate that they were meeting their target audience. Data profiles had been produced for each area so that the Centres knew who to target.
The Committee AGREED that it wished to comment on the next report on Children’s Centres which would be considered by the Cabinet on 19 February.
42/07 SCRUTINY WORK PROGRAMME 2007/08 AND ONWARDS
(Agenda Item 7)
(a) Young (Child) Carers (and support for them): Scoping Template
At its previous meeting, this Committee had agreed its Scrutiny Work Programme for 2007/08 and onwards. It gave top priority to a scrutiny review into young child carers and support for them.
The Lead Member Review Group comprises Councillor David Turner, Councillor Mrs Anda Fitzgerald O’Connor, Councillor Carol Viney, Mr Ben Jackson and Mrs Sue Matthew.
The Committee was asked to comment on the draft template and agree a version to be submitted to the Scrutiny Co-ordinating Group, which meets on 8 October.
The Committee AGREED to submit the scoping template to the Scrutiny Co-ordinating Group subject to the following amendments:
To Rationale
· (to add the following wording in bold italics)
Young carers have been identified by Members including two of the authority’s Scrutiny Committees; Social & Community Services and Health) as a key issue.
To Specify Witnesses/Experts
· To add ‘Schools’, ‘Pastoral Heads of Year Groups’, ‘Representatives of Primary School Head teachers’ and ‘School Nurses’.
· To remove the repetition of ‘District Councils’.
(b) Educational Attainment amongst the most “deprived” children across all Key Stages.
At its previous meeting, this Committee agreed its Scrutiny Work Programme for 2007/08 and onwards. It gave second priority into a scrutiny review into educational attainment amongst the most economically “deprived” children in Oxfordshire across all Key Stages.
The Lead Member Review Group comprises Councillor David Turner, Councillor Val Smith, Mrs Sue Matthew and Ms Bernadine Spencer.
The Committee noted that it was now anticipated that this review would commence in February 2008 and that Councillor Haffenden would wish to join the Lead Member Review Group in place of Brenda Williams.
Any other members of this Committee who would like to join the Lead Member Review Group were asked to contact either Councillor Haffenden or Kath Coldwell.
(c) Ongoing Review of Children & Young People’s Plan as it is implemented: Discussion
At its previous meeting, this Committee had agreed its Scrutiny Work Programme for 2007/08 and onwards.
One of the items in this Committee’s Scrutiny Work Programme for 2008/09 is an ongoing review of the Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP) as it is implemented. The Task Group will be reporting back to the Committee periodically and feeding into the review of Year 2 of the Plan.
On 17 July the Cabinet approved the review of the first year of the Children & Young People’s Plan, which had been produced in April 2006.
Task Group members comprise Councillors Fooks, Glass-Woodin and Viney, Mrs Sue Matthew and Ms Bernadine Spencer.
Following discussion, the Committee AGREED that:
· the Task Group would meet before December 2007, focus on 1 or 2 topics of concern and report back to this Committee’s December meeting*;
· Councillors Fooks and Mrs Fitzgerald-O’Connor would feed in information provided to the Children’s Panel in order to avoid duplication.
*If it was not possible for the whole Task Group to find a suitable date then at least two Task Group members would attend the meeting.
43/07 TRACKING SCRUTINY ITEMS
(Agenda Item 8)
Report back on advice by this Committee to the Cabinet or Council.
The Committee noted the following information:
· Review of First Year of the Children’s and Young People’s Plan
On 17 July the Cabinet approved the Review of the Children and Young People’s Plan.
· Full Time Admission for All Reception Year Children
On 17 July the Cabinet agreed to:
(a) approve a change to full-time admission for all reception aged children from January 2009;
(b) instruct officers to work with the private and voluntary sector providers to implement actions outlined in the report; and
(c) request the Leader of the Council to write to the Secretary of State to ask that the Government assesses the impact of the principal existing and all new Early Years initiatives on the financial viability of Oxfordshire’s private, voluntary and independent nurseries, pre-schools and day-care providers before proceeding further with the initiatives, in view of the vital role these play.
· Planning, Preparation and Assessment Time in Primary and Nursery Schools – Implementation and Impact: Final Report
The Committee noted the Cabinet Member’s response which was listed on an Addenda.
· Youth Justice Plan
On 17 July the Cabinet agreed to recommend the Council to approve the Youth Justice Plan for submission to the Youth Justice Board.
44/07 FORWARD PLAN
(Agenda Item 9)
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.
The Committee noted that Councillor Fooks had already requested that this Committee look at the Review of the First Year of Delegating the Statementing Budget at its October meeting in order to offer comment and/or advice to the Cabinet.
................................................................................... in the Chair
Date of signing.................................................................. 2007