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ITEM CH3

CHILDREN’S SERVICES SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

MINUTES of the meeting held on 26 September 2006 commencing at 10.00 am and finishing at 1.15 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.

37/06. APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE AND TEMPORARY APPOINTMENTS

Apologies for absence and temporary appointments were received as follows:

Apology from	Temporary Appointments
Councillor Nicholas P. Turner	Councillor Tony Crabbe
Mrs Sue Matthew	-

38/06. MINUTES

The Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 11 July 2006 were approved and signed, subject to the following amendments:

Minute 33/06, 2^nd paragraph – delete the word ‘presentation’ and substitute it with ‘celebration’;

Minute 35/06, 1^st paragraph – delete the word ‘tank’ and substitute with ‘task’.

39/06. BUDGET SCRUTINY 2006/07

• Levels of attainment in Oxfordshire.
• Overall improvement – exceeding targets.
• New relationship with schools – school improvement partners.
• Quality assurance.
• Providing good practice – curriculum.
• Improvement intervention.

• New Relationship with Schools. Shift of resources over next 3 years – replaced by grant funding.
• Impact of Dedicated Schools Grant. £390m - £72m. 2007/08 budget – no flexibility completely ring fenced
• Preparing for our Joint Area Review. Will be preparing 2007/08 - September/October 2007 resource implications.
• Fall out of promoting engagement funding for 16-19 year olds. 2007/08 through grant funding mechanism large fall in funding to primary education.
• Increasing social care responsibilities/duties and costs of legislation. 2006/07 – Introduction of special guardianship.
• Planned reduction in Standards Fund grants – SEN/Social Inclusion – post 2008. For 2008 – Comprehensive Spending Review meant to address it.

• The Challenge of ‘floor funding’. Oxfordshire beneath the floor so on the floor. Brought up to rate of floor by rate funding mechanism.
• Achieving the national ‘Gershon’ efficiency targets. Medium term financial plan – need to find £5m efficiency savings in the next year.
• Post 16 SEN provision. Review with LSC has come up with recommendation to extend post 16 provision available in schools – no funding mechanism for this. At around £580,000 – currently spending £1.1m a year.
• Addressing APA ‘weaknesses’. Annual Performance Assessment.

• Changing demography – demand/need across primary and secondary school places. Particular issue in Oxfordshire – we are seeing decline in birth rate but off-set by people moving into area – Shift in demand and need for School places. – need to better address how we match and supply and need.
• Placement Matters – improving provision for Looked after Children and increasing family support services. Awaiting outcome of review – need to change the way we work – need to get our interventions upstream.
• Improving co-ordination of funding and service provision with Health. Turmoil in health when they have been reorganising has been very difficult – difficult to have discussions with health over past few years.

• Demand-led budgets e.g. Home/School Transport £15m) – up to £1m inflation. (1% = £160k). £15m budget – changed the way its managed. Majority spent on statutory transport to schools and for SEN. Inflation pressure 5% last year. We anticipate that will need £1m for inflation and additional money for fuel and wage costs – will have budgeted for 3%.
• On-going Social Care Pressures:

• Demand for post 16 SEN provision. Could cost £3m over 3 years with the possibility of needing £500,000 for next year.

• ‘Employer of last resort’ issues for schools

• Structure of residential care/respite care/home support for families and young people with high levels of care needs. Most inequitable bit of our funding. Been neglected. Small level of resource will make big difference.

40/06. SCRUTINY REVIEW OF GIFTED CHILDREN: DRAFT REVIEW REPORT

• Meeting gifted children’s needs by a differentiated curriculum or an above age class or differentiated peer group, depended on the ability of the teacher; it was easy in practice to teach a gifted child in a class to the level of different age children; eg small rural schools in Australia where there were lots of different age children being taught at the appropriate level. But, evidence showed that gifted children liked being grouped with other gifted children. But it was more than just teaching an above age curriculum hence recommendations about experience, training and a gifted education programme were welcome.
• Professor Geake acknowledged that there might need to be more comment in the report about abilities surrounding academic giftedness, eg being creative, lateral thinking – "creative intelligence" was a characteristic of the gifted.
• There were concerns about personal and social development not matching academic, when children were taught out of their age group. This was a challenge. Where this crossed, for instance, the primary/secondary divide, it was a question of bringing the secondary provision into the primary school. In Australia, feeder primary schools had secondary teachers come in and do specialist lessons in primary but this transgressed "political" boundaries in the UK.
• There were notions of "elitism" surrounding giftedness and a view that gifted children would achieve regardless of identification and provision. However, the evidence was that one can expect to find the gifted everywhere and not in particular social groups. Ironically IQ tests were good at picking out children as they were culturally neutral. Nevertheless, if a child was in a deprived social environment there might not be the triggers to up regulate the relevant genes and therefore one could end up with situations where only the middle class children were being identified.
• As regards achievement, some would achieve to maximum capability but none could just be left alone. There was a disturbing number of under-achievers - more so among girls who realise quickly that they could be excluded from peer group activities if they were explicit about their academic interests, gifts etc. Boys didn’t realised so quickly and hence the outcome was often behavioural/discipline problems.
• Identification should be more widespread.
• In Australia there had been research on gifted children reaching adulthood. Those who had been accelerated through education seemed to do well career wise and socially. Those who had not been accelerated had all sorts of social problems. So, as regards the separation of children and the social implications, concerns seemed to be unfounded; it was an inevitable characteristic of humans that they "hang out" with those who were similar.
• There were concerns about whether mainstream schools could stretch gifted children enough and about whether a programme for mainstream could do enough. Programmes could be labelled and as such, be "programmes for all". Children should not be labelled.

• Main findings should state that every child stands to benefit from providing properly for the gifted in state schools.
• Teachers when "talent spotting" came across other talents and abilities eg leadership. Whilst aiming towards a programme for the gifted one would come across these other abilities.
• There were uncertainties around linking giftedness with SEN.
• Lots of emphasis was given in schools to talents of one kind or another but not to recognition of academic achievement.
• There were concerns about the deliverability of the recommendations.
• The old SNAST (Special Needs Advisory Support Teacher) system that was dismantled in the mid-1990s, could have been a means to provide for gifted children.
• Several Members had questions around resource implications and said that it was too early to make recommendations.
• It was questioned whether there was a problem in academic achievement levels in Oxfordshire, that there was insufficient information to reach this conclusion and therefore, for the review to reach its conclusions.
• There was general comment that one could make recommendations to teacher training institutions without any likely success.
• The practicality of the recommendations needed thinking through because schools work to national requirements, so there would be resistance; the recommendations to the review need tweaking to fall into line with realities.
• It would be unfortunate given the debate at the committee on the review if the piece of work became polarised, because a theme in the review was how to enable schools to meet needs across the board.
• The review accurately identified the ethos of schools and expectations as critical.

41/06. STABILITY OF PLACEMENTS FOR CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER SCRUTINY REVIEW

(Agenda Item 7)

This review had been submitted to the Cabinet on 19 July 2005. On 28 February the Committee had received a six month update and agreed to ask for a further update in six months time.

Accordingly, Mr Couldrick provided a written update (CH7) which outlined further progress achieved in implementing the Review recommendations that the Cabinet endorsed.

The Committee then questioned Mr Couldrick in relation to the progress achieved in implementing the Review recommendations as follows:

Q. Could you tell the Committee what progress there has been on introducing bonuses for the skills acquired with experience and incremental pay scales for the length of service, to improve retention of foster carers?

A. Payment Structure - work was ongoing. Recent government recommendations include a minimum wage allowance for carers. The payment structure needed to be rationalised as the structure was currently very complicated and made it very difficult for carers to understand what they were entitled to.

Another issue was that Oxfordshire’s looked after population was ageing. The ages of people who were looked after was rising and in turn the complexity of their problems increased which brought new challenges for the people caring for them.

Q. In a local paper I noticed an advertisement for a PACT recruitment evening. How does this impact on Oxfordshire County Council’s (OCC) own recruitment for carers? Did organisations such as this offer the same financial incentives as OCC?

A. It was an increasingly competitive arena. PACT who were a charity, were looking to diversify their foster care provision. There were also 5 other independent private sector foster agencies operating in Oxfordshire at present.

The Foster Care Service at OCC was inspected most recently in July 2006. It gained 3 out of 4 rating in terms of recruitment and the support that it provides to carers.

OCC worked with PACT where it could. However it was a competitive market for staff and the people they were looking to recruit possessed the same skills as OCC were looking to employ.

Q. Do we have a big proportion of looked after children in comparison to other counties? Were private firms offering foster families/carers better financial incentives than OCC?

A. Overall we had a lower number of looked after children than other authorities. Yes private firms did pay more than OCC, but not dramatically, but this was mainly due to the fact that they charged OCC more. For example, this was a ball park figure. OCC would pay a family looking after a 12 year old approximately £250 per week. If this child was placed through PACT they may be paid around £300 per week, but PACT would charge OCC approximately £1000.

The Committee thanked Mr Couldrick for his update.

42/06. HEALTHY SCHOOLS SCRUTINY REVIEW

(Agenda Item 8)

On 27 September, this Committee 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.

The Lead Member Review Group tabled a revised Scoping document (CH8) at the meeting for Member’s comment. Councillor Fooks explained that the Scoping document had been revised at the request of the Scrutiny Co-ordinating Group who had asked the Review Group to re-word the rationale and objectives box to clarify whether the review would focus on commonly used health indicators, such as, nutrition and exercise, or on the issues of emotional health.

Councillor Fooks then reported on the current progress of the Review. Following further discussion with the health schools advisor, Julie Garner the Group had decided what particular aspects of emotional health within the healthy school scheme the review might usefully focus on

The Review Group had also arranged visits to Bath and North East Somerset Council to talk to officers and Councillor Maria McNeir who featured in a recent article in "Councillor".

The Group were also planning a visit to a couple of primary schools and a couple of secondary schools who were not involved in the scheme.

The Committee AGREED to note the progress of the Review thus far.

43/06. TRACKING SCRUTINY ITEMS

(Agenda Item 9)

The Committee AGREED to note the outcome of their advice and recommendations to the Cabinet in relation to post 16 SEN provision.

44/06. FORWARD PLAN

in the Chair

Date of signing 2006

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