Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Children, Education & Families

Forward Plan Ref: 2015/118

Contact: Jim Leivers, Director for Children’s Services Tel: (01865) 815122

 

Report of the Director for Children’s Services (CA6)

Children’s Services in Oxfordshire has and continues to be a primary priority for the Council and its partners. In particular, keeping children safe is of critical importance to the Council and as such the Authority has a clear explicit resource commitment to supporting the most vulnerable within the community. There is however significant pressures and challenges facing public sector services that mean the current status quo arrangements are not sustainable. This item comprises an overview report together with a series of three reports which cover in some detail:

 

• The outcome of public consultation regarding proposals for change to early help services, including, children’s centres and early intervention hubs

• Proposals for the future shape of Education and Learning Services

• Proposals for future safeguarding and Corporate Parenting Services

• Proposals for future Children’s Social Care services.

 

The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to:

 

(a) receive the outcome of the consultation exercise on the future of early help services along with the proposed alternative arrangements for Children’s Services as outlined in the Cabinet Advisory Group report of September 2015 along with recommendations from the Director of Children’s Services regarding future organisational arrangements for Children’s Social Care;

(b) approve the proposed arrangements for Safeguarding and Corporate parenting services as outlined in the attached report;

(c)approve the proposed arrangements for Education Services as outlined in the attached report; and

(d) receive a further detailed report on the implementation of the proposed changes.

The Cabinet had before it an overview report together with a series of three supporting reports covering:

 

• The outcome of public consultation regarding proposals for change to early help services, including, children’s centres and early intervention hubs

• Proposals for the future shape of Education and Learning Services

• Proposals for future Safeguarding and Corporate Parenting Services

• Proposals for future Children’s Social Care services.

 

The resolution set out below incorporates the recommendations from Agenda Items 6, 6(a), 6(b) and 6(c).

 

The Deputy Leader of the Council set out the terms of the decision made by Council on 16 February 2016 to reinstate £2 million from early intervention services, including Children’s Centres and Early Intervention Hubs, originally earmarked as part of the identified budget reductions.  In addition Council further agreed to make available an additional £1million short term funding to develop alternative working arrangements with District Councils and local voluntary groups to allow a number of Children’s Centres to remain open but be funded from sources other than the County Council.  It was agreed that the detail of how the reinstated funding was to be used should be identified at a later date. Consequently, Cabinet would consider at this meeting the recommendations of the Director of Children, Education and Families regarding the future of Children’s Services as laid out in the various reports before it and that in addition the Director be required to provide to a future meeting of Cabinet detailed proposals as to how the additional and retained funding arrangements would be best utilised. 

 

The Council’s Monitoring Officer drew the Cabinet’s attention to a letter received from Central England Law Centre challenging the Council’s decisions regarding the radical reorganisation of children’s centres in Oxfordshire. The letter stated that the decisions taken had been fundamentally flawed and therefore challengeable. However, he advised that in his view the letter had failed to take into account the terms of the Council’s decision taken in February insofar as a further report would be submitted to Cabinet with proposals as to how the extra £2m might be used whereas the Cabinet, at this meeting, was considering establishment of Hubs for the delivery on intervention services with no decisions scheduled to be taken with regard to specific closures of Children’s Centres. He added that the consultation process, which it had been claimed, was flawed had in his opinion been conducted correctly.

 

Presenting a paper setting out the comments from the Performance Review Scrutiny Committee regarding proposed future arrangements for children’s services Councillor Liz Brighouse referred to the long scrutiny process which had been carried and thanked officers for the work in developing the proposals and undertaking the extensive consultation.

 

Speaking on behalf of the Chalgrove/Watlington Children’s Centre and Maple Tree (Wheatley) Children’s Centre Steering Groups David Turner recognised the difficult position the County Council found itself in but a great deal of uncertainty existed with regard to future provision and he was particularly concerned regarding provision in rural areas whose need was as great as in urban areas. He advised that the Chalgrove and Watlington centres had merged under one management team to achieve some savings which he suggested could be rolled out countywide. He urged the County Council to do all it could to save as much as possible and protect vulnerable areas.

 

Speaking with regard to her specific local centre which provided vital support Councillor Fooks was also cognisant that the level of need existed right across the county. She was concerned that uncertainty was already leading to staff leaving and felt that the Cabinet Advisory Group should be reconvened to consider these issues.

 

Councillor Susanna Pressel endorsed the views of the previous speakers but felt the advice of the Monitoring Officer had been incorrect insofar as closures were being considered and the issues today were clearly connected. Supporting Option 4 she called for deferral of a decision regarding the 8 hubs and proposed that the rise in councillor allowances agreed last year be rescinded and used as a saving towards the costs of this service..

 

Responding to a question from Councillor Heathcoat she advised that she had donated her allowance increase to charity.

 

Expressing regret at the need for cuts Councillor Gill Sanders recognised that there had been little real option but her Group had welcomed a compromise being reached. However, it was imperative that as much of the service as possible was retained along with experienced professional staff and to do that all Groups needed to continue to work together.

 

Responding to Councillor Carter who had reminded her that cuts necessary today had also been as a result of central government policy pre 2010 Councillor Sanders acknowledged there had been huge problems over 5/6 years but felt that the current government could have done more to help protect valuable services and in that regard current government policy was wrong.

 

Councillor Janet Godden endorsed the comments from the Performance Review Scrutiny Committee as presented by Councillor Brighouse.  A full and frank consultation and discussion was now required to take this forward to retain as high a level of service as possible.

 

Councillor Richard Webber acknowledged that it was unlikely that the letter referred to earlier by the Monitoring Officer would be the last such letter received in the light of clear messages from the consultation undertaken so far such as 71% of respondees not supporting any of the proposals. He was concerned at the loss of universal services and saw this as a short term solution. The timetable for delivery and savings was unclear and more clarity was required. A decision had been taken now to pause and rethink but any decision should be further deferred to enable the Cabinet Advisory Group to consider the issues.

 

Councillor Webber responded to questions from –

 

Councillor Carter – with regard to membership of the Cabinet Advisory Group the Liberal Democrat Group would review its position to participate if the CAG was reinstated and charged to explore opportunities given by the recent Council decision.

 

Councillor Rose – he felt that unitary government could look at these issues from a different perspective and as there was already a lot of uncertainty with no clear timeline for these issues to be addressed there could be a case to defer.

 

Councillor Melinda Tilley affirmed that the County Council were required to find £6m and the proposals currently before the Cabinet today were aimed at reorganising services in order to do that while meeting the needs of more vulnerable children. She commended the reports and moved the recommendations in each together with the additional recommendation set out in the addenda sheet.

 

Jim Leivers explained that the suite of papers before the Cabinet had been prepared in order to change fundamentally how the Directorate for Children, Education & Families carried out its functions while addressing the requirement to find a budgetary reduction of £6m over 3 years. Acknowledging that requirement to make reductions he emphasised that the main driver behind the current proposals had been to provide a safer environment for safeguarding children.  The county council could not afford to stand still and choices needed to be made to make the service fit for purpose. A number of future government proposals regarding the moving role of education; changes to adoption services; youth offending services and child protection and local safeguarding boards would need to be factored in but it would not be possible to meet future statutory requirements while retaining current levels of service. In his judgement the series of papers before the Cabinet provided a way of meeting future commitments and making that service safe. Whatever was decided would be contentious but he was faced with a statutory set of duties which he and the Cabinet Member had a duty to meet.

 

Three presentations were made regarding:

 

·                Safeguarding and Corporate Parenting Service

·                Future Arrangements for Education Support for Oxfordshire Schools

·                Future Arrangements in Children’s Social Care

 

Councillor Tilley pointed out that the recommendations for future arrangements highlighted the commitment to effective change. Members of the Cabinet thanked officers for their presentations and the full consultations which had been undertaken and obviously taken on board as part of the proposals now being put forward.

 

RESOLVED (unanimously):

 

New Arrangements for Oxfordshire County Council’s Children’s Services

 

(a)          receive the outcome of the consultation exercise on the future of early help services along with the proposed alternative arrangements for Children’s Services as outlined in the Cabinet Advisory Group report of September 2015 along with recommendations from the Director of Children’s Services regarding future organisational arrangements for Children’s Social Care;

 

(b)          approve the proposed arrangements for Safeguarding and Corporate Parenting Services as outlined in the report (CA6);

 

(c)          approve the proposed arrangements for Education Services as outlined in the report (CA6); and

 

(d)       receive a further detailed report on the implementation of the proposed changes.

 

 

The Safeguarding and Corporate Parenting Service

 

(a)       agree the proposals outlined in paragraph 19-22 of the report (CA6a); and

 

(b)       agree that a further report outlining in detail the proposed staffing arrangements and costs be made to a futureCabinet meeting.

 

Future Arrangements for Education Support for Oxfordshire Schools

 

(a)          approve the proposed arrangements for Education and Learning Services as outlined in the report (CA6b).

 

Future Arrangements in Children’s Social Care

 

(a)       that eight Children and Family Centres be developed in the locations set out in the report (CA6c). These Centres would deliver services that met the authority's statutory duties relating to Children's Centres and deliver statutory and targeted services to vulnerable children and families;

 

(b)          that limited open access services be provided from within the eight Children and Family Centres;

 

(c)          a mobile bus be retained to deliver services to rural communities and the traveller community as these communities were less likely to attend the main centres;

 

(d)          to continue to support the child care settings currently based in Children's Centres through to April 2017. During this time the authority would work with the centres to ensure they were financially self-sufficient from April 2017.

(e)          approve the inclusion of £1.9m budget in the capital programme for the new Children and Family Centres to be funded from the unallocated corporate resources;

 

(f)           commit to continue conversations with organisations and groups that had shown an interest in using alternative funding streams to enable centres to remain open; and

 

(g)          that the Director for Children, Education & Families provides a future meeting of Cabinet with detailed proposals as to how the additional and retained funding arrangements agreed at full Council on 16 February 2016 be best utilised.