Agenda item

1.35 pm

The report sets out how Children and Family Centres were reconfigured in 2017 including the Family Solutions Service which provides early help casework through the Team around the family (TAF), Children in Need (CIN) and Child Protection (CP) plans.

The report goes on to explain the role of health visitors and how they interact with the Locality and Community Support Services (LCSS). Finally the report sets out how interactions at Children and Family Centres interact around exclusions, attendance and Education Health and Care Plans.

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to note the report.

The Chairman of the Committee had requested a report from officers to better understand how current services worked together to ease children’s transition to school and promote school inclusion since the closure of the family Centres in March 2017.

The Committee had before it a report which set out how Children and Family Centres were reconfigured in 2017 including the Family Solutions Service which provided early help casework through the Team around the family (TAF), Children in Need (CIN) and Child Protection (CP) plans.

The report further set out the role of health visitors and how they interacted with the Locality and Community Support Services (LCSS). Finally, the report set out how interactions at Children and Family Centres interact around exclusions, attendance and Education Health and Care Plans.

Accordingly, Maria Godfrey, Delia Mann, Social Care Manager and Nicola Taylor, Lead for Health Visiting attended the Committee to give an overview of the 3 services and how they came together to identify children requiring early help in order to ensure the right services were provided at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation into statutory services and to ease transition into school and promote school inclusion, including the role of health visitors.

The Locality and Community Support Service (LCSS) was created to provide advice and guidance to professionals in the community, when there were emerging concerns about a child, to ensure the right services are provided at the earliest opportunity and prevent escalation into statutory services.

The Family Solutions Service combined Children’s Social Care statutory social work and Early Help services. The Early Help offer was redesigned from the Council’s former Early Intervention Hubs and Children Centres. The new service was run from eight Children and Family Centres plus two satellites across the county. The service provided early help casework through the Team around the Family (TAF), and statutory Children in Need (CIN) and Child Protection (CP) plans, as well delivering evidenced-based interventions such as parenting education, treatment for domestic abuse, children’s ‘play and learn’ sessions.

Each centre also delivered casework jointly with Aquarius (young people’s substance misuse intervention) to young people to increase their educational inclusion and employment opportunities.

Health visitors were qualified nurses and midwives with specialist public health training. They were trained in child development, women’s health issues and safeguarding children. The aim was to achieve for all families: improved access and experience of children’s health services, improved health outcomes for children, reduced health inequalities. Health Visitors were experts at ‘adding value’ through their public health practice and delivery of universal services. Health visitors worked in teams and were supported by community staff nurses and nursery nurses. They were a skilled workforce proficient in contributing towards early health assessments focusing on preschool children up to 5 years old.

During debate the Committee made the following points:

·                There was concern over children’s readiness for school and whether there were enough Health visitors, recruitment of Health Visitors was an issue and currently the service was 7 visitors down;

·                Provision was based in the highest need areas, so there was currently no provision for east and south Oxfordshire;

·                There was a notion issue around “children’s readiness” – the Children’s Trust were carrying out a piece of work around this with Health England;

·                Concern was expressed around the rural population and whether universal access was working;

·                Outreach need more work – the model of referral presented challenges as it was harder to find people;

·                There was a rise in children before 5 years of age with hearing and eyesight problems – the possibility of working with childcare services to be explored more fully for early identification;

·                There was a named nurse for LAC

·                 There was need for more support over attendance.

Following debate, the Committee AGREED to note the report and to set up a small working Group to carry out a piece of in the Autumn to ensure consistency was offered across the localities in terms of what services were offered and to carry out a joint piece of work with HOSC around readiness for school.