Agenda item

10:30

A report from Oxfordshire Children’s Safeguarding Board.

The Committee considered the report commissioned by the Oxfordshire Children’s Safeguarding Board on the case of Jacob.  Kevin Gordon, Corporate Director for Children’s Services, introduced the item stressing that some aspects of the case were confidential.  The Chairman asked for the discussion to focus on improvement and learning from the case.

The Chairman had accepted the following request to speak on the item:

Councillor John Howson recalled that there was a great awareness of the difficulties in placing children taken into care in academy schools at the time of Jacob’s case.  The six Oxfordshire MPs and the Cabinet Member with responsibility had written to the Secretary of State on the issue.  He asked then why no system had been put in place to tackle the problem.

Councillor Howson referred to the audit of cases of children missing from education ordered by the Local Government Ombudsman in 2019 and asked was Jacob’s case not covered by that review or had it only focussed on excluded children.  He believed that all academies must recognise that they had a responsibility to all children in respect of providing an education.

Lara Patel, Deputy Director - Safeguarding, presented slides summarising the case.  She noted that it was unusual to name the child in a case such as this but it was the family’s wish.  One of the main conclusions was that Jacob had been let down by the education system – having not been in school for 22 months.  There was a need to improve work with professionals and families to identify and tackle exploitation and to ensure that all parties were working together.

Joe Kidman, Commander for Oxford City, Thames Valley Police, added that there was now a violence reduction unit in place, the systems operating in Oxford City that were praised in the report had been rolled out across the county and there was greater cooperation with other forces such as West Midlands and London.

Hayley Good, Deputy Director Education, stated that the local authority could not direct an academy to take a child but that there was now a more robust challenge to schools that refuse to take a child.  The In Year Fair Access Protocol had been revised to ensure that a child was placed within 20 days of them coming to the panel.  A meeting had been held recently with multi-academy trusts to work on building relationships and this was attended by 21 representatives  There was also a new data sharing agreement across BOB (Bucks, Oxon, Berks West) on health visitor records which will help in tracing children.

Hannah Farncombe, Deputy Director Children’s Social Care, concluded by emphasising the importance of the whole safeguarding system being on alert and to ensure that effective processes were put in place so that a situation was not allowed to drift.

Officers responded to issues raised by Members as follows:

·         The new Youth Justice and Exploitation Service brings together the high-performing Kingfisher and Youth Justice Service teams.  Kingfisher was put in place to tackle sexual exploitation but there was now a range of complex forms of exploitation which the new service has been set up to work with.

·         It needed to be recognised that if children were offending then that was another reason for them to keep silent.

·         Jacob had not experienced a lack of access to CAMHS but sometimes there was a need to encourage families and children to accept the help being offered.

·         Children identified by TVP as in need of a service were prioritised for CAMHS on the basis of risk.  They did not simply go in a queue.

·         The Navigators initiative was specifically hospital based.  There were other mentorship programmes including the Blueprint Project.

·         Bringing children into the criminal justice system did introduce an element of ‘must’ into the situation but with children it needed to be handled with sensitivity and compassion.  Overall the key goal was to have the right intervention for each child made early.

·         The revised In Year Fair Access Protocol will come into effect on 1 April.  Revisions to the national admissions code were unlikely to come into effect before September.

·         Children we care for who were not in education had access to online learning and there may be the possibility of extending that to other children who were awaiting an education placement.

·         The Council was participating in research by the University of Oxford called “Excluded Lives” that will examine the differences between approaches in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

·         Local MPs had been briefed on these issues to encourage them to take the points on education up at national level.

The Chairman thanked the officers from all of the services for their work in the very complex and fragmented area of education.