Agenda item

Report by Corporate Director of Children’s Services

 

The report (POSC7) discusses the progress to date and what has been achieved, both quantitatively and qualitatively, a year into the implementation.

 

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to:

a)            consider the contents of the report and put relevant questions to the Cabinet Lead member, Director of Children’s Services and supporting officers.

b)           decide if any further action is required.

c)            consider recommending to the Oxfordshire Place Board consideration of the Family Solutions Plus (FSP) business case to agree the future funding approach.

 

The Committee had before it a report discussing the progress to date and what has been achieved, both quantitatively and qualitatively, a year into the implementation of Family Solutions Plus (FSP).

 

Councillor Liz Brighouse, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Children, Education and Young People’s Services described the service as a success story in its first year.  The service deals with children who have been referred to the MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) and the number of referrals has been increasing.

 

Councillor Brighouse reminded Members that the courts decided when the Council has to look after a child and therefore the courts must decide when that responsibility can end.  The new service aimed to work with families to alleviate the many different problems that can be the cause of child safeguarding issues.  It was a real step in the right direction.  It cost money but the Council needed to invest in our children in the same was as any parents would in their children.

 

Hannah Farncombe, Deputy Director of Children’s Social Care, gave a presentation on the links between FSP and the Public Health Outcomes Framework.

 

Ray Fitzpatrick, Professor of Public Health, University of Oxford, and Charles Vincent, Professor of Psychology, University of Oxford presented an independent evaluation of the service.  They found:

 

·         Reduced numbers of looked after children in care

·         Reduced numbers of children on child protection plans

·         A model of working which has universal support of the staff in the service

·         The service is achieving well but is challenged by high workloads and the impact of the pandemic

·         Emerging findings of approval by families

·         Reduced numbers of police call-outs

·         Reduced volume of emergency mental health service use.

 

Delia Mann, Head of Services for Family Solutions Plus and Early Help Teams, and Andy Symons, Senior Operations Manager, Turning Point, the Adult Substance Misuse Service, recounted case studies involving mental health needs and substance misuse by parents where they did not have to remove the children because they were able to assist the family in a more holistic way through partnership working.

 

Members thanked officers and guests for the report and presentations and raised a number issues:

 

Staffing

 

Members asked

·         how staff were being supported given the often emotional and stressful nature of the job and unsocial hours;

·         how workloads were managed to ensure work/life balance;

·         if front-line staff had access to independent counselling.

 

Officers responded that recruitment and retention were national issues in this sector.  The difficulties of the job were acknowledged but it could be very rewarding too.  There was independent counselling available but more psychological support embedded within the teams would be helpful.

 

The Council was trying to ‘grow’ its own staff with an early professional development unit with bespoke packages of support.  An external expert view was being sought on how the Council could do better on retention and in the Oxfordshire employment market. Bringing the workload down was a key issue in terms of retention.  There were economic factors too such as affordable housing.  The Council was also examining if anything could be done with the apprenticeship levy.

 

Team working

 

Members asked

·         how the teams were managed around individual cases.

·         were all of the team members from the Council or were partners participating?

·         were there some social workers embedded in schools?

 

In building a team, a group was formed of people pertinent to that family’s needs.  They meet on a regular basis and have a coordinated action plan.  Other specialists can be brought in if and when extra needs were identified.  A team might include the school nurse, a probation officer, external specialists – everyone significant to that family.

 

Some schools and academies funded their own social workers but few do anymore because of cost pressures.  The Council has a named worker for each school to encourage early intervention, though of course, each worker had many schools.

 

Members also asked where most referrals to the MASH came from.  Officers responded that the largest number of referrals came from the police, mainly from domestic abuse incidents.  Schools would be next which was not surprising as they see the children every day.

 

Members asked if the responses of schools varied significantly and if so, what were the factors involved?  Officers referred to the Locality & Community Support Service which provided resources for schools to help identify needs early and put in place interventions that don’t meet the threshold for Children’s Social Care.  However, the national policy framework had not caught up with this kind of work in Oxfordshire.  There was a disconnect between what Ofsted was measuring and the realities on the ground.

 

In Oxfordshire there were three times more Children’s Social Care assessments than Early Help Assessments.  That needed to be reversed and a target of 10,000 Early Help Assessments was being set for next year as opposed to 3,000 this year.

 

Members asked if the problems with delays in the court service were beyond their control or if there was anything they could do in the way of lobbying or applying pressure.

 

Officers described the problems in the capacity of the courts to deal with the workload and in recruitment to the Family Court Advisory Service.  Consequently, the Council’s own social workers were finding it hard to manage the increased work level around legal proceedings.  The government had provided more funding for the courts to tackle the backlog and the Council was engaged in a recruitment campaign to provide more legal support for Children’s Services using some Covid reserve funds.

 

Members raised the issue of some people slipping through the net or receiving inappropriate support from agencies not fully understanding the impact on children.  Officers responded that this was something that they would address in refreshing the Early Help Strategy.

 

Looking forward, Members asked what the next steps were to improve the system even further and if the necessary budget was there.

 

Officers responded that FSP started last November and was expected to pay back its costs over a 2 to 4 year period but those calculations did not include Covid.  The Council was in a good position to sustain the service and perhaps in three years or so should see savings and have to decide what to do with those savings.

 

Professor Vincent encouraged Members to take a three year view of the service to allow the trajectory to play out.

 

Councillor Brighouse commented that there had been so many cuts to services over the years that we were left now with mainly emergency services.  This piece of work demonstrated the value of early intervention.  It was important to bring health workers on board and get more money into schools to enable them to support children to live healthier and happier lives.

 

The Chair summed up as follows:

 

He asked officers to convey the thanks and support of the Committee to all of the staff involved.  While it was still early days there were positive signs that the service was succeeding.  It has quickly been accepted as a useful therapeutic and supportive model.

 

It had been well implemented but workload can be challenging to the teams involved and supporting their continuous professional development was important.

 

The longitudinal study of the service - repeatedly looping back to monitor the effect over time - would be important to evaluate if the system was being successful against the big drivers of children entering the system - substance misuse, domestic violence and mental health.

 

The Chair proposed four recommendations which were agreed, along with recommendation c) from the report.

 

RESOLVED to:

 

·         endorse the need for the external review of best practice in recruitment and retention;

·         endorse the efforts to provide more legal support for child services dealing with delays in the system;

·         endorse the proposed target of 10,000 Early Help Assessments in order to reverse the current trend of three times as many Children’s Social Care assessments as Early Help Assessments;

·         support the resourcing of the FSP in the Council’s budget process, recognising the expected savings in the longer term;

·         recommend to the Oxfordshire Place Board consideration of the Family Solutions Plus (FSP) business case to agree the future funding approach.