10:10
Contact Officer: Meera Spillett – Director for Children, Young People
& Families, tel (01865) 815122
The Director will give a presentation to the Committee which will provide a high level overview of the services provided by the Directorate and the challenges which will need to be addressed to meet the target.
The Committee is invited to receive a presentation from the Director to be followed by and question & answer session.
Minutes:
The Director for Children, Young
People & Families reported that she had attended the National Children and
Adult Services; shaping the present, building the future Conference held in
Manchester in November. The National
Children and Adult Services Conference was an established event that saw an
audience of approximately 1200 high-level attendees coming together for three
days to discuss and debate the latest issues affecting children and adult
services. The 2010 conference was held in Manchester at the newly
revamped Manchester Central.
This year's programme included a
mix of keynote/ministerial addresses and other significant plenary sessions by
key players in adult and childrens services. There
was also the opportunity to take part in a variety of participatory breakouts
and networking sessions. Key
speakers at the conference included Sarah Teather MP,
Tim Loughton MP, Andrew Lansley, Michael Gove, Sir David Nicholson and Professor
Eileen Munro.
She reported on the Key messages coming out of the conference as follows:
DfE Vision
·
We are
committed to transforming our education system so all children, regardless of
their background, thrive and prosper.
·
For
parents to have more high quality schools to choose from, more opportunities to
open new schools, and more opportunities to get involved in the running of
existing schools.
·
To
replace top-down targets and a culture of inspection with more transparent arrangement
and a focus on underperformance.
·
To
support those who work in our schools and children’s services.
·
Where
government has a role to play, we will empower families and ensure that all
children are protected from harm and neglect.
Schools
·
The process for identifying underperforming
schools to convert to academy status and the process for allowing all schools
to convert are scheduled to begin in Dec 2010;
·
Guaranteed Unit of Funding for Schools will be
introduced in 2011
·
New floor standards - these will apply from January 2011;
·
Education Endowment Fund to which Schools and LAs can apply to support Schools to improve both their levels of attainment and
the progress they make with their pupils;
·
Proposals for University Technical Colleges will
be progressed by March 2011, with the aim of opening the first such technical
college in Sept 2011;
·
Future revenue funding arrangements for schools
will be contained in the Schools White Paper and are likely to include a
National Schools single formula;
·
Reading tests at age 6 will be piloted from June
2011;
·
Plans to improve apprenticeships will be
published by March 2011 to begin by Sept 2011;
·
Reform to inspection of schools by Dec 2011;
·
Proposals to improve teacher training and CPD
will be published by Dec 2010;
·
Proposals on teachers’ pay and performance
management relations will be presented in 2011-12.
Social Care & Social Work
·
New standards for the employers of social
workers will be developed for May 2011, and for social workers by Sept 2011.
·
Reform to inspection of local authorities is
expected to be implemented by May 2012.
·
Details of the early intervention grant will be
included in the local government settlement in December 2010.
·
The number of families “going through” evidence
based early intervention programmes (to be identified
through Allen Review) will be published in Dec 2011.
·
Streamlined regs,
guidance and min standards for fostering, children’s homes and adoption will be
published in April 2011.
·
There will be support for LAs
to roll out evidence based practice for foster care in 20 sites.
Youth Work
·
DfE takes
responsibility for the National Citizenship Service from 2013. In Oxfordshire we are a partner in the successful bid by V the
National Youth Volunteers Service for the NCS pilot.
·
There will be an independent review on
commercialization and sexualisation of childhood from
Dec 2010 until May 2011.
Early years
·
Pilots for extending the entitlement to free
child care to two year olds will begin in April 2011.
As you will know,
however, it isn’t just the DfE that we need to look
for to understand holistically the needs of children and policy initiatives
from Central Government. Here are some of the other Departments and some key
items from their Business Plans:
Department of
Health
·
The first NHS outcome framework is due to be
published in Dec 2010 and implemented by 2012;
·
Proposals for pilots of new dentistry contracts
with emphasis on children to begin in Dec 2010;
·
There will be a cross government strategy on
mental health and public metal health published in Dec 2010;
·
A stand alone programme
to increase access to talking therapies for CYP will be established in Sept
2011;
·
The LA’s role in
public health will be described in the Public Health White Paper to be published
in December. The Health Bill which will give LAs a
role in public health is due to be published in Dec 2010;
·
Shadow public health arrangements will be in
place by April 2012, with budgets and powers being devolved from April 2013;
·
Develop full implementation plan for additional
health visitors, including details of:
·
numbers of health visitors needed to achieve a
net increase of 4,200 above 2010 levels;
·
initiatives and incentives to drive return to
practice;
·
plans to increase health visitor training
places;
·
a new module for health visitors in practice and
those in education to refresh/provide skills in building community capacity by
November 2010- to be launched Jan 2011.
Department of Business, Innovation & Skills
·
Jointly with DfE (John
Hayes) have announced an ‘All age careers service’ - “building on the best of Connexions
and Next Steps”.
·
The government aims for the all age careers
service to be in place by April 2012.
These are just a
few and other departments like the Home Office have plans around ending
detention of children for immigration purposes, the Ministry of Justice is
taking forward the review of the Public Law outline commissioned as part of The
Lord Laming Report and the Department of Communities and Local Government has
announced a review of Local Authority funding to take place from January to
July 2011.
We are expecting
the White paper on Schools to be published on or by 26th November
and that will have in it more about the role of our Local Authority.
Michael Gove when
he spoke to directors went through how he saw our role:
·
As Strategic Delivery Partners
·
Champions of educational excellence – challenging
individual schools to improve, encouraging great schools to share their
expertise, putting underperforming schools on notice if they are not improving.
·
Greater autonomy on for those leading both schools and
local authorities.
·
Able to develop their own plans to improve the quality of
Early Years provision.
·
A central role as guardians of social justice, ensuring admissions
are fair.
·
Essential role as providers of support for children with
special educational needs.
·
Ensure there is sufficient high-quality alternative
provision.
·
Along with the DfE focus shared
attention on how to improve schools where:
·
Attainment is low and pupils progress poorly;
·
the most recent Ofsted judgment
is that the school is eligible for intervention or is merely satisfactory (the
latter is included to reflect wider issues in the school such as its capacity
to improve, or in key areas such as leadership and governance) ;
·
there is a record of low attainment over time – whether
or not the most recent results have crossed a minimum threshold, we should be
looking at whether the previous results indicate those increases are
sustainable ;
·
and pupils in secondary schools achieve poorly compared
to schools with similar intakes.
The Director then gave a presentation to the
Committee (a copy of the presentation is appended to these Minutes and
to the signed copy of the Minutes) which provided
further information on the financial challenges faced by the Directorate and in
particular:
This would be met by reviewing statutory responsibilites and how they were met; the removal of ring
fences and grants finishing; multi disciplininary:
Multi-agency working together – sharing assets & integrated teams whilst
supporting most vulnerable children.
Following the presentation, members made the following
points:
The Committee thanked the Director for Children, Young People & Families for her presentation and requested a further briefing (to follow the Local Government Spending Review outcome) prior to the Budget Meeting on 20 December 2010.