Agenda item

Report by Director of Finance and Support Services.

The Committee is asked to examine the Council’s corporate performance, finance, savings delivery and business performance for the services within the remit of this Committee for the period October to December 2022.

49.1     The Committee considered the Performance and Resources Report for Quarter 3 which covered October-December 2022.

Children and Young People

49.2     The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Cllr Russell, introduced the report highlighting that much of the improvement journey had become business as usual for the service whilst it waited for the anticipated full Ofsted inspection.  The Cabinet Member felt things were moving in the right direction whilst acknowledging that there were still challenges, e.g. placement sufficiency, for which a recovery plan was in place; recruitment and retention, which was improving now that the social workers from overseas were being onboarded.  A correction was highlighted on page 19, paragraph 31, second bullet point should read Orchard House not Cissbury Lodge.

49.3     Members of the Committee made comments and asked questions and a summary of those questions and answers follows.

49.4     KPI 1 - Percentage of referrals to Children’s Social Care within 12 months of the previous referral – A very close eye was kept on re-referrals with the Performance Board reviewing data and issues raised being investigated and reported back.  Looking at information monthly could be misleading as one large family could cause a spike in numbers.  It would be better to look at figures as a rolling total. Our benchmark level is on par with statistical neighbours.  All trends and spikes are investigated to under what had happened, why and how to learn from these experiences. 

49.5     KPI 2 – Percentage of Early Help Plans closed with outcomes met - Whilst there had been a struggle to recruit to Early Help, most posts had now been appointed to.  Where families were waiting to access an allocated worker there was a robust system in place, whereby a manager had contact with the family on a regular basis to review the situation and prioritise action if needed.  Information on timescales was held and could be shared with the Committee.

49.6     KPI 9 – Positive outcomes on child protection in 12 months – A positive outcome was a family stepping down within 12 months of being on a Child Protection Plan, this could be due to the child becoming looked after, which could be in the best interests of the child but is not always viewed as a positive.  A more beneficial way would be to look at the number of children subject to child protection plans for 2 years plus which was at 1%, which was very good compared to statistical neighbours and the south-east.

49.7     KPI 7 – Stability of children looked after placements – The restructure of the Commissioning Service had helped with stability of placements; a lower figure was better for children and we compared well with statistical neighbours.  Work was in process to look at the best use of resources for appropriate placements including a campaign to recruit more in-house foster carers.

49.8     External Residential Placements – The process when a child became known to the authority was to first look for a placement in-house, e.g. a foster carer placement. If the child had complex needs, they may need support in a residential setting. The County Council has some residential settings, but they were at high occupancy levels.  Since the Covid pandemic there had been an increase in children with complex needs who required bespoke arrangements, often only available in the private sector.

49.9     The Government changes to the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children the County Council could support as part of the National Transfer Scheme could mean the use of external placements. 

Learning and Skills

49.10  The Cabinet Member for Learning and Skills, Cllr N Jupp, introduced the report highlighting three main points of performance: that Ofsted inspections of schools continued to provide positive outcomes with 93% of children attending Good or Outstanding schools; the Education and Learning Strategy was now a live document and moving forward; and a High Needs Recovery Plan was now in place to address the growing impact of the increasing number of children identifying with special needs on the budget.

49.11  Members of the Committee made comments and asked questions and a summary of those questions and answers follows.

49.12  Members asked that a full list of projects under the Capital Programme be included in the next PRR so that the Committee had an overview of all the capital projects within the portfolio.

49.13  KPI 27 – Percentage achieving expected standard in read, writing and maths combined at the end of Key Stage 2 – Back in 2018 the target had been on track, but levels had fallen away over the pandemic period.  Work was being done on this area.  Additionally, what was not shown in the paper was that there had been a national decline over the pandemic period

49.14  KPI 29 – Percentage attainment gap of disadvantages pupils compared to non-disadvantaged pupil peers at end of Key Stage 2 – The gap between the two groups had started to close this year.  A number of actions were underway e.g. moderation to make sure targets were not over ambitious, a review of schools to ensure things were being done correctly.

49.15  Resolved – That the Committee welcomed the updates on the performance and finance within the portfolios and the responses given to questions:

Children and Young People:

1.   The Committee were reassured by the quality assurance process in place for children social care re-referrals.

2.   Asks for detail on the timescales for those children and families in early help awaiting allocation. 

Learning and Skills:

3.   Asks that the full list of Capital Programme projects are included in the Q4 PRR report when it comes to Committee.