Agenda item

Children First Improvement Update

Report by the Director of Children’s Services.

 

The report updates the Committee on developments in the Children First Programmes since its last meeting in September.

Minutes:

 

39.1   The Committee considered a report by the Director of Children’s Services. The newly appointed Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Jacquie Russell, introduced herself as the lead member for the portfolio however the Leader, Paul Marshall, would retain the statutory responsibility for the area for the current time.

 

39.2   The Director of Children’s Services introduced some of the new leadership team who each outlined their areas of responsibility as follows:

 

Ø  Sally Allen – Deputy Director – Frontline teams including the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and social work teams.

Ø  Jackie Wood – Assistant Director Corporate Parenting – fostering and adoption, residential care and placements and Children Looked After (CLA).

Ø  Ann Marie Dodds – Assistant Director Early Help – Early Help Hubs, young carers, Voice and Participation, Pause and Care Leavers.

 

39.3   The Director of Children’s Services advised the Commissioner’s report was expected at the end of October and a review would be published once the Secretary of State had made a decision for future service delivery. The following update was provided on workforce and caseloads:

 

·       The workforce had stabilised and staff were committed.

·       The vacancy gap was now under 2%.

·       Caseloads were reducing enabling better quality practice.

·       Benchmarking data was being gathered.

 

39.4   The Committee considered the following points in discussion:

 

·       Members considered what recruitment processes were in place to reduce the reliance on agency staff. The Deputy Director advised the service were working with the communications and IT teams to create a more savvy approach to recruitment. A change in imagery had resulted in more hits on the website and social media was enabling the campaign to reach out further than West Sussex.

·       Members asked if there were specific teams with a vacancy gap bigger than 1.8%. The Deputy Director advised some areas were more challenging to recruit to, such as Assessment and Intervention and therefore these teams consequently had higher caseloads, but that these were coming down. The Deputy Director advised part of that solution to bring these down was the use of agency staff.

·       The Committee noted the requirement for children engaged with the service to experience consistency and considered the stability of agency workers within that context. The Deputy Director advised it was critical there was consistency for children and families, but noted the challenge of keeping agency staff in frontline teams such as the MASH. She advised this was improving however, and that in some cases agency staff had either become permanent, or left and then returned to WSCC on a permanent basis.

·       The Committee asked about the numbers of unallocated cases and those held by managers. The Deputy Director advised scrutiny of daily lists of unallocated and manager allocated cases was undertaken and responses sought from service leads around those. The Deputy Director further explained these cases tended to be in transition, and there was a clear line that there was to be no unallocated cases and a zero tolerance for managers holding cases. The Director of Children’s Services advised a short report on unallocated cases could be produced for the BPG if desired. The Committee agreed this would be useful.

 

39.5   The Assistant Director - Corporate Parenting, Jackie Wood, provided an update to the Committee on the Improvement Plan objective of life story work. The Committee heard the following key points:

 

·       Life story work maps the life of a child in the care of the local authority, and is used as a therapeutic tool by social workers to help the child understand their journey.

·       Ofsted identified life story work as an area that needed to improve.

·       Training was being undertaken with social workers, foster carers and residential workers via an online forum.

·       The work culminates in a life story book, which was a priority for children being adopted.

·       Improvements would be evidenced through quality assurance monitoring.

 

39.6   The Committee considered the following points in discussion:

 

·       Members asked if they could observe the training. The Assistant Director – Corporate Parenting advised members would be welcome to attend the foster carer training.

·       The Committee asked how the service planned to keep track of targets in terms of quality and timeliness when life story work was an ongoing process. The Assistant Director advised the service were looking at how life story work was recorded and undertaken through Mosaic, which is a system used by social workers to record chronologies and case management. She added that colleagues in QA and performance would undertake thematic audits which would include quality and timeliness of life story work which would happen on a quarterly basis.

 

39.7   Ann Marie Dodds, Assistant Director – Early Help provided an update to the Committee on the development of the Children First Strategy. The Committee heard the following key points:

 

·       The Children First Strategy would be a collective and co-produced document. Consultation had taken place with over 100 professionals and children and youth groups to ask how WSCC could better work with partners to improve outcomes.

·       The service were working hard to establish a strategic intent with the headline statement of what WSCC wanted for its children, and how this is achieved in partnership. The challenge was identifying the set of behaviours that genuinely puts children first.

·       Engagement and workshop events were ongoing due to high demand and attendance and expected that on 19 November 2019 the strategic intent would be launched. The intention was to bring the strategy to the next meeting of the Committee on 4 December 2019 which will hopefully capture the collective desire across West Sussex to put children at the centre of the decision making.

·       The Chairman requested that information regarding the launch be shared with members.

 

39.8   Resolved that the Committee:

 

1.   Notes the conclusion of the work of the Commissioner.

2.   Notes that Ofsted has confirmed that the Practice Improvement Plan satisfies the requirement to suitably address all the matters of concern raised in the inspection report of May 2019.

3.   Notes the leadership and workforce improvement narrative.

4.   Requests officers provide the BPG with options to ensure voices of staff and partners are heard.

5.   Notes the preparatory work on a Children First Strategy, its scope and purpose, and agree to preview the decision at its meeting on 4 December 2019.

 

Supporting documents: