Contact: John Coughlan, Director of Children's Services. [email protected] Tel 01962 846400

1 Summary

1.1 In April 2005, the Policy and Resources Scrutiny and Select Committee received a report on the committee's inquiry into the Prevention and Management of Risk with Children and Young People. The report made three main recommendations directed to the Council as a whole and by implication the impending Children's Services Department. The report also made a series of additional recommendations largely connected with strategic development and also the role of Elected Members.

1.2 The purpose of this report is to provide a progress update on the response of the Children's Services Department (which came into being in August 2005) to those recommendations. Given the acknowledged scale of the considerations and recommendations of the inquiry report, and given the extent of the Change for Children Programme which is at the heart of the Children's Services Department, this report will summarise a number of those key areas of progress which relate to the concerns of the inquiry. Because of scale and timing this very much remains "work in progress". However, this report will evidence the substantial activity taking place which addresses the considerations of the inquiry.

1.3 The three main recommendations of the original report were that Hampshire County Council, in its lead role under the Children Act 2004, should:

· Plan to ensure that the whole of the children's workforce delivering universal services to children and young people in Hampshire is trained to: spot early indicators of risk; know how to respond and access other universal or specialist services where necessary; understand and effectively undertake their part in supporting families and developing resilience in children.

· Collect and collate data from across organisations which is then visibly used to: plan and prioritise actions to prevent risk; provide on-going trend information to enable us to evaluate the impact and plan future prevention activity.

· Use strategic and local data effectively in its planning with partners to: agree and prioritise a few realistic outcomes across the county; identify and prioritise local needs and interventions; map existing services against local needs to identify gaps and make best use of existing resources.

1.4 This report supports the following aims of the Corporate Strategy: aim one, maximising life opportunities; aim four, building strong and safe communities; aim five, improving services; aim six, developing councillors and staff.

1.5 The report supports in particular the second key outcome identified by the Children Act 2004, Staying Safe, as it covers strategic activity designed to protect the community's most vulnerable children. Arguably, a failure to effectively tackle risk challenges all other outcomes for the child.

1.6 In addressing the inquiry's recommendations the body of this report will especially focus on: establishing the Children's Services Department and the Change for Children Programme; partnership and governance arrangements; the Local Safeguarding Children Board; the Children and Young Person's Plan; the future role of the Children's PRC. All of these developments are relevant to the recommendations.

2 The Children's Services Department and the Change for Children Programme

2.1 Children's Services Department (CSD) came into being technically in August 2005 with the appointment of the director and since then the departmental management team has become fully operational with two Deputy Directors, one leading on Education and Inclusion and one on Children and Families, and an Assistant Director for Resources and Performance. A core aim of the new department will be to sustain the high levels of performance achieved by the former Education Department and the Children's Social Services, but in a way which maximises the opportunities of drawing the two sets of services together. A substantial programme of staff consultation has taken place to identify the most appropriate communications and also to establish the new departmental structure. The department remains on course to have that structure in place by March 2007. Although there is much work to do, the key features of the new structure will include:

· The retention of the successful elements of the education services which contribute to high standards of attainment in schools.

· Establishing integrated senior management for former social care services and former welfare related education services.

· Configuring local services on district/borough council boundaries with clusters of schools to encourage the development of whole systems for children.

· Introducing early intervention teams comprised of various integrated front line services and designed to provide better coordinated support to children and families who are experiencing difficulties which are beyond mainstream support but not extreme enough to qualify for social services assessment. This service will be fundamental to the concerns of the inquiry.

2.2 Hampshire's Change for Children Programme is much broader than structural change, however. It is a programme which also includes a range of elements to address the need for cultural and behavioural change in order to meet the requirements of the Children Act 2004 and ensure best outcomes for children. The programme includes five workstreams other than structural design. These are: participation; workforce; business processes; policy and service development; and partnership and governance. In various ways the progress of these workstreams will support services that address risks to children consistent with the concerns of the inquiry. For example, the actions on workforce will ensure there is increasing integration of workforce development, from training to skills analysis and progression, so that all aspects of the department understand the complex array of roles and responsibilities and particularly the levels of vulnerability. This activity will especially focus on some of the risk factors identified within the inquiry. The work on business processes will ensure we introduce at an early stage the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) which is specifically designed to harmonise existing assessment processes and ensure children's needs are identified at the earliest point so that targeted services can be tailored to suit needs before they become more complex, dangerous and expensive. Under policy and service development, as well as refining the systems and skills required to introduce early intervention teams, we will be ensuring that the service architecture of the forthcoming children's centres and extended schools will support the work of the whole service.

3 Partnership and Governance

3.1 In March of this year the Cabinet of Hampshire County Council agreed the partnership and governance arrangements which are the framework through which relevant agencies will engage with the planning and delivery of children's services. These are, for the most part, those agencies implicated by a duty to cooperate through Section 10 of the Children Act 2004. The arrangements represent Hampshire's "children's trust approach". The core elements of the arrangements include: a standing conference chaired by the Lead Cabinet Member; a partnership management board chaired by the Director of Children's Services; a series of service specific county wide partnership groups to drive performance on identified aspects of children's services (also referred to as outcomes partnerships); and a series of local partnership boards based on district and borough boundaries to ensure local engagement within the programme. The arrangements are overseen by the various governance processes of the respective agencies, the most significant of which is the Cabinet of the County Council in view of the council's statutory lead role. These arrangements are designed to fulfil the agencies' collective duties to the Children Act but they also serve to address the concerns identified within the inquiry that all partner agencies should be clearly accountable for safeguarding children.

4 Local Safeguarding Children Board

4.1 Like all equivalent authorities, prior to the Children Act Hampshire County Council coordinated an Area Child Protection Committee (ACPC) in order to ensure agencies were working together effectively to address risks to children. The Children Act 2004 required the dissolution of the ACPC and the establishment of a Local Safeguarding Children's Board (LSCB) in its stead. Hampshire's LSCB came into being in March of this year though there remains much work to be done to put in place all of the required attendant changes. The key differences between the LSCB and ACPC are that the new body has statutory weight, requires a broader membership (including for example from second tier local authorities), and has a clearer preventative remit to safeguard children potentially at risk alongside the narrower remit to protect those known to be at risk. However, these distinctions can be fraught and for obvious reasons, as the new remit is taken forward, an emphasis must be retained on the core child protection procedures. Therefore, the work of the LSCB will be central to the considerations of the inquiry as it seeks to take a broader approach to the prevention of risk. The government issued revised guidance in April of this year, Working Together to Safeguard Children. Alongside a wider agency membership Hampshire's LSCB has agreed it should initially be chaired by the Director of Children's Services at least until the procedural and other changes are in place. These should include a new financial formula to service the work of the board through contributions of the relevant partners. Unfortunately, the government chose not to prescribe such a formula in order to allow for local discretion. While the rationale for that decision is understandable, it has served to complicate local negotiations.

4.2 In the meantime, a number of positive initiatives are progressing under the auspices of the board which have relevance to the recommendations of the inquiry. Firstly, the broadened membership of the board is immediately promoting the safeguarding responsibilities of all agencies. Secondly, there is now much better engagement within the local authority especially at the interface between schools and children's social services in the development of training as well as in case specific activity. One example of this progress was the highly successful initiative aimed at headteachers and governors in January of this year to promote awareness and understanding in identifying and tackling abuse by adult professionals. These seminars were attended by over 600 school leaders, showed local foresight in the context of the subsequent List 99 debate, and are being rerun through popular support. Thirdly, the structures for the new department should include a single safeguarding unit to coordinate the various strands of safeguarding activity - though this will remain the core business of all the component parts of Children's Services.

5 The Children and Young People's Plan

5.1 The inquiry rightly placed a heavy emphasis on the need for the development of robust data and needs analysis of children in need. As the inquiry found, while this is a common sense objective, the complexity and disparity of children's services render the task challenging. There is now a requirement upon the local authority as lead agency to produce a Children and Young People's Plan (CYPP) and Hampshire's first CYPP was submitted at the end of May following an extensive consultation exercise with partners, parents and children. At the heart of the plan is a detailed needs analysis which forms the basis of the priorities set for the coming years - the plan is a three year document in the main but will be subject to annual progress reviewing. The needs analysis ranges across all services and partners. It is obviously in relatively early stages of development. The needs analysis and priority setting within the plan necessarily reflect the performance assessment process between the authority and our inspectorates, principally Ofsted and CSCI. That process in turn focuses on the data that supports the key measures and indicators that make up the performance or outcomes framework. A number of these relate directly or indirectly to tackling and preventing risk to children.

5.2 Members will be aware that the annual performance assessment process for 2004/5 lead to the children's social services judgement that Hampshire is serving most children well with excellent capacity to improve. This is a very strong rating. However, whereas to achieve this rating all of the areas of activity need to be above average, performance on safeguarding was generally the least strong of all of the outcomes the services are measured against. This covers a range of factors such as placement stability for children looked after as well as indicators to ensure that where there are risks to children they are being dealt with appropriately. Therefore, during the past year particular attention has been placed on such activity as ensuring that reviews of children subject to child protection procedures are at the highest standard of compliance. One of the objectives of the CYPP in line with the development of the new structures for Children's Services, will be to develop more sophisticated ways of measuring local determinants of risk and the most effective forms of earlier intervention.

6 Children's Services Policy Review Committee

6.1 Finally, the inquiry paid particular attention to the role of elected members in preventing and managing risk to children. Members will be aware that the Children Act 2004 also requires the establishment of a single appointed Cabinet member to take the lead political role for Children's Services. This is a role which politically mirrors that of the director. Those arrangements are now in place in Hampshire. However, the role of PRC is also crucial to the Change for Children programme and the concerns of the inquiry.

6.2 The timing of the County Council's review of the functioning of PRC's is especially helpful in this regard. The Children's PRC has already established a strong approach to scrutinising services but it is faced with a massive agenda in joining up education and children's social services business. The forthcoming review of external membership should help ensure a strong balance of expertise, as will the introduction of a framework for briefing members on the key service issues outside of the more formal reporting mechanisms. There are two particular areas of development which should further enhance the authority's safeguarding capacity in this regard. First, we are now able to establish a clearer routine of reporting the detail of the annual performance assessment process to members via the PRC. This will allow for an evidence based scrutiny of the main areas of progress including safeguarding. Secondly, we can, with the support of the Lead Member, use the membership of the Children's PRC as the basis for establishing a list of members who can, through appropriate training, fulfil regulatory requirements to visit establishments and other services. This will support the role of all elected members as "corporate parents" with a shared accountability for outcomes for children in the county.

7 Legal Implications

7.1 There are no specific legal implications arising out of this report. The report primarily deals with the council's response to the Children Act 2004 and related child care and education legislation.

8 Financial Implications

8.1 There are no specific financial implications arising from this report. It is worth noting that the inquiry report was concerned with ensuring that preventative services are developed which can offset the need for more expensive interventions when children fall into higher levels of need. Indeed, this is a premis of the legislation and the design of the new local structures. However, research shows that better investment in early intervention can lead initially at least to higher levels of demand on more intensive services as more need is exposed. To support the Change for Children Programme the Schools Forum have agreed the revenue investment of £0.5m rising to £1.5m in 2007/8 into early intervention services. This is a welcome initiative on the part of schools in the county.

9 Personnel Implications

9.1 None identified.

10 Impact Assessment

10.1 Whereas there are no direct implications arising from this report research shows us that children from black and minority ethnic groups and children with disabilities (and the young carers of adults with disabilities) are more likely to suffer from other forms of deprivation and may therefore be more likely to be in need of safeguarding. This places an additional emphasis on the need to ensure children's services are assessing need accurately and are accessible.

10 Crime Prevention Implications

11.1 There are no specific implications, but again research shows us that there are strong correlations between the factors that cause a child to be at risk and those which may lead to criminal behaviour. The effectiveness of the partners' preventative services are therefore doubly important to the community.

Recommendations

1 It is recommended that the committee note this report.

2 It is further recommended that the committee consider if they require a further annual update on the progress of the Change for Children Programme.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.