Archived decisions

Children and Young People Select Committee

Work Programme 2007-8

Topics of interest

The Children and Young People Select Committee has expressed interest in a variety of topics for their Work Programme 2007-8. In order to finalise this programme, Members will consider the findings of the recent Joint Area Review and the Children and Young People's Plan evaluation to ensure that these topics meet the following criteria:

· Capacity to influence and improve the service under consideration

· Timeliness and relevance to local services

· Issues not under consideration elsewhere

· Issues not subject to other scrutiny or performance monitoring activities

The final work programme will be approved at the October 3rd meeting of the Select Committee.

    1. Respite for families of children with severe disabilities

Topic already confirmed as Work Programme item. Refer to scoping document for details.

    2. Corporate Parenting

Topic already confirmed as Work Programme item. Development and delivery of a `Pledge' for Children in Care.

Further scrutiny of how the Pledge is being delivered in Hampshire will form part of the Committee's work for 2008.

    3. School leadership: successes and challenges under current reforms, including the 14-19 agenda.

Members proposed various angles for scrutiny of this topic - as yet to be determined. Possible angles include:

    · Recruitment and retention of teachers, including head teachers: what is being done to secure the future?

    · Tackling underachievement in secondary schools

    · Development of a 14-19 curriculum in a rural county (lessons learned from case studies such as Cumbria)

    · Transport considerations in delivering the 14-19 curriculum

    · Pressures on timetabling in delivering the 14-19 curriculum: what will be the impact on teachers and pupils (i.e. ensuring people are in the right place at the right time, pressures on teachers teaching various subjects)

    4. Young Carers: spending on young carers

The Policy and Resources Select Committee received a report on February 1 2007 regarding the Young Carer's Grant. Key points included:

    · The Young Carers budget is funded entirely by the children's element of the Carer's grant from central government. However, because of freedoms available to HCC, there is no requirement for the whole grant to be spent on Young Carers. For 06/07 the grant is £677,000 and the Young Carers budget is £357,000. The rest of the grant supports the Children's Services budget.

    · The £357,000 is divided into two parts: £167,000 goes to locally managed projects to support carers (including a respite service in Fareham/Gosport and sitting services in Havant/Petersfield and Alton/Aldershot) and £190,000 is managed centrally to provide a number of projects i.e. the Young Carers initiative for young people with caring responsibilities, as well as seven projects across Hampshire working with Young Carers.

    · Financial monitoring forecast an underspend of £23k against the budget of £357,000 which was used to offset overspends elsewhere in Children's Services.

Members had concerns about the levels of spending on young carers directly and the use of resources to support the Children's Services Budget given the level of financial support from the Government for young carers. The P&R Select Committee therefore referred the item to the CYP Select Committee for further investigation.

    · Members proposed that this item could be the focus of a short piece of scrutiny (short workshop) as part of their budget scrutiny programme to help understand issues regarding funding for Young Carers and advise any recommendations for annual budget setting.

    5. Development of an integrated Youth Service

Members proposed the following as possible angles for scrutiny - to be determined:

    · All reports to the Executive Member to be received by the Committee for pre-scrutiny throughout the year.

    · How is the Local Authority promoting achievement through accredited learning?

    · How is the integration of services achieving greater value for money?

    6. Focus on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services:

Following the July 5th report to the Committee on the Protocol for Shared Funding for Children with Complex Needs (Colin Hardy), Members expressed an interest in following the development of joint commissioning around CAMHS. Members have noted that this will probably be a key focus of the JAR action plan and may therefore not be a suitable topic for scrutiny at this stage.

    7. Focus on progress with Therapy Services scrutiny:

At the July 2007 meeting of the Committee, Members received an update on progress with some of the recommendations of the 2004 Review of Access to Therapy Services for Children in School and Pre-School.

Since the recommendations arising from the 2004 review covered a wide array of issues, Members wish to consider the finding from the JAR/CYP evaluation information before deciding what key aspects of this review should be monitored during 2008.