Archived decisions

9. DECLARATION OF INTEREST

Members were mindful that, where they believed they

had a personal or personal prejudicial interest in any

matter to be considered at the meeting, they should

normally at the time of the debate declare their nterest,

and having regard to the circumstances described in

paragraphs 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the County Council's

Code of Conduct, consider whether to leave the

meeting whilst the matter was discussed save for

exercising any right to speak in accordance with

Paragraph 12 of the Code.

There were no declarations of interest.

10. MINUTES

The Minutes of the Committee held on 2 July 2009 were confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

11. CHAIRMAN'S COMMUNICATIONS

a. Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) Checks

The Chairman reminded Members that, as corporate parents, they should have a CRB check. He urged those Members who had not yet completed a CRB check to do so.

12 CHILD PROTECTION - LESSONS LEARNED FROM HARINGEY COUNCIL

The Director of Children's Services gave a presentation on the lessons learned from Haringey Council following Baby Peter. He gave details of the national and local context, developments from new investment, performance analysis, the unannounced OFSTED inspection and future developments.

He outlined the National Context which included:

· Climbie, Laming, Every Child Matters, Children Act 2004

· Safeguarding: a broad, collective approach to secure the welfare of all children, especially the most vulnerable

· Child Protection: the intensive process to protect children believed to be at greatest risk

· Local Safeguarding Children Board (Hampshire Safeguarding Children Board)

· Baby Peter, Doncaster et al, Laming 2

· Workforce challenges

· Political, operational and resource risks

· National upsurge in demand

· Children's centres, extended schools much higher levels of awareness

· At least 30,000 of the most vulnerable children successfully protected daily

Hampshire had a strong base with Joint Area Reviews, Annual Performance Assessments, National Indicator Sets and quality assurance. However it did have to cope with scale, size and consistency and was not immune from workforce pressures. There was no complacency and a determination to learn the lessons.

Systems reviews and £1.2m new investment

The £1.2m new Investment given to Children's Services by the County Council would be used for:

· Unqualified social work support staff

· Expanded independent reviewing service

· Dedicated referral service in Hantsdirect

· Mobile technology

· Social Work Training bursaries

These were now all in place and starting to see dividend

On performance Repeat Child Protection plans were down from 18% in 2007/08 to 11.3% and timeliness of Initial and Core Assessments has declined but Hantsdirect embedded team would improve this

The Revised Ofsted Framework included an annual judgement of the performance of Children's Services generally, an annual unannounced inspection of children's safeguarding duty intake systems and a three yearly detailed inspection of safeguarding and children in care services.

He gave details of an unannounced Ofsted Inspection which took place on 17 and 18 August 2009. Three Inspectors reviewed 50 cases, three Area offices plus Hantsdirect . There were four elements to Ofsted's letter following the inspection:

Findings

· Children and families were involved in assessments and their views were appropriately recorded on files.

· Child protection enquiries seen by inspectors were conducted in a thorough and timely manner.

· Child protection thresholds were well understood and appropriately applied.

· The training co-ordinated by the Local Safeguarding Children Board was valued by social work staff.

· Practice was sensitive to the racial, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of children and their families.

· Revised arrangements for case file auditing had recently been adopted.

· Senior managers had plans for a systematic evaluation of the impact of this process on the quality of services to children and families.

Strengths

· The emergency duty team provided a robust and effective service for children and their families.

· The Local Safeguarding Children Board had taken a thematic approach to the dissemination of lessons learnt from all recent serious case reviews.

· Senior managers had responded promptly to weaknesses identified in the referral and assessment service by restructuring the service in the north east of the county, thereby reducing caseloads in this service and by significantly remodelling the `Hantsdirect' service.

Areas for development

· Written inter-agency thresholds for services for children in need

· Screening referrals to the referral and assessment teams

· Written receipts of referrals to referring agencies

· Variable quality of initial and core assessments

· Record keeping is inconsistent across the county

· Accessibility of management electronic records (SWIFT)

Area for priority action

· Social work staff in the children in need team in one office were found to be carrying high caseloads.

He outlined the areas for further work which included the Ofsted forthcoming annual judgement, three-yearly detailed inspection, Children and Families Advisory Panel. Workforce Strategy (trust-wide). Profiles of the Hampshire Safeguarding Children Board and Children's Trust and roles of Lead Member and Directors.

Members were keen to have more information on the strength of locality partnerships in schools to ensure that schools and partnerships were working together, the SWIFT capacity and engagement with IT colleagues on SWIFT/IT issues and social housing - District Councils having a duty to co-operate on accessibility to social housing.

RESOLVED:

That:

a. The Director of Children's Services be thanked for

his presentation.

b. Reports/presentations be presented to the Committee, in due course, on the strength of locality partnerships in schools to ensure that schools and partnerships were working together, the SWIFT capacity and engagement with IT colleagues on SWIFT/IT issues and social housing - District Councils having a duty to co-operate on accessibility to social housing.

13. 16 - 19 YEAR OLDS - RESPONSIBILITY

TRANSFER

The Director of Children's Services presented a report on the progress being made in planning for the transfer of 16 - 19 responsibilities from the Learning Skills Council (Item 5 in the Minute Book) The reforms were built on a number of principles:

· Provision was driven by learner choice and funding follows the learner

· Local Authorities would be the strategic lead for outcomes and achievement 0-19

· Local authorities would l form sub-regional planning and commissioning groups based upon the travel-to-learn patterns of young people.

· A Young People's Learning agency (YPLA) would be established to support local authorities in meeting their new responsibilities.

· A strong, demand-led Further Education (FE) sector would deliver post-19 skills funded through the Skills Funding Agency (SFA)

These reforms would sit alongside other related reforms to 14-19 including the introduction of Diplomas and Functional Skills, the roll-out of entitlement for all young people and the raising of the participation age (RPA) to 17 by 2013 and to 18 by 2015.

Work was progressing in line with the pace of change being set by the Government and the Learning and Skills Council and essential transfers of staff were progressing and on track for 1 April 2010.

The budgets for the transferring staff would transfer to Hampshire in a `ringfence' agreement that would last for three years. This protected them from the impact of Hampshire as a `floor' authority, where, had they been placed into base budget the funding would not have been received by the authority. It was still not clear what would happen at the end of three years, the County Treasurer was working on the assumption that after that point the funding will go into the County Council's base budgets.

The funding for the 16-19 provision by the colleges would be allocated to them on a national funding formula basis, and the County Council would therefore have little direct financial leverage. Influence would be through the commissioning of places for courses and individuals with specific needs. In reality this meant that the County Council would have little direct influence on the `mainstream' of 16-19 provision, which was led by learner demand. The County Council's task would be to ensure that those who would otherwise be disadvantaged by such a system (the vulnerable groups mentioned above) had sufficient provision made for them, within appropriate geographical areas. This was an area of activity that had been underdeveloped by the Learning and Skills Council and which would need to be at the heart of the approach from the County Council if the aims of the Children and Young Peoples plan for all young people to the age of 19 were to be met.

RESOLVED:

That the report be received and noted.

14. ADMISSIONS - ARRANGEMENTS AND

OUTCOMES

The Director of Children's Services presented a report giving an overview of school admission arrangements (Item 6 in the Minute Book).

School admissions operated in a constraining legal framework. The local authority must set admission arrangements for its own community and voluntary controlled schools, must organise a co-ordinated scheme so that families receive one offer of a school place and police voluntary aided and foundation schools that are their own admissions authority. The authority was supported by Hampshire's Admissions Forum; the authority must have regard to the advice of the Forum.

In the autumn term the Admissions Team had four main themes to its work.

· A review of the appeals heard for entry in the previous academic year (in this case 2008/2009).

· Pupils, who were part of the recent main admissions round i.e. the September 2009 intake, start school.

· The September 2010 admissions procedures began with approximately 34 000 families making their applications for places in reception classes in infant and primary schools, junior schools and secondary schools; deadline for secondary applications was 23 October 2008, primary deadline was 20 November 2008.

· The consultation for the 2011 admission arrangements was carried out within the authority and with neighbouring authorities between October 2008 and March 2009.

RESOLVED:

That the report be received and noted.

15 THERAPY SERVICES FOR CHILDREN WITH

DISABILITIES AND COMPLEX CARE NEEDS

The Chairman of the Therapy Review Panel, Councillor Anna McNair Scott. updated members on the arrangements for the review, the first meeting had taken place on 22 September. Scrutiny of the user groups and the NHS would take place on 7 and 8 December 2009.

16. WORK PROGRAMME

The Chief Executive presented the Committee's forthcoming work programme (Item 8 in the Minute Book). Members highlighted the 14 - 19 agenda - access to services, Parenting including teenage pregnancy and Youth Service/Connexions as issues raised at the last meeting of the Committee.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee's work programme be approved subject to 14 - 19 agenda - access to services, Parenting including teenage pregnancy and Youth Service/Connexions being included in an appropriate timescale together with the issues raised at this meeting.

The strength of locality partnerships in schools to ensure that schools and partnerships were working together, the SWIFT capacity and engagement with IT colleagues on SWIFT/IT issues and social housing - District Councils having a duty to co-operate on accessibility to social housing be added to the Committee's work programme

The outcome of the therapy services review be presented to a future meeting of the Committee.

The Work programme be updated and 14 - 19 agenda - access to services, Parenting including teenage pregnancy and Youth Service/Connexions be included.