Agenda item

To receive and consider the Children’s Services Performance Indicators.

The Committee received the Children’s Services Performance Indicators report which was set out in agenda pages 15-24.  The Committee also received a tabled report with updates.  The report was presented by Nick Hammond, Service Manager Intelligence and Impact.

Members were pleased to note that the report included the trends and other requests made by the Committee.

During the discussion of the item the following comments were made:

·           Members asked why were the Education Health and Care Plans (EHCP) still at 14% of completion within the 20 week target if the service was now fully staffed, and asked how many children this related to;

·           Nick Hammond, stated that since quarter 2 the service had received 80 new requests and turned around 106 plans at the same time.  The issue was dealing with the backlog and new requests at the same time;

·           Sal Thirlway, Assistant Director for Learning Achievement and Partnerships reiterated that the service was having to deal with a backlog and cope with ongoing requests at the same time.  He stated the timescales were improving;

·           Councillor Kerr referred to the minutes of the September 2019 meeting where the Committee was told that the service would achieve the national picture of 58% by December 2019.  She believed the service should strive for 100% and she asked what were the barriers stopping the service from achieving better timescales;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that the service was working towards clearing the backlog, some of the measures currently being undertaken would be discussed later on, during the SEND Strategy item discussions;

·           In response to a question Nick Hammond stated that currently there were 66 open EHCP assessments, 8 of those were over the 20 week target;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that back in September the service had underestimated the capacity that was needed to clear the backlog;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that the service was aware that the curve of improvement was not quick enough, however it was important not to compromise quality over timeliness;

·           Members were interested to know about the statistics around appeal cases against the Local Authority.  Nick Hammond stated that there had been 16 mediation cases in the current financial year.  Officers agreed to inform the Committee about the outcomes of the mediation cases;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that some parents were in agreement to miss the timescales in order to ensure the quality of plans;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that there was now more involvement of health professionals, and quicker provision of health information to enable the service to achieve the target;

·           In response to a question Nick Hammond stated that there was no deadline for the completion of the Early Help review;

·           In relation to dashboard 3, Members were concerned that in order to achieve the target, the quality of assessments might have been compromised.  Members were also concerned about the percentage of repeat referrals.  Adam Davis, Assistant Director Children’s Social Care stated that there was no correlation and that the quality had not been compromised;

·           In relation to dashboard 4, Adam Davis stated that visits were taking place within the timeframe, however they were sometimes not being recorded within the timeframe;

·           In response to a question in relation to children protection visits, Adam Davis stated that some families might receive unannounced visits, this depended on each case and the risk factors.  He stated that visits were set every two weeks if necessary, however if more frequency was needed, the service would look at other strategies;

·           In response to a question Adam Davis stated that the recording of visits consisted in a comprehensive report, not just recording the date of the visit.  He stated that it was possible that the recording of visits had not taken place at the point in time when the report was run, therefore missing the deadline;

·           In response to a question Adam Davis stated that any change in Social Worker inevitably had an impact on the children;

·           In relation to dashboard 6, Nick Hammond stated that there were various ways to collect information on care leavers who were Not in Education Employment or Training (NEET), mainly around the work undertaken by Children’s Services; 

·           Adam Davis stated that the service had been working with Housing to ensure that all care leavers were placed in suitable accommodation.  There was currently one care leaver in a B&B accommodation, and housing was looking to find a solution for this case;

·           In relation to dashboard 7, Nick Hammond clarified that 49 was the number of children and not the number of incidents; he apologised for the misinformation at the last meeting;

·           Councillor Mickleburgh was interested to know if there were any gender issues, risks or trends in the children missing from home/care statistics;

·           Members were interested to know the number of  Wokingham children who had gone missing from other local authorities; Officers agreed to report back;

·           Adam Davis stated that the service was using social media and LinkedIn to spread the message about Social Worker recruitment.  The service had recently made six job offers and was looking at other potential candidates;

·           In response to a question Adam Davis stated that the service did look at employing graduates.  However, it was important to balance the number of newly qualified Social Workers and experienced Social Workers; and

·           Councillor Kerr was interested to know the split across departments in the use of agency workers.

RESOLVED That:

1)     Officers would provide the following additional information:

a)     the number of EHCP mediation cases and their outcomes;

b)     the number of children missing from home/care who were placed with other local authorities;

c)      The number of agency workers split across departments; and

2)     The report be noted.