Agenda item

Question

How have Children's Services managed to continue to deliver services in these challenging times especially in respect to our most vulnerable families?

Question

How have Children's Services managed to continue to deliver services in these challenging times especially in respect to our most vulnerable families?

Answer

In response to Covid-19, Children’s Social Care has adapted and amended how we deliver our services to ensure that both children and workers are safe and the risks are mitigated. Our changes are based on the Government’s advice and guidance such as: social distancing, good hygiene and not undertaking unnecessary journeys. The changes to our practice and service delivery could be summarised as:

• Risk assessments and mitigation of risks;
• Visiting the families we are most worried about and having the correct Protective Equipment when necessary, such as masks and gloves;
• Adapting our offer and supporting families differently depending on their needs; and
• Of course we now have digital technology which has supported us in our engagement with families; and
• Also of course remote working.

We are focused on keeping children safe and keeping our staff safe as well as our statutory duties. This is, as you can imagine, a delicate balancing process.

Most workers are now working from home and this has been possible because of the new IT equipment we have.  We have also changed the way we do recording so that we accurately capture how our visits are taking place; if it was by phone, video call or face to face.

All Child Protection visits in the Borough are ongoing and are face to face using all safety precautions as required.  Child Protection Conferences and Looked After Reviews are taking place remotely via conference calls.

All ‘Looked After Children’ cases have been reviewed and where possible visit time frames amended; in line with the statutory requirement of each case. The availability of new apps and software has supported the use of video calling to communicate with children regularly.  In addition to this the Bridges Resource Centre is continuing to offer a residential respite service, although it has been slightly reduced.

All court applications for Public Law (where we need to protect a child) and Youth Justice are being completed remotely via video link.  The number of contacts made to our ‘front door’ i.e. duty, triage and assessment has reduced and we are using some of the capacity created to support pressures and gaps in other teams and assist with visits.

Finally we are meeting weekly with the Berkshire West Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, which includes Health and the Police, to identify and address any issues or themes as they arise.

Supplementary question

It sounds like you are doing good work.  In the question you mentioned technology but one part I did not catch you speaking about there in regard to schooling.  So how has the virtual school been performing in this time period within the children in their cohort?

Supplementary Answer

Students are provided with work packages and on-line learning materials and in addition our Looked After Children, as you know we are all in locum parentis as a Councillor i.e. Corporate Parents and for them we have provided on line encyclopaedia, and they also have 1:1 tutoring.