Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from June Griffiths and John Thomas.

None.

Members of the public wishing to take part should notify the Head of Legal and Democratic Services in writing or by e-mail indicating the nature and content of their proposed participation no later than 9.00am on the working day before the meeting (in this case 10 May 2016).  Enquiries can be made through the telephone number/e-mail address below.

None.

(previously circulated)

The Minutes of the Meeting held on 17 March 2016 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The Strategic Commissioner – Education and Skills and the Interim Lead Commissioner attended the meeting to discuss the measures and resources in place within the Council's Education & Skills Intelligent Client Unit (E&S ICU) to monitor and manage the delivery of the education services commissioned to Babcock Prime. The E&S ICU has a Lead Commissioner, Commissioning Manager and Commissioning Officer.

The majority of the Council's Learning and Achievement Services were commissioned to Babcock Prime on 1 October 2015 on a 5 year contract. The services transferred to Babcock Prime from the Council were:

·       School Admissions

·       Children Missing in Education

·       Elective Home Education

·       Exclusions

·       Post-16

·       Specialist Inclusion Services

·       The Virtual School (not the Headteacher role)

·       School Improvement

·       Governor Services

·       Early Years & Childcare

·       Education Investigation Service/Children in Entertainment & Employment

·       Education Welfare Service

·       Workforce Development

The Council retained some services which were previously within the Learning and Achievement Service:

·       Place planning and provision

·       The role of the Virtual Headteacher

·       The strategic lead for services for learners with Special Educational Needs (SEN)

The County Council monitors the Contract under a strict and robust governance structure and had:

·     Weekly commissioning meetings with the Babcock Regional Manager

·     Monthly Review Meetings with Council and Babcock senior managers, which included Council commissioners and Babcock leads

·     Quarterly Review Meetings with senior Council officers and Cabinet Member, and senior Babcock Prime; and also had

·     A suite of programme processes which had been introduced to ensure robust contract monitoring:

–       Reporting and contract monitoring tools

–       Issues log and Early Warning Register

–       Data management protocols

–       Evidence of continued measurable improvements in standards e.g. Ofsted inspections

During the discussion the following main points were made:

·       The Commissioning Team co-ordinated and quality assured all data used to monitor the KPIs and each KPI was accompanied by a narrative giving detailed background on each indicator.  It was difficult to measure the County Council's 2016 performance in comparison to 2015 as the KPIs were changing. The performance however, could be compared nationally.

·       It was suggested that although the national indicators had changed, consideration should be given to running a parallel system for a period of time to compare like with like data and thus County Council year on year performance.

·       Looking to the future, it was suggested that performance data could be broken down by district level, an approach which was welcomed by Members.

·       In response to the concern that the turnover of School Improvement staff was having an impact on the poor performance of KPI 3 in relation to KS2 (The proportion of schools below the government's floor standards and those deemed to be 'coasting' is below national or statistical neighbours performance, whichever is lower) it was felt that although there had been some changes in staff since Babcock were appointed and the demise of the National Strategy, the gap was in fact narrowing.

·       It was suggested that the deficit of primary school places for September 2016 in Worcestershire was due to a bulge year (a one-off situation) and managing parental  ...  view the full minutes text for item 242.

The Assistant Director for Safeguarding was invited to the meeting to update the Panel on progress of the Back to Basics Safeguarding Improvement Plan since the Local Government Association (LGA) Safeguarding Peer Review in April 2015.

In November 2014, the County Council - as part of its desire to be a learning organisation - invited the LGA to help facilitate a Peer Review on its approach to safeguarding children.  The Peer Review took place in April 2015. 

The Children and Families Overview and Scrutiny Panel considered the outcomes of the Peer Review at its meeting on 25 June 2015 and were informed that the LGA team had identified the following four priorities:

·     A 'back to basics' Safeguarding Improvement Plan

·     Resolving the future direction for the 'Front Door'

·     Implementing a detailed financial recovery plan

·     Review and defining the role of Early Help

The Panel agreed that they would undertake further scrutiny work to consider the Directorate's response to these priorities and met with the Assistant Director Safeguarding Services and Strategic Lead Quality and Improvement on 5 August 2015.

It was recognised that much of the ongoing improvement work and work initiated in response to the Peer Review was still at an early stage and that it would take time before improvements would be seen.  Therefore, it was agreed that the Scrutiny Panel would receive an update in six months' time on the progress made.

The Safeguarding Improvement Plan implemented in May 2015 had been monitored monthly by the Safeguarding Improvement Board.  The Plan was subsequently refreshed in January 2016 and was considered by the Safeguarding Improvement Board in February 2016.   The refreshed Plan took into account the progress achieved to date and was aligned to the three strategic priorities for Children's Social Care:

·       Getting the 'gateway' into Children's Social Care right;

·       Securing safety and permanence for children at the earliest opportunity;

·       Building a confident and capable workforce.

As a result, the performance indicators that accompanied the Safeguarding Improvement Plan were revised so that they were directly relevant to the Plan and were signed off in March 2016 by the Children, Families and Communities' Directorate Leadership Team and Safeguarding Improvement Board. Progress on performance was monitored through monthly corrective action reports which were compiled monthly by the Team and Group Managers for performance clinics that are held in each of the locality safeguarding areas.  These were then reported to the Assistant Director for Safeguarding and on to Safeguarding Improvement Board.   

Evidence from other local authorities who had embarked on improvement journeys similar to Worcestershire (e.g. Walsall and Herefordshire) suggested that improvement began with compliance. There had therefore been a focus on the compliance-based practice standards:

·       Assessments in timescale

·       Timeliness of visits

·       Timeliness of Section 47 Enquiries

·       Timeliness of Initial Child Protection Conferences (ICPC)

·       Timeliness of response to complaints

Performance had improved evidenced by March 2016 data except for the percentage of Initial Child Protection Conferences completed in timescale.  Performance for this indicator fluctuated between May 2015 and March 2016 between c. 40%  ...  view the full minutes text for item 243.

The Strategic Commissioner: Early Help & Partnerships was invited to the meeting to provide an update on the Stronger Families Programme which was Worcestershire's response to the national Troubled Families programme.

Delivery of phase 1 of the programme was completed by March 2015 and provided support to over 900 families who met the criteria of having children not attending school, youth crime/anti-social behaviour and/or adults not in employment. Of these families 833 achieved the required improvements (improved school attendance, reduction in crime/anti-social behaviour and/or an adult moving into employment) that allowed the County Council to claim further 'payment by results' government funding.

Delivery of phase 2 of the programme was underway and had so far delivered support to 760 families who had complex needs.  A key requisite of the second phase of the programme was a system change - to challenge the barriers faced by families receiving services across the public sector. This was being led in Worcestershire through the Connecting Families Programme.

The pilot being carried in Redditch still needed further time before more formal plans could be put in place for a county-wide roll-out, however, it will be built on the following building blocks:

• Family Support Workers in a District area would at some point be expected to come together as one team and be co-located. Local Partnerships would need to be identified to provide Change Champions to support the approach
• Communications to share learning from Redditch
• District specific learning events to build programme according to local need.

The Chairman thanked the Officers for attending the meeting and asked if members could be advised when wider roll-out across districts took place.