Minutes:
The Council had before it a Notice of Motion standing in the names of Mrs E B Tucker, Mr T A L Wells, Prof J W Raine, Mr M E Jenkins, Mrs F M Oborski and Mrs S Askin.
The motion was moved by Mrs F M Oborski and seconded by Mrs S Askin.
The Council agreed to deal with the Motion on the day.
The mover and seconder spoke in support of the Motion:
· that every Councillor was a Corporate Parent and they needed to ask the question would this service be good enough for my child – if not it was not good enough
· the scrutiny function needed to be strengthened
· the Corporate Parenting Board must take on scrutiny work in partnership with the Children and Young Peoples' Scrutiny Panel and District Councils
· After the Ofsted report the Council must move forward
An amendment was proposed by Mr G Vickery and Seconded by mr L Mallett that the word "mandatory" in paragraph 1 should be removed and replaced with the words "new, enhanced" so the first point should read "to require every future Member of Council to participate in a programme of new, enhanced Corporate Parenting Training". It was clarified that in this context the word meant that Council would still require its Members to undertake training. It was argued that the word mandatory was not needed as the Motion already 'required' Councillors to participate in Corporate Parenting Training. It was more a matter of semantics rather than principle.
A number of points were made against the amended Motion including that the amendment could be seen as watering down the intention of the original Motion which was to ensure that all Councillors took their responsibilities seriously. "Mandatory" was a sign of intent and implied individual and collective responsibility.
The amendment was put to the meeting and was lost.
The substantive motion received general cross-party support when put to the meeting and was carried (all members in favour with 1 abstention) and Council RESOLVED that "Council recognised that the outcome of the recent OFSTED judgement on this Council's Children's Services performance reflects poorly on the responsibilities of every Member of Council.
Council therefore resolves:
1 To require every future Member of Council to participate in a programme of mandatory Corporate Parenting Training, which will properly inform them of their roles and responsibilities as Corporate Parents (and as set out in an updated Corporate Parenting Handbook).
2 To ensure that the Scrutiny Function is strengthened (with the Children and Young People's Scrutiny Panel having access to professional staff support in the process of holding the Cabinet Member and Administration to account).
3 To empower the Corporate Parenting Board to scrutinise such elements of the Council's functions with regard to the services for Looked-After Children as are felt necessary to ensure effective oversight (and with regular reporting back to the Children and Young People's Panel).
4 To revise and regularly publish an appropriate framework of Key Performance Indicators to include qualitative and quantitative measure in order to enable better performance monitoring in relation to services to Vulnerable Children".