Agenda and minutes

None.

None.

To authorise the procedure for confirming and signing the Minutes of this meeting.  It is recommended that the Minutes be circulated to Members of the Panel and be signed by the Chairman in light of any comments on their accuracy received within 7 days of their circulation.

RESOLVED: that the minutes of this meeting be circulated to Members of the Panel and be signed by the Chairman in the light of any comments on their accuracy received within 7 days of their circulation.

The Panel will be asked to exclude the press and public from the meeting for the following item as it is likely that exempt information relating to any individual will be disclosed and the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

RESOLVED: that the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the following item as it is likely that exempt information relating to any individual will be disclosed and the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

Summary of the proceedings during which the press and public were excluded (this is a fair summary of the proceedings and there are no exempt minutes)

On 19 October 2017 the Appointments etc Panel agreed to the creation and appointment of an additional temporary post of Assistant Director (Early Help and Commissioning) to cover some of the responsibilities of the Assistant Director (Families, Communities and Partnerships) whilst that post holder, Hannah Needham, led on the creation and implementation of the Alternative Delivery Model (ADM).

Following this, Hannah Needham continued in the newly positioned role of Assistant Director (Families, Communities and Partnerships) with the added Alternative Delivery Model (ADM) responsibility.

On 12 December 2017, the Appointments etc. Panel approved the internal appointment of Sarah Wilkins on an 18 month secondment to the temporary post of Assistant Director (Early Help and Commissioning).

On 5 February 2018 the Appointments etc. Panel approved the extension of the interim arrangements for Nick Wilson as Assistant Director (Education & Skills)until 31 March 2019 when it was originally planned that the Alternative Delivery Model in relation to children's social care – now Worcestershire Children First (WCF) - would go live on 1 April 2019.  Throughout these moves, the substantive post for Hannah Needham remained Assistant Director (Families, Communities and Partnerships).

The ADM go live date has since been moved from 1 April 2019 to 1 October 2019.The Department for Education has also recently approved the Council's recommendation to extend the proposed scope of WCF to include Education & Early Help.

The revised scope of services proposed as being transferred into Worcestershire Children First created an opportunity for synergising some of the services transferring to WCF, ready for go live on 1 October 2019.  It has become clear that there has been a greater need for the Education teams and the Early Help & Commissioning teams to continue to work even closer together, but under one point of leadership.

In addition, it has been accepted that some services within CFC will not transfer to WCF and will be retained within the Council (for example Communities).  There will therefore need to be continued leadership of these retained functions within the Council.  However, it is proposed that the Early Help function does transfer to WCF, so the services under the current Assistant Director (Families, Communities & Partnerships) would be split between the Council and WCF, which needed rationalising.

Based on this, it was proposed to delete the following 2 roles from the structure of Children, Families and Communities:

(a)  Assistant Director (Families, Communities & Partnerships)

(b)  Assistant Director (Education & Skills).

In deleting these two roles it was proposed to create two new roles:

(a)  Assistant Director (Communities & ADM Programme Management)

(b)  Assistant Director (Education & Early Help)

The Panel recognised that Hannah Needham had been effectively carrying out the duties of the newly created post which was a suitable alternative to the existing substantive post.

In order to maintain operational independence and oversight of the programme management of the ADM, and to have a structure  ...  view the full minutes text for item 1174.