Issue - meetings

To consider a report of the Strategic Director of Children, Families and Adults.

Fintan Bradley, Head of Service: Strategy, Planning and Performance, attended to provide an update on the progress which had taken place across a range of service areas as a result of the Announced Inspection of Children & Family Services in June/July 2011. The published report from Ofsted had outlined a series of areas for improvement within specified timescales and these had been distilled into a specific action plan by the Children and Families senior leadership team. Fintan Bradley noted that actions from the April 2011 Unannounced Inspection had been merged into the plan and that it was being monitored through the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) Performance Management sub group.

It was queried whether the department had been surprised with the number of actions that had emerged from the inspection. Fintan Bradley confirmed that the department had not been surprised as they were already aware of the service gaps. He stated that it was important for the department to be self aware and self critical and that it would have been more of a concern if the actions had come as a surprise. Following from this point, it was stated that considering six out of the seventeen areas required immediate attention this demonstrated that the self assessment processes must not have been robust. Fintan Bradley acknowledged that this was partly due to the flux as a result of being a new Council but continued to assert that the service would need to improve the systems around ‘deep dive’ self review.

It was questioned if there were any processes in place for feedback to be provided to residents/professionals who had made a referral to the Council on a child safeguarding issue. Fintan Bradley confirmed that feedback systems were in place and that the Council would always seek to offer the referrer alternative routes for dealing with the issue if it was not escalated to the Common Assessment Team.

Attention was drawn to the action which recommended that the Council ‘Ensure that service users are actively and consistently engaged are able to contribute to service development’. It was noted that there were ‘still issues’ with this action and it was queried what these were and whether the service was confident that improvements could be made. Fintan Bradley acknowledged that the department needed to get better at listening to service users and then doing something positive with that information. Whilst this practice was going on, there were still issues of consistency. The Committee was reassured that the performance management sub group of the LSCB were looking at this issue carefully and that a report could be brought to scrutiny in three months to provide an update on progress.

It was noted that a 16 plus working group had been referenced in a number of action points. Bearing in mind that a recent Task Group had been established to look at the issue of care leavers, it was queried whether the Committee was duplicating work streams. Fintan Bradley confirmed he would seek clarification on this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 153