To receive a presentation from the officers of the Children and Families Service.
Minutes:
Tony Crane, Cath Knowles and Fintan Bradley as senior officers of the Children’s and Families Directorate, attended to provide the Committee both a general overview of the department and then subsequently a more detailed overview of each respective service.
Tony Crane began by describing the vision of the Children and Families Directorate, outlining the fact that they were aiming for Cheshire East to be a place where all children and young people were supported well to maximise their life chances. It was explained that they were going to achieve this by making the most effective use of resources and by developing a high performing workforce.
The Committee were also informed about the achievements of the Directorate since Cheshire East was formed in 2009. In particular it was noted how the service had achieved improvements in educational standards and also how they had strengthened mechanisms for keeping children safe.
Following this general introduction, Tony Crane reported on the function of his service; Early Intervention and Prevention. It was explained how the work of his team was centred on an emerging evidence base which asserted that ‘prevention is better than cure’. From this philosophy, the service had identified the following priorities:
· Break the transmission of generational issues to keep families together.
· Blend the offer for those families that want support but maybe don’t need it and those families who need it but don’t want it.
· Drive the join up in services to families.
· Deploy resources in an efficient and agile manner.
Following Tony Crane, Cath Knowles explained how her service, Children and Families Social Care, had made a number of changes to the way they delivered services. It was reported that since December 2010, Social Care had moved away from the generic social work delivery that was part of the legacy of Cheshire County Council to smaller social work units – in line with what was known as the ‘Hackney model’. It was then outlined what the ‘must do’ service priorities were and how the service planned to meet these.
Lastly, Fintan Bradley described the work of the strategy, planning and performance team. It was reported that the function of this team was to support the Directorate in the strategic planning and commissioning of services, school places and sufficient child care provision from internal and external partners.
As a final point, Fintan Bradley outlined a number of general priorities that were some of the most pressing concerns for the Directorate. These were as follows:
· Establishment of a Pupil Referral Unit
· Review of SEN provision
· Review of formula funding for schools
· Review of Home to School Transport Policy
· Development and implementation of a new schools business support agreement.
After listening to the presentation, Members expressed a number of queries about aspects of service delivery.
Firstly, it was asked whether the Directorate had the figures on CAF referrals. It was confirmed that these were available and that they could be found in the LCSB performance reports.
Secondly, it was asked how the service had managed to achieve an impressive reduction in social worker case loads. It was explained that this had been done mainly through increased recruitment and an improved, more efficient structure but also because work done as part of the early intervention agenda had meant less children were coming into care.
Lastly, it was suggested that in terms of helping new Members of the Committee to understand the drivers behind the changes in safeguarding practice, it would be useful to review the issues the previous Committee raised as a result of the Laming Report to see the progress made against these.
RESOLVED –
a) That the presentation be received
b) That the previous Committee’s suggestions following the Laming Report be brought back to a future meeting for review.