Agenda item

CSC Improvement Plan Update and Scorecard

Report of the Head Children’s Social Care

Minutes:

Further to Minute No. 5 of 12 July 2016 the Committee considered the report of the Director of Social Care and Health on the Children’s Services Improvement Plan Update and Scorecard.

 

The report indicated that In April 2016, an Inspection took place of services of need of help and protection, children looked after and care leavers; that the inspection concluded that Children’s services in Sefton required improvement to be good across all areas and made 11 recommendations; that Sefton was required to develop an Improvement Plan that addressed all 11 recommendations and this was submitted to Ofsted and the DfE in October 2016; and that the Improvement Plans, which had been shared previously with the Committee, identified the following three key objectives:

 

(1)

Ensure frontline practice is consistently good, effective and focussed on timely, measureable outcomes for children;

 

(2)

To improve management oversight at all levels to ensure effective services for children and young people receive good quality supervision; and

 

(3)

Ensure that frontline services are sufficiently resourced and the workforce appropriately skilled to enable high quality work to be undertaken with children and young people.

 

The report provided a summary of the progress in relation to the action plan for 2016 /17 and should be considered alongside the Improvement scorecard data.

 

The report concluded that there was evidence of improvement across a number of areas; that the actions identified in the Ofsted Improvement plan had been completed but there now needed to be a period of ‘bedding – in’ change and sustained improvement and this would be supported as part of the new staff structure and as caseloads became more manageable; that the Improvement plan was being reviewed and refreshed with a greater emphasis on impact and outcomes and this would be shared at a future meeting of the Committee; and that Quality of Practice and Supervision Audits would continue to ensure that the Service focused on quality as well as data and that the focus would remain on supporting staff and the partnership to understand the child’s lived experience.

 

Members of the Committee raised the following issues:-

 

·       The overall increase in the rate of referrals (137 more than in 2015/16) and the re-referral rates increased to 21.6%

·       Problems associated with children seeing different social workers

·       The improvement required regarding the capturing of information arising from assessments, visits and through direct work

·       The average caseloads of social workers and the potential to reduce such caseloads

·       The proportion of Children Looked After who had been looked after for over 12 months who have had an assessment completed within the latest 12 month period

 

RESOLVED: That

 

(1)

the Director of Social Care and Health be requested to submit Bi – annual progress reports and score card updates to the Committee:

 

(2)

the Director of Social Care and Health be requested to submit the refreshed version of the Children’s Social Care Improvement Plan to the meeting of the Committee to be held on 26 September 2017;

(3)

Kara Haskayne, Service Manager, Children’s Social Care and Trish Galloway, Service Manager, Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) be requested to attend the meeting of the Committee when it next considers a child sexual exploitation report to update Members on the work of the MASH; and

 

(4)

the Head of Children’s Social Care be requested to make a presentation to the next meeting of the Committee providing an overview of the Ofsted inspection framework.

 

 

 

Supporting documents: