Agenda item

Report of the Director of Social Care and Health

Further to Minute No. 6 (2) of 10 July 2018, the Committee considered the report of the Director of Social Care and Health on the Children's Social Care Continuous Improvement Plan.

The report indicated that Children’s Social Care was inspected by Ofsted under the Single Inspection Framework in April 2016 and was judged as “requires improvement”. An improvement plan was developed which addressed the 11 recommendations made by Ofsted. Bi – annual reports had been provided to the Committee in relation to progress against these recommendations, supported by a performance dash-board. The Annual Report was presented to the last meeting of the Committee on 10 July 2018.

This plan was the third refresh of the Improvement Plan and incorporated learning from the Local Government Care Practice Diagnostic which took place in April 2018, the recently published Serious Case Review, as well as learning from audits.

The Plan identified three key objectives, namely:-

1.         Ensure frontline practice is consistently good, effective and focussed on timely, measurable outcomes for children.

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

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 Children’s Services Improvement Action Plan 2018/19 was attached to the report.

Members of the Committee asked questions/raised matters on the following issues:-

·         A number of areas within the Children’s Services Improvement Action Plan appeared to indicate that improvements were required. Were senior managers happy with the direction of travel for services?

Case-loads were higher than preferred. A number of social workers were newly qualified and relatively lacking in experience, although no children were deemed to be at risk.

·         Were case-loads dangerously high?

Case-loads were not dangerously high although they were higher than preferred. Case-load complexity was taken into account when assigned to social workers, together with the experience of social workers. The number of looked after children had increased during the previous 12 months, so there was increased demand to the Children’s Social Care service. This mirrored the national and regional picture.

·         What was morale like amongst social workers?

Morale fluctuated, although a number of social workers spoken to during the recent Local Government Association Peer Review had indicated that they enjoyed working at Sefton.

·         Reference was made to the transition period following the recent re-structure. Was this working well?

Positive feedback had been received following the recent re-structure, although there were always challenges to new ways of working.

·         Some of the performance measures within the Children’s Services Improvement Action Plan had not been rated.

Some bench-marks were not national standards, rather they were standards set within the Sefton Service and practice was monitored.

·         Reference was made to the performance measure of:-

“Accommodation and support for care leavers is appropriate…”. What was deemed to be “appropriate”?

There was some accommodation which would not be deemed to be appropriate, e.g. bed and breakfast or custody.

·         When was Children’s Social Care likely to be re-inspected?

Ofsted Inspectors had notified on Thursday 27^th September that they would be undertaking a two-day focussed visit under the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services framework (ILAC), Although this was not a judgement inspection, they would look at areas for improvement and this would influence when the next full inspection would take place.

RESOLVED:

That bi-annual reports and performance scorecards continue to be received by the Committee for scrutiny and challenge.