Agenda and minutes

There were no Declarations of Interest made by Members at this point in the meeting.

The minutes of the previous meeting of the Children and Young People’s Social Care and Services Scrutiny Panel held on 25 October 2021 were submitted and approved as a correct record.

The Executive Director of Children’s Services will be in attendance, together with Team Managers, to provide further information in relation to the Children’s Services element of the Locality Working pilot.

A report had been circulated on behalf of the Executive Director of Children’s Services, who was in attendance at the meeting to provide further information in relation to the Panel’s current scrutiny topic ‘Locality Working from a Children’s Services Perspective’.  It was intended that the format of the meeting would be more discussion-based and, subsequently, a number of Officers were in attendance, as follows: R Farnham, Director of Children’s Care; G Earl, Head of Prevention; H Clark, Team Manager (Early Help); A Hill, Team Manager (Social Care) and A Parkinson, Newport Neighbourhood Manager.

The submitted report provided further details specifically in relation to the Children’s Services element of the locality working projects.

The Panel was advised that Stronger Families, or ‘Early Help’, had three Senior Practitioners working in the two localities – two in Newport and one in North Ormesby.  This had been the case for the past year.

It was explained that any referrals requiring early help support in Newport and North Ormesby were received via the Mulit-Agency Children’ Hub (MACH), the ‘front door’ of Children’s Services (in the same way referrals were received across the whole of Middlesbrough) and allocated immediately to those Practitioners working within those localities.  Sometimes cases were ‘stepped down’ to early help services from Social Work teams where social care intervention was no longer required but some form of additional support was still needed.  It was highlighted that when early help staff in the localities had high caseloads, the cases were allocated to other staff across the service.  Team Managers and Assistant Managers worked hard to try to avoid this happening.

Demand for early help services across Middlesbrough was high.  All families were referred in through the MACH and allocations were made every day so that families received a swift response – within three days.

In terms of the Social Care (Social Work) teams, initially one Social Worker was allocated to each of the localities, however, it was soon discovered that this was not sufficient.  Resources had now been increased to three Social Workers linked to North Ormesby and two Social Workers linked to Newport.

Referrals to Social Care (statutory interventions) were also made via the MACH by professionals working with children or by families.  Where the family was new to Social Care and did not already have a Social Worker, they would be assessed by the Assessment Service and where it was identified that more work was needed the family would transfer to the Safeguarding and Care Planning Service.  If the family was located in Newport or North Ormesby they would be allocated to a Social Worker assigned to that locality.  However, in order to avoid children having changes in Social Worker, there would be instances were children from Newport or North Ormesby would have Social Workers who were not attached to the localities.  This would change as children’s cases progressed so that there would be an eventual move towards consistency of social workers within the locality model.

The Panel was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21/25

The Executive Director of Children’s Services will provide an update in relation to Covid recovery in Children’s Services, where appropriate.

The Executive Director of Children’s Services advised that there was little to report other than Council staff were due to reoccupy offices from 1 December 2021 on a 60:40 home working/ office basis.

NOTED

The Chair will provide a verbal update in relation to business conducted at the Overview and Scrutiny Board meeting held on 9 November 2021.

A verbal update was provided in relation to the business conducted at the Overview and Scrutiny Board meeting held on 9 November 2021, namely:-

·        Executive forward work programme

·        Update from the Executive Member for Environment, Finance & Governance

·        Chief Executive’s Update

·        Scrutiny Panels’ Chair’s Updates.

·        Final Report – Economic Development, Environment & Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel – Middlesbrough Regeneration Post Covid-19.

AGREED that the information provided be noted.

The next meeting of the Children and Young People’s Social Care and Services Scrutiny Panel was scheduled for Monday, 13 December 2021 at 4.00pm.

Any other urgent items which in the opinion of the Chair, may be considered.

The Vice Chair raised the matter of a news report that had been published regarding research undertaken by the County Council Network which estimated that by 2025 there could be a 30% rise of the number of children in care.  It was queried whether this was the predicted trend for Middlesbrough and how prepared we were for such an increase.

The Executive Director responded that in August 2019 Middlesbrough had 702 children looked after which was the second highest per 10,000 children in the country.  One of the reasons for this was that children were not being moved to their forever homes quickly enough.  A lot of work had been done since then but in many ways Middlesbrough was starting to buck the trend.  The numbers of children looked after remained high compared with other parts of the country, but had reduced significantly.  In terms of being prepared, Middlesbrough needed to continue to improve practice in order to continue to improve permanency and ensure the right resources were available in early help services.

The Director of Children’s Care added that the national return made annually to the DfE had just been published which was why the report was pertinent.  Middlesbrough’s position had changed significantly in terms of the number of children looked after due to improvement.  Nationally, children looked after numbers were increasing and the number of children becoming adopted was reducing, however, whilst it was recognised that numbers remained high in Middlesbrough, the number of children looked after had reduced by 23% over the last 12 months and the number of children becoming adopted had increased. 

The Panel felt reassured and congratulated Children’s Services on the hard work and improvements being made.

NOTED