Agenda item

A report of the Director of Legal and Governance Services was presented to provide the Committee with an update on Legal Services and the response

to the Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Social Care Services.

The issues in relation to capacity remained, with case numbers continuing to remain at a high level. However, the numbers had decreased, with care cases currently at around 100, compared to 140 in December.  At this stage

the reason for the decrease was not clear, as there had been a number of contributing factors, including changes to Gateway Panel, a more effective use of the PLO process, and Court increasing their hearings further to the covid issues, meaning more cases had concluded.

In terms of the resources to meet this demand, there had been some changes to the team since the last update.  The role of the Principal Legal Executive (People) had been changed to Head of Legal Services (People).  The interim postholder applied and was successful in securing the permanent position, bringing some stability to the team.

Two permanent Solicitors had been recruited, although another Solicitor was leaving the Authority.  In the interim, this post would be filled by one of the Trainee Solicitors who already had experience of the role and would qualify as a Solicitor later this year.

There was one Legal Assistant vacancy, which was currently being recruited to.

The role of Court Progression Manager (CPM), that would sit within the Legal Services Children’s team as the lead officer, to ensure the timely progression of cases in family court proceedings, had also been filled. 

Based on the current staffing of 4.6FTE fee earners, plus the trainee Solicitor, the team can effectively manage around 75 active care cases. As the current active care cases were above this, a number of cases were currently outsourced to a local Children’s Solicitors firm via the Council’s procurement process.   Provision had been made for the firm to deal with a maximum of 100 cases over the next 12 months at a cost of approximately £4,000 per case.   It was clarified that this figure did not include the costs of disbursements.

A Legal Services review was underway to determine how to resource the service to meet the demands, use resources to the best advantage. The timescale for the completion of the review was July 2021.

Legal Services continued to contribute to the improvement journey for Children’s Services in a number of ways, both strategically and operationally. 

Monthly audits had been introduced, with feedback continuing via the 1 to 1 sessions between individual team members and the Head of Legal Services, with the objective of achieving a standard and consistent practice across the board. 

The Head of Legal Services had been one of the leads in a project undertaken by a subsidiary of the Local Family Justice Boards, which was tasked at looking at Care Orders at home, as this region was an outlier in terms of the care order at home numbers. 

The Public Law Working Group was formed, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, to investigate the steep rise in public law cases coming to the Family Court and to offer recommendations for improving the system’s ability to address the needs of the children and families. The Groups’ report, published in March 2021, had clear implications on working practices, both across Children’s Care and within legal, with a number of themes highlighted.  In response to the report, and to the timescales set, a working group had been established between Legal and Children’s services to implement the recommendations.

AGREED that the information provided was received and noted.