Agenda item

The Executive Director of Children’s Services will provide the Scrutiny Panel with an update in relation to the Commissioner’s 12-month review report into Children’s Services.

The Executive Director of Children’s Services provided the Panel with an update in relation to the Commissioner’s 12 month review report into Children’s Services.

 

A copy of the full report had been circulated with the agenda prior to the meeting for information and the Executive Director provided the Panel with a presentation in relation to the key headlines from the report.

 

It was highlighted that the Commissioner’s report was submitted to the Minister in August 2021.  A decision had been expected from the Minister by 15 September, however, this had been delayed due to a Government restructure and a new Minister, Will Quince MP, had been appointed on 16 September.

 

The Executive Director provided background information for newer Members of the Panel, including a timeline of events from the Ofsted inspection in November/December 2019, to the present time.

 

It was explained that the 12-month review took place during the week 12 – 16 July 2021.  The Commissioner viewed a range of strategic documentation; held interviews with key leaders and political leaders; hosted a range of focus groups looking at vital areas including quality assurance, performance, workforce development, practice and partnership working; held discussions with the DfE Adviser, Independent Chair of the Improvement Board, Chair of Safeguarding Arrangements and LGA staff supporting the authority.  The Commissioner shared his findings with key personnel and structured his report against the key enablers for improvement.

 

The Commissioner’s analysis of key areas yielded the following findings:-

 

Leadership and Management

 

·        Credible leadership team

·        Impressive and sophisticated understanding of demand and future progressions

·        ‘Middlesbrough Children Matter’ branding appeared to be providing an ambitious catalyst for change

·        Leaders were more involved on a regional level

·        Significant political leadership changes could destabilise progress.

 

A Member of the Panel expressed concern that instability in political leadership may destabilise future progress of the improvement journey and hoped that the situation could be resolved quickly.  The Executive Director advised that discussions had been held with the Mayor and Chief Executive and that political leaders needed to be fully supported in order to achieve stability and minimise risk.

 

Strategic Partnership Approach

 

·        Effective Improvement Board – with recent engagement of new members (including voluntary organisations and Thirteen Housing).

·        Appointment of the Chair of Safeguarding Partnership bringing energy and enthusiasm.

·        Leadership culture and possibly Covid have brought partners closer together and enhanced engagement with external bodies.

·        The MACH continued to sustain improvements and make additional improvement.

·        There were opportunities to move away from historical narrative and to resolve issues around Police contacts through ongoing debate.

 

Workforce

 

·        Trusted relationships between staff and senior and middle management levels and positive feedback from frontline staff on visible, credible leadership.

·        Impressive Strategic Workforce Development Strategy with exceptional modelling work (eg planning levels of staff required as practice improved).

·        Good Learning and Development Programme with flexibility.

·        Plans to enhance recruitment and retention coming to fruition.

·        Some progress with staffing but still too many agency staff.

·        The Annual Health check provided mixed reading – feedback scores from staff were lower around workloads, access to regular and reflective supervision and understanding of the practice model.

·        Some reduction in caseloads but some teams remained above desired levels and were behind the pace.

 

Practice Improvement and Innovation

 

·        Development of Strategies including Early Help Strategy, Learning and Education Strategy, Corporate Parenting Strategy – incorporating the Permanence Strategy which the Commissioner commented had made considerable progress in tracking and oversight of children in the care system leading to impressive performance in timely moves for children to their forever homes.

·        Highly impressive Audit to Excellence programme.

·        Investment in Youth Services (one of the few local authorities to do this).

·        Models for enhancing and integrating provision at a local level.

·        The Practice Model was clear, well communicated and better understood.

·        Partnership in Practice model with North Yorkshire.

·        Are there too many referral processes?  Looking at a single referral model to avoid duplication and delay.

·        Are there too many initiatives?  Potentially distracting and should be avoided – progress would be made by doing more of the same.

 

The Commissioner found that there were examples of impressive performance during the last year, including:-

 

·        Timeliness of assessments had improved from 76% to 95%.

·        Numbers of Children Looked After had reduced from 702 (August 2020) to 539.

·        There was an increase of 42% in Early Help cases, with evidence to show that 78% had been closed with positive outcomes.

 

The Commissioner also found that 22% of practice remained inadequate, although practice was improving; Family Group Conference numbers were too low and the FGC model was not fully embedded; re-referral rates were too high.

 

A summary of the Commissioner’s recommendations was provided as follows:-

 

·        Need to move into an ambitious medium term financial plan (MTFP) to fund activity pro-actively rather than reactively.

·        Further reduction in caseloads needed whilst maintaining and embedding high quality activity and avoiding distraction by new initiatives.

·        Planned new members of the Improvement Board and increased joint activity between the Improvement Board and Safeguarding Partnerships must be implemented.

·        Political leadership arrangements needed to be enhanced, with additional capacity and training for key roles.  The Mayor was asked to provide an update to the DfE by the end of October 2021.

·        Less reliance on agency staffing.  The MTFP must create a detailed timeline for progressing this.

·        Work to increase reflective supervision and focus on quality of practice was needed.

·        More local high quality placements and greater placement choice to support children to returning to Middlesbrough was needed.  Planned enhancements to residential placements must be matched by skilled, stable staffing to care for those with complex needs.

·        Reduce complexity of accessing commissioned or directly delivered services for frontline staff.  Allow speedy access to meet children’s needs.

·        Performance challenges highlighted in the report must be prioritised.

·        Ambition to locate improvements in Children’s Services in the context of wider improvements for all children needs to translate into effective delivery routes.  (For example, could the Middlesbrough Children Matter branding be rolled out to all children in Middlesbrough and to partners?)

 

The next steps would be to receive the Minister’s decision and reflect on any additional recommendations.  The full report would be circulated with a communication thanking staff for their hard work.  The Improvement Plan would be reviewed and revised to incorporate the additional recommendations from the Commissioner and from Ofsted which would then be presented to the Improvement Board for endorsement.  It was anticipated that the next Ofsted monitoring visit was likely to be in the New Year.

 

The Chair thanked the Executive Director for her presentation.  The Panel acknowledged that whilst there was further work to be done, the Commissioner’s report was positive and that staff should be thanked for their hard work towards improving services for children in Middlesbrough.

 

AGREED that the information provided be noted.