Agenda item

The Executive Director of Children’s Services will be in attendance to provide the Panel with a broad overview of the services within Children’s Services which fall within the Panel’s remit and to highlight key priorities, issues and challenges for the year ahead.

The Executive Director of Children’s Services was in attendance at the meeting to provide the Panel with a broad overview of the services within Children’s Services that fell within the Panel’s remit and to also highlight the key priorities, issues and challenges for the Service for the year ahead.

 

The Panel was already familiar with the ‘Middlesbrough Children Matter’ branding for Children’s Services which was a key priority to show all children in Middlesbrough that they mattered. 

 

Within Children’s Services staffing structure there was a Director of Education and Partnerships, a Director of Children’s Care and a Head of Strategic Services – all working together as one Service.  Education and Partnerships worked across the whole service and Children’s Social Care promoted better outcomes for vulnerable children.  Children were safest in schools and the education of children looked after was supported through the virtual school.  The Head of Strategic Services supported the Directors in relation to improvement work, such as managing the Improvement Board and Improvement Plan, and having general oversight of audit.

 

It was acknowledged that there was a separate Children and Young People’s Learning Scrutiny Panel whose remit largely fell within the Education and Partnerships element of the Service, therefore, in terms of this Panel’s remit, details of the Heads of Service within Children’s Social Care were provided as follows:-

 

·        Head of Early Help and Prevention – Responsible for early help provision pre and post Social Work involvement to support vulnerable families.

·        Head of Referral and Assessment – Responsible for the Multi-Agency Children’s Hub (MACH) and the Assessment Teams.  (The MACH was the ‘front door’ of the Service where referrals were received.  When a referral met the threshold for social care intervention, it was allocated to the Assessment Teams for an initial single assessment).

·        Head of Safeguarding and Care Planning – Responsible for Safeguarding and Care Planning Teams and Frontline Teams (working to prevent care proceedings where appropriate and on Court safeguarding work).

·        Head of Looked After Children and Corporate Parenting – Responsible for Looked After Children Teams and Pathways (Care Leavers’) service.

·        Head of Futures for Families – Responsible for Futures for Families (No Wrong Door model) (hub provided respite and edge of care work); Residential Children’s Homes and the Fostering Service.

·        Head of Children with Disabilities – Responsible for Children with Disabilities Service and oversight of Practice Leads (including the Lead for the Independent Reviewing Officers) who were exploring how to further improve practice.

·        Principal Social Worker – Responsible for Centre for Practice Excellence (including Audit to Excellence, Training, Social Work Academy).

·        Head of Strategic Services – Responsible for Oversight of Performance and Quality; Inspection Preparation; Participation; Safeguarding Partnership (Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland).

 

The Panel heard that Children’s Services’ Strategic Priorities 2022-24 aimed to show ‘Middlesbrough Children that they Matter’ by working to make the town safe and welcoming and to improve outcomes for all children and young people, by:-

 

·        Expanding the current youth provision model in areas suffering high levels of deprivation.

·        Evidencing that Middlesbrough Council listened to children’s voices.

·        Consolidating and building on recent progress in Children’s Services to improve its Ofsted rating.

·        Exploring the potential for the establishment of an Eton college in Middlesbrough.

·        Delivering and extending the ’50 Futures’ programme.

 

Directorate priorities included a number of strategies to be delivered, as follows:-

 

·        Participation

·        Workforce

·        Early Help and Prevention

·        Placement Sufficiency

·        Pupil Placement Strategy

·        SEND Strategy

·        Community Learning Strategy

·        Learning and Education Strategy

 

In addition to the delivery of the above strategies, Children’s Services’ priorities for the year ahead included:-

 

·        Targeting young people who were NEET (not in education, employment or training).

·        Delivering the Inclusion and Specialist Strategic Plan.

·        Working with schools and partners to help school improvement and support educational outcomes in Middlesbrough.

·        Delivering a refreshed Youth Justice Plan aligned to the Youth Justice Board’s ‘Child First’ principle.

 

Further priorities across the Service as a whole included embedding the Council’s corporate values within the directorate and to make staff feel more valued; improving staff communication so that staff felt more engaged; and delivering all budgeted savings initiatives and maintaining spending within set limits.

 

In addition to Strategic and Directorate priorities, the Panel was informed that there were three important national initiatives:-

 

·        Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child (White Paper).

·        SEND Review: right support, right place, right time (Green Paper).

·        Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

 

The main issues and challenges for Children’s Services over the coming year were identified as follows:-

 

·        Improving Outcomes for vulnerable children and young people in Middlesbrough:-

·        Under intense scrutiny from Ofsted, DfE and internally;

·        Mechanisms for improvement, such as the Improvement Board, Ofsted Monitoring Visits, DfE reviews, all required rigorous preparation.

·          High demand for Children’s Services in Middlesbrough due to demographics.

·          Workforce Stability.  Recruitment and retention of experienced, permanent social workers was a national issue and could impact on staff morale.

·          Finances – the cost of agency staff and rising costs of external residential placements.  (Whilst the number of external residential placements had reduced, the cost of existing placements had increased with inflation).

·          Growing and developing ‘Partnership Working’.

·          Roll out of ‘Middlesbrough Children Matter’ across the town.

 

In response to the presentation, the following issues were raised:-

 

·        In response to an expression of interest from a Panel Member in relation to attending one of the Children’s Services weekly staff briefing sessions, the Executive Director extended an invitation for all Panel Members should they wish to attend.  The Chair requested that any Panel Members interested in attending should inform the Democratic Services Officer and arrangements would be made accordingly for one Panel Member to attend each briefing.

 

·        In response to a query regarding responsibility for private children’s residential homes, the Executive Director stated that the Council was not responsible for overseeing private residential homes, however, it did have responsibility for its own residential homes all of which were rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted.

 

·        A query was raised regarding the Safeguarding Partnership and it was confirmed that the Partnership operated on a south-tees basis across Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland bringing together key agencies such as the local authorities, Police, Health and voluntary organisations to look at particular issues in those areas in addition to sharing information on performance and progress across all agencies.  It was highlighted that a Safeguarding Newsletter had been established and arrangements would be made to circulate to the Panel, and all Members of the Council.

 

·        It was highlighted that in addition to the South Tees Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, Tees-wide procedures were in place so that all of the Tees Valley local authorities followed the same procedures in relation to a wide range of issues, for example young people at risk of suicide, teen pregnancy management, etc and Middlesbrough shared other services with Redcar and Cleveland including the Youth Offending Service.

 

·        A Member of the Panel asked what progress had been made in relation to the recruitment and retention programme for Social Workers.  The Director of Children’s Care responded that she was leading on the Workforce Strategy and that recruitment and retention of social workers was a challenge locally, regionally and nationally.  Some progress had been made in recruiting permanent staff and reducing the numbers of agency staff by trying to make caseloads more manageable, providing better support from managers and a having a good learning and development offer.  Middlesbrough’s Centre for Practice Excellence continued to develop and Members were advised that newly qualified social workers now stayed within the academy for six months with small caseloads so that once they were allocated to their teams they were much more prepared and confident.  The academy ensured that newly qualified social workers received good supervision and support in order to get the best start possible as a social worker.  This would be a key component in growing Middlesbrough’s own permanent workforce and there had already been some significant success.

 

·        In response to a query regarding partnership working, the Panel heard that Middlesbrough had secured three well-regarded voluntary organisations as part of its youth service contract – The Junction; Linx; and Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation – each providing a variety of services and support to young people and young carers.

 

·        The Chair advised that she had been invited to attend the Middlesbrough Children Matter conference and queried whether all Members would be welcome to attend.  It was confirmed that all Members would be welcome to attend the event to promote and celebrate Middlesbrough Children Matter.

 

The Chair thanked the Officers for their attendance and informative presentation.

AGREED that the overview of Children’s Services be noted.