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Agenda and minutes

Venue: Council Chamber, County Hall, The Rhadyr, Usk, NP15 1GA

Contact: Democratic Services 

Items
No. Item

1.

Declarations of Interest

Minutes:

No declarations of interest were made.

2.

Delivering Excellence in Children's Services'. The Next phase…….

Minutes:

The Head of Children’s Services provided a presentation to introduce the overarching theme of ‘Delivering Excellence in Children’s Services…The Next Phase…’ in the following three reports.

3.

Workforce - Meeting Increasing Service Demands pdf icon PDF 530 KB

Minutes:

Purpose:

The purpose of the report is to provide members of the Children’s and Young People’s Select Committee with asummary of the workforce proposals for the next phase of the ‘Delivering Excellence inChildren’s Services’ Programme, and to allow pre-decision scrutiny of the evidence base and business cases to support the proposals as set out in this report.

 

Key issues:

1.    In January 2016 Council approved a reconfiguration in the way in which we deliver as services within Children’s Services as part of the overarching transformation programme ‘Delivering Excellence in Children’s Services’.  The report sets out the next phase of the transformation programme of the workforce elements of four teams:

 

·         Early Help, Duty & Assessment Team

·         Family Support & Protection Team

·         Placement & Support Team

·         Business Support Team.

 

2.    There continues to be an upward trend in the numbers of Looked After Children and Young People, children on the Child Protection Register and increases in the number and complexity of child care cases within the service which in turn require more resources to both ensure the child’s safety and well-being and to meet statutory requirements.  The increases in Monmouthshire are in line with regional and national trends.

3.    The demand pressures have resulted in the need to recruit agency social workers to help meet statutory requirements and to reduce and manage the risk of harm to vulnerable children and young people creating additional budgetary pressure and not achieve a stable and permanent workforce.

4.    Over the last six months the service has implemented live dashboards to track and record case load activity and complexity providing an overview of the pressures and capacity across the whole service to ensure that the allocation of workforce resources is optimised.  Work with each family is monitored, reviewed and remains outcome focused.

5.    Current analysis of service demand versus resources has highlighted two teams under particular pressure (the Early Help, Duty & Assessment and the Family Support & Protection Team); one team has some potential to release resource (Placement & Support Team), and 3 teams are resourced correctly including Business Support.

6.    This information has informed understanding of ‘safe’ case load standards.  It is recognised that manageable caseloads are essential to achieving a more stable workforce and to ensure that children receive the best intervention where and when it is needed.

7.    Analysis, in the Early Help, Duty and Assessment team indicates the average caseload required to ensure safe practice would be between twenty and twenty five cases per worker.  In the Family Support & Protection team the average case load is lower reflecting that this team works with more complex cases (particularly those within court proceedings).

8.    The report focuses on recruiting permanent workers coupled with strengthened practice management structure to deliver strong and sustainable services.  A stable and consistent workforce allows for continuity of service to families, shared service knowledge and history, and ultimately better outcomes for children.

9.            The Service has reduced the average number of agency social workers working within the service.  There will be further challenge  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

4.

Delivery Models for Family Support - Realignment of Team Around the Family (TAF) pdf icon PDF 409 KB

Minutes:

Purpose:

The purpose of the report is to provide a case for the realignment of the Team Around the Family service within the wider structure of family support services to better meet the needs of the local population and to contribute to Monmouthshire’s delivery of the Social Services and Well-being Wales Act (2014) (SSW-bWA).

 

Key issues:

1.  Currently the TAF team consists of a TAF Co-ordinator and three TAF Project Workers. The function of the team is predominantly one of care co-ordination, assessing families referred for a service, liaising with service providers and coordinating TAF meetings with service providers and families where a package of support is co-ordinated. The TAF team remain involved for between 6 and 12 months with each family, chairing meetings at which progress is reviewed. They currently work with approximately 60 families a year.

2. The TAF Team is funded through Families First. Monmouthshire has a small population.  Although it has pockets of deep deprivation, it is generally considered to be an affluent community, this means that grant funding such as Families First, is relatively small, and it is essential that resources are focussed so as to achieve the greatest return on investment.

3.The report proposes the focus of the team on TAF is retained, as per Welsh Government policy, but that the activity is re-aligned so that the work of the team focusses more on working directly with vulnerable families on the cusp of statutory intervention to prevent them requiring statutory support. The team will be tasked and supported to delivery brief interventions that are outcomes focussed around what matters to children and families in line with the Social Services and Well-Being Act (SSW-bWA). Working in this way should increase productivity from 60 families a year to 150 families a year.

4. The importance of preventive work and early intervention is well-recognised. It is a fundamental principal of the SSW-bWA. It recognises that providing support at an early stage may well reduce the need for more intensive, and potentially invasive, intervention at a later stage.

5. The value of intervention throughout childhood and adolescence.  The arguments for prevention are particularly associated with children and young people, especially under-fives. The social and emotional foundations established in the first three years of a child’s life, to a large extent attributable to the standard of parenting, are arguably the biggest determinants of positive outcomes throughout the life course. The benefits of promoting the Welsh Government’s aim of giving children a flying start in life are important for all generations. Older people who have experienced positive foundations (e.g. good education and health, strong social networks), are more likely to have a healthier transition into independent old age. However, recent research into adolescent neuroscience indicate that adolescence offers a unique window of opportunity to significantly ameliorate the impact of early trauma and poor parenting.

6. Adverse Childhood Experiences

There is a growing body of evidence that shows how profoundly health throughout

the life course is negatively affected by adverse childhood  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

Recommendation arising from our review of Placement and Support Team

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Purpose:

The purpose of the report is to provide details of a proposed re-alignment of Monmouthshire Children’s Services delivery model specifically in regards tothe Placement and Support Team (PAST) and to highlight progress against the targets identified within the initial business case previously endorsed by Cabinet including an outline of next steps.

 

Recommendation:

1. That Select Committee provides pre-decision scrutiny regarding:

·         The proposed reconfiguration of 2 assessing social worker posts from the establishment within the PAST.

·         The transfer of resources released from 1 of the posts into the creation of a social worker post within the Support and Protection Team.

·         The transfer of resources released from the 2nd post into a spot-purchasing budget to procure independent assessments as and when required.

·         To progress with reviewing 3 other posts also created within the initial business case i) Psychologist ii) Special Guardianship Worker and iii) Placements and Contracts Officer Post.

·         To transfer the Contact Team from the line management of the PAST to the Service Manager Early Help and Assessment as part of the realignment of Family Support and Edge of Care services.

2. Select members are requested to consider these proposals in the context of:

·         The National Fostering Framework which sets out the direction for more regional approaches to fostering services across Wales (see background papers).

·         The increasing demands and pressures across Monmouthshire Children’s Services as set out within the Workforce report.

·         There continues to be an upward trend in the numbers of children Looked After Children, children on the Child Protection Register and Children subject to court proceedings, with corresponding budgetary pressure.

·         The two parallel papers presented regarding Family Support and Workforce.

 

Key Issues:

1. In 2014 council approved a business case to include as follows:

·         To employ 2 full-time Social Workers with the intention of recruiting more Monmouthshire Foster Carers

·         To employ a part time psychologist to assist with the recruitment and retention of foster carers and promote placement stability

·         To create a Placements and Contracts Officer post to assist with finding and maintaining placements for children in foster care

·         To create a Special Guardianship Order worker to support / increase Special Guardianship Orders within the authority.

 

2. The PAST Project Board was established in early 2017 to work within the overall Delivering Excellence Programme for Children’s Services and specifically to:

·         Review progress against targets in the business case

·         Review the additional posts that had been created within the business case

·         Develop an improvement plan

·         To consider different service delivery options.

 

3. The Project Board carried out a range of activities in accordance with its aims including:

·         Benchmarking against other Local Authorities and regional partners

·         Development of team dashboards and performance indicators for the PAST

·         Gaining feedback from foster carers

·         Caseload analyses and productivity over the last 5 years

·         Gaining feedback from colleagues in the wider Children’s Services arena

 

4. Outcomes from the review

·         The original business case assumed that increasing staff would, amongst other targets, increase foster carer recruitment and retention and allow more placements to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.

Safeguarding Evaluative Report pdf icon PDF 143 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Purpose:

This report evaluates the progress of Monmouthshire’s key Safeguarding Priorities using identified measures to highlight progress, identify risks and confirm the direction of travel for improvements and further development. It is based on Monmouthshire’s safeguarding aim that both adults and children will be supported, and protected, from harm and abuse. It will be set against the safeguarding priorities, which are set within the Corporate Safeguarding policy 2017, with measures reflecting the previous WASG Performance Review March 2017 and has clear links to the Authority’s Safeguarding Service Improvement Plan.

 

Key Issues:

The Evaluation of Safeguarding is relating to information between April 17 –October 17. This period of time saw the restructure and review of Monmouthshire’s Corporate Safeguarding Policy and therefore the expectation is that Performance Data collation in certain Safeguarding areas will be developed as identified for future evaluation. Much of the business of Safeguarding is an ongoing process and how we measure the effectiveness of Monmouthshire’s Safeguarding Practice will develop as Service Provision across the council develops.

 

1. Good Governance:

It is recognised that good progress has taken place in regard to previous recommendations made in regard to the Councils Senior and Directorate level. Changes at Regional Board level and within National Policy will required a continued planned response.

 

2. Safe Workforce

Whilst recognising that Safe Recruitment processes are well embedded, a new corporate roll out of the SAFE audit’s across the Authority has been completed. This has highlighted the significant Safeguarding Training programme to ensure the authority is compliant with the Revised Corporate Policy.

 

3. Preventative Approach

The new focus on the development of a Preventative agenda has led to increased partnership working with developing within Community Hubs and within the Community itself. Changes and ambiguity under the SSWA have changed the responsibility and accountability within early support services, and this developing work will need to link carefully within the authorities statutory responsibility.

 

4. Robust Protection

The Safeguarding Processes have been embedded within Child and Vulnerable Adult protection for a long time. Within Children’s Services the ongoing agenda of change has created a good time in which to review current CP processes and procedures, and to ensure staff understand the requirements and expectations of their role and task. Further to this, where pressures both internally and externally are identified safe practice must be supported by a clear infrastructure of Risk Management Frameworks, clear procedures, models and tools. The creation and

development of joint Adult and Children’s Safeguarding teams/Unit allows opportunities to consider how best to identify opportunities for “joined up” work and models of working together prior to the revised All Wales guidance for both Vulnerable Children and Adults.

 

5. Safe Services

Whilst there has been an established approach to contract monitoring in commissioned services for some time, this is no doubt where future understanding of how we scrutinise and Quality Assure commissioned service’s will develop most. There are internal and regional developments beginning to build on a framework of monitoring and compliance. The new Volunteer’s Policy currently  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.

To confirm the date and time of the next meeting as 7th December 2017