Agenda item

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 to reduce the reliance on agency staff if the recommendations in this report are agreed.  The Business Case for the recruitment of additional contact workers reflects the sustained increase in the numbers of children looked after by the Local Authority.  Consequently this rise in numbers, together with increased demand from the courts, has resulted in the contact team being unable to keep meeting the increasing demand leading to reliance on the use of Independent providers.

Recommendations:

Select Members are requested to scrutinise and consider the key recommendations in this report as follows:

1. Early Help Duty and Assessment Team

·             To convert one Social Worker post into a Senior Practitioner post.

·             To make the temporary Support Worker post into a permanent role within the team.

·             To convert one temporary agency worker assignment into a permanent Social Work post (or 60 hours of Support Worker hours).

2. Family Support and Protection Team

·         To convert three temporary agency worker assignments into three permanent Social Worker posts.

·         To convert of one temporary agency worker assignment into one permanent Senior Practitioner post.

3. Placement and Support / Contact Team

·         To increase the contact team by one Contact Support Worker on a six month temporary contract. The purpose of this is to reduce the current costs of spot-purchasing contact worker sessions from independent provider (whilst the second phase of family support review work is undertaken).

·         To implement the full recommendations contained within the review of the Placement and Support Team including i) the formal consultation regarding the deletion of 2 assessing social worker posts from the establishment within the Placement & Support Team and ii) the transfer of resources released from 1 of these posts into the creation of a Social Worker post within the Family Support & Protection Team.

4.  Business Support.

·         To amalgamate unutilised Business Support hours within the establishment into a permanent business support post.

·         To review and revise the Business Support Manager job description, to provide a key role of supporting the Children’s Services with all aspects of workforce planning including staff recruitment and retention.

Members Scrutiny:

It was commented by a Member that there appeared to be a lot of changes from temporary to full time work and questioned if this would make a difference to the numbers employed in the roles described.  Secondly, it was queried how much the changes will cost.  It was responded that there will be four additional posts in Children’s Services section costing approximately £200,000.  It was detailed that in the Medium Term Financial Plan, the proposal is to meet the costs from savings in next years’ budget plan (e.g. increased use of Mon CC carers not independent carers, replacement of two expensive out of county with in county placements by 2018/19 and pursuing with the Health Board that the Council is correctly resourced for high cost cases).

The Select Committee were reminded to take the reports into account when scrutinising the budget. 

The Committee generally felt the proposals made sense noting that the development of a strong, in-house workforce of permanent staff provides continuity and better use of resources in view of the identified upward trend in demand.

In response to a question, it was confirmed that there is a saving of £12-13,000 pa in employing a permanent member of staff as opposed to engaging a supply Social Worker.