Agenda item

To provide members with an update of the support being provided during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Officers Jane Rodgers and Rebecca Stanton delivered the presentation and answered the members’ questions, with additional responses from Will Mclean.

Challenge:

During lockdown, one would have expected an impact from schools not making referrals to your team? Where did the referrals come from at this time?

The referral rate did not drop significantly during lockdown. Many referrals were from the Police, usually concerning domestic abuse. There were also self-referrals from parents struggling with the issues that were affecting their family during this period. Early help provision didn’t stop, nor did school-based counselling; so, although we weren’t getting referrals directly into Children’s Services, we had that open communication with all the early help and support services. Therefore, when problems did emerge, we were able to have the referrals. Issues within families come to light even though the schools might be closed – school is a big referrer, but so are Health and Police. When schools did come back we saw a steady increase, but Police remained the largest referrer.

Is there evidence of an increase in domestic violence during lockdown?

Unfortunately, we don’t get to all domestic abuse. The more we can create conditions whereby children and young people can share what’s happening at home through services provided by the family support team, the more we can try to tackle those issues early. As mentioned already, the level of police referrals has gone up – the majority of these concern domestic abuse.

Regarding supervised parental meetings, if two families meet will there be a risk of virus transmission? But if we return to virtual meetings, will that affect the children’s resilience?

We have been clear about not switching digital off completely – we have continued to offer both approaches. Part of the rationale for that was that if we go back into a full lockdown, children won’t be wrong-footed; we will simply increase the digital element. Doubtless, however, it will have an impact on children who want to see their parents that they don’t live with. Our contact centres and family time centres have been risk-assessed in detail, and the management that goes on with how families play with toys, the cleaning regime, etc., is all in place. Therefore, where we can still have face-to-face contact, the necessary steps have been put in correctly.

How many of your staff were vulnerable and needed to isolate, and what was the pressure of absence rates? As an authority, can we support that?

The social and emotional pressures on staff have been considerable. We continue to do whatever we can to support their resilience. Going into this phase is very daunting. Our absence rates over this period have not been to the extent where there is a real impact on the service; in fact, they have been remarkably good. Some individuals needed to shield, or were in households with someone shielding – we have worked carefully with them, and risk-assessed them to see what they can do. Many of those people were able to continue to work from home. We monitored the data in this area very closely in case we reached critical levels of staff shortages.

What are your overall reflections on the implications of a potential second national lockdown?

It is very difficult to say. We are more prepared for lockdown now than the first time. We have done a lot of work to make ourselves operational, and understand some of the challenges better, and the ways in which we can alleviate them. We would certainly be worried about the impact on families, and are especially so about the long-term emotional welfare of the children and young people.

Do you hope to keep the partnership with food banks working?

Yes, this is very high on our agenda. We are speaking with colleagues who were running the food banks and doing that community work about how we can continue that work. We are also looking at how to bring in third sector, to make more of a wider community approach. We are also doing a survey through our early help panel, to ensure our intentions were received in the same way by the families, and to iron out any kinks. We had to be careful in this work with consent, and being transparent to families about sharing information between the teams.

Do we have an idea of the causes for the referral rates having gone up? Particular pressures?

There has been an escalation of existing problems and family dynamics due to the pressures of Covid. Finance has been one of the issues. Another big feature for children and young people has been anxiety around the pandemic, and the lack of an ending to it, which has brought up feelings of grief and loss: children have lost their year in school, activities with friends and, of course, there have been deaths in the family. We’ve worked hard on how to accept and manage grief and loss in a family setting. We aim to do the annual Remembering event on grief and loss virtually this year. We are also monitoring closely online exploitation, both criminal and sexual, substance and alcohol misuse, and parental mental health.

What support are children with Additional Learning Needs receiving, now that there is no specialist school for them (with Mounton House having closed)?

Yes, these were some of our more vulnerable children during this period. Not all of them could attend their schools, certainly during lockdown. Our role is to provide respite and support to children with disabilities, which we did through our Action For Children disability support service: we spent a number of hours each day with some of our most vulnerable children during this period, to provide respite for the family, and try to keep them in some sort of routine. We had our day respite service, where a child could go during the day, and parents continued to utilise direct payments during the period. So, although we can’t ever replace what a child would get from a school, we can provide additional support where it is needed.

There were huge amounts of positive work between CYP and Social Services colleagues throughout lockdown, to ensure we were aware of all of the children who might need support, and ensure that vulnerable children could access support and learning. It is important to remember that Mounton House was open throughout that period, so it was providing support and education to the children during lockdown. There are a number of children whom we support, often in conjunction with Social Services, who have to go to schools out of county: in some cases, they were able to continue attending school, but if not, we worked closely with the schools to ensure they continued their engagement with the children. Our expectation of out of county schools is no different from our expectations of those in county.

Chair’s Summary:

The members expressed their gratitude for the work performed by the officers and their colleagues. We have been reassured that Child Services responded quickly, in a very difficult situation. The schools responded very well too. We have had a comprehensive report as to how Child Services has operated during this time, both virtually and – increasingly – in person. We are grateful for the questions that have been answered about violence in the home, which is a major concern of this committee. It is very good to hear that the service has continued to pick up children and families that are at risk, and put in the necessary support. We are glad to hear of the strategies for supporting staff, too. We were reassured about referrals continuing, and staff absences being small. We also heard about the continuing work with external organisations