To review the increased budget for children's services for investing in children's services transformation.

The Corporate Director for Children and Young People introduced the report, the purpose of which was for the Committee to review the increased budget for children's services for investing in children's services transformation.

During the following discussion/debate the following principal points were noted:

•        The pension scheme that care givers can receive as part of their contract is/will be the Local Government pension scheme which can be opted in and out. This is regulated and generous and should attract people.

•        The terms and conditions of the employment contract are being reviewed to ensure it attracts people to the positions and made more attractive.

•        Herefordshire needs to attract people inwards and this could be improved by a good pension scheme.

•        A copy of the employment contract was requested to be provided to committee members.

•        Although working to an exemption at the moment given the urgent need to recruit, we will be returning to a regional memorandum of understanding between all the regional authorities and will not be aiming to poach the expertise or staff/LOCUMs of other local councils.

•        The council needs to ensure that the £11m, is spent correctly and in the best way the council can. When looking at the figures Legal receive a lot of the funding. Queried whether legal secretaries would be better hires than solicitors as it would be more cost effective.

•        Human Resources were commented to be an expensive outsourcing resource that could be brought internal.

•        Suggestions were raised about including a ‘refer a friend bonus’ to try and encourage people into the council to fill positions. We could be using similar incentives to come and work in Herefordshire.

•        The committee wants to see commitment from experienced social workers to help in training other social workers especially the level 1(new starters) and 2. It was raised that this does happen already and a number of social workers take on an education role.

•        Interim workers are aware of the deadline of their contracts. Some are approached to stay on and these conversations start early on in the process before the end of the contract. There are a number of ongoing initiatives in place to try and retain some of the interim workers.

•        There needs to be a look at how to better utilise support workers to try and reduce the workload of social workers where possible. This could also lead to further training opportunities to train support workers into becoming social workers.

•        Sexual abuse in children is not touched upon in the plan, nor how these children are identified and supported. Some of the money should/could have been inputted to informing children on the importance of coming forward when they have been abused and in understanding the need for the protection of their personal space.

•        Pastoral support and more proactive support is needed for children who are at risk or are experiencing abuse.

•        Children services come into their own when abuse is known and they are able to support and help. Potential usage of collaboration with charity services.

•        Important to note that recruitment is underway, but noted it is a difficult problem faced by all authorities. Idea of supporting career progression with salary increases which could aid the problem of recruitment was muted.

•        Social workers have a protected status and must undertake a degree course to qualify. A number of social workers undertake additional courses that are linked to universities to develop and train further. The council needs a workforce that is diverse and has a range of skills.

•        There appears to be a significant drop in the budget figures for HR and Legal support, but this is due to the fact this resource was reported in their individual budgets and not in the budgets of the Children’s Services.

•        There is no budget in this transformation money that would be available to develop and recruit youth workers locally. There is nevertheless a very important need to think more about adequate service provisions for the youth in the county, since this is certainly not currently in place.

•        Improvement progress metrics are reported to the improvement board and the corporate cabinet board quarterly. The committee should include reviews of these quarterly reports in its future work programme.

•        There currently isn’t a contingency plan for not recruiting sufficient staff, but this is not seen as vital as the council has not had issue with recruitment at the moment. Most of the staff recruited for the transformation plan are already in post. There is a risk and challenge to other recruitment, but not so much on newly qualified staff.

•             The committee should be reviewing aspects of children’s service delivery that actually impact on the lives of young people as much as simply looking at the KPI’s

On being asked to sum up their thoughts on the discussion, the cabinet member noted that they were pleased that over the past few weeks the committee had had opportunities to see this plan and understand the investment being made, which should be seen as a very significant investment in people and admin support.

Conclusions:

Resolved: that the committee requested the following information:

• A written response to a question posed by the committee be provided by the Corporate Director for Children’s Services - What is the timescale for effectively providing SENCO support when identified?
• A copy of the employment contract of social workers be circulated to members of the committee for review.
• Further detail should be provided to explain the figures set out in Appendix A. Table 1 in relation to the increased budget figure of £11.4m (relative to the table in the original budget)

Resolved: that the committee asked for the following actions and recommendations to take place:

• To bring a draft proposal, based on the advice of officers, back to the next committee meeting, with regards to reviewing retention and recruitment in the form of a Task and Finish Group. This should include opportunities to meet frontline staff.
• Key weakness areas in the service delivery should be particularly identified for subsequent committee review, with the view of moving beyond just the recruitment and key performance indicators. The Director of Children’s Service was asked to look at additional metrics that could be used by the committee to effectively evaluate service delivery improvement, which it was agreed would be reported to and scrutinised by the committee quarterly.

The meeting adjourned for a short break at 16:06.

The meeting recommenced at 16:16