To review the use of £11.49m from the Financial Resilience Reserve which was made available to support resourcing the transformation stage of children’s services.

Recommendation

That:

a)    That the contents of this report are noted by the Children and Young People scrutiny committee

Rachel Gillott (Service Director Safeguarding and Family Support) gave an overview of the report.

On 31 March 2022, Cabinet approved £11.49m Resilience Reserve funding to assist the improvement of Children’s Services. The recommendation was for funding to be allocated in two tranches, the first tranche of £5m and a further tranche of £6.49m have subsequently been released.

In respect of interim recruitment, the investment had allowed interim staff to be deployed across a number of areas:

a. Additional social work teams to manage the increase in demand during 2022/23

b. Auditors, Improvement Leads and Practice Develop Leads

c. Two additional Heads of Service (Fostering and Quality Assurance)

d. Data and Systems Analyst

e. Additional Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs)

f. Managing Practitioners across the service

g. Service Managers across the service

h. Additional management and worker capacity in the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub

i. Funding to scope and implement Trauma Awareness Training being part of the learning offer

j. Scoping and commissioning of Family Group Conferences pending permanent recruitment

The remaining £473,000 had been set aside to be carried forward into 2023/24 to enable the continuation of key posts to support the response to Ofsted.

The funding had been invaluable to our current improvement journey.

The fostering head of service was highlighted as a particularly valuable post and funding had allowed for time and communication between families and foster carers and others that had had a traumatic journey.

Q: What is the reason for a forecast underspend of £688,337 at the end of the current financial year – is it targeted spending that was not made as planned (ie. the improvement plan not going to the anticipated pace) or costs being less than expected?

Q: Some time ago the DCS agreed to provide a category spend list as per the original improvement plan before the additional funding was approved, to compare how the extra money was proposed to be spent and prioritised. Could this please be provided to the committee?

The service director assured the Committee she would investigate the category spend list.

Ms Fiona Reid referenced a recommendation made by the Committee to cabinet in relation to family group conferences being introduced by April 2023.

The Committee Chair explained to Ms Reid that Cabinet had not approved the recommendation as it had feared the deadline of April was too tight.

Ms Reid raised concerns about the number and cost of looked after children in the county and stated that she believed the figure was almost double that of statistical neighbours and represented a significant drain on Council funds, which she felt could potentially be reduced by the introduction of family group conferences. 

The service director explained that family group conferencing staffing and job expectations had been established and that spot purchasing through another organisation meant that conferencing would be available as of 1 April 2023.

Other key points were:

Due diligence relating to trauma informed training had been carried out regarding a provider and it was now  ...  view the full minutes text for item 135