To receive apologies for absence.

Apologies for absence had been received from Councillor Rob Williams, Councillor Clare Davies (present remotely) and Hilary Hall (Corporate Director Community Wellbeing).

To receive details of members nominated to attend the meeting in place of a member of the committee.

Councillor Frank Cornthwaite substituted for Councillor Rob Williams.

Councillor David Davies sat in the vacant committee member seat.

To receive declarations of interests from members of the committee in respect of items on the agenda.

None.

To receive the minutes of the meeting held on 7 May 2024.

[Papers to follow]

The committee voted to defer approval of the minutes of the meeting of 7 May 2024 until the next committee meeting of 30 July 2024.

To receive any written questions from members of the public.

None.

To receive any written questions from members of the council.

None.

The purpose of this report is to update the committee on the workforce challenges in children’s services and to outline the work being undertaken to address those challenges.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development introduced the report and the attached appendices, noting that the employment survey summary from 2022 at Appendix C was the most recent set of data available. The next staff survey had just been released and new information from that would be available in the autumn of 2024.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development pointed out that significant improvements had been made and that the service was in a much better position than it had been three years ago, but there was still much work to be done.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development highlighted the need to be relentless in everything being done to tackle workforce challenges and was confident that the plan in place would get the service where it needed to be.

The Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development identified the greatest challenge currently faced, as dealing with the service’s reputational issues and the potential damage that had been done to its ability to recruit. There had only been limited success in telling a positive story about improvements in the service outside of the council and addressing that would be a priority going forward.

The Committee discussed and asked questions about the report as detailed below:

1.    The committee thanked the director for the report and pointed out that sufficiency and stability of staff within the workforce was a key aspect of the Improvement Plan and was at the heart of work being done to ensure and provide a good service for children, parents and families within Herefordshire.

2.    The committee enquired about the risk, in terms of the impact on children in Herefordshire, of not getting the children and young people workforce strategy right.

·         The Service Director explained that restorative practice training was going very well and 500 workers had received the training, however, without a permanent and stable workforce there would be a continuous stop-start element to the training, which would hamper progress.

·         The Service Director for Safeguarding and Family Support explained that over the last two years children and families had often had numerous different social workers assigned to their cases and that each time the social worker changed or moved on the family and child had to retell their story.

·         The Service Director emphasised the importance of having a permanent workforce in place as this would enable the restorative framework and practice model to be fully embedded, which would provide traction going forward. It was noted that staff in the MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub) were fully permanent, fostering services staff were almost fully permanent and that all team managers would, hopefully, be permanent by July 2024.

·         There were still challenges relating to historic reputational damage, especially in relation to the court team and children in care staff. The recent change of Director of Corporate Services had created some temporary unsettlement amongst staff, but this had been a blip and the service had turned a corner, with two team managers having  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To consider the work programme for the committee.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained that development of the work programme was ongoing, and that the final version would be available for the July 2024 meeting.

In the meantime, a meeting would be taking place on 26 June 2024 with directors of the council, the leader of the council, the chief executive and the cabinet member for children and young people. The aim of the June meeting would be to get a sense of topics, objectives and expected outcomes for forthcoming committee meetings. 

Tuesday 30 July 2024, 2pm

Tuesday 30 July 2024, 2.00pm