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 written into the training programme for all workers.

Public Law Outline (PLO) paperwork, which families receive before court proceedings, had been improved following input from families. The input had helped shape a letter that would direct families to guidance and support at the beginning of and during the process.

Tess Burgess (Head of Law Children and Families) explained that the Council had relaunched all of its PLO documentation in October 2022, there was a short testing period of the documentation and it was re-reviewed in January 2023. The paperwork was in line with the relaunch of the PLO process that was undertaken by Sir Andrew McFarlane - the President of the family division of the judiciary. The changes coincided with announcement that there would be a push to reduce the number of weeks care proceedings take back down to 26 rather than the current national average of 44 weeks. It was noted that Herefordshire’s average was 19 weeks, which was a top performing figure.

It was also explained that the government had removed the quota system for capping the number of asylum seeking children within counties. This would likely have an impact on funding and looked after children data within Herefordshire..

Resolved: The Committee unanimously noted the report.