Papers to follow.

 

The purpose of this item is to present an update to the Committee in respect of the progress and implementation of the Children’s Improvement Plan. The latest version of the Improvement Plan will be released week ending 14^th July 2023 and will be added as a supplement to this agenda in due course. 

The corporate director for children and young people and interim service director for improvement introduced the report.

 

The interim service director provided an overview of the improvement plan progress update that had been presented to the Children’s Improvement Board in June 2023.

 

Detail was provided on the blue, red amber, green (BRAG) scoring system in relation to progress being made regarding the 10 priority improvement areas. The BRAG system was also being used to monitor and track improvement impact, to ensure that tasks being completed as part of the plan were making a positive difference to improve outcomes for children, young people, carers, parents and family members.

 

It was explained that following the June meeting of the improvement board (and six months after the launch of the plan) a rationalisation exercise had been undertaken which aimed to: streamline and coordinate the improvement infrastructure, improve the accountability of reporting to the improvement board and to increase the pace of improvement.

 

The interim service director stated that with regards to accountability, the forthcoming July meeting of the improvement board would be the first occasion where senior responsible officers and service leads for each of the work streams would be reporting directly to the board.

 

A pitfall of ‘feeding the beast’ was identified, which highlighted the potential risks of focusing too heavily on implementing and achieving elements of the plan, whilst losing focus on the impact of implementing objectives, the ‘so what?’. It was pointed out that the rationalisation exercise would ensure that those working on the plan would be able to see more clearly what the work they were engaged in was achieving and how it impacted young people and their families within the county.

 

The discussion was opened up to the committee for questions.

 

The committee asked what was being done to tackle the crucial issue of recruitment and retention, especially in relation to social workers and social work managers, within the county.

 

It was explained by the interim service director that the authority was promoting the point of difference in terms of what it had to offer over other authorities and that this was being achieved by:

 

-          The development of the Spirit of Herefordshire website to promote the benefits of living in the county and working for the local authority.

-          Creating competitive remuneration and bonus schemes.

-          Introducing apprenticeships and career progression schemes and building on the existing ‘grow your own’ model to improve learning, development and recruitment at a local level.

-          Ensuring caseloads were manageable and creating conditions where social workers and managers could forge trusting and confident relationships with their colleagues and other stakeholders.

The corporate director highlighted the common misconceptions about the quality of work carried out by agency and temporary staff, but pointed out that all the senior leadership roles and most of the heads of service and senior management positions were fully permanent. It was hoped that this stability would aid recruitment in a challenging market and give assurance to: young people, their families and the local community, that the directorate was in a more stable position moving forward.

 

It was also pointed out that two recent Ofsted monitoring visits had returned positive feedback in relation to improving staff morale.

 

The committee congratulated those involved in stabilising the top three layers of management within the directorate and were hopeful that having people in permanent posts would make a significant and positive difference.

 

The committee noted the high levels of expenditure involved in employing temporary staff and emphasised the importance in developing a robust ‘grow your own’ approach to running training courses locally, as this was a problem that was not going to go away. It was felt that in the long term it was vital, from a cost and quality of service perspective, that there was a readily available pool of locally trained social workers and managers available for recruitment within the county and that engagement with appropriate surrounding higher education establishments was needed to see what could be provided within Herefordshire.

 

The committee felt that if social workers lived locally, were trained locally and employed locally then there was less likelihood they would qualify as a social worker and then seek employment outside of the county.

 

The corporate director agreed that tackling recruitment issues was one of the key factors in ensuring the improvement plan was successful and noted that the authority already had capacity for 12 new qualified social workers each year and had a business case proposal going through to increase that figure to 22-25 for the year ahead.

 

The committee acknowledged that there was often a need for agency/temporary staff to meet peaks in resourcing demand, but that the mix was still not right and needed to be tackled to reduce overspend within the directorate.

 

When asked about when identifiable savings from restructuring to a more permanent resourcing model would materialise, the corporate director explained that the Q1 report was still being finalised and that providing identifiable savings would be unlikely in the current financial year.

 

The corporate director also pointed out that, even after planned restructuring of the workforce, the percentage of temporary staff would stand at around 20%, which was a normal and acceptable figure nationally, even in outstanding authorities.

 

The committee noted that there was scope for schools and multi-academy trusts to provide a base for social workers, which might provide flexibility in linking social workers more clearly with schools.

 

The committee asked if the improvement board should be providing the scrutiny committee with a written report identifying what its concerns were, as this could avoid duplication of work between the scrutiny committee and the board.

 

The committee also noted that the improvement plan had many actions, but that it was difficult to determine what, if any, impact these were having at ground level.

 

The corporate director explained that regarding linking social workers more closely with schools, conversations about early help hubs and basing social workers in or around schools were taking place and that was something that needed to be exploited more. It was noted that autism hubs were due to commence operation in autumn of 2023.

 

The corporate director explained that the improvement board was not responsible to the scrutiny committee, but was responsible to the Department for Education. However avoiding overlap and duplication of work was important to ensure that the best value was obtained from the board. The chair of the children and young people scrutiny committee was a member of the improvement board, so this would hopefully prevent any obvious duplication of work.

 

The corporate director pointed out that the improvement board did more than just review the feedback report, but also challenged a number of partnership agencies on their performance and impact.

 

The corporate director pointed to examples of positive impacts resulting from actions in the plan. It was explained that significantly fewer children were coming into care as a result of management practice and the number of children on child protection plans had dropped by approximately 100 since last September 2022, which was as a result of improved management and multi-agency responses.

 

In summer 2022 there had been concerns about multi-agency response to risk, but there were now robust systems and enough capacity in place to ensure that multi-agency responses happen and happen quickly.

 

Some historical cases remained unresolved, but the directorate and cabinet portfolio holder were working to try to bring those to a conclusion. The work being done with and feedback from Leeds was also proving useful in ensuring actions had successful impact.

 

The committee enquired about whether information coming out of exit interviews of staff leaving the service could be acted on.

 

The corporate director stated that the interviews were optional and that much of the feedback centred on travel, infrastructure and the need to be in the office. The authority had put in place robust plans to make it easier for employees from outside of the county to tailor their attendance patterns to suit their work/life balance. Heavy caseloads and supervision issues had been identified as potential problems areas. Some colleagues from minority groups had experienced racism in Herefordshire and this was something the Council, agencies and the community needed to tackle and address.

 

The committee asked why fewer children were now being taken into care.

 

The corporate director pointed to improved quality of practice, assessments and management oversight as factors in the reduction. The growing capacity and investment in resources for family group conferences was also a factor and it was noted that further to what was stated in the June report there were now 26 conferences in place.

 

The corporate director noted that there had been a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum seekers arriving in the county and that this would become an increasingly important issue over the coming months and years, and one that the scrutiny committee would be well advised to add to the work programme and monitor closely.

 

The committee asked about the availability of support for social workers who were suffering with stress and didn’t want to let colleagues know they were struggling, as they felt they would be letting the side down.

 

The service director for safeguarding and family support explained that personal and professional support was available to all social workers. The employee assistance programme was a private confidential service, which was in place to ensure that staff were supported and had help in identifying and managing common occupational hazards such as burnout, compassion fatigue and trauma. Principle social workers, forums and staff reference groups were also available to help develop conditions to flourish and encourage best practice.

 

The committee asked what would happen once additional funding being given to the directorate to implement the improvement plan began to drop off.

 

The corporate director stated that care for children and young people had been and continued to be a key priority for the past and present administrations. It was explained that as practice improved, the number of children in care and high level interventions would go down, which in turn would reduce costs. Making sure public money was being spent wisely and effectively would continue to be paramount through the improvement journey.

 

The cabinet member for children and young people added that the improvement journey needed to happen at pace.

 

The committee identified neglect as key area that would need to be focused on and addressed.

 

The corporate director, independent scrutineer and cabinet member echoed this and agreed that the proper adoption/implementation of the neglect strategy, early help measures and restorative practice would be key to ensuring the success of the improvement plan. The importance of effective multi-agency engagement and coordination would also be of paramount importance in terms of the successful implementation of the plan.

 

The committee discussed and considered the quality, sources and visualisation of data contained in the reports and suggest the following actions for the directorate to consider:

 

Actions:

 

Data Presentation - Where possible the committee and officers should strive for consistency and commonality in the way data is collected, calculated and presented.

 

Impact Statements from Care Experienced Families – Engage with families who had been involved with the service before and after to obtain feedback as to whether or not the improvement plan is making a positive difference to service.

 

Data Visualisation – Present data in a way that makes it clear and easy for external and internal users to be able to establish the longitudinal direction of progress and sequential relationships of activities.

 

Data Visualisation – Employ a simple colour coded traffic light system for KPIs (key performance indicators).

Feedback Sources – Encourage feedback from children as well as parents.

 

Dashboard and data - Share the monthly dashboard in a similar way to the old performance challenge meetings and provide regular updates on the longitudinal view to keep members up-to-date on performance, with particular focus on impact data and quality auditing.