To update the Scrutiny Committee on the Families’ Commission report.

 

The Director of Children’s Services gave and introduction and overview of the report and explained that it had posed seven questions for consideration some directed at the council and some at the partnership.

 

It had been agreed with the commission that there would not be a rush to give glib, shallow responses to these questions and that adequate time would be taken to stop and reflect.

 

The Director sought the committee’s agreement to provide a further update in three months’ time on the progress and impact of the steps taken since the publication of the commission’s report. The director stressed that this would not be a paper exercise for the council and its partners. Long term responses and plans had been developed and a direction had been taken to further engage with some of the families who had met and spoken with the commission.

 

 

The committee asked the Independent Scrutineer for the main points that were raised by the commission and what progress had been made.

 

The Independent Scrutineer started by thanking the families involved for their contributions.

 

The Independent Scrutineer noted the areas of overlap involved in responding to the commission and the overall improvement journey that children’s services was on.

 

It was explained that partner engagement with restorative practice would help meet some of the recommendations of the commission and that a trauma informed awareness training package would be rolled out across the partnership over the coming months.

 

It was stated that focusing on the way the partnership worked, the culture and the way it interacted with the families who were involved with the social care system would be key to success in the future, but that all of this would take time to get right.

 

The partnership would need to find ways in the future of ensuring it got direct feedback from families going through the system and that the restorative approach being rolled out should help that.

 

 

The committee enquired as to what the restorative approach would look like, what differences families who had used the service before would notice and whether the ‘Think Family’ approach would be embraced.

 

The Independent Scrutineer explained that the new approach would focus on ‘working with and not doing to’ by seeking joint solutions to issues and that children would stay with their families whenever it was safe and possible for them to do so

 

The Director of Children’s Services pointed out that restorative/relational practice was a model of practice that had been around for many years and that if the committee wished it would be possible, with joint input from the Leeds improvement partner, to carry out a workshop on the subject.

 

The Director acknowledged that one of the key criticism of children services had been that families felt they had been ‘done to and not worked with’. Some families had come for help and support and felt that the service hadn’t provided that and had been heavy-handed or escalated things in an unhelpful way.

 

The service had tried to listen to that and the commission had been a staging post.

The restorative practice was like two axis on a chart, one being high support and one being high challenge, with an aim to having honest conversations that help raise concerns, but also focusing on strengths and how families could be encouraged to build on these in the best interest of the children.

 

In the past interventions had bas been characterised by high challenge and low support, which had been punitive and led to criticism

 

The Director stated it was about shifting behaviour, language, the way the service work with families and colleagues and building good relations over a period of time through honest conversations and dialogue. This was something that hadn’t occurred in the past and Leeds was helping that process of change.

 

It was explained that:

 

Restorative practice was about putting things right, saying sorry and discussing how to make amends and get things right

 

Relational practice was about building good relations between practitioners and families, practitioners and practitioners and practitioners across a range of agencies.

 

The Director stated that this didn’t do the subject justice and that he would like to make a presentation to the committee at a later date with the improvement partner.

 

ACTION: Director of Children’s Services and improvement partner to deliver workshop on restorative/relational practice.

 

 

The committee raised concerns that there was still a lot of jargon involved in the communications. At the heart of what needed to be done was focusing on building relationships, responding to questions and carrying out and completing commitments.

 

The Director explained that the update was for committee purposes and that a different communication was going out to families.

 

The committee discussed the issue of co-production. It was asked if and how the service was capturing feedback from families to move things forward, and whether there was a strategy or plan to benchmark and monitor progress.

 

The committee also enquired as to whether the complaints system needed to be improved and if there was a system that could work and be applied across the partnership.

 

The Director explained that there had been a lot of additional conversations with families who cooperated with the commission. The complaints process was one of the seven questions that the commission asked it to consider.

 

Structural and operational differences in the NHS, West Mercia Police and the council would make it hard to introduce or implement a single standardised complaints process. However, the partnership was working hard to promote signposting of support for families very clearly through the partnership website. Sampling around families was also being carried out to establish whether people found the complaints processes very helpful or accessible, this information could be used for analysis and the creation of a forum where the learning from that sampling could be applied.

 

 

The committee asked where would a family experiencing issues with social care go to presently to raise those issues.

 

The director said most families would use the statutory complaints procedure, which was a very closely and tightly monitored system and process.

 

It was explained that as recently as last year not everything had been going through the statutory complaints process and complaints weren’t being responded to in a robust way. Training was now being given to frontline managers, so that the service would get better at responding to complaints.

 

Other routes used by families included: directly contacting the Director, the cabinet member or local ward councillor.

 

The committee asked what work was being done to encourage families to raise complaints.

 

The Director pointed out that when the service starts to work with families it lets them know about complaints and compliments procedures, which wasn’t the case previously.

 

Also if a child is on a protection plan or is looked after then an independent review officers will remind families about the complaints procedure that is available.

 

The process is detailed online and through leaflets available at different points in the process. Although not all families could do so, engaging the complaints process via the website was a common route.

 

The committee enquired as to whether there had been an increase in complaints.

 

The Director confirmed there had been an increase in stage one and two complaints within the process, which was to be expected following the promotion of the complaints process and the recent Ofsted inspection. The Director felt that not enough complaints were being resolved at stage one, but that work was being done to resolve this.

 

 

The committee asked if local ward councillors were contacted following an initial complaint to the service from one of their constituents, so that they could act as a go-between.

 

The Director explained that the service welcomed the constructive engagement of ward councillors, but that it was not confidentiality prevented them from telling councillors about who the service was working with. Some families might not want their ward councillor involved and some councillors might not have the capacity to be involved in such situations.

 

 

The committee noted that there was a heavy emphasis on listening to the families and taking a family-centred approach to the complaints process. It was asked whether, for the sake of balance, the case officers and social workers involved in cases were approached for their opinions and input.

 

The Independent Scrutineer explained that from experience, the families speaking to the commission were very open and hadn’t denied that there were circumstances in their lives that had required them to seek help around their children.

 

It was pointed out that the complaints the families had had with the process weren’t about the decisions that were made, but rather the way they had been treated during the journey.

 

The Independent Scrutineer stressed that moving forward it was about doing what is necessary, but in an empathetic and respectful manner.

 

The committee acknowledged this, but asked if, when a complaint from a family came in, whether the social worker on the case was consulted with and asked for input.

 

The Director explained that at stage one the investigating manager and team manager would look at case records, speaking to social worker and may speaking with the school depending on the nature of the complaint.

 

The Director added that stage one complaints would either be upheld, partially upheld or not upheld. Often at this stage families would be content that somebody had listened and looked at the complaint, others would not and this would lead to stage two or above. The process was not entirely different to complaining in any other arena of life.

 

The Independent Scrutineer pointed out that there was also the safeguard after the statutory procedure, whereby there was a right to a stage three independent review of the complaint.

 

The Director and Scrutineer explained that a historical failing in the service had been that complaints went through the council’s rather than the statutory process, with the council process not allowing for an independent review at the end of it. Some families were not aware of the statutory process.

 

When applied properly the complaints procedure could be effective and independent review were extremely helpful.

 

 

The committee noted that there had been a significant change in the last year, but wondered what needed to be done to change the culture.

 

The Service Director for Improvement in Children Services echoed previous comments about the historic lack of respect and empathy when dealing with certain cases and added that there had been a judgemental element in the manner in which families had been treated 

 

It wasn’t just about what had happened, but how it happened. Improving culture would involve listening to and respecting people and valuing the contribution that they could make. The Service Director noted that all families had been very brave in contributing to the process and had helping to reshape and improve the service.

 

 

The committee asked about what was being done to help parents being abused by their children and what support was in place for young carers.

The Independent Scrutineer explained that there had not been any substantial work in relation to young carers yet, but it was on the list of questions.

 

 

The committee noted that regarding culture within the partnership, there had been a feeling by some partners that the families commission was very one sided and that there was another side to the story, but what emerged was a picture of a flawed culture that had developed over time. The committee asked if the Independent Scrutineer was seeing a change within other partners in terms of a need to address a culture towards families that are asking for help.

 

The Independent Scrutineer explained that in order to get line of sight, it had been necessary to put in place a programme of multi-agency audits to pick up some of the aspects of how meetings were being held. Reviews about the conferences had been mixed and there were potentially still a lot of people who needed to change how they were behaving - that was a challenge for Herefordshire.

 

The plan was to change culture through training, development and the rollout of the restorative approach. The role of the IRO (Independent Review Officer) would be to assert control over meetings. The culture was still in part problematic and it would take time to change.

 

The committee noted that the speed of change was hard to hear as they would like the change to occur swiftly.

 

The Independent Scrutineer explained that there was plenty of research on improvement that gives a one to three year window from inadequate to the better areas, change always takes time. The project with Leeds was a major advance forward.  Leeds had helped other authorities and it was recognised that the big the big thing Leeds did was to get the partnership right.

 

 

The committee asked if the Scrutineer felt that the right messaging was coming from the top.

 

The Independent Scrutineer stated that he believed the intentions were good, but that the partnership still struggled with going from intention to practice and there were clear priorities for the next year to shift the position from a critical one to a more positive position.

 

The committee noted that continuity of staff was vitally important and that there was a need for more family support workers. Poor practice would continue until a stable workforce was in place, with more family support workers were in place to support social workers.

 

The Independent Scrutineer agreed that establishing a workforce with the right culture was probably the single most important building block of a secure and effective social care system, but pointed out that Herefordshire Council was not alone in struggling with the difficult recruitment market.

 

 

The committee asked if the ‘think family’ approach was being adopted across the partnership, as there hadn’t been much from the partners on this matter.

 

The Independent Scrutineer felt that this would derive from the restorative programme, which engaged all partners, not just social workers, but also other partners. The think family approach needed to be at work with all partners in initial child protection conferences, in review conferences, in strategy discussions and assessments of the MASH on which pathways were appropriate for the family.

 

It was stated that the Safeguarding Children Partnership Annual Report would be available by the next meeting and that partners would be attending when the committee looked at the report.

 

 

The committee asked whether all the Herefordshire families within the service now had access to social workers on a face-to-face basis

 

The Independent Scrutineer suggested that that was a question for the Director, but felt the situation was moving in the right direction, although the biggest issue with social workers continued to be turnover and continuity.

 

The committee voted unanimously in favour of the following recommendation:

 

RESOLVED:

 

That: The committee noted the report.