To provide the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee with the findings and recommendations of Scrutiny Management Board’s task and finish group tasked with scrutinising the current expenditure and future budget of the children and young people directorate.

[Papers to follow].

The report was introduced by the Chair of the Task and Finish Group, who provided the Committee with an overview of the findings and recommendations of the group. The key considerations included:

·       The group had met once in person and twice online.

·       The group had been provided with a number of documents - some in confidence - that provided information about oversight in relation to how the delivery of services in the directorate was being undertaken on a monthly basis.

·       Cost consequences of decisions that were made on care packages were often monitored on a weekly basis.

·       The level of detail that had gone into providing monthly reports to Cabinet, which Cabinet had scrutinised collectively in terms of maintaining oversight on in-year delivery.

·       The group had looked at in-year delivery, as well as budget proposals, in order to gain an understanding of the trajectory/journey of the service in terms of delivering on the improvement plan.

·       The group had sought evidence and assurance on progress being made in-year to support and underpin the balance and content of the budget in terms of service area budgets, but also areas of savings and identified pressures.

·       It was noted that the directorate had overspent considerably over the last two years and that this had posed a significant risk to the Council and resulted in savings being imposed in other areas. The group had been keen to obtain assurance that the directorate would get it right this year

·       The group had produced seven recommendations (a-g) covering the range of different areas that had been investigated.

Following the presentation the report was opened up to the Committee, the principle points of the discussion are summarised below.

1.     The Committee acknowledged that progress had been made to improve the understanding of costs associated with service delivery, but expressed concern that the savings targeted for this year had not been delivered as of yet.

2.     The quarter 2 performance report and monthly cabinet reports going up to October 2023 had not provided assurance that tangible savings relating to reduced costs of looked after children and the staff mix between permanent employees and agency staff were starting to be delivered.

3.     The committee raised concerns about spiralling costs within the care service system and felt that it would be useful to look at the national situation to determine whether the system was dysfunctional and what could be done about it.

4.     The Corporate Director echoed the highlighted problems with the system and explained that information and recommendations had been put to the government by various stakeholders. This was not a market the Council had direct control over, although it had built good relations with providers to ensure that costs had been kept lower than the national average, whilst making sure children’s needs were being met.

5.     A discussion took place in relation to each of the recommendations made within the report. The Statutory Scrutiny Officer suggested that six of the seven recommendation had been discharged during the course of the meeting, these relating to proposed work programme item considerations for the Committee and data requests to the directorate. The final recommendation (g) would require a response from Cabinet.

The Committee voted unanimously in favour of the recommendations, but acknowledged that recommendations ‘a-f’ had been discharged during the course of the meeting and should be noted by Cabinet. Recommendation ‘g’ would require a response from Cabinet.

Resolved: That it be recommended to the executive:

a.     Financial performance data to form part of the ‘measures that matter’ and performance dashboard data, and should be reported back to staff teams so that they are aware of the financial consequences of the service performance alongside other measures.

b.    Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee to examine how SEND Transport demand and costs are managed, including a review of operations in other rural local authorities.

c.     Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee to scrutinise work to step children down from residential care, and to reunify families where children have become looked after.

d.    Dedicated financial resource to continue to be embedded within the children and young people directorate to provide challenge and assurance that day-to-day costs are being captured and forecast correctly.

e.     Each monthly financial outturn report for the Children and Young People directorate, and weekly Children’s Service Analysis Tool (CHAT) be provided to the chair of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee.

f.      The Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee undertake a piece of work to examine the robustness of the council’s data and management information supporting the children and young people directorate.

g.    Savings as proposed to be targeted for Children’s directorate to deliver in 2024-25 but assured funding to be found from elsewhere to balance the council’s budget.