To brief the committee on the Quality Assurance Framework for Herefordshire Children’s Services, including the values and principles underpinning this.  Also to describe the means by which quality assurance activity is undertaken, the outcomes from quality assurance activity in the last year and the impact of the quality assurance activity in the Herefordshire Children’s Services improvement journey.

 

The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review introduced and gave an overview of the report.

 

The committee heard that quality assurance was at the heart of the Children’s Services Improvement Plan. The QAF (Quality Assurance Framework was made up of three equal and complementary components:

 

· Hearing the voice of children, young people and parents/carers

· Audit activity

· Key Performance Indicators.

 

A key part of the quality assurance work being carried out was the multi-agency activity being conducted with the police, health and voluntary sector partners through the Safeguarding Partnership.

 

The QAF (Quality Assurance Framework) was being updated with a view to the new framework being complete by the end of the September 2024, with a particular emphasis being given to listening to and acting on the voice of children and young people.

 

The Chair invited comments and discussion from the committee in relation to the report. The key points of the discussion are detailed below:

 

1. The committee asked for further details in relation to the changes being implemented in the new framework and why those changes had come about.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review stressed there was an increased emphasis on feedback from children and young people, there was a whole new stream of activity to collect feedback on a regular basis, which would be monitored on a month-by-month basis.

 

o   The audit template had been improved to make it more user friendly for practitioners. Going forward, the whole service - rather than individual sections - would be looked at every month.

 

o   Case grading would be carried out by team managers, but alongside that a peer auditor, who was not part of the operational work, would also carry out an audit (which would include engaging with the child, family and social worker). The outcomes of these two audits would be looked at together and a third senior manager would come in to discuss any differences between the two gradings. This would act as a looped audit, which would enable for immediate learning to be provided for the manager and peer auditor.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that applying this looped audit model across the service would provide much greater opportunity to identify areas where things were being done well and where improvement might be needed.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People pointed out that one historic area of weakness had been in the high level approach the service had taken to providing feedback to the workforce, this hadn’t always been meaningful for staff. The updated framework would provide detailed personal feedback that would allow people to understand when they were doing well, where improvement was needed and what impact the improvements being introduced were having. 

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained the greater emphasis being placed on service experience feedback from children and families in relation to: how easily they had been able to contact their social worker, had they being provided with a copy of their plan and were they given an explanation that provided them with an understanding of why they/there child was in care.

 

o   Experience feedback would be more distinct from and provide a more holistic perspective than the regular case specific feedback which concerned individual details of plans rather than the service user experience as a whole.

 

2. The committee enquired about the impact of doing the simple things well as emphasised by the improvement partners at Leeds City Council.

 

o   The Service Manager Quality, Assurance and Performance explained that the service had been working very closely with the partners from Leeds whilst developing the renewed framework. It was doing a lot of work in a lot of different areas, but had avoided taking a scattergun approach and was ensuring things were being done well in one area before moving on to the next.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review stated that doing the simple things well involved listening to and reacting to feedback from children and families about the fundamentals of social work practice.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People pointed out that there was nothing wrong with the existing quality assurance framework, but it was being updated to reflect the new programme of activity, which would include: audit, key performance indicators and service user feedback. Only with those three things in place would it be possible to gain a real understanding of the quality of the services being provided.

 

3. The committee noted that the values and principes that underpinned the Quality Assurance Framework seemed very similar to the council’s corporate values and principles, and enquired whether there a more specific set of values and principles that would underpin the updated framework.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review gave an assurance that the new Quality Assurance Framework was being updated with the Thrive values and the values seen within the Workforce Development Strategy, and would reflect the restorative and strength-based approach.

 

4. The committee stressed it was keen for the framework to be publicly available and that the values contained within it should be evident and transparent.

 

5. The committee enquired how the Quality Assurance Framework would be changed and updated to take into account and react to feedback being provided by children, young people and families.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that the framework would not change, but that there was a foundation around the framework that included a key performance indicator dashboard underpinning the Improvement Plan, which would be monitored on an ongoing basis.

 

o   The audit case file model would enable children and families to answer questions that had specifically been put in as measures within the phase 2 Improvement Plan. It would be a dynamic process, but not one that would involve ‘reinventing the wheel’ every few months.

 

6. The committee asked how it would be possible to ascertain that the changes and improvements being introduced were having an impact on young people.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People stated that the impact would be seen everywhere within the service and would come back through feedback from children and families explaining that they understood and had contributed to their plans. Key performance indicators would demonstrate that the service was getting plans out within timescales and that less plans were overdue. Professional audits would show that plans were being produced to a high standard. 

 

 

7. The committee noted that, historically, regular changes of appointed social workers had been a problem for many young people, and asked how the service intended to address workforce issues in order to meet the challenge of improving the quality of plans.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that the workforce strategy was weaved through the work that was being carried out all the time and that there was a dedicated Workforce Board in place to implement he Workforce Strategy and ensure stability and continuity.

 

o   Providing individual staff and teams with positive feedback and recognition for progress that was being made was also key in ensuring that the workforce felt valued and wanted to remain in the service.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review highlighted the work being carried out through the Social Care Academy, which had been successful in training and retaining newly qualified social workers.

 

 

8. A committee member raised concerns that the constant monitoring and auditing of staff and plans created an oppressive environment for social workers. It was asked if there was a system in place to capture the voice of the social workers.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that the results of the recent Council Workforce Survey had allowed for a deep dive into what the workforce across the children’s directorate was feeling. There had been greater engagement with the survey this time around and it had provided positive feedback about the directorate.

 

o   A new national approach called the ‘social work health check’ had just been launched, which aimed to understand how social workers felt they were being supported, challenged and guided to be the best practitioners they could be.

 

o   A new communication overview had been launched that would allow staff to obtain information and provide feedback on what was happening within the directorate. This was backed up by bi-monthly staff conferences and an ongoing informal approach to meeting with team managers for them to provide feedback to their teams.

 

9. The committee asked if there was a mechanism for staff to provide anonymous feedback about the directorate.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained there was a whistleblowing process and means for staff to send anonymous emails, but the preference would be that there was an environment where staff felt confident and comfortable about sharing any issues or concerns they had openly with their team and manager. The Workforce Survey was also anonymous.

 

10. A committee member raised concerns that employers never got the full story when a boss asked a junior member of staff or a team of workers what their thoughts were on workplace matters and it was suggested that consideration be given to introducing the use of quality circles - where feedback came out from a group of workers of the same level/rank, but no managers were present during the discussion and no individual was named as a contributor.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People said that the service would be willing to give consideration to such an approach.  

 

 

11. The committee asked about the process for when parents requested a change of social worker in spite of the child/children involved in the case having a good relationship with them.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained it was important to listen to the voice and needs of the child rather than the parent in instances where a change of social worker was being requested. If there were clear signs that there was a healthy relationship and strong engagement between the child and the social worker then the request for a change would not necessarily be granted. However, it was recognised that building good relations between all parties was paramount to achieving positive outcomes and where a relationship between a social worker and a family had completely broken down there were mechanisms in place for adjustments.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review pointed out that feedback from families exiting the service had been very positive and nearly all families indicated that the social worker in their case had made a positive difference.

 

12. The committee asked if there was a mechanism within the framework to highlight positive feedback about the service and whether this could be communicated in public communications.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that positive feedback had been fed back to the individuals involved and quarterly assurance reports would contain information about both complaints and compliments. The director warned of the risks on publicly communicating bite-sized quarterly results and felt that a yearly summary would provide a clearer picture of how the service was performing.

 

13. The committee asked about the process involved in terms of closing the loop where specific issues had been identified around inadequate team or individual performance.

 

o   The Service Manager Quality, Assurance and Performance explained that there was moderation process whereby a reassessment and evaluation would be carried out by a service manager/head of service who would look back over the last 3 months to ensure improvements had been implemented and actions completed. Targeted workshops, one-to-one support and best practice briefings promoted ongoing wider learning that would address any themes emerging from audits.

 

o   The Head of Service Safeguarding and Review pointed out that there was an escalation process in place for situations where improvements and interventions recommended by an audit did not appear to have been successfully implemented.

 

o   It was noted the number of inadequate gradings coming through the system had dropped over the last quarter.

 

14. The committee asked if it was feasible to include children and young people within the auditing process and whether this was already being done.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that the service was keen for input and feedback from children and young people to help shape the audit process. Newly developed participation groups might eventually be a good means of obtaining feedback once they were properly established. In the short term the plan was to see the new framework and auditing process embedded, get the participation groups established and then consider how to bring more people into the process.

 

 

15. The committee enquired as to why there had been an apparent drop in the number of audits being conducted in the previous month compared to the two preceding months.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that there had been a summer recess, with many staff taking their annual leave for holidays. In addition to that the new improvement plan and final development stages of the quality assurance framework had also had an impact on the number of audit cases being conducted. The directorate had taken a step back to leave some clear water between the old processes being concluded and the new processes being introduced in September 2024.

 

 

16. The committee raised concerns that previous promises that the voice of the child would be listened to and acted on as part of the quality assurance process had not been delivered on and sought assurance that things would be different with the updated framework.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that there were three main elements to consider when considering the voice of the child. The first came through the case work as it was being done and was recorded on file as the lived experience of the child. The second was drilling down into and analysing the input being recorded at every stage of the process and this was an area where the service had historically been quite weak, especially so in discussing and recording comments from children exiting the service.

 

o   There was a need for the service to be able to analyse and understand what the users experience of the overall journey through the system had been. As part of the new process children would be asked questions throughout their journey and at the point of closure when the assessment and intervention had concluded.

 

o   The third element of voice of the child was around participation and engagement and this was an area where work had recently been undertaken and developed with children looked after.

 

o   The service was constantly learning and challenging the way that it did things, and it was aware of the need to ensure all three of these areas were equally balanced.

 

 

17. The committee enquired as to where within the quality assurance framework could it be identified that culture change was being promoted and encouraged in a way that would become embedded.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People stated that they felt culture within an organisation was about people and not just training, workshops and briefings. Culture change should be led by managers and leaders with tools in place to lead a culture that wanted to listen to its children. The ways of working that were being introduced would do that. Evidence of culture change would come when staff could be seen to be promoting, encouraging and monitoring feedback from children and families.

 

18. The committee asked at what point did the Corporate Director Children and Young People expect to be satisfied that they were getting sufficient feedback from the children and families.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained the service had carried out its stock take and challenge to itself in quarter 1 and would see changes starting to embed in quarter 2. Progress would be further challenged in quarter 3 and by the end of quarter 4 the quality assurance programme would have become business as usual.

 

o   The Cabinet Member Children and Young People summed up by acknowledging the positive work that the directorate had carried out and was continuing to develop.

 

o   It was important that relationship building with the child and with parents remained a key element of the process being put in place. The restorative practice model sought to - where it was safe to do so – manage the risk to children within their families and their family network, so that the service could get the best outcomes for them.

 

At the conclusion of the debate, the committee discussed recommendations and the following resolutions were agreed.

 

Resolved that:

 

1. Children’s Services should adopt their own set of values and principles, separate from the corporate council values. These should be displayed on a child- and family-friendly page on the Herefordshire Council website alongside a user-friendly guide to the Quality Assurance Framework (QAF), ensuring the framework and values are publicly accessible and reinforcing the strengths-based, restorative approach to cultural change.

 

2. The service should explore ways to involve children and young people in the analysis associated with the auditing process, ensuring their experiences and feedback contribute to service improvement.

 

3. That the service explores Quality Circles as a means of getting staff feedback.