To scrutinise the Herefordshire Children’s Services and Partnership Improvement Plan Phase 2.

 

The Corporate Director Children and Young People introduced and gave an overview of the Improvement Plan Phase 2 report.

 

The Phase 2 Improvement Plan had been developed to bring focus, pace and measures to the improvement journey.

 

The plan set out highlights of what had been achieved in the last two years and importantly introduced a Quality Assurance Framework of measures to enable the service to monitor progress, these were: key performance indicators, service user feedback and audit.

 

The Children’s Improvement Board, had reviewed its terms of reference and membership and was independently chaired by the Department of Education Commissioner. Meetings were held on a six-weekly basis.

 

Herefordshire Council continued to have a strong commitment to improving performance in children’s services. Transformation of the service was now in its third year of a three-year programme that began in October 2021. The phase 2 plan covered the period 2024/25 and would be refreshed in July 2025.

 

The Corporate Director Children and Young People highlighted two Ofsted recommendations listed within the plan:

 

-        Corporate responsibility for the help and protection of children and those in care and care leavers, so this is prioritised and embedded across the council and partnerships.

 

-        The sufficiency and stability of staff across the workforce, including sufficient numbers of Foster Carers, so children receive a timely response to having their needs identified and met across the service.

 

and described the actions and activities being undertaken as part of the plan to implement these recommendations and monitor progress.

 

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 enquired what the director expected Ofsted’s reaction to the plan to be.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that the plan had been shown to the lead Ofsted inspector, the reaction to it had been positive and the inspector had commented that it read like a more focused plan in terms of being able to demonstrate actions that had and were being taken by the service. Feedback from staff and partners had also been positive.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People stated that the directorate was prepared for the next Ofsted visit and would be showcasing the new practice that was in place.

 

2. The committee enquired about an action regarding engaging with Herefordshire families to review and update the safeguarding levels of intervention, and asked how the service would move away from the risk averse response to intervention that it had been criticised for in the past.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that six engagement sessions had been booked in market towns, the sessions were being publicised by children’s centres, GP surgeries, social workers and the safeguarding website. Take up for the first session had been disappointingly low and it had had to be cancelled.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People was keen to increase promotion of the events to ensure that future sessions were well attended by families and other members of the public.

 

o   The sessions would include the Corporate Director Children and Young People and partners from the police and health services, who would deliver a short presentation based on a real case study and then invite the public and attendees to provide input and opinion on what they thought the right and correct course of intervention would be. This would then be followed by a discussion with the groups about what actually happened and how that compared with what the groups thought should have happened. This would hopefully open up conversations about what early help and intervention should look like.

 

3. The committee stressed the importance of widely promoting these sessions, possibly through social media to ensure people participated and engaged with them.

 

4. The committee raised concerns about children’s dental health within the county and if/how the Improvement Plan would address this as issue.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People stated that they were unaware of the scale of the problem around dentistry within the county and that this would involve engaging with the Integrated Care Board to ensure the issue was addressed, especially for vulnerable children and children in care.

 

o   The Cabinet Member Children and Young People stated that in a recent meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board it had been reported that two new NHS dentists had been commissioned and that this was the start of a journey that might also potentially include extending provision via a mobile dentistry service for rural areas.

 

5. The committee considered whether dentistry was only one area where standards were not as high as would be expected and were concerned that other seemingly routine health and wellbeing checks and services might not be functioning to an acceptable standard. The question was asked as to whether there was a checklist for looked after children in terms of general physical and mental health care.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that there were two things that were recorded and collated as statutory indicators: the dental check for children in care, and health assessments for emotional and physical wellbeing. The key performance indicators on both of these were low, and there was a need to establish whether this was a capacity issue or a problem with the process in terms of carers not presenting children for the checks. The problem was being unpicked by the directorate now and was due to be looked at by the Heath, Care and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee in a forthcoming meeting.

 

6. The committee discussed the potential inclusion of child-friendly subsection within the impact on community section of council reports, particularly those going to Cabinet to inform executive decisions.

 

o   The Cabinet Member Children and Young People explained there was support for the child friendly concept, but there was a danger of creating a burden of activity that might detract from work already being done. It was suggested that child friendly activity should ideally sit alongside existing work, rather generating additional work.

 

7. The committee praised the update of the Improvement Plan, particularly the inclusion of monthly snapshot quality assurance data, which showed clearly how areas were improving from 2022 through to 2024. The benefits of being able to identify trends and build up a longitudinal picture of what was going on across the service were welcomed.

 

8. The committee enquired as to whether there were any explanations for drops in performance across certain areas over the period, citing as an example, the reduction in the number of strategy meetings taking place within 48 hours in the MASH, which had dropped from 96% to 92%.

 

9. The committee also asked, why, with a smaller case load in 2023 the service had completed a lower percentage of care proceedings within 26 weeks than was achieved in 2022.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained that they didn’t have the background detail to hand to explain those particular dips in performance and that going back through every indicator - to establish why they had changed - would be a time intensive process for the service. The director felt that it was important to focus on where the service was currently  and where it was going, but did give an assurance that they would seek out an explanation and provide a written answer regarding the two areas of dipping performance identified by the committee.

 

10. The committee enquired about the frequency of reporting in relation to the multi-agency Professional Differences Escalation processes.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People that the crucial element was that there were timely outcomes for escalations relating to disagreements among partners around thresholds of interventions and that these escalations were held in matter of days and not weeks. The annual report on that would detail how many time the escalation process had been needed in order to resolve a difference between professional bodies. It was not anticipated that there would be significant use of the escalation process over the course of a year.

 

11. The committee asked what mechanism was in place by which the progress of the delivery of the plan could be monitored and made public.

 

o   The Corporate Director Children and Young People explained progress was monitored by the Improvement Board, where each of the recommendations and the actions in them were reported every six weeks. Any potential risks would be identified and addressed in situations where a particular activity was being delayed.

 

o   The Commissioner’s Report would be made public as would the outcomes of Ofsted visits.

 

12. The committee suggested the Corporate Director Children and Young People might consider how progress being made regarding Delivery Plan and Improvement Board activity could be communicated more openly to the public.

 

 

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

 

Resolved that:

 

1. Cabinet should endorse a publicity campaign to ensure maximum feedback from children, young people, and families on the "Working Together Consultation" concerning Right Time, Right Place thresholds and managing risk.

 

2. That Herefordshire Council identify a means to report publicly on progress in delivering the Improvement Plan for children’s services.