The Committee was informed of the receipt of the Corporate Assessment and Joint Area Review undertaken in 2005 and the timetable for preparing an Improvement Plan.

The report outlined the Comprehensive Performance Assessment process noting that the Council was one of the first eight authorities to experience the new process of assessment.  The process involved a Corporate Assessment and a Joint Area Review of services for Children and Young People and contained a new assessment on Direction of Travel, expressed in terms of the capacity of the organisation to improve.

He explained that in overall terms the Council had been assessed as being a 3 star authority and that its capacity to improve had been rated as Improving Adequately.  He wanted to place the Improving Adequately judgement in context because the Council was one of only 30 per cent of local authorities improving at or below that level.  That was significantly below the level of improvement to which the Council should aspire.

He then referred to the Joint Area Review (JAR).  The headline here was in relation to the Staying Safe judgement where the overall contribution of services to keeping children and young people safe was ranked as Inadequate, scoring a grade of 1.

This fed into the separate star rating judgements given by the Commission for Social Care Inspection where overall the Council had received a zero star rating.

This was a serious position for the authority and the overall Inspection results and the process for developing an Improvement Plan in response to the findings were described in the report.  The Chief Executive commented specifically on the Staying Safe judgement and to the following summary of the issue drawn from the report.

“On the evidence gathered most children and young people appear to be safe.  However not all those at the greatest risk of abuse and neglect get the help they need.”

The report had concluded that there were serious weaknesses in the system overall and that the implementation of the Child Concern Model (which is central to both), the assessment of need, and the planning of provision for children in need had been poorly planned and was giving rise to continuing problems in practice.  There was concern that the criteria governing the involvement of local authorities’ professional social workers were set too high.

He emphasised the importance of addressing the issue immediately and directly.

There followed a discussion on the thresholds for intervention and, in response to Councillor W.J.S. Thomas, the Chief Executive outlined the risks of drawing conclusions from individual cases without a thorough examination of the circumstances of such cases.  The issue was whether the Child Concern Model as currently operated by the Council was effective in managing the risks in such cases.  The Committee noted the broadly positive assessments in relation to the other service blocks and noted in particular the issues highlighted by the JAR in relation to the number of 16 year olds taking jobs without training and the provision of housing for young single people.  In response to a question about the results for the first eight authorities the Chief Executive gave his understanding that, of the first eight authorities to experience a JAR, four had received initial grades in relation to Staying Safe of Inadequate.  Some of those grades were subject to appeal.  In making that statement, the Chief Executive emphasised that that should not detract from the serious attention that needed to be paid to that judgement.

It was noted that the issues raised in the JAR crossed the remits of a number of Scrutiny Committees.  The relevant Chairmen would therefore need to discuss how the Scrutiny function would continue to contribute to the development of the Improvement Plan and its implementation.

In relation to the Corporate Assessment, the Committee noted the specific finding in relation to the Scrutiny function and accepted that a response to that issue would need to be made as part of the Improvement Plan.