Agenda item

(Mrs J Wainwright, Director, Commissioning and Partnerships, Mrs R Turner, Managing Director, and Mrs S Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children, Families & Education)

(Mrs A Agyepong, Equality & Diversity Manager and Mrs J Wainwright, Director, Commissioning and Partnerships were present for this item)

(1)         The Committee discussed a report that outlined the aims of an updated draft Equality and Diversity Strategic Action Plan 2010-2013.

(2)         The Chairman asked that Mrs Wainwright introduce the report.  Mrs Wainwright explained that it was important that this report was produced and before Members now as KCC was committed to equalities and diversity and there was a need for a Strategy to plan and implement the work across the Directorate.  Reports of this kind were also essential in the inspections that apply across the County Council and as part of the Comprehensive Area Assessment and other inspection processes.  KCC had made a commitment to achieve excellence, under the Equality Framework for Local Government during 2011, a higher rating than currently held across the County Council. The Children, Families and Education Directorate was working toward providing the necessary environment to achieve excellence.  The report gave a series of examples and a strategic action plan over a number of years on how this would be achieved.

(3)         Mrs Agyepong highlighted the five key areas of performance within the strategic action plan and gave examples of work being carried out in those areas as follows:

·         Knowing your community and equality mapping;

·         Place shaping leadership, partnership and organisational   commitment;

·         Community engagement and satisfaction;

·         Responsive services and customer care;

·         Modern and Diverse Workforce.

(4)         Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments which included the following:

(5)         In response to questions by Mr Critchley, Mrs Agyepong advised that measuring best practise would be carried out by looking across KCC and across several partners to see how new ways of working were being developed, which could then be implemented across the County.  She gave the example of colleagues based in a Children’s Centre in Ashford who were developing a framework for questions that needed to be asked for children who came from families where English was a second language as they began to enter the education system.  They had been doing this piece of work just for their Centre and had not thought about other parts of Kent that were experiencing the same issue  that they could share that practise to produce good outcomes for the children.  Mrs Agyepong said that she had worked with them to pull the framework together and linked them back to the Early Years Team so that once this was piloted the practise could be shared more widely and the impact it had measured. 

(6)         Mrs Agyepong said that work was being undertaken to look at the Customer Impact Assessments to ensure that the people who needed our services could access them taking into account the equality measure.

(7)         In response to a question by Mr Vye, Mr Abbott stated that for future meetings the finance report could highlight the budget that underpinned the work on the Equalities and Diversity Strategic Action Plan for the Children, Families and Education Directorate.

(8)         Members commented that future reports should have less jargon and contain examples of how the aims would be achieved and the required resources to explain how, for the Committee to keep equalities at the heart of its agenda.  Mrs Wainwright said that this area was not an exact science.  She explained giving the example …”To continue to expand the mechanism used to engage the community in policy and service development and evaluation would be carried out though local working, engaging groups that might be around Children’s Centres by talking to; parents, professionals in those Centres and asking them questions such as what they thought about our current policy?, what they felt could be done better?, and were there particular problems in their area?  If a number of people came up with the same thoughts those would be embedded into practise”.  Mr Cooke felt that the outcomes that could be measured were not dependant on this; the measures in the report were complimentary measures that supported other programmes that were within the Committees remit, eg Not in Education Employment or Training (NEET).  Mrs Agyepong said that she was clear about the strategic objectives which would be put forward in an action plan.  She gave the example of knowing the groups that were being consulted at present but there being a need for clarity on why those groups were being consulted and not others and how other groups in communities could be reached to consult with to inform services.  Mrs Agyepong agreed to reword the report to include outcomes.  

(9)         RESOLVED that:

(a)   the responses to Members comments and questions be noted;

(b)   agreement be given to the covering report being reworded to make the outcomes clearer by giving examples;

(c)   that future finance reports highlight the budget that underpinned the work on the Equalities and Diversity Strategic Action Plan for the CFE Directorate be noted;

(d)   agreement be given to the new strategic approach to Equality and Diversity within the Children Families and Education Directorate; and

(e)   the Committee received regular reports of activity against the Equality and Diversity Strategic Action Plan 2010 to 2013 be noted.