Issue - meetings

(1)     The Committee received a verbal update from Mr L Ridings, Deputy Lead Member (Vulnerable Children). 

(2)     Mr Ridings highlighted key issues that had taken place since the Committee last met which included the following;

• Vacancies  for Social Workers in the Children Social Services advising that already 62 newly qualified Social Workers had been appointed from this country, 29 from Boston USA and 9 from North Europe. 
• The unannounced inspection had not taken place but was due in November or early December.
• The ICS data system, used by Social Workers to input and retrieve data on their case work, continued to cause problems due to the stability of the system.  The input of data was now being carried out by administrative staff rather than Social Workers.  Members were advised that all exemplars would be in place by April 2010 which would mean less paper work.

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

(4)     Mr Vye referred to Partnerships and reminded Members that the next phase of the review would be a corporate strategic overview; he felt that Members should scrutinise and feed back what was happening in their own electoral divisions as well as looking at issues across the County.  Dr Wadman concurred suggesting that at local level local knowledge should be used.

(5)     RESOLVED that the verbal update and the Members comments be noted.