Issue - meetings

(Report by Mr J Hawkins, Transformation Programme Manager)

(1)         The Committee received a covering report “Change to Keep Succeeding” that set out a proposed new structure for the senior management of Kent County Council.  This report had previously been presented to meetings of the Council’s Cabinet, Scrutiny Board and Cabinet Scrutiny Committee in the week commencing 11 October 2010.

(2)         Mr Hawkins referred to pages 74 and 75 explaining that in the case of Education, Learning and Skills and the Director of Children Services the structure remained the same.  The structure created a directorate of Education, Learning and Skills to create capacity to deal with the issues coming from the government’s Education White paper.  Children’s Social Services would be part of Families, Health and Social Care.

(3)         Mr Vye raised a few issues which included; (1) that the Liberal Democrat Group did not agree with the proposed new structure for the senior management of KCC. (2) He referred to page 88 in particular paragraph 13.2 of the report that referred to the opinions of the staff and those that referred to a strong dislike of silos.   He felt that it was counter intuitive that after a number of years where Education and Children’s Social Services had been moved towards integration the proposal was to split them up again.  He referred to the recent upsetting Ofsted report which indicated that within Children’s Social Services information did not flow freely within one directorate. (3) He then questioned how the report on children’s services in April 2009 signed off by the former Chief Executive, Peter Gilroy, was reconciled by the recent Ofsted report.  (4) Mr Vye pointed out that the Children’s Social Services would be moving into a department where teams/areas were not co-terminus.  (5) He raised the issue of staff morale, where staff were put under immense pressure because of the increase in referrals and this would mean 3 restructures in the last 4 years.  (6) Mr Vye then referred to the risk assessment within the report saying that it did not adequately assess the risk to come with another restructure in a department which was already under great pressure and where morale must be sustained at all costs.

(4)         Mrs Hohler stated that the new structure reflected a change in ethos and that she agreed with the merging of Children and Adult Social Services and that it would aid the transition from child to adult services.

(5)         RESOLVED that:

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

(b) the matters raised by Members at this and other Member meetings to which this matter is to be reported would be fully considered as part of the consultative process.