Agenda item

(Verbal update by Mr Ridings, Deputy Cabinet Member for Vulnerable children and Ms H Davies, Director of Specialist children’s Services and Mrs J Wainwright, Director of Commissioning and Partnerships)

(1)         The Chairman asked Ms Davies to begin with her verbal report.  Ms Davies gave a brief update on the position of the CFE Restructuring advising that she and colleagues were currently interviewing for the 12 posts of Preventative Services Manager.  This post would drive the development of the early intervention through bringing together all relevant agencies.  

(2)         The Committee noted that the Special Educational Needs Review had started and would include all provision. The Review would be completed in the Autumn and the initial findings reported to Cabinet in September.

(3)         Ms Davies advised of the ongoing increase in Looked After children (LAC), which had increased by 30 in the last quarter, the struggle to keep those within in-house placements and having to place some of those children in the independent sector.

(4)         In response to the Mr Gilroy’s, former Chief Executive of KCC, Safeguarding Review, Ms Davies explained that work was underway to address the recommendations and would be reported to the October County Council meeting.

(5)         Ms Davies was pleased to inform the Committee that 60 newly qualified Social Workers had been appointed and would be in post by September.  She gave assurances that they would receive an induction and support from senior staff.

(6)         Ms Davies explained that the coalition Government review on child protection by Eileen Munro would be looking at reducing the bureaucracy of the social workers’ role.  Kent would be looking at the Review’s Terms of Reference with staff to look at the ways we deliver Social Work in Kent.

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

(8)         Mr Robinson said on behalf of Mr Vye, who sent his apologies for this meeting, that he would prefer summaries of the items in the verbal update rather than bullit points in future and sought a response on Minute 26 (5).  Ms Davies noted the first comment and advised that the Chairman and Leaders of the Opposition would be advised of serious case reports in the future unless there were legal implications that prevented this.

(9)         In response to a follow up question, Ms Davies advised that part of the CFE Directorate restructuring involved the Children’s Centres being line managed from the Autumn of this year by the Preventative Services Managers. The Specialist Services Group were also reviewing the specifications for the Children’s Centres, being mindful of the budgetary constraints that were likely to take place in April 2011 and the coalition government’s message that they anticipate that Children’s Centres would  become a more targeted service.  The review would conclude in the Autumn.

(10)    In reply to questions by Mr Smith, Ms Davies explained that there were 27 social workers recruited from the United States of America and 25 from Europe.  Of the 60 newly qualified social workers the vast majority qualified from the University of Kent and Christchurch, Canterbury.  For the future, there were 2 schemes being restarted enabling 10 or 12 social workers assistants to qualify through the Open University route per annum and the setting up of a trainee social work scheme with the aim to recruit 10 or 12 trainee social workers for a year, followed by a 2 year course.  If those two schemes were successful she anticipated that they would continue and even expand them as she felt that growing our own social workers had to be the way for the future.

(11)    In reply to the second question, Ms Davies said that the uncertainty for staff across the County Council had been difficult.  There were challenges in how the policies of the coalition government developed.  The challenge in her Group was to develop a vision of how they wanted children’s services to be delivered, and in the coming years, as there were budget reductions, tailor that accordingly.

(12)    In response to a follow up question, Ms Davis assured Mr Smith that she did have enough political direction from KCC.  There was important work that would be covered over the Summer and Autumn of this year through working closely with Mrs Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Education and Mr Ridings, Deputy Cabinet Member, Vulnerable Children with an emphasis on early intervention services to minimise children requiring social work services.  Work was also being carried out on rethinking how social work services were delivered to reduce the bureaucracy for social workers enabling them to do social work and to feel better supported.

(13)    In response to a follow up question by the Chairman, Ms Davies advised that the recommendations in Mr Gilroy’s report would be dovetailed with the various reviews being undertaken.

(14)     In response to a question by Mr Craske, Ms Davies advised that when the 60 social workers came on stream there would be approximately 60 vacancies, which needed to be put in the context that the social work establishment had been increased significantly during the latter part of 2009.  The challenge would be; do we recruit more social workers or do we recruit staff with other qualifications to work in social work teams? Ms Davies felt that there was creative potential through not considering that all posts had to be filled with qualified social workers; there were different ways to deliver our services.

(15)    In response to a question by Mr Robinson, Ms Davies stated she was satisfied that there were clear supervisory policies in place in Kent for social worker assistant posts, and an audit process where the District Managers audited that staff were being supervised appropriately and were given a workload that was appropriate to their level of experience.

(16)    In reply to a question by Dr Wadman, Ms Davies said that there had been significant referrals to Children’s Social Services every week and a number of those referrals were not at the threshold of Children’s Social Services.  The vast majority of those children would have a level of need, as they had been referred.  Ms Davies felt that the challenge that needed to be grasped was what were the whole range of services available in every district for children.  The new post of Preventative Services Manager would ensure that those services in a district were well coordinated to help vulnerable children. This would ensure that a rational decision would be made about those children that would require social services.  Ms Davies said that work was being carried out to refine the process for a single point of access, which existed in some districts now, so that it was clear which service a child with a level of need accessed, to stop the cycle of referrals being made that do not meet the threshold.

(17)    The Chairman then asked Mr Ridings to give his verbal update.  Mr Ridings commended the efforts made in recruiting the 60 social workers.  He concurred with Ms Davies statement about ensuring that the supervisory programme and support were adequate to meet the needs of the social work career with proper progression so that they stayed in Kent rather than leaving and going elsewhere.  He advised that there were different issues in recruitment in each district.  He stated that there would be no compromise in the quality of social work that was presented in this authority.  He did not feel that this would be done in the same way as in the past 20 years; there would be different and improved ways of handling the service and hopefully at a lesser cost.  He then went on to mention the ICS data inputting system where he felt there were too many people from Children’s Social Services spending a disproportionate amount of time keying in data for the governments returns, although this had been getting better with the number of mistakes falling from 60k in April 2009 to a significant lower number in 2010.  Other systems and providers had been looked at but there was an enormous cost from changing from one system to another.

(18)    Mr Ridings had tabled the following information to the Committee. “Current monitoring of Children Social Services actual expenditure indicates there will be an overspend of £2million for the financial year 10/11. The major constituent parts of this overspend have been generated by the fostering and 16 plus service. The volume of children and young people needing to access foster placements and the 16 plus service has been far above our original predictions. Also, the adverse mix between in-house fostering and Independent Fostering Agencies has added to the fostering overspend”.

(19)    Mrs Wainwright was then invited to give her verbal update.  Mrs Wainwright focused on the restructure and re-organisation within Children, Families and Education and progress with developing the new Children and Young People's Plan (CYPP).  This included an update on the current position with recruitment into the new CFE structures, and the need for induction, staff development, and team building/re-building.  She advised that within these processes there would need to be a change from a culture where services were reliant on grant funding to one of securing the best outcomes through integrated working and a greater focus on drawing the Kent Children's Trust partners into joint commissioning arrangements.

(20)    Mrs Wainwright then gave an overview of the timelines involved in developing the new CYPP from 2011 - 2014 and a summary of progress to date, copies of a timeline chart were tabled.

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

(22)    In response to a question by Mr Smith, Mrs Wainwright advised that there had been Member input during the Senior Management Team meetings held within Children, Families and Education (CFE) Directorate through looking at the Directors written rationale, which included what they wished to change, whether it stacked up, were we doing the right thing, was it conservative or radical, so that the structure met the needs of the young people, bearing in mind the reductions in the budget and grants.  She said that there had been changes of minds when looking at the options in detail.  The Directors had to look at the range of posts within their Groups and across CFE to determine the best use of staff. All agreed that the Preventative Services Manager posts would be critical to success.  There were also risk analyses made. Ms Wainwright stated that monitoring of the new structure would be through the managerial processes.  Each manager would have to monitor that there were no gaps working through the structure looking at what was wrong and putting that right, making adjustments to ensure that the Business Plans were being met or there would be an impact on the performance indicators.  Staff needed to be clear of their responsibilities.  She concluded that this could not be definitive as the full impact of the coalition government’s changes was not known.

(23)    The Chairman asked that the CFE restructure be kept on this Committee’s agenda for progress reports.

(24)    RESOLVED that:-

(a)   the responses to Members questions be noted;

(b)   the CFE restructure be kept on this Committee’s agenda for progress   reports;

(c)   the verbal updates be accompanied with a summary of the items rather than bullit points in future; and

(d)    the verbal update be noted.