Agenda item

To receive a verbal update from the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education and the Corporate Director of Children, Young People and Education.

1.    Roger Gough (Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Education) highlighted several areas in which there were significant financial pressures across children’s services. He said that the Local Government Association had expected a £2billion funding gap within children’s services nationally and therefore the pressures were not unique to Kent. He said that pressures continued to grow for children’s social care and that this was an area in which Kent County Council had been willing to invest in and support, therefore expenditure had increased. He discussed current pressures on school places and said that the number of children who were moving from primary school to secondary school was ever-increasing. He said that the pressures around delivering school places was due to the National Free School Programme not delivering in several key areas of the County and the need to find funding to support school budgets for the National Funding Formula. He discussed growth in mainstream High Needs Funding and the changes that had been put in place for mainstream High Needs Funding which was agreed by the Funding Forum at the end of last year. He said that these changes would be effective from Spring 2018, but the underlying pressures and demands would remain. He said that the total funding gap in this financial year for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children was £4.6million. He said that the most significant element regarding the funding gap was the gap between what Kent must continue to spend to support care leavers and Kent’s income from the Government. Mr Gough said that he and the Leader of Kent County Council, Mr Carter, had met with the Minister of State for Immigration in November 2017 to discuss a funding review and said that Kent’s views were presented to the Government at this time. He said that whilst pressures remained, Kent were making a significant amount of effort to bring together Children’s Social Services, Early Help and the changes that had been made to High Needs Funding. The structural measures had been put in place to respond to those pressures.

2.    Matt Dunkley (Corporate Director of Children, Young People and Education) said that Kent were in the middle of many extreme changes in demand and need and said that Kent were experiencing several challenges relating to demographic movement, inward migration and managing education responses. Children’s Services had aimed to group together current services that support schools in a new form with new freedoms which would allow a degree of co-production with schools. This in turn would secure those services and the relationship that Kent had with schools. He said that he was impressed by the teams he had visited working throughout the Council and said that colleagues had responded to challenges well. He added that the staff working within Kent County Council worked in such a way that allowed targets and challenges to be met.

a)    In response to a question, Mr Gough said that although the National Transfer Scheme had progressed well initially, there were signs that had indicated that progress was slowing due to structural issues. He said that some authorities had been reluctant to accept additional Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) due to the gap in funding. He said that Kent had experienced a very significant change relating to the turnover of children becoming care leavers. He said that Kent were still above the 0.07% ceiling of UASC agreed by Government, this figure did not include care leavers. Sarah Hammond (Interim Director of Specialist Children’s Services) said that once Kent’s numbers fell below the 0.07% ceiling, any new arrivals would remain in Kent until the ceiling was reached again, children currently on the NTS scheme would be transferred.

b)    In response to a question, Matt Dunkley said that the number of children going into care was not increasing. He said that there had been a significant increase in the number designated as children in need and in need of a child protection plan. He said that there were combinations of things that lead to surges in demand, the better services got at recognising demand, the more it increased. A significant driver for Kent had been a changed approach by the police with regards to dealing with domestic abuse incidents, they had radically changed how they respond to the needs of children who were in a place where there was domestic violence but were not necessarily subject to violence themselves. He said that another significant driver had been the changing nature of poverty. He said that five years ago, 82% of children were from workless households, but this had decreased to 50%. This in turn meant that the remaining percentage of children were from working households. He said that families from intergenerational benefit-led backgrounds faced different challenges with regards to the changing nature of the labour economy. Roger Gough said that there was a disproportionate number of social service referrals within children’s services where children and families had moved to Kent from London Boroughs, there was also a wider structural change, managed movements were also influencing pressures.

c)    In response to a question, Mr Gough said that primary schools gained the least from the outcome of the School Funding Formula and said that several schools had concerns with regards to the School Funding Formula. Matt Dunkley said that Kent did not have any direct financial exposure to Carillion apart from a very small investment into the pension fund. Although some of the firms that Kent had contracts with had sub-contractor relationships with Carillion and therefore this was being scrutinised to ensure that these relationships were not having an impact on services in Kent.

d)    In response to a question, Matt Dunkley said that he had recently met with the Executive of the Kent Association of Headteachers (KAH) to discuss High Needs Funding and School Funding Formula and the changes that had been introduced. He said that schools felt disrupted by the delay in receiving some of their High Needs Funding due to an overspend issue that Kent were managing. He said that there were a range of underlying issues around demand for High Needs Funding which the Schools Funding Forum had not been able to resolve yet and would require a more profound look. He said that it was important to ensure that the High Needs Funding overspend did not have an impact on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) or other services. Matt Dunkley had met with head teachers and agreed to introduce a dialogue at the next meeting to present ideas in relation to how the High Needs Funding expenditure could be managed, and he would work with head teachers to minimise the impact that this had on schools. Mr Gough said that it was important to look at mainstream High Needs Funding and the changes that Kent had introduced in September 2017, the changes which were agreed with the School Funding Forum in the latter part of 2017, and the wider issues with High Needs Funding and overall general levels of demand.  He said that there was much more work to be done in this area.

e)    In response to a question, Mr Gough suggested a Members Briefing to look at the statistical information within the report in further detail, this was welcomed by the Committee.

f)     A Member requested further statistical information on the impact of families from London coming to Thanet who were not under the responsibility of the other Local Authorities but required Kent’s services, in addition to the burden on the school places.  Mr Gough and the Chairman agreed that this information should be provided to either the Local Board or the Area Board.

3.    RESOLVED that the verbal updates be noted.