Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were noted and the Chairman welcomed Councillor Pam Light as substitute for Councillor Wendy Brice-Thompson and Councillor Linda Van den Hende as substitute for Councillor Nic Dodin.

None declared.

The Chairman announced details of the arrangements in case of fire or other events that might require the meeting room or building’s evacuation.

It was announced that the next Children and Learning Overview and Scrutiny meeting would take place on 19 November 2013 and would commence at 7.00 pm. 

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the Committee meetings held on 19 September 2013 (amended), and 29 October 2013 and to authorise the Chairman to sign them. 

The Committee considered and agreed the amended minutes of the meeting held on 19 September 2013 and the minutes of the meeting held on 29 October 2013 and authorised the Chairman to sign them.

It was noted that the Committee had yet to receive an update from officers on issues raised about the transport service to and from Dycourts School that had been highlighted at the September meeting.

Follow up to meeting held on 19 September 2013.  Original report attached.

The additional meeting had been called to receive a progress update on the recommendations made in the OFSTED Report reviewed previously at the Committee meeting on 19 September 2013. At this meeting, members had raised a number of concerns that not all recommendations in the report had been fully implemented and had requested that an action plan to deal with the outstanding items be presented to the Committee. 

Officers reported that all the actions had been included in the Service Plan which was now on the website under the Council’s Service Planning Process.  Most actions had been fully or partially implemented and that only two remained incomplete. The actions that had been fully implemented were as follows:

·         Review the functioning and membership of the London Borough of Havering Safeguarding Children Board (HSCB) to ensure it is fully constituted and provides sufficient scrutiny and oversight of the effectiveness of child protection practice and the effectiveness of arrangements for children in need .

·         Review the governance responsibilities and accountabilities to ensure there is communication and a formal link between HSCB and the Chair of the Children’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee

·         Continue to develop and adopt a more consistent approach to supervision in order to ensure that it provides the right level of critical challenge and opportunity for reflection and is a vehicle for driving up practice standards

·         Ensure work is progressed to enable children and young people to access advocacy services which support them to attend child protection conferences

·         Ensure that the tracking system for all referrals in the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) service is embedded and that timescales for response outlined in the threshold to services document are met

·         Undertake a detailed analysis and evaluation, following the implementation of the newly formed MASH, to formally consider any early lessons to define the service and forward plan

·         Complete the roll out of the children’s case management system (CCM) in order to ensure that managers and staff have the tools to do their job properly

·           Complete the overarching service plan for delivering against the corporate and strategic priorities for children’s services and make clear through aligned operational plans the journey ahead for staff, members and partners

The actions that were partially completed were:

·         Complete the proposed re-commissioning of the emergency duty team (EDT) with minimum delay and as part of that process set clear and unambiguous performance and quality standards for the new service

·         Ensure effective consideration is given to a child or young person’s ethnicity, culture, religion and language in assessments so as to inform planning

·         Develop a more robust approach to quality assurance in order to be able to track qualitative improvements over time, for example the percentage of child protection plans that are outcome focused and/ or measurable

·         Review and refine the performance management framework to include key indicators, including measures that are currently missing, as well as comparative data, trend information and projections, with commentary and key information broken down to team or pod level

·         Ensure the collation and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 66.

Verbal update.

The main progress since the inspection has been evident in addressing MASH timescales, reviewing the LSCB and its links to Overview and Scrutiny and the establishment of the Children’s Society service for advocacy and for following up on Missing Children.

Officers informed the Committee that they had checked today and that there was no backlog at MASH. It was acknowledged that Councillor’s visits gave conflicting views about the backlog which was actually with the police. Officers assured the Committee that timescales and response times were being met and that the new system was currently being tested.  This system would provide management information for reports as currently staff still used manual systems.   

MASH had only been in existence for 6 months when the Inspectors came and there had been issues around the IT systems which were new.  Overall, the Inspectors were happy although concerns were raised and these have now been dealt with.

MASH was fully staffed with ten new staff currently being recruited and Officers were generally pleased with staffing levels as other London boroughs were having difficulties in recruitment. It was important to retain good permanent staff but the department also used temporary staff, some good and some bad. The standard of newly qualified staff was high but they did not have the experience and therefore management oversight had to be in place.  Officers advised that there is likely to be an overspend on staffing so as to ensure that statutory responsibilities are carried out.  It was suggested by one of the members that retention of staff be looked at.  The Chairman would be meeting with Councillor Paul Rochford on this and will report back to the Committee.

Committee Members are invited to indicate to the Chairman, items within this Committee's terms of reference they would like to see discussed at a future meeting.

Note: it is not considered appropriate for issues relating to individuals to be discussed under this provision.

A member requested that officers provide a report on the safeguarding issue at the next Children & Learning Overview and Scrutiny meeting on 19 November 2013.

It had been agreed that an extra meeting would take place on December 5 commencing at 7.00 pm to discuss the Self Evaluation Form Training in preparation for OFSTED.

      The Chair of the LSCB would be invited to the meeting in January.

Councillor Pam Light affirmed that there would be a member development programme next year after the elections.

Members of the Committee requested a copy of the Terms of Agreement and Constitution be circulated.

       The next meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny meeting would be held on 19 November 2013.