Agenda and minutes

Members are invited to disclose any interests in any of the items on the agenda at this point of the meeting.  Members may still declare an interest in an item at any time prior to the consideration of the matter.

There was no disclosure of interest at the meeting.

To approve as a correct record the Minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 27 February 2018 and authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting held on 27 February 2018 were agreed as correct records and signed by the Chairman subject to the correction that Julie Lamb extended her apology of absence at the meeting.

The Assistant Director of Policy, Performance and Community presented sixteen of the seventeen corporate performance indicators that fell under the remit of the Children & Learning Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee.

The presentation highlighted that nine indicators (56%) had a status of Green whilst seven indicators (44%) had a status of Red.

The Assistant Director of Policy, Performance and Community indicated that the following areas required improvement:

•     The number of former relevant young people aged 18-21 years old in education, employment or training was at 55%.  Even though the performance was lower than the set target, the council surpassed the national average and many other London boroughs. The Council had been awarded funding from the Department of Works & Pensions to set up a Work Club at the Cocoon to deliver a programme supporting young people to attain employment and to embark on further education.

•     The proportion of care leavers ‘Staying Put’ with foster carers had dipped slightly in Quarter 4 to just below target.

•     The introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy had a negative impact on the number of apprenticeships starts.  Nationally there had been a drop to approximately 60% in starts. The introduction of the new funding reform put the emphasis on employers to deliver the national target of 3 million apprentices by 2020.  Employers had fed back to the Department on a number of issues including a lack of appropriate frameworks, difficulties in accommodating the 20% off the job training time required and the increased costs of the new standards.

The Sub-Committee noted the following highlights:

•      16 new in-house foster carers were recruited during 2017/18. This was an improvement on the previous years outturn and exceeded the target.

•      The proportion of looked after children placed in Havering foster care rose to 44.5%, compared to the target of 40%.. The In-Care strand of the Face-to-Face Pathways Programme focused on enhancing the in-house resources available for all looked after children.

•      There continued to be a reduction in the proportion of children becoming subject to a Child Protection Plan for a second or subsequent time within 2 years. The outturn was an improvement on the previous year and was below the target.

•      The performance for early years providers remained Good/Outstanding at 97%.

•      The percentage of 16/18 year olds not in education, employment or training (or whose destinations were unknown fell to an all-time low.

The Sub-Committee noted the performance report.

The Chairman suggested that the work programme be re-submitted to the next meeting of the sub-committee following a proposed meeting to consider the items with officers.

The Sub-Committee received a report that highlighted the outcome of the Local Area Inspection of support for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND which took place between 26 February and 2 March 2018.

The inspection identified that the service had increased the pace of putting children and young people at the centre of planning for their future. Inspectors recognised that the Council’s evaluation of it’s strengths and areas for development were broadly accurate.

The Sub-Committee was informed that the inspection served as a v useful exercise which reinforced the services approach to co-produce more and to engage and involve all partners when planning support.. The changes to systems and processes had already started to have an impact on outcomes for children.

The Inspection concentrated on the following three key areas:

a.         The effectiveness of the local area in identifying children and young people’s special educational needs and/or disabilities.

b.         The effectiveness of the local area in assessing and meeting the needs of children and young people who had special educational needs and/or disabilities.

c.         The effectiveness of the local area in improving outcomes for children and Young People who had special educational needs and/or disabilities.

The report outlined the following findings:

1.    The service to children with the most complex needs had improved and worked well across agencies to meet their needs.

2.    The Young People who participated in the inspection were mostly positive about the support they got, especially from their schools or colleges.

3.    Teaching staff in schools reported that they and their pupils got helpful advice, guidance and care. There had been reductions in the number of exclusions of five-year-olds and Young People not in education, employment or training.

4.    Parents were positive about the schools where provision for pupils who had SEN and other disabilities was effective. Parent groups recognised that there were some good services in the local area.

5.    The work with Young People to co-produce developments was strong, but not as strong with parents.

6.     The service was not aspirational enough about the future outcomes of children and Young People with SEND, as it was found to be slow to implement the SEND reforms when they were first introduced.

7.    New systems and more rigorous self-evaluation were resulting in strong improvement.

8.    A significant number of parents were concerned about the support their children received as there were delays in receiving reports, including Education Health and Care (EHC) plans.

9.    The process for producing EHC plans had improved. Outcomes were more incisive and the plans identified more clearly what support was to be put in place.

10. Not all infants received the integrated two-and-a-half-year check or the antenatal visit and the six-week baby health checks, as part of the Healthy Child Programme.  It was identified that this was only available to those families where vulnerability had been identified.

11. The overall effectiveness of nearly one third of secondary schools required improvement or was inadequate. This meant that too many children  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The Sub-Committee received a report that updated on the progress to improve standards across Havering’s early year’s providers, schools, and colleges.

The reported highlighted that there were currently 89 schools in Havering, and they are broken down as follows:

The report included a detailed data chart (Appendix 1 to the report) and breakdown of the Ofsted grades and school type (Appendix 2 to the report).

The report highlighted the key areas of performance in each of the key stages of education. It detailed government statistical demographic information and comparisons with local authorities.

The Sub-Committee was informed that the local authority used its legal powers of intervention to act promptly following the identification of issues in cases where a provider did not take, or intend to take, timely independent actions to improve.  In such a context, the service principle was to maintain a high quality relationship and a wide range of collaboration mechanisms between providers, governing bodies, trusts, Local authority officers, members of the Council and the Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) in order to ensure the efficient and effective functioning of the education system in Havering.

In the last 18 months, the local authority had issued 3 warning notices and 5 letters of concern to schools.  The areas of concern were finance, standards and progress, governance and leadership.  The Local Authority (LA) had also used other formal powers of intervention, including the appointment of additional governors and the withdrawal of financial delegation.  Where the LA had concerns about academies, these were raised through the RSC.

The Sub-Committee was informed that the service continued to monitor the performance of all providers, schools and colleges on a regular basis, with a refreshed approach to bringing about necessary improvements.

The report recommended that the Sub-Committee continues to receive updates on school improvement, consistent with a schools-led strategy as agreed by school leaders, governors and partners, including the Regional Schools Commissioner.

The Sub-Committee noted the comments of the report.

The Sub-Committee received a report that highlighted the initial feedback from the Inspection of Children’s Service by Ofsted.

The report detailed that the service was formally inspected under the new inspections of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) framework between Monday 11 June and Friday 22 June 2018.

The inspectors highlighted significant improvement across Children’s Services since the Single Inspection Framework (SIF) inspection report, published in December 2016, when provision was judged as requiring improvement to one of Good for overall effectiveness in less than 18 months.

The provisional graded judgements for the Service were:

·         Overall effectiveness – Good.

·         The experiences and progress of children and young people in need of help and protection – Required Improvement.

·         The experiences and progress of children in care and care leavers – Good.

·         The impact of leaders on social work practice with children and families – Good.

The Sub-Committee noted that that the Service’s own self-evaluation and assessment, together with Ofsted’s initial feedback, indicated that there was still much to be done and that it was crucial that the council continued to drive improvement and innovation to meet the needs of children, young people and families within Havering.

The Sub-Committee was informed that during July/August 2018, following receipt of the final inspection report, Children’s Services would formulate a comprehensive post inspection action and improvement plan to address all recommendations and areas for development, for the scrutiny of Members.

The Sub-Committee noted the comments of the report.

The Chairman invited the Sub-Committee to indicate items within the Committee's terms of reference that would like to see discussed at a future meeting.

A Member requested that the sub-committee receive a report on Private Sector Leasing (PSL) Changes (Local Authority approach to families in the situation and consideration of what was offered to them).