Agenda item

Report attached.

Mary Phillips/Sue Elliott

Start time: 13.40

MP explained that Children and Families services were preparing for a future inspection by Care Quality Commission and OFSTED. The inspection had a wide-ranging scope covering SEND outcomes from 0-25 and included such topics as understanding local need, education, health and care plans, and joint commissioning. The scope of the inspection covered all children with an identified special need and was not restricted to those with Education, Health and Care Plans etc.  The organisations that anticipate being inspected include the local authority, those in the youth justice system, CCG, NHS England, health providers, early years settings, schools and further education colleagues

Reports of most previous inspections in other areas were available and five days’ notice of the start of the inspection would be given to the Council and CCG. Inspectors would expect evidence-based information, including sharing of information. The inspectors would meet with providers and commissioners as well as parents, carers and children & young people themselves. Officers had put in a great deal of work in order to be ready for the inspection and the implementation of the Children and Families Act.

It was emphasised that the Children and Families Act aimed for children to be prepared for an independent adulthood. All working was required to be joint between education, health and social care. The Local Offer for Havering would therefore be closely inspected.

Associated risks included a need to articulate funding challenges and low numbers of personal budget holders, although the Council wished to increase this. Other risk areas included the transition process, a lack of evidence of joint commissioning taking place and not having a live system of tracking from pre-birth onwards. It was recognised that integration could be improved, including for example integration between early years providers and health visitors.

Joint working for commissioning, assessments and an integrated 16-25 provision also needed to be addressed. ICT needed to be used as part of the solution around joint assessments given the limited time and other resources available to GPs, physios etc. MP felt there was a full commitment to addressing these issues. Next steps included the appointment of an officer to support inspection preparation. 

MP felt that other inspected authorities had received similar results around joint working and the inspection team would not be expecting all issues around Children and Families to be fully resolved at this stage.

Councillor Ramsey felt it was important to show if Havering was making similar progress to other Local Authorities. MP felt Havering was in a similar position to other Council areas. The inspection report would identify areas where progress needed to be made, rather than make judgements.

MP would bring to a future meeting of the Board the self-evaluation that had been worked on with the CCG. It was confirmed that there was a list of services commissioned for children and the delivery plan was being written at the same time.   

Data sharing was difficult to implement fully at present due to there being a number of different ICT systems across the various organisations that did not fully communicate with each other. MP gave an example where children’s pupil numbers did not match up with their NHS number. AS felt that this was an area that could be developed as part of the ACO programme of work.

It was explained that local SEND data was gathered from many different organisations. There had not been any SEND data gathered nationally although the Department for Education was now producing outcome tools for this area. The SEND needs assessment (part of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment) also made a series of recommendations covering strategic, service and technical issues.

AM felt that some key issues re SEND included immunisation, access to annual health checks and equipment. MP added that there was only a low number of occupational therapists available and it was important to use resources in the right way.

A question was asked about frequency of data being updated for SEND. MP clarified that data would be updated on an annual basis. A further query was raised about school exclusions for SEND.  MP agreed to revise the Executive Summary to include reference to state schools.

Action: Revised Executive Summary to be circulated to Board Members.