Report by Joy Hollister
Minutes:
The Group Director – Children’s, Adults and Housing reported that Children’s Services had been on an improvement journey since the service’s last OFSTED inspection. There was a rising population in the borough and Havering was the highest net importer of children and families in London. There was an increasing level of diversity in Havering with many children not having English as a first language and pockets of deprivation.
Havering was seeing its highest recorded numbers of children protection plans and Looked After Children. There were also more incidents of children being taken into care and of Section 47 initial child protection investigations. The Council wished to support children to realise their potential and to focus on early intervention and protection. Children’s Services had a similar vision to support excellent outcomes by helping communities to help themselves.
When the service was last inspected by OFSTED two years ago, a clear focus had been found on early intervention and prevention. Recent initiatives had seen the introduction of 1:2:1 parenting support for parents with drug or alcohol issues. A strengthened family training programme had also been introduced. Housing officers had also now been placed within Early Help Services.
OFSTED had found motivated staff with manageable caseloads. Since the inspection, caseloads had increased but staff were now more motivated. There was a new children’s commissioner within the CCG and a new commissioning manager had also been appointed in children’s services. A lot of trained social workers were now choosing to stay within Havering.
OFSTED had previously found that the Common Assessment Framework was not embedded in Havering but this had now been replaced by the Early Help Assessment Process. The previous performance management framework had been found by OFSTED to be underdeveloped but the quality assurance framework now used in the directorate was very good. Cases were audited on a six-weekly basis as well as monthly with police and health.
A Child Safety Performance Board was chaired by the Leader and a Children’s Services Improvement Board also met regularly. The Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) was operating well. The Community MARAC was also performing effectively in providing help to the most difficult cases not meeting other thresholds. The Local Safeguarding Adults and Children’s Boards had the same Chairman, allowing a useful crossover of work.
Placement stability for children was now much improved and there was better tracking of cases. Looked After Children participated in reviews and gave feedback annually during activities at the Stubbers Centre. Permanency planning if children if children were unable to return to the parental home now started at an earlier stage.
Challenges for the service included using too many agency staff and assessments and personal education plans taking too long to complete. The appointment of the Virtual Head was helping with this latter issue however.
The service’s IT systems needed to be developed and training for social workers on the existing CCM system was commencing next week. Once the Care Act had been introduced fully, it was felt that a new IT system may be needed. Budget reductions and demand management were ongoing issues, as was the constant legislative change in this area.
Work in progress included the recent appointment of a new participation officer to improve corporate parenting. Fostering recruitment had improved but it was accepted that education of Looked After Children needed to be better. A principal social worker, covering both children and adults was about to be appointed.
The Chairman welcomed the update, feeling that the service was maintaining performance on less funding.