Agenda item

Councillor G. A. Russell, Chairperson of the Improving Lives Select Commission, welcomed Steve Ashley, Chair of the Rotherham Independent Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and Phil Morris, Business Manager, Rotherham Independent LSCB.  Steve and Phil had been invited to attend this meeting so that the annual report of the LSCB could be considered. 

 

Also in attendance for this item were Joyce Thacker, Strategic Director, Children and Young People’s Services, and Rotherham’s Lead Member for Children, Councillor Paul Lakin, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families’ Services. 

 

Councillor Russell especially welcomed Steve Ashley to the meeting.  Steve had started his new job at the beginning of September, and this was the first meeting of the Improving Lives Select Commission that he had attended.  Councillor Russell looked forward to working with him and the LSCB in the future.

 

Steve presented the annual report of the Rotherham Independent LSCB.  The Annual Report covered all areas of the Board’s activity during 2012/2013, including: -

 

·         LSCB governance and partnership arrangements;

·         Progress against the Board’s priority areas and business plan;

·         Activities of the Sub-groups;

·         Information about the Child Death Overview Panel;

·         Contribution of Lay Members;

·         Challenges and Priorities for 2013-2016.

 

The Children Act (2004) required LSCBs to produce annual reports that provided a ‘rigorous and transparent assessment of the performance and effectiveness of local services’, ‘published in relation to the preceding financial year’ and ‘fit with local agencies’ planning, commissioning and budget cycles’ and ‘list the contributions made to the LSCB by partner agencies and list what the LSCB has spent’. 

 

Reference was made to Rotherham’s LSCB’s priorities for 2012/2013 and how these were reflected in the business plan for 2013-2016 and the work of the Board’s Sub-groups. 

 

The Rotherham LSCB had its own budget; the main contributors were Children’s Social Care Services, Children’s Health Services and the Police.  The 2012/2013 outturn for the budget was a £6,940 under-spend.  £841 of this had been earmarked for learning and development activity and the remaining £6,099 would part-fund the 2013/2014 budget. 

 

The main risks and uncertainties surrounding Children and Young People’s Services was the revised Ofsted inspection framework for children in need of help and protection, children looked after and care leavers due to be implemented nationally in November, 2013.  The Rotherham LSCB was working with partner agencies to assess performance and ready evidence of the positive outcomes of children and young people.

 

The Independent Chair referred to a separate piece of work that he was undertaking in relation to Child Sexual Exploitation to determine how effective Children and Young People’s Services was in protecting children and young people at the present time.  This was a separate piece of work to the Inquiry that had been commissioned by Rotherham’s Chief Executive. 

 

Discussion ensued and the following items were raised by member of the Improving Lives Select Commission: -

 

·         Impact of Welfare Reforms: – were referrals to social care services increasing as a result of the welfare reforms? 

o   An increase in contacts/referrals had not been identified at the present time;

o   The recommendations from the Serious Case Review into Daniel Pelka’s tragic death were being reviewed by Rotherham’s Safeguarding Children and Families Service;

o   Rotherham’s Safeguarding Children and Families Service was also responsible for the Early Help Panel, which aimed to provide help to families before they reached crisis point.  The Service had also provided robust training for all schools on identifying signs of neglect and the appropriate response.

 

·         Social care thresholds: - were the thresholds correct?

o   The Independent Chair was confident that social care thresholds governing which intervention children and families would be subject to were correct;

o   Further work was on-going on whether all agencies knew the thresholds and understood whether it was their role to refer and how to do this.

 

·         The Local Safeguarding Children Board and its associated Sub-groups: - were these groups working well together?

o   The Independent Chair was the chairperson of the full Local Safeguarding Children Board, and also of the Performance Sub-group;

o   Due to the time-limited nature of the full Board meeting, the Independent Chair would be working to ensure that the focus of the Board meetings would be performance and how the agencies were working together;

o   Board meetings would also be a forum for professional challenge between the agencies that were represented.

 

·          What were the main areas of concern?

o   It was right and proper that huge amounts of local and national attention were being paid to the issues of Child Sexual Exploitation.  However, it was possible that this could lead to other areas being missed;

o   The levels of neglect of children and young people was also an emerging issue;

o   The Independent Chair had received projections relating to deprivation upon starting his role.  He was aware of the Council and partner’s work aiming to reverse this, and would keep a watching brief on the issue.

 

·         Safeguarding Children and Families’ Services four RED rated performance indicators, as shown the annual report.  What was being done to ensure that performance improved?

o   The Strategic Director for Children and Young People’s Services confirmed that it was a concern to the Service to have RED rated areas.  The Service carried out fortnightly performance and analysis reports.  There were no cases that had not been allocated to a named worker.  The Strategic Director received a weekly report on the allocation of cases;

o   Children and Young People’s Services participated in a Multi-Agency Support Panel (MASP) that sought to support families, explore all options available and undertake a Common Assessment Framework (CAF) on the family’s situation.

 

·         Performance Indicator NI65 (Children becoming subject to a child protection plan for a second or subsequent time) (RED rated) and NI67 (percentage of child protection cases which were reviewed within required timescales (GREEN rated) were discussed to fully understand their direction of travel.

o   The Independent Chair had charged the Strategic Director with benchmarking Rotherham’s performance against national outcomes;

o   It was expected that Central Government would shortly be announcing changes to the overall suite of performance indicators;

o   The Independent Chair agreed to produce a critical suite of performance indicators that was user-friendly.

 

·         Working with Partner Agencies to safeguard children: -

o   The Independent Chair confirmed that all partners were currently participating on the Board, following the outcome of an audit of attendance;

o    The LSCB had worked to ensure that reporting pro-formas were as user-friendly as possible to enable partners to contribute their opinions.

 

·         Publication of the Serious Case Review into Child S’s death had now taken place.  What had happened since publication?

o   The Strategic Director confirmed that hundreds of workers had been trained in the lessons learned.  This also included each ‘generation’ of new workers that joined Children and Young People’s Services;

o   Training sessions aimed to be ‘two-way’, and allow front line workers to outline their thoughts and explain job related pressures to facilitators and managers;

o   A robust action plan was implemented following each Serious Case Review.

 

·         Different agencies working together to safeguard children and young people was a very positive thing, were there any barriers preventing this from being fully realised?

o   IT systems used by different agencies were not always consistent and did not always communicate.  A consistent system for reporting and  recording concerns would have been implemented with the Contact Point IT system, but funding for this had been withdrawn by Central Government whilst the system was being piloted;

o   Co-location of area teams was considered important to increase the wealth of multi-agency interface.  The Strategic Director was determined to continue supporting the practice of staff being located in their areas with multi-agency colleagues, despite reducing resources bring pressures to centralise teams.

 

·         What was the role for members of the public in reporting their concerns about a potential case/s of Child Sexual Exploitation.  What would be the message, for example, to people who were reluctant to report their concerns for fear of being ridiculed/ignored/laughed at?

o   The Independent Chair was clear that no agency would support an attitude of such complacency following a contact from a member of the public;

o   Literature had been circulated within the community informing people how to report their concerns.

·         The Councillor who had raised this question had not seen any of the literature referred to within his local community.

o   The Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families’ Services referred to the Countering Child Sexual Exploitation training that had been made available for Rotherham’s Elected Members. 60 of the Council’s 63 Elected Members had participated in this training.  The training had also been rolled out to Parish Councils;

o   The Strategic Director spoke about the training that had been offered to all Schools;

o   Age-appropriate training would be designed for children in Years 6 and 7 by the Healthy Schools Team, which informed young people about the risks and what to do if they felt threatened;

o   A training package had been put together for Chairs and Vice-Chairs of Governing Bodies;

o   A communication campaign had been designed, including the Rotherham Advertiser, and the use of social media, leaflets, e-safety training.

 

·         Other issues discussed included: -

 

o   Children Missing Education;

o   Domestic Abuse.

 

The members of the Improving Lives Select Commission thanked the Independent Chair and his colleagues for the annual report.  The Commission’s feedback was that the report was very specific and that it would be useful to have general statistics included within the report to provide a balanced view of the numbers of children, young people and families that interacted with Safeguarding Children and Families’ Services. 

 

Resolved: -  (1)  That the 2012/2013 Rotherham Local Safeguarding Children Board Annual report be received and its content be noted. 

 

(2)  That the Independent Chair develop a critical suite of indicators for use by Elected Members, Select Committees and so on, to scrutinise the performance of Safeguarding Children and Families’ Services.

 

(3)  That future annual reports of the Rotherham Local Safeguarding Children Board include general statistics that could be used to contextualise the information within the report.