Agenda item

Jean Imray, Interim Deputy Strategic Director, Children and Young People Services, presented the third quarter (December, 2015) performance report for the key areas of Safeguarding Children and Families Services.  Appendix A of the report took into account direction of travel on the previous month, comparison against national benchmarking data and, where applicable, analysis against locally set targets.

This was the first specific performance indicator monitoring report presented to the Commission regarding Children’s Social Care since the outcome of the 2014 Ofsted inspections.  Since the inspection, performance management arrangements within the Service had undergone significant improvements and would continue to develop over time.

A number of performance improvements had been achieved in the last twelve months including:-

-         A more robust and responsive multi-agency front door service (MASH) with the proportion of referrals with timely decision making consistently in the high 90%s – 98.6% in December against a low of 36.7% at the end of 2014

-         A reduction in the number of children on a Child Protection Plan for excessive periods of time – at the end of December only one child was subject to a CPP for over two years compared to eighteen in April

-         Almost all Rotherham’s vulnerable children now had up-to-date intervention plans in place and recorded.  With 100% children subject to a Child Protection Plan, 96.9% of Looked after Children (LAC) and 90.3% of Children in Need with up-to-date plans compared to performance at the end of 2014 of 80%, 82%and 32% respectively

-         Children were now being seen by their Social Workers more regularly – 96.2% of Looked after Children were receiving statutory visits on time with national standards and 95.0% of children with a Child Protection Plan had been visited in the last two weeks (local standard)

-         Caseloads for Social Workers had been reduced and averages across all teams were now consistently within agreed limits of eighteen-twenty-two cases

The report also set out current key improvement areas.

Discussion ensued on the report with the following issues raised/clarified:-

·         Due to the number of CSE operations and the possible children involved, there had been an increase in Section 47 investigations.  However, a number, when investigated, had found the concerns to be unwarranted.

·         All adoption agencies had their pool of adopters so not only would the Authority “buy” adopters (pay a fee to an adoption agency) but Rotherham’s adopters were adopting by way of other authorities/agencies.  Currently there was a shortage of adopters so the Authority was having to place more children with out of authority adopters and having to pay a placement fee.  A recruitment campaign was to be launched in the same way as there had been for foster carers.  This was a national problem.  There was work that could be done to improve the situation and the Authority was doing what it could.

·         Anybody who was an approved adopter would have been through a very rigorous adoption assessment whether it was by a local authority or private adoption agency.  The Authority would always look at the details of an approved adopter to ensure the right child was being matched to the right adopter.  Once placed, the Authority would continue to visit until the Adoption Order was made; at that point the child ceased to be a LAC and that family became that child’s legal family so there would be no visits.  However, for older children there was a comprehensive support package around the adoption placement to ensure the placement had the best chance of success.

·         All authorities were under an obligation to notify the authority they were placing their child into.  Rotherham had a system in place to ensure the notifications were sent out and a robust checking system was also carried out.

·         This also applied to private independent places.  Normally, if an authority placed a child outside its own area then it would be with an independent fostering agency or an independent residential home; if young people were placed in Rotherham they would not be with Rotherham foster carers, but with independent foster agencies.

·         The number of LAC had increased to 423 in December, 2015.  It was too early to say whether this was a trend but there had been fewer discharges for which there could be a variety of reasons e.g.  young people turning 18 and a tendency not to do any reunifications and returns just before Christmas.  There was a gradual upward trend because the Service was better at identifying children who should be at home and more robust action taken for those who were still subject to a Child Protection Plan and not really improving.  The Authority was suffering from a lack of an Adolescent Crisis Response at the moment and part of the sufficiency strategy was to try and develop that service if possible.  There were two areas where the increase was most notable - in the under 5’s and over 15’s – with a much higher number of young people not actually going into care until the age of 15-17 quite often due to the lack of appropriate response to teenage homelessness and family crisis.  There should be better work with young people as it was not good to go into care at that age except in exceptional circumstances.  There had also been a slight increase in that age group due to some of the CSE work that had been carried out.

·         The participation rates for the 4-11 and 12-17 years should be treated with caution.  The “participation” could have been the filling in of the consultation form at the LAC's review.  The Authority had not been good at capturing the voice of the child and then translating it into meaningful changes that informed the development of service and delivery.  Generally local authorities captured this but it needed to be more meaningful such as LAC chairing their own reviews.

·         The Service was developing a scorecard to be used for LAC which contained a much more detailed set of data which was only about LAC and foster carer recruitment.  There would be an opportunity to include health and report thereon.

·         The Care Leaving Indicator should be viewed with caution.  All the 96.6% showed was that the care leavers were not in prison or B&B but nothing with regard to the suitability of the accommodation.  From a Corporate Parenting perspective, there should be detailed information as to where exactly the care leavers were, whether the accommodation met the young person’s needs etc.  It was known that there was a problem with some of the current accommodation for care leavers  and that there was insufficient variety to meet the needs in that group.

·         It had been exceptionally busy in December, 2015, with regard to Social Workers’ caseloads.  This was probably due to a variety of reasons i.e. annual leave being taken and not having had the opportunity to close down cases or a Social Worker having a student working with them who could not be allocated cases.  Newly qualified Social Workers had protected caseloads for the first year of practice – under ten cases.  Sometimes Workers had high numbers of cases but consisted of large families.

·         Rotherham still had a lot of agency staff which, in part, was due to the Authority agreeing post-Ofsted to an additional thirty front line practitioner posts, however, recruitment of experienced Social Workers was a problem for all authorities.  The Authority was up to its capacity now and would not take on any more newly qualified Social Workers due to their lack of experience so it was now the challenge to attract and recruit experienced Workers in Rotherham particularly given its reputation.  Nevertheless, the Authority was making definite inroads and the information was being passed on regarding how it was managing to keep low caseloads particularly the caseloads for LAC.

·         The fully functioning MASH required a secure environment particularly because of the sharing of very confidential information.  There were problems in terms of the capacity of the accommodation currently occupied in Riverside House.  The CSE Team was due to move into the Eric Manns Building which would then give the MASH more room and ability to bring more people in.   A retired Head Teacher occupied the Senior Education role within the MASH but with more space, Education Welfare Officers could be added to strengthen the MASH response to children at risk because they were not in education/missing from education.

·         There was a very robust approach being applied by the Virtual Head with regard to Personal Education Plans of LAC.  The Service was now much more confident that the majority of the children had PEPs but would not be satisfied until it was 100% - currently 92.3%.  The issue of quality was something that was under review all the time.  The Virtual Head and Team constantly reviewed individual PEP’s to ensure they were quality assured. The new electronic PEP would be a much better way of being able to review; its format lent itself to draw out important elements as to what progress the child had made from the last school term to present.

·         There were a number of issues for secondary schools when a child came into the care system late and likely to bring with them a number of educational challenges that they had before they went into care i.e. fixed term exclusions.  There was some work to be done in order to make sure teachers in secondary schools/designated teachers for LAC were absolutely signed up to sharing the same ambitions and aspirations that the Service had for its LAC.

·         Reconfiguration of the Social Work Service had just been completed.  Previously Social Workers in localities were holding cases that were complex children in need, children with Child Protection Plans, LAC in Care Proceedings and some LAC that were placed out of authority.  Although the Service had managed to reduce the numbers, the complexity of having to work in these different specialisms had not helped to improve the quality of the work and quite often it was the LAC that got a less good response.  Accordingly, the work had been reconfigured and the Team now organised into North, South and Central teams with better alignment to the Early Help Teams/schools and the learning communities.  The work would include a stronger networking with the agencies that were in their patch to and the moving of the LAC work, including Court procedures, into the LAC Teams so that the service area was able to specialise and focus only on LAC.  Also there were two or three additional Team Manager posts so that no Team Manager was managing more than six or seven practitioners, and would be able to supervise better the work of the Social Workers.

·         Improvement journeys were 3-5 years – there was no short term or quick fixes.  However, improved practice would be more  financially affordable in the longer term.

·         The report was submitted to the Improvement Board, Directorate Leadership Team, Local Safeguarding Board (Performing Sub-Group, and Deputy Leader on a monthly basis.

The Chair thanked Jean for her presentation. 

Resolved:-  (1)  That the report be noted.

(2)  That any issue of concern be reported to the Select Commission.

(3)  That the performance report on be submitted to the Select Commission on a quarterly basis starting in the 2016/17 Municipal Year.

(4)  That a report be submitted on Children Missing from Education, and that this report details how many of these are  Looked After Children.