Agenda item

To receive a summary of performance under key themes for Children’s Social Care Services at the end of the 2015/16 reporting year.

Report of the Strategic Director of Children and Young People’s Services

Cabinet Member:     Councillor Watson (in advisory role)

Commissioner:         Bradwell

Consideration was given to a report which provided a summary of performance under key themes for Children’s Social Care Services at the end of the 2015/16 reporting year.

The following examples of good and improved performance from the previous 12 months were reported:

·         Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) response rates were high: 96.5% at contact and 92.8% for referrals received in the full year

·         The assessment backlog of 313 had been eradicated and at year end there were no open assessments over 45 days

·         Assessments completed in 45 working days improved from 70.1% in 2014/15 to 92.8% in 2015/16, with in-month performance reaching 98.4%.

·         Children in Need (CIN) with up-to-date plans improved from 65.1% in 2014/15 to 98.6% in 2015/16.

·         In month data for up-to-date Child Protection Plans (CPPs) is regularly above 98% and at year end was 100%

·         Percentage of Initial Child Protection Conferences within 15 working days had improved from 65% in 2014/15 to 88.3% for 2015/16.

·         A review of all long term CPPs had reduced the percentage open for two years from 4.2% in 2014/15 to 0.8% in 2015/16.

·         A reconfiguration of services had increased management oversight and ensured that caseloads were consistently at manageable levels for workers across the service

·         The performance of Looked After Children (LAC) visits over the year against national minimum standards was 96.5%, however against the very aspirational local 28 day target of 90% performance at 80.2% needed to improve

·         The new national measure relating to days between ‘becoming LAC and adoption placement (A1) is performing significantly better than the government benchmark with a reduction from an average of 661 days in 2013/14 to 338.5 in 2015/16

·         The number of Care Leavers with an up to date Pathway Plan had increased by nearly 20% to 97.5%

·         Although further improvement work would be required on Health and Dental assessments, performance compared to the previous year had improved considerably. Health had improved to 92.8% compared to the previous year’s 81.4% and Dental was at 94.5% compared to 58.8%

·         There had been good improvement within the year with 97.8% of LAC having a Personal Education Plan in place compared to 68.7% at the end of March 2015. 95% had a plan in place which was less than six months old compared to 76% in March 2015.

·         The work of The Evolve Team (CSE) was consistently of a high quality with audit outcomes being assessed as good or better and with 100% visits undertaken.

A number of key areas for further improvement were also identified as follows:

·         The number of Section 47 investigations was high and was the subject of an intensive review at the time of writing the report.

·         The re-referral rate to social care at 27.9% for March and 30.9% for the entire year was high compared to statistical neighbours and national benchmarking data.

·         The timeliness of LAC reviews for the year was 83.3%, which represented a drop on the previous year’s position of 94.9% , and was due to performance issues earlier in the year.

·         Whilst there had been a significant increase in the number of Personal Education Plans during the year, the educational progress of LAC needed to improve significantly.

·         The quality of practice was still not consistently good, which had been supported by the results of audit activity, which showed 25% of case work meeting the high standard set by the authority.

In reflecting on the report, both Commissioner Bradwell and the Cabinet Member highlighted the dramatic improvement in services during the last year, but also referred to the need to continue to improve. I

Commissioner Bradwell agreed:

1.    That the report and accompanying dataset in respect of the 2015/16 year end performance of Children and Young People’ Services be noted.

2.    That the work of staff in Children and Young People’s Services to improve performance and services be acknowledged.