Agenda item

Alisa Barr, Head of Service, and Deborah Johnson, Performance Assurance Manager, presented the 2017/18 year-end performance under the key themes for Children and Young People’s Services

 

Due to the comprehensive nature of the report, summaries of ‘good and improved performance’ and ‘areas for improvement’ were reported provided together with a more detailed report for each Service Area i.e. Early Help, Children’s Social Care and Education and Skills Section.

 

Performance had been considered against local targets, including associated ‘RAG’ tolerances.  They were reviewed annually and set in consideration of available national and statistical neighbour benchmarking data, recent performance levels and Rotherham’s

 

What is working well

-        Satisfaction rates for Early Help were consistently high with 100% of families completing exit surveys in March rating the Early Help intervention they received as Good or Excellent.  The Service had achieved a total annual performance of 96% overall

-        Annual performance showed that Rotherham’s local total engagement rate was high (92.2%) with 59.7% of families contacted and engaged within 3 working days

-        During the year partners had completed 15.9% of the total Early Help Assessments (6.5% 2016/17)

-        Troubled Families’ target of engaging with 633 families during the year had been exceeded (1,073 by the end of March, 2018)

-        96% of children living in the 30% most deprived super output areas were registered with a Children’s Centre of which 68% were actively engaged

-        Primary attendance rate was currently 95.7% compared to 96% nationally and secondary was 94.5% compared to 94.6% nationally

-        Youth Justice Board statistics showed that Rotherham had made a positive decrease of 49.6% in the number of First Time Entrants from the same period last year.  Re-offending rates had also decreased by 6.6% (29.2%)

-        5.6% decrease in the number of contacts with Children’s Social Care, however, the referral rate had increased from 26.6% to 28.6%

-        The re-referral rate had made incremental improvements (23.1%), a 4.4% decrease on the 2016/17 outturn evidencing that casework practice was significantly improving

-        Provisional performance in relation to assessment timeliness was 78%, a 7.3% decline on the previous year, however, the volume of assessments completed had increased by 32%

-        Less than 1% of children ceasing a Child Protection Plan (CPP) were subject to that Plan for 2 years or more.  At the end of the reporting year there was only one child being supported through a CPP for more than 2 years and only 10 who had been on a Plan for more than 18 months

-        The Looked After Children’s Virtual School had ensured 97% of eligible Looked After Children had a Personal Education Plan

-        Rotherham’s Care Leavers Service graded Outstanding by Ofsted in the 2017 re-inspection of services

-        The number of children living in a family based placement remained relatively stable at 82.4% (81.1% at the end of March 2017)

-        Rotherham was top quartile performer for timeliness of adoptions with the adopted training package recognised by Ofsted as an area of excellence

-        Performance in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile for a Good Level of Development continued to rise and be above the national average

-        64.0% of pupils met the expected standard combined Reading, Writing and Mathematics (RW&M) in Key Stage 1 assessments (59.8% in 2016/17) and improvement of 4.2% and placed Rotherham above the national average

-        61% of pupils met the expected standards in R,W&M with regards to Key Stage 2 (53.9% in 2016) an improvement of 71.% and in line with the national average

-        At Key Stage 4 the Rotherham Progress 8 score was +0.06, 0.09 above the national average score of -0.03

 

What are we worried about

-        85.3% of Early Help Contacts triaged within 5 working days, whilst below the 100% target, was consistent with last year’s outturn

-        212 Payment by Results claims submitted for the Families for Change programme taking the total for the Programme to 292.  Whilst a significant improvement, it remained behind at this stage of the programme compared to other authorities

-        Annual outturn figure of 3.3% for Not in Education, Employment or Training against the local target of 3.1%

-        Children subject to Child Protection had increased from 370 to 656 and Looked After Children 488 to 624 which equated to increases of 77% and 29% respectively

-        The provision outturn position for the timeliness of Initial Child Protection Conferences was 83.9%, 7.1% lower than last year

-        Compliance against the local CPP visit standard was 89.1% which was less than 1% below last year’s outturn position

-        Decline in the timeliness of CPP Review Conferences of 94.6% compared to 98.6%

-        Compliance for plans in date had seen an outturn position of 82.7% for eligible Children in Need, 86.7% for children subject to CPP and 89.7% for LAC

-        Increase in the last 3 months in the number of LAC who were experiencing multiple placement moves.  The provisional figure was 13.1% (81 out of 618 children) was an increase on 11.9% for 2016/17

-        LAC Health and Dental assessment performance was low although there was a suggestion that there was still some time lag in inputting data onto Liquid Logic by Social Workers

-        14.8% of pupils achieved English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) at grade 5 or above, 4.9% below the national average (all schools) and 6.6% (state funded schools).  17.0% achieve Ebacc at grade 4 or above, 4.9% below the national average (all schools) and 6.9% (state funded schools)

-        A decline in the proportion of children and young people attending a “good or better” school of 2% to 84.0% at the end of December 2017

-        85.3% were triaged within 5 working days for Early Help Contacts which was maintained performance against last year

-        58.7% of families had been contacted and engaged within the 3 working days timescale with a further 32.5% being engaged with outside of the timescales.  The total annual outturn was 92.2%

-        Of the 68 Early Help Assessments in scope for completion in March 2018, 45.6% were completed within the target timeframe

-        Progress and support for partners to complete Early Help Assessments was ongoing.  By the end of March 2018 15.9% of EHAs in 2017/18 had been completed by partners which was a significant improvement on last year

-        Primary and secondary schools completed 67.5% of partner EHAs with the remaining partners (including Health) completing the remaining 32.5%

-        Children centres’ registration rates during 2017/18 was 91% against a 95% target.  However, performance in the 30% most deprived Super Output Area neighbourhoods was better with 96% of children registered against the 95% target overall

 

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

 

-          A Performance Sub-Group had been established to scrutinise performance on a quarterly basis

 

-          Clarification was sought on the eligibility for the Looked After Children for an Personal Education Plan. 

 

-          Eligibility was considered as opposed to all LAC children as a proportion of them were below the age of 3 years and not in education.  The Authority had chosen to have a Personal Education Plan (PEP) for all children over the age of 3 years that attended provision.  Sometimes there were very good reasons why a child of 3 years was not attending provision i.e. if moving placement and delayed the start until in a more stable provision but if a child attended school and was of school age they would have a PEP in place

 

-          There was confidence that the 97% of eligible LAC who had a PEP was correct as it was closely monitored.  Every time a child underwent a LAC Review the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) would be checking that a copy was available

 

-          The 15 children without  PEP at the end of 2017/18 were known, a number of which had only recently entered the care system

 

-          Every child who came into care was allocated an IRO.  The rise seen in LAC presented some significant challenges but the Directorate was clearly aware of its statutory duties to ensure every child had its review in the timescale required.  Other experienced officers without caseloads were  being utilised to provide additional capacity in an effort to maintain as best performance as possible

 

-          There were a number of plans in motion currently one of which was Right Child Right Care which attempted to ensure that the Service was actively identifying and moving in an appropriately timely manner any child who should be safely, and could be, safely discharged from care so as making a child’s time in care no longer than it should be.  That involved discussions with foster carers and SGO, exploration of the extended family who perhaps in the past had not been in a position to care for the child and review all opportunities for the rehabilitation of older children

 

-          Members of the Senior Leadership team were employing significant rigour around the review of decision making on every child coming into care to absolutely ensure that no alternative support could be offered to prevent them from coming into care

 

-          Placement disruptions were not increasing.  Recent evidence was showing greater stability for LAC.  There was a pilot programme of intensive intervention programmes through the internal Therapeutic Team with evidence of the young people who had accessed the programme being extremely positive

 

-          It was hoped that the figure for the placements lasting more than 2 years would decrease which would mean that more young people were being supported through to greater independence

 

-          There was concern about the level of need and demand on services.  A Head of Service and an Assistant Director had been put in place to review all children coming into care/subject of Protection Plans to provide assurance that those decisions were the right decisions.  The situation had stabilised, however, the numbers had risen in the last 2 months due to a large number of sibling groups being taken into care

 

-          It had been anticipated that the fortnightly performance meetings instigated during the improvement journey would cease, however, they have been retained to keep oversight.  It was known that some of the recorded visits were not being completed within the preferred timescales, however, due to the performance meetings, it was known it was a recording issue

 

-          New methodology was being employed for Social Workers which took time to capture the information in different ways

 

-          Whilst the numbers of CPPs had risen, the children were subject to them for shorter periods of time

 

-          There were a number of factors that made Rotherham’s situation unique e.g. Ofsted, Casey, Jay.  It was known that the Authority had families whose children had received a service from the Directorate previously but not received it at the right time and their needs were more complex and complicated now.  There were also significant ongoing Police Operations which added complexity to the environment the Directorate was operating in as well as a Complex Abuse Enquiry in the Borough

 

The Chair thanked Officers for the report.

 

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

 

(2)  That the Cabinet Member attends the September Select Commission meeting to enable further discussion on the year end outturn.