Invitees

Deborah McMillan, Corporate Director – Children

Cllr Huw David, Cabinet Member Children & Young People

Colin Turner, Head of Safeguarding and Family Support

The Corporate Director – Children presented a report to update the Committee on the progress made to develop a Strategy to define the activity around the early intervention and prevention services in Bridgend.  The Strategy for Bridgend, known as “Early Help in Bridgend”, was attached at Appendix 1 to the report.

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships explained the concept of early intervention, which basically consists of local practitioners from across different services, working together to respond to incidents which require multi-agency responses so that they are able to effectively provide an all-encompassing service for vulnerable children and families.  These multi-agency community teams would be able to identify difficulties and intervene before those difficulties reached the point where it could seriously affect the wellbeing and development of a child.  Each family would be allocated a key Family Support Worker who would be the main contact and support for the family throughout, continuing to coordinate the family needs for as long as support is required. 

She informed Members that considerable investment had been put into early intervention over the last few years; part of which involved moving the support services into hubs within the Borough so that services are community based and more easily accessible.  She advised that detailed reports would be available for Members in the next few weeks to explain the Strategy in more depth, including some background and case studies set against the levels of need.

The Committee queried why there did not appear to be any connection with the Western Bay collaboration.

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships confirmed that there were good links within Western Bay, with the potential in the future to roll out some initiatives that had already proved successful in Swansea.  She explained that the Directorate was in the process of being restructured, with all services reporting to one Group Manager instead of several Managers and Heads of Service as was the case before.  This move would result in significant financial savings, mainly in the management structure of the teams, which will preserve early intervention services.  She stressed that if the Authority were to disinvest from those services, it would place more pressure on the LAC service in the future.

The Corporate Director – Children explained how the two strategies (Early Intervention and Prevention Strategy and the LAC Placements and Permanency Strategy) would work together, helping to meet the needs of families with complex needs by early intervention.  She advised that they were working to manage demand as the Directorate was now expected to find an extra £5m in savings, which equates to a third of the controllable budget for the Children’s Directorate.  She advised that with the whole reorganisation of the Directorate, the multi-agency community teams would be able to devise individual holistic plans, personalised for each child and their family

The Committee enquired about the makeup of the hubs and how they would prove more sustainable than if services remained centralised.

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships advised that the hubs were already in the development stage, based in three locations: Pyle Life Centre; Coleg Cymunedol Y Dderwen and the East Hub will be at Civic.  Various support services would be based within those hubs and Officers were currently going through an exercise to establish how to develop them. 

The Committee asked about the financial implications on the budget for Early Intervention in view of the Directorate having to find approximately £8m in savings.  The Committee further asked for details of the £1.5m unidentified savings, and asked where that was coming from. 

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships explained that most of the budget for Early Intervention was grant funded, made up of various grants including permanent grants for programmes such as Flying Start and Families First, which could fund many of the support services.  As well as core funding, there was also the Integrated Family Support grant, which is a year-on-year budget.  Focus was to stop chasing short term grants and look at more stable long terms ones.

The Cabinet Member – Children and Young People advised that Flying Start, Families First and Integrated Family Support were the flagship projects of the Welsh Government, introduced during the current term of office.  He therefore did not anticipate any reductions in funding to those programmes during the current term of office, and on the contrary expected a continuous expansion to Flying Start.  The Chairperson commented that the Children’s Minister’s resent statement supported this.

The Committee asked what actions were being taken within the Strategy to involve the wider sector and voluntary organisations such as youth clubs.

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships advised that it was limited at the moment; however the intention was to engage with the volunteer sector in all areas and work closely with the Youth Support services, particularly around the restructure.  It was also the intention to consult with partners, including health colleagues, in how to populate the action plan.

One Member was concerned where the funds would come from, should there be an over-spend in the Directorate’s budget again this year.

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support advised that the Authority had a significant number of LAC and there were a number of children in Bridgend who were not achieving their potential.  He informed Members that there were two aims:  to prevent children suffering harm and entering the care system and a permanency plan for LAC.  For the Strategy to work successfully, it requires engagement from all professionals, as with the right family support, some of those children could be returned to their families, and once the Strategy is embedded, it was hoped to reduce the number of LAC.  However, he stressed that he could not predict what was in the future and gave Members an example of three children from one family within the Borough who were taken into care this week for their safety, just as the number of LAC was reducing.

The Corporate Director – Children advised that at this time of year the Directorate was looking towards next year’s budget requirements.  She highlighted that there were sometimes pressures in relation to unexpected costs which affect the budget, such as new legislation around pay scales for night time workers working in the Authority’s residential homes.  She informed Members that they were making strides to increase the number of in-house foster carers, as foster places within the private sector cost twice as much.  There had been some success during recent months with 122 independent foster placements being reduced to 100.  The other pressure was in Court proceedings, as children very often had therapeutic needs where specialist care is required; however there were processes in place to ensure best value from such providers.

          Conclusions:

·           Members requested that the links to the Western Bay project through the IFSS are made more explicit within the Strategy.

·           The Committee requested that more consideration is given towards the potential future savings from Early Intervention and Prevention work and that this be incorporated into the action plan.  Members agreed they would be considering the financial savings when the item is revisited.

·           Members expressed concern over the action plan for the Strategy in that it did not contain direct links to outcomes, or have any clear actions that could be monitored and used as evaluative evidence.  The Committee therefore requested that priority be given to the development of local indicators and outcomes and that these are clearly laid out and agreed by all partner agencies under the strategy to ensure that there are defined priorities and targets for all to meet and monitor.

·           The Committee requested that they revisit the item in 12 months’ time, at which point they requested that they receive evaluative evidence of outcomes from the Strategy including any impact on the numbers of LAC within the County Borough and any financial savings that have been achieved through preventative work.