Invitees:

 

Cllr Huw David, Leader

Cllr Hailey Townsend, Cabinet Member, Childrens Social Services and Equalities

Susan Cooper, Corporate Director, Social Services and Wellbeing
Laura Kinsey, Head of Safeguarding and Family Support
Deborah McMillan, Corporate Director – Education and Transformation

Elizabeth Walton-James, Group Manager Safeguarding & Quality Assurance

Mark Lewis, Group Manager Integrated Working & Family Support

The Chairperson invited to the meeting the Invitees for the above item, and it was agreed by Members that Committee went straight into a question and answering session on the report.

 

A Member asked how the Western Bay Partnership Group could be challenged, and if necessary, held to account in respect of their Child Practice Safeguarding Review decisions. He added that information regarding these decisions should also be made available to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for monitoring purposes.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support advised that the Western Bay Safeguarding Board was formed of multi-agency associates, which included representatives from Children’s and Adult Services. This included representatives from these multi-agency groups being represented on this Board.

 

She explained that the Child Practice Reviews were carried out by a Sub-Committee that sat under the Board and therefore any such Reviews were actively considered before being undertaken, and where deemed necessary, by professionals from the key stakeholder groups that made up Western Bay. Safeguarding issues were looked at not only regionally she added, but also as part of local arrangements.

 

The Member whilst acknowledging the above, still considered that Members of the Committee should be made aware of outcomes in respect of important matters such as Child Practice Reviews. This was required, in order to ascertain if services were progressing to the necessary standard, as well as to establish if recommendations proposed were acted upon and/or service improvements were being made.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support further added, that as soon as a Child Practice Review was concluded then it was reported to Members through relevant Committees.

 

A Member  referred to page 35 of the report and paragraph 4.30 that stated that Early Help refers to a way of working, which will ensure that children, young people and families who are at risk or vulnerable to poor outcomes are identified early and that their needs are effectively assessed and met by agencies working together. The aim here being to prevent their escalation rather than to respond only when the difficulty has become so acute to as to demand attention. He felt that the crux here was the various agencies working closely together in order to prevent any tragedies occurring. He hoped that any such close partnership working involved all key stakeholders, for example the Police, Flying Start, Health partners, the local authority, and enabling all information generated in respect of a young person within the system, being closely shared between stakeholders so that they all play their respective parts in  providing support for young people who were looked after. He asked how the Early Help and Permanence Strategy would address issues such as this.

 

The Member referred to page 45 of the report where it listed the ambitions of the Strategy, and in conjunction with this, he referred to page 46 where there were listed key objectives under the sub-heading Key Objectives in Early Help and Permanence Planning Early Help. In relation to bullet point 3 here, where reference was made to managing highly predictable risk better (e.g. parents who have been in care themselves and parents who have previously had children removed), he was hopeful that the Early Help and Permanence Strategy would adequately address issues such as this so that they are avoided in the future.

 

The Head of Strategy Commissioning and Partnerships advised that these had been historic problems, and that one of the aims and objectives of the Strategy was to address these and other areas where improvement could be made in respect of managing arrangements with regard to Looked After Children.

 

Within the last 18 months support services had been reconfigured in order to obtain improvements, including the development of 3 Hubs where employees from key areas of support such as the local authority and the Health Service worked together. A single point of contact had also been introduced for a number of various services and this was located in the main Civic Offices in Bridgend. A single database system called WCCIS was now also being used by key stakeholders such as Health and BCBC, which was also allowing for a more cohesive and joined-up approach in terms of support for Looked After Children. Professionals from all partner agencies had also put in place as part of the Strategy, an Action Plan to look to secure improvements proposed in the support of young people.

 

A Member asked if there were close working links between statutory bodies such as the Police, Safeguarding Unit and schools, amongst others, in respect of the serving of Person Protection Notifications (PPN’s) on young people.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support advised that when the Police were alerted to a worrying situation concerning a child or young person, they were obligated to inform other key support agencies in order that each agency looked to play their part, by actively taking steps and appropriate actions to protect the child/young person from harm at an early stage.

 

The introduction of Multi Agency-Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) would give increased support to both vulnerable young people and adults advised the Head of Safeguarding and Family Support. These would allow for Assessment teams in Adult Social Care and Education to overlap and therefore integrate more effectively than previously.

 

The Corporate Director – Education and Family Support emphasised that integration of elements of both her team and that of the the Corporate – Social Services and Wellbeing was key, and in relation to that, she advised Members that the Chief Executive and herself had attended a meeting this week, to look at a new Plan proposed to tackle both poverty and child mistreatment, where the importance of improved integration of key support services was highlighted. Grant funding would be made available by Welsh Government for this for key support services of the Authority, such as Families First and Flying Start. Welsh Government were encouraging more proactive methods of support and giving financial backing for this, in order to meet the needs of children and young people at an earlier age. This funding would also be made available across a wider area as opposed just to the more deprived areas of the County Borough.

 

A Member referred to pages 30/31 of the report and asked how many children were in receipt of foster care with family members other than their parents. He also asked how many children stay in such a care arrangement for long periods of time, as there was a significant cost element attached to this type of care package, as opposed to them remaining with their parents. He was unclear from the Tables on page 31 of the report of the split in this regard.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support confirmed that she would be able to provide the Member with this information outside of the meeting. She added however, that Social Services were encouraged to take the above course of action by the Courts as well as it also being an approach promoted by the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014. It was often better to place a child in the care of a family member as they were familiar with these individuals. The family members were assessed prior to such a placement being made and they also had to be registered as foster carers in order for this course of action to be pursued. The alternative to this was that the child be placed with an In-House or Independent Foster Carer. It was generally considered that to remain in a family environment as opposed to being placed with an Independent Carer was a more preferential option that came with a better outcome for the child in question.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support further added that a more proactive approach was needed by family members looking after children pursuing Special Guardianship Orders should long term situations such as that mentioned above arise.

 

A Member confirmed that he was concerned with the fact that BCBC were the fourth highest ranking Authority in Wales when it came to numbers of Looked After Children (LAC) and this concern had been shared by another Overview and Scrutiny Committee. The current number was 131 children per a 100,000 population.

 

The Corporate Director - Education and Family Support advised that the Early Help/Early Intervention Hubs were still to be fully developed and that the above figure was high, but this had been compounded by the fact that historically there had been a backlog of LAC cases that had been actively worked upon in order to reduce this number.

 

She added that the Action Plan that supported the Early Help and Permanence Strategy 2016 sets down a series of actions/milestones, some of which related to managing the population of LAC. Paragraph 4.40 of the report outlined a number of steps and proposals by which these could be reduced and therefore Officers were being proactive in attempting to achieve this through these.

 

The Chairperson asked if funding in respect of the aims and objectives of the Strategy, particularly Families First, is both adequate and secure.

 

The Group Manager – Learning Disabilities confirmed that the Early Help and Permanence Strategy would be supported by grant funding equating to 80%. Funding for Connecting Families was core funded however, this was not sufficient and had to be supplemented from Directorate funding where appropriate. Services in respect of Early Help received grant funding in the region of £3 - £3.1m, though the staffing compliment in this area of work were in the main on temporary contracts and there was also insufficient number of staff to adequately support the work that needed to be undertaken.

 

With regard to an earlier question concerning numbers of Looked After Children, the Group Manager Safeguarding and Quality Assurance confirmed that there had been an increase recently of court related work for Social Workers. The picture overall however, for numbers of Looked After Children was approximately the same currently as last year.

 

A Member voiced some concern regarding this, in that whilst other local authorities were having some success in reducing these numbers year on year, BCBC always seemed to have difficulty in consistently achieving this. He asked how BCBC compared to other neighbouring authorities in terms of areas of depravation.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support advised that BCBC were the 4^th highest in terms of Looked After Children numbers, and over the last 5 years we had been anywhere between the 3^rd to 5^th highest. Cardiff University were undertaking research into the numbers of Looked After Children in welsh local authorities. The findings of the Cardiff University arising from this research would be available early next year, and local authorities would be informed if they could take any steps whereby they could possibly reduce these numbers.

 

The Member made a follow-up comment, namely that it may be internal system issues that need to be addressed to reduce numbers of Looked After Children, as oppose to a study by Cardiff University.

 

A Member referred to Table 1 on page 31 of the report where reference was made to there being 49 children on Placement Orders for adoption which was quite a high figure. She asked if there was any connection between this and any high level of teenage pregnancies in the County Borough.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support confirmed that as far as she was aware, there was no correlation between these, though she could investigate this further, by obtaining information regarding the ages of parents whose children were subject of Placement Orders.

 

The Corporate Director – Education and Family Support confirmed that in 2012 and as a result of an inspection by Estyn, an Inspector picked up upon the fact that there had been an instance where there were 9 pregnancies in the same comprehensive school. Due to this, an increased and more robust awareness campaign was introduced at all BCB schools, and since this time, the numbers of pupils pregnant in schools had significantly reduced.

 

A Member asked where the Just @sk premises was presently based.

 

The Group Manager – Integrated Working and Family Support confirmed that this Drop-In facility was now based here in the Civic Offices. He added that as well as this facility, there were further Outreach bases in community settings. The feedback received from young people on this set-up and who required these services he added, was in the main positive.

 

As this concluded debate on this item, the Chairperson thanked the Invitees for attending following which they retired from the meeting.

 

Conclusions:

 

1.                              1    The Committee recommend that the Joint Action Plan be revisited as the evidence for a number of actions do not support the outcomes. For example, Members commented that a Health Visitor part of the front door arrangements, or a new referral form, does not provide evidence that Children and Young People’s needs are identified and met in a more timely manner. Further clarification is needed in order for the action plan to be used and monitored effectively.

 

(2)         2    The Committee reiterated the concerns of the Corporate Resources and Improvement Overview and Scrutiny in relation to the numbers of LAC within the County Borough.  Given the Authority’s social and economic position in Wales, its current numbers of LAC were significantly high in comparison with other LAs, ranking 4^th highest.  The Committee acknowledged the work that was being undertaken by Cardiff University into LAC figures in Wales, and requested that they receive this as soon as it is   available. 

 

3           3    Officers reported that recent checks made by courts had confirmed that all children that are currently Looked After, needed to be Looked After.  Members therefore commented that if this is the case the issues may lie in the preventative work, before children and young people are hitting those levels and agreed to test this on the research findings from Cardiff University.

 

4      The Committee requested further detail as to:

 

a)    whether the numbers of children in foster care as illustrated in the Table on Page 31 of the report are with foster parents or with family members;

b)    how long these children are staying with family members; and

c)    how are the LA encouraging family members to take on a special guardianship orders.

 

5      The Committee requested that they receive further detailed information of the funding for Families First.

 

The Committee requested that they receive feedback gathered from Just Ask service users in relation to their views on the user friendliness of the Civic Office site.