Decision details

The Chair welcomed County Councillor Mrs Susie Charles, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Schools; Neil Kissock, Director of Financial Services; John Readman, Interim Executive Director of Education and Children's Services; Dave Carr, Head of Service Policy, Information and Commissioning (Start Well); Rachel Blundell, Financial Intelligence Manager (Start Well); Charlotte Ennis, Wellbeing, Prevention and Early Help Manager; to the meeting.

The report presented set out all of the savings proposals as agreed by the Cabinet at its meetings between 14 September and 18 January 2018 inclusive that were relative to both the Children's Services and Education Scrutiny Committees terms of reference for consideration.

Future items for Scrutiny review during 2018/19 included:

·  Children's Social Care (CSC) – Fostering and Residential. Reassurance requested around the suggested impact of potential future pressures on the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).

·  SEND Service – Information, Advice and Support (IAS) Team. Update requested from the agreement to a job evaluation and function review of the recently merged Information, Advice and Support Team.

·  SCAYT+- consultation outcome from the proposed decision  to redirect the work of SCAYT so that it generated income by providing specialist multi-agency assessment and intervention to children and families who attracted funding from the Adoption Support Fund. This could be potentially be a 2 year saving unless the adoption support fund was extended.

·  Youth Offending Team (YOT) – consultation outcome from the proposed decision to complete a full service restructure to enable a 25% reduction in LCC's contribution to the budget.

·  Children and Family Wellbeing Service – consultation outcome from the proposed decision to reduce the non-staffing budget by £0.750m and the staffing budget by £0.500m and to reconfigure remaining current staffing structure.

Resolved: That;

  i.  Matters from the Cabinet Members budget proposals for 2018/19 to form the basis for scrutiny review during 2018/19 be determined.

  ii.  All matters determined by Members be compiled from the minutes of the meeting and form part of the work planning session in readiness for the 2018/19 municipal year.