Agenda item

Director of Children's Services (DCS) Update

Minutes:

3a)  Performance Summary March

 

John Readman, Executive Director of Education and Children's Services, Lancashire County Council introduced a presentation which included the performance update.  The performance dashboard was included in the agenda pack and John and Peter Dwyer were in discussion about how reporting would be addressed going forward.

 

3b)  Action Plan following the Ofsted Inspection Monitoring Visit

 

Simon Fisher, MASH, Lancashire County Council and Eric Halford, Lancashire Constabulary gave an update on the final Ofsted Monitoring Visit to MASH on 27 and 28 February 2018.

 

The document provided at Appendix B gave details of what was said by Ofsted, what was being done in response, the next steps and how improvements would be evidenced.

 

Issues raised included the 70% of cases where children are referred by police to the MASH when they did not end up receiving services from Children's Social Care following an assessment.  Eric Halford commented that this was an issue with the quality of the referrals and partly that the organisation does not have a system for collecting the detailed information and so refer in, so as to capture the information.  This was being addressed and hopefully around September there would be an ability to record non-crime related information on a new system when CONNECT was introduced.  At the next Operational Group meeting they would be looking at live cases to gain a better understanding of what information was required on contacts/referrals.

 

The LSCB were currently looking at a single referral form Pan-Lancashire and were delivering training in relation to the thresholds within the Continuum of Need.

 

Eric confirmed that the Police queues was reducing and this had been maintained since March 2018, consistently reducing for the last four weeks.  This still required close monitoring by the MASH Steering Group.

 

There had been an increase in PVPs (Police Vulnerable Person report) from MASH to Early Help and there was a positive response from the Police on the ground on this.

 

Continued engagement with Commissioned Services was needed for their contributions to delivering early help.  Contract and monitoring requirements were needed, to be proactive both internally and externally to ensure that cases were being picked up by the contracted agencies.

 

The following actions were agreed within the MASH plan:

  • Conversion rates of referrals remained low and the Board endorsed the proposal to focus future MASH plans for change on the quality of the Police referrals to MASH so as to reduce the overall number, clarify changes required to the quality of referrals(including Domestic Abuse related)
  • The meeting noted also the work in the LSCB to ensure that the Continuum of need (CON)document outlining the threshold criteria for referrals was being re-launched and publicised so that referrals across the board were accurate and relating to the CON.
  • To apply new quality controls to referrals as part of new measures to Triage referrals and reduce unnecessary assessments
  • Brief the operational MASH group on the changes needed.
  • Build changes into longer term plans
  • Use the MASH and Early help Board to manage the changes required and feedback to the Improvement Board
  • Monitor progress through audit activity

 

3c)  Self Assessment

 

i)  Vision and Ambition – Executive Summary

 

The Board were asked if they were in agreement with the slightly amended version of the Vision – "Children, young people and families in need of help are safe, healthy and supported to achieve'.

 

Resolved:  that the Board agreed the revised wording for the Vision.

 

It was agreed that that the Vision be used in all relevant documents across all Services and by Partners where appropriate.

 

ii)  Self Assessment review

 

The Board were asked to read the draft self-assessment by each Key Judgement and if they felt there was anything that needed to be added to that judgement area, then to write it on a post-it note, which would be collected at the end of the meeting and included in the Self-Assessment document.  The document was a work in progress enabling the service to get a good understanding of strengths and weaknesses.  It would be used as part of any inspection process.and would be maintained in readiness for this. 

 

It was agreed that where there was data to back up the narrative then this should be included. 

 

It was agreed that where there were areas of weakness or concern, then these areas should have a detailed action plan in place to resolve the issues..

 

Action:  Partners were asked to review how their service was described and provide detailed feedback information where necessary.

Action plans to be included in areas where there were identified weakness

Key Judgement 2 – Children Looked After – Education, 3rd bullet point, needs revisiting for clarity around wording.

 

Sally Allen, Josephine Lee and Dave Carr gave a brief overview on the key judgement areas on evidence that we were increasingly effective on and also areas for development and improvement.  These were detailed in the PowerPoint.

 

It was agreed as follows:

 

  • Meeting noted the enlargement of the Police Service teams dedicated to the delivery of support to victims of Child Sexual Exploitation and proposed addition to the SA.
  • Greater focus was proposed on particular groups under the CSE theme
  • Specific mention was requested by Sakthi Karunanithi of the recent result of inspections of substance misuse services
  • Agreed to record in a storyboard the variety of work across agencies relating to the Children Missing from Home and missing education
  • Agreed to develop a briefing concerning and circulate this to leaders being interviewed so that they are familiar with the planned approach
  • The SA will outline current concerns relating to joint  management of health assessments and will propose a sustainable plan for future maintenance of a quality approach
  • The draft SA would be continued to be amended in draft form until it fulfilled requirements and then would be signed of at SMT and tabled at a future Board.
  • Adjustments to it would be ongoing as data and changes progressed and refocused priorities
  • Input from partners would continue to shape the SA.

 

Any further information to be included in the Self-Assessment document should be forwarded to Dave Carr, email dave.carr@lancashire.gov.uk.