Decision details

Young People's Feedback on the Hertfordshire Model

Young people had looked into Hertfordshire County Council's Social Care system and commented that it sounded positive and that it could benefit a lot of people, however, wondered how it would be embedded in Lancashire.  Young people felt that this would be a huge overall of all the different teams within Lancashire County Council's Children's Social Care system and wondered how big in comparison Lancashire was to Hertfordshire.  Following research on Children's Social Care statistics between the two Councils young people came to the following conclusions:

·  Although the population of the two counties was similar, the size of Lancashire was far bigger.

·  Lancashire also had a far greater number of young people accessing support from social care.

·  Could this mean a new way of working was more difficult to carry out?

·  Young people would like to see any changes be successful and with the right planning, if Hertfordshire could do it, why could Lancashire not?

The Board were informed that the figures the young people had researched were from 2017/18.

Sharon Hubber, Director of Children's Social Care replied to the young people's findings by informing them that Hertfordshire had implemented the family safeguarding model three years ago when their numbers were a lot higher, than those researched in 2017/18.  A front door reduction of 40% had now been noted at Hertfordshire since the Family Safeguarding Model was implemented which was a significant reduction and they were, where Lancashire was now.  Lancashire would want to see a noticeable difference within three years of implementation also.  The route out of care in Hertfordshire was a lot quicker than Lancashire was administering currently.

Some of the key principles of the model was to:

·  Support families.

·  Multi-agencies working together to support families and keep families together.

·  Work in a more supportive way to prevent children coming into care.

Working with families to help strengthen and support them would be carried out differently and social workers would have more time to dedicate to spend with families.  Social workers would need the right amount of cases to allow them time to support families and processes would change to help reduce time taken with administrative work ie new electronic notebooks which could be used whilst mobile, which would aide a more efficient way of working.

The Chair queried as to why children in care figures were rising in Lancashire and continued to do so?  The Board were informed that this was a national trend and was down to poverty, osterity, organisations that had demised who supported Local Authorities, inadequate Ofsted reports and risk averse Authorities which all added to the trajectory rising across the Country including Lancashire.

Resolved:  That an item be placed on the next agenda to give the Board a more informed overview on the Hertfordshire model.

Care Leavers Christmas Gifts

The Chair reminded the Board that the Care Leavers Christmas gifts collection was running until 6 December 2019 with various drop off points across the County.

Young Peoples Involvement in Future Corporate Parenting Boards

It was raised by the young people, that they had recently seen their time allocation on the agenda at Board meetings reduced significantly, after they used to have half of the meeting to discuss their issues.

It was noted that the young people's involvement in the meetings were valued and a vital role of the Board and there were plans in place to look at the Board as a whole and how the meetings could be improved.  Further discussions would be taking place at the next agenda setting meeting and there would be further discussion at the next Board meeting in January 2020.

Health

Health colleagues invited young people to challenge them at future Board meetings on issues they wanted to raise.