Issue - meetings

Presented by: Elaine Shinks, Terri Hacking, Sarah Barraclough, Alice Marquis-Carr and Debra Wilson

To provide an overview of their service areas to the Committee

Sarah Barraclough, Head teacher at Ashton Primary School

Sarah presented information to the Committee on Child Protection and Safeguarding (from a primary school Head teacher's point of view) with questions taken from members.

Sarah discussed some of the ongoing communication issues around children's social care referrals, information sharing and IT systems (functionality of schools portal and data protection). 

Although, where social workers were based in schools, considerable difference had been made to communication and information sharing.

Debra confirmed that a pilot was due to take place in Rossendale to look at the outcomes from referrals which would then be emailed to the safeguarding team in Lancashire Care Foundation Trust (LCFT) and if successful, this would be rolled out further.

Sarah also highlighted the issues around support services which included school nurses and the frequency of meeting attendance.

Debra reported that work was being undertaken by LCFT to look at the appropriateness of school nurses attending meetings which should help.

The Committee was informed that there had been general concerns around supervision for staff who worked with very challenging children which had yet to be embedded in schools, and this continued to be the case. 

Sarah confirmed that these concerns had been raised at the school cluster meetings (for West Preston), however the concerns may not be mirrored at the same level across the county as Ashton Primary School was based in a particularly challenging area.

Terri Hacking, Children's Services Manager for Action for Children

Members were informed that Action for Children was a childcare provider in Lancashire with two children's centres in Burnley.

Across the two children's centres, Terri reported the reach was in excess of more than 1000 children and that they had been required to register those children at the children's centres.  The average was reported to be at 108% (due to transient areas).

Terri highlighted some of the services currently available through the children's centres, which included:

• Identification of families pre-birth through the health agreement in place
• Working closely with children's social care to provide support to families
• Link with Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) through referrals
• Link with families and agencies through Common Assessment Framework (CAF)
• Health visitors support through baby clinics
• Engagement with BME communities through a diverse team of staff
• Working with families through the Continuum of Need levels
• Working with families with special educational needs and neglect

It was noted that children's centres formed a strong element of children's services, which was highlighted in the recent Ofsted inspection.  Terri confirmed that concerns had been raised that this could change as a result of the transformation as services became more targeted (with the exception of health visitors and school nurses).

Debra Wilson, Service Line Clinical Lead for Universal Services, Lancashire Care Foundation Trust (LCFT)

Debra provided an overview to the Committee of the Universal Services within LCFT which included:

• 18 Child and Family Health Service teams

• Family Nurse Partnership in Preston and Burnley providing an advanced parenting programme
• Immunisation and vaccination teams (for school  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5