Issue - meetings

A report was presented by Donna Talbot, Head of Service, Business Intelligence, providing an overview of performance activity across the Council for Quarter 4 of 2017/18.

Education and Children's Services

It was reported that retention of staff in children's social care had improved, including both newly qualified staff and experienced staff choosing to remain with Lancashire.  There were fewer first time entrants to the Youth Justice System and Lancashire remained lower than all comparator groups, although our offending rate was slightly above the national average.  This was due to the more complex cases being those that now come to the attention of the youth justice system. The Committee noted that absence levels across all educational settings remained low and that Lancashire was in the top quartile nationally.

Retention of newly qualified staff was improving and the proportion of social workers with over 3 years experience had improved, indicating that experienced staff were also being retained.

County Councillor Driver expressed concern that 25% of children's social care assessments completed during the year had taken over 45 days to complete.  Dave Carr, Head of Service – Policy, Information and Commissioning (Start Well) confirmed that this had been highlighted in the Ofsted self-assessment and that every district now had a duty team in place to address this.

Growth, Environment and Community Services

It was reported that it was taking longer to repair street lights and highways defects.  Phil Barrett, Director of Community Services reported that there had been problems with the new HAMS system, the long winter had stretched resources and that there had been issues with the operation/familiarisation of new equipment.  County Councillor Iddon wished to point out that staff were working hard to make the new system fit for purpose and that no repairs could be done for 3 months, due to the bad winter.  The figures provided in the report were based on defects repaired within 20 working days.  It was noted that had this been figures for defects repaired within 30 days, the figure would have been 90%.

Phil Barrett confirmed that staff were always encouraged to report any highway/street lighting issues and that they would be reminded again about the importance of this.

Libraries and Museums

The Committee noted that the service was currently developing a range of new indicators to cover the offers which featured in the library strategy.

Adult Services and Public Health

It was reported that the use of reablement for older adults had continued to increase, with both improved take up and effectiveness.  Significant progress had been made in reducing the number of delayed discharges from hospital attributable to adult social care, in that the figure had gone down by 43% since last March.  Admissions to residential care were still higher than comparator groups although improvements were being made.  The Committee noted that the proportion of people having health checks continued to increase, and that figures in Lancashire were better than nationally.

The number of reablement referrals had doubled in 2017/18 compared to 2016/17  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5