Issue - meetings

Umer Khonat, Business Intelligence Analyst, Business Intelligence Team

To receive the Annex 'A' performance data report for children in care and care leavers and receive any issues/comments arising from the report.

Umer Khonat, Intelligence Analyst, presented the Children's Services Performance update for December 2019.

A heat map was presented to the Board which was full of useful statistics that the Board can utilise and challenge services if required.  The heat map showed information relating to assessments, contacts and referrals, Section 47s, Children in Need, Child Protection, Children Looked After, Care Leavers and adoption information.  This data was also presented to Ofsted and the thresholds contained within it had been agreed by management and were comparators with our North West neighbours and England.  Information was broken down by districts and information was presented in a way that highlighted the positive elements and also the pinch points and again this could be seen clearly within the districts in what was working well and maybe what was not working so well and needed to be challenged and good practice shared amongst districts.  Data quality meetings were also held and Heads of Service in Children's Services come together with the Director of Children's Social Care to try to prevent any blockages in the system and to ensure that areas that were showing as amber, work progressed to ensure they did not run into issues and become red on the RAG rating system.

There is also a new data tool that will make the findings more interactive and this is called PowerBi.  Umer agreed to demonstrate this new tool at a future meeting.

It was reported that as at December 2019 Lancashire was good at the following:

Re-referrals

Re-referral rate 20.1% - December 2019.

Assessments

Timeliness – 6 month rate 85% (on par with national rate), improvement from 78% in 2017/18.  December performance 87%.

Children Protection Plans

1007 (40.3 per 10,000), reduced from 1329 since December 2018, the rate now remains below the regional (56.5) and statistical neighbour (48.3) and the national averages (43.7 per 10,000).

Children Looked After 

Short term placement stability – 7.8%.

Visits in Timescale – 87%.

Repeat Children Looked After - 9%.

Number of Children Looked After placed over 20 miles from home outside the local authority boundary – 11%.

Placements

Increase in Fostering to 61.7%.

Reduction in Supported accommodation to 6.8%.

Care Leavers

In Suitable Accommodation (19-21 Years) – 89.9%.

Private Fostering

Visits within timescale– 63%.

Caseloads

Average caseload – 16.7 for all social workers (November 2019).

Highlighted below were the areas that Lancashire needed to improve/challenge on as of December 2019:

Section 47/Initial Child Protection Conferences (ICPC)

Section 47/Initial Child Protection Conferences within timescale - 62%.

Children in Need (CiN)

Visits within timescale – 59%.

Child Protection (CP)

Visits within timescale – 81%.

Repeat Child Protections in 12 months (7.4%) and ever (26%) - off target.

Children Looked After (CLA)

Rate of Children Looked After per 10,000 – 84.5.

Children Looked After with an up to date Personal Education Plan – 79.2%.

Health Assessments performance - 78.3%.

Dental Assessments performance - 69.5%.

Missing episodes interview completed within 3 days – 54.6% (improved from 44.8% since October 18).

Strengths and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6