Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Alice Marquiss-Carr.

To note the appointment of County Councillor Gina Dowding as Chair of the Committee and County Councillor Susie Charles as Deputy Chair.

Resolved: Noted the appointment of County Councillor Gina Dowding as Chair and County Councillor Susie Charles as Deputy Chair.

Clarification was sought around the role of the Children's Services Scrutiny Committee in relation to the Health Scrutiny Committee.  It was confirmed that any health services relating to children and young people would now fall under the remit of this Committee.

It was noted that a Youth Council representative had been requested and officers awaited confirmation.  The Committee were also informed that all other representation outlined in the terms of reference and membership had been confirmed.

Resolved: Noted the terms of reference and membership of the Committee.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

Terri Hacking and Debra Wilson declared a general interest relating to their roles within children's services.

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.

Presented by: Wendy Broadley

The draft work plan was circulated with the agenda for discussion and recommendations.

Due to the number of transformation projects taking place across many of the children's services areas, it was recommended that it would not be beneficial to discuss these service areas until they had been completed.  However, it was noted that it would be beneficial to look at the services which were currently working well to ensure that there was no reduction in the quality of services.

The Committee were informed that information received from Louise Taylor indicated that the Youth Offending Team (YOT) and the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) services were due for an Ofsted inspection.  The Committee discussed the benefits of looking at these two services through sub group work to be further clarified at the next meeting in April.

It was recommended that the two sub groups could utilise the two meeting dates currently in the diaries for June and July for this Committee if needed and a brief report outlining the aims, information and outcomes to the September meeting of the full Committee.

It was then recommended that the Fostering and Adoption service could be discussed at the September meeting.

Resolved:

1. Committee noted the report and the draft work plan
2. Work plan to be updated following discussions held
3. Officers from SEND and YOT services to attend the meeting in April to give Committee overview of services
4. Review the information which has previously been presented to the Education Scrutiny Committee
5. Volunteers for the two sub groups to Wendy Broadley prior to the next meeting
6. Meeting dates booked for June and July to be utilised for the sub group work if required
7. Next full Committee meeting to take place in April and then to meet on a quarterly basis with the following meeting in September

The Committee's attention was drawn to forthcoming decisions and decisions recently made by the Cabinet and individual Cabinet Members in areas relevant to the remit of the Committee, in order that this could inform possible future areas of work.

Resolved: Committee noted the report.

There were no items of urgent business declared.

The Chair informed members that the Children's Services Scrutiny Committee have been approached to take part in an e-learning pilot which included a package of online training for Safeguarding Level 1, Safeguarding Level 2 and Child Sexual Exploitation.  It was explained that an email from Catherine Earnshaw would be circulated with further detail in due course.

Resolved: Committee agreed to take part in the e-learning pilot

Next meeting of the Committee to be held on the 20^th April 2016 at 4.30pm, Cabinet Room C, County Hall

Next meeting of the Committee to be held on the 20^th April at 4.30pm, Cabinet Room C, County Hall