Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from County Councillor Jennifer Mein.

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.

None disclosed.

To be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

The minutes of the meeting held on 17 January 2013 were agreed as an accurate record and signed by the Chair.

Michael Walder, Senior Policy and Performance Officer, introduced the quarterly corporate performance monitoring report for quarter 3 of 2012/13 (October 2012 – December 2012).

Michael explained that the Quarter 3 monitoring report highlighted 5 indicators that have missed their annual target or are currently forecast to miss their year-end 2012/13 targets. These 5 indicators correspond to 14% of the total number in the scorecard and are:

·  The proportion of children looked after achieving 5 GCSEs A*-C including English and maths.

·  The percentage of people who would benefit from receiving services via self directed support who have personal budgets.

·  The rate of youth re-offending.

·  The number of carers receiving assessments or reviews

·  The number of working days lost to sickness absence per full time equivalent (FTE) employee within Lancashire County Council.

A Recovery Plan has been produced for each of these indicators.

The Recovery Plans for the first 3 indicators listed above were presented to the Committee at Appendix A to this report, whilst the Recovery Plans for the other 2 measures were presented and agreed at previous meetings of the Cabinet Committee.

Performance Indicator 1: Increase the proportion of children looked after achieving 5 GCSEs grades A*-C including English and Maths from 11.9% to 18%

Sue Parr, Manager (Primary) and Associate Headteacher Virtual School

Alternative and Complementary Education and Residential Services (ACERS)

gave an update on this indicator and explained that the current performance for 2012 was 12.9%.

Sue explained that there are fluctuations in the year on year figure as the cohort that sit GCSEs each year is relatively small.  Sue also highlighted some of the other performance indicators relating to the attainment of Children Looked After (CLA).

In 2012, the performance /GCSE results of Lancashire Children Looked After at Year 11 (age 16) improved on 2011 results by an average of nearly 4% (over all GCSE achievements), and were better than had been predicted by Fischer Family Trust (FFT provides predicted pupil GCSE grades based on prior attainments and achievements) given the profile of needs of the 93 young people who were tracked.

Similar progress was made by Lancashire CLA  who are educated out of the county, though substantially more CLA educated in Lancashire achieved 5 GCSE grades  A* -C than CLA educated out of county.

Sue also presented data analysis from the Virtual School for CLA - Report on Attainments and Achievements of CLA 2011- 2012 (first year of collation and analysis) regarding the influences and barriers associated with Year 11 CLA educational  attainment and achievement as follows

a)  Special Educational Needs

·  25% of the 93 pupils had identified Special Educational Needs and were not predicted or entered for 5 GCSEs +English and Maths.

·  11 pupils were not entered for any GCSEs.

·  All CLA pupils experiencing Special Educational Needs made excellent progress in relation to the  individual educational targets set at their SEN Annual Statement Review or Individual Education Plan Review. 

b)  Stability of Care Placement

·  Despite significant  proactive work across all services ,58% of all Year  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Michael Walder, Senior Policy and Performance Officer, presented the report. 

Michael explained that the customer experience project was designed to offer Lancashire County Council services the facility to better understand the needs, experiences and aspirations of their service users to enable service improvements. 

The individual research projects are undertaken by the county council's graduate management trainees.  The programme is now in Wave 5 with approximately 40 services having undertaken research projects. 

This current Wave of the programme involves 11 research projects that are scheduled to be undertaken and completed between December 2012 & July 2013. 

Michael asked that the Cabinet Committee review the list of 11 customer experience project currently being undertaken/planned and advise which they would like to report back to future meetings.

Resolved: The Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement noted the report and agreed that the following four projects be reported back to future meetings:

·  Shared Lives Services

·  Older People's Service

·  Environmental Services

·  Children and Parent Support Service

An item of Urgent Business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the minutes, the Chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Members' intention to raise a matter under this heading.

None.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee will be held on Tuesday 16 April 2013 at 2.00 pm in Cabinet Room B, County Hall, Preston.

It was noted that the next meeting of the Cabinet Committee will be held on Tuesday 16 April 2013 at 2:00pm in Cabinet Room B, County Hall, Preston.