Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from County Councillor Tim Ashton.

Members are asked to consider any Personal / Prejudicial Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

None declared.

To be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

Resolved: That the minutes of the meeting held on 31 May 2012 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

Bob Stott, Director of Universal and Prevention Services, and Rod Norton, Strategic Lead for Early Intervention/Support, (both Directorate for Children and Young People) presented a report setting out progress around the Early Support and Intervention (ESI) Strategy within Lancashire.

A report "Proposals for the use of £5 Million One-off Funding to Improve Safeguarding and Outcomes for Looked After Children and Young People" was agreed by the Leader of the County Council in January 2010.

The ESI Strategy was agreed by the Lancashire Children's and Young People's Trust in June 2010. ESI relates to work which will increase resilience within families and allow work at an early stage to reduce the number of families for whom a referral to statutory services is deemed necessary.

Of this, £1.73m was allocated to support the co-ordination of ESI across the 12 Locality Children's District Trusts (LCTP's). A Strategic Lead for ESI was appointed in June 2010 along with the team structure, which came later, as described in the Executive Summary of the report presented with all team members on a fixed term two year contract from April 2011. A further £600,000 was allocated to allow ESI pump priming within the LCTP's. Therefore, in total, Lancashire County Council has allocated £2.33m to support ESI between 2010 and 2013.

Progress to Date (June 2012)

Rod Norton explained how ESI was being implemented by "Working Together in Lancashire" and explained how the approach taken was to work differently in order to:

•  Reduce duplication

•  Reduce dependence

•  Reduce cost

•  Reduce and manage risk

•  Manage demand and expectation against funding.

Rod also highlighted other different ways of assessing needs including:

•  Strengths based (what can, not what can’t do)

•  Child and family centred/focussed (looking at whole)

•  Earlier support (proactive)

•  Evidence based (what works)

•  Sustainable and whole system change (mainstream not grant funding)

Working together with a number of partners has involved a number of aspects including:

•  Sharing locations

•  Sharing ownership

•  Sharing pathways (tell us once)

•  Sharing commissioning and delivery

•  Sharing information

Rod also highlighted a number of Early Support Developments, including:

•  Creation of a Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)

•  Creation of Multi Agency Early Support Hubs based on Children’s Centres and Youth Zones

•  Refresh of the CAF (Common Assessment Framework) and CoN (Continuum of Need)

•  Refresh of ‘Request for Service’ pathways

•  Redesign of Commissioning structures and processes

•  Refresh of Information Sharing Agreements

•  Introduction of  Management Information Software

Rod summarised his presentation by explaining that a countywide approach had been taken and that the strategy was district based and was available in four districts now, and in the remaining eight districts by September 2012. Rod also advised that the strategy encompassed the "working together with families" project led by Gail Porter and the potentially nationally funded work (possibly up to £8.7m over three years) that had identified a number of specific families to work with and help. 

Committee members welcomed  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

Mike Heaton, 16-19 Manager, Directorate for Children and Young People, presented the report and explained that the report provided an update on performance of the European Social Fund Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) Project 2011/13 covering the validated data period of 1 September 2011 to 20 March 2012.

Mike explained that the Service aim is to reduce the number of young people, aged 14-18 (or up to 25 for young people with Learning Difficulties and Disabilities) in the Lancashire sub-region, who are at risk of becoming, or are, NEET.  This is in order to improve their education, employability and personal skills and to enable them to successfully progress into work or further learning or training.

In November 2010, Lancashire County Council facilitated a 'Partnership' responding to an invitation to tender by the Skills Funding Agency and were successful. In terms of funding Mike explained that the total contract value is £3,558,067.00 targeting a minimum of 1,621 young people over three years.  The number of young people to be targeted is prescribed by the Skills Funding Agency.  To help put this into context the number of young people NEET, in Lancashire, in September 2011 (the start of this ESF Programme) was 2,295 and in March 2012 (the reporting date of this report) it was 2,612. The 'Partnership' agreed to the funding methodology allocating resources broken down to district level using available NEET cohort data (as at December 2010).

Mike highlighted progress to date as follows:

Mike highlighted areas of good performance and also any barriers to performance.

The Committee welcomed the presentation and report and members of the Committee expressed their thanks for the regular updates on performance levels received.  The Committee asked if some case studies could be brought to a future Committee meeting to show some examples.

Resolved:

The Committee:

(i)  Noted the report and provided comments as appropriate.

(ii)  Requested that a further update report be submitted around September/October 2012.

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.

There were no items of urgent business to be considered.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee will be held on Thursday 30 August 2012 at 2.00 pm in Cabinet Room B, County Hall, Preston.

The Cabinet Committee noted that its next meeting would be held on Thursday 30 August 2012 at 2.00pm in Cabinet Room 'B', County Hall, Preston.