Agenda item

Donna Talbot, Head of Business Intelligence, attended and presented a report setting out details of corporate performance monitoring for the 4^th Quarter of 2015/16 (January to March).

An overview of the Quarter 4 (Q4) budget position was provided at Appendix 'A' so performance could be viewed within the associated financial context.

It was noted that the latest Ofsted Post Inspection update was provided at Appendix 'B' and updates would continue to feature in these reports going forward.

It was reported that regular corporate monitoring of performance across the authority is continuing, with the production of quarterly reports and analysis of corporate performance. Quarterly Quality of Service reports against the themes of Start Well, Live Well and Age Well have been produced for Q4 2015/16, giving an overview of performance against agreed headings and parameters.

The key highlights were noted and included:

Start Well

·  The Child Protection Plan (CPP) rate per 10,000 and the Children Looked After (CLA) rate per 10,000, had both increased from Q3. The number of Lancashire children on a CPP was 1443 and the number of CLA was 1691 at the end of March 2016, largely due to increased risk averse practice since the Ofsted inspection outcome. A risk sensible model is being introduced to ensure the correct interventions.

·  It takes longer in Lancashire for children to be matched with an adoptive family, from 272 days (2011-14) to 279 (2012-15). The aim was to achieve good adoptive matches to ensure that the breakdown rate was lower.

·  During 2014/15, 71 out of 498 of pupils with special educational needs and disability achieved 5 A* to C grades at GCSE including English and maths, higher than the national average (8.8%), regional (8.7%) and statistical neighbour (8.4%) averages.

It was agreed to provide figures for the number of children matched with an adoptive family quickly and to consider a further performance indicator regarding breakdown rates following adoption.

Live Well

·  Members expressed their concern regarding the rise in the numbers of children (aged 0-15) killed or seriously injured (KSIs), which had increased from 69 in Quarter 3 to 88 in Quarter 4. It was reported that Lancashire's Safer Travel Team provided interventions to address child casualties and schools, in those districts which have shown an increase during 2015, have been proactively targeted for educational activities.

·  Safer Travel Team officers are working with Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety to map current road safety interventions across Lancashire and a new Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety Co-ordinator has been appointed to direct activities of all partners and target resources to more effectively reduce casualties.

It was agreed that further information would be provided regarding KSIs, particularly concerning time of day/year that the child KSIs occur.

Members agreed that the new Partnership Road Safety Strategy should be included on the agenda of a future meeting of the Cabinet Committee.

Age Well

·  Results from the 2015/16 Adults Social Care Survey had maintained the high standards achieved last year. There was positive feedback from service users with particularly high scores for indicators covering quality of life, social contact and people feeling safe with their services.

·  CQC inspection results had been published for 14 of the 17 Lancashire in-house care homes. 11 were currently rated as good overall, with 3 currently rated as requires improvement. Members were informed of the actions taken to ensure sustainable improvements were made at the 3 care homes requiring improvement.

Richard Cooke, Health Equity, Welfare and Partnerships attended and presented the Ofsted Post Inspection update presented at Appendix 'B', including the actions put in place and developed since the last report to the Cabinet Committee in March 2016.

Members noted the main points:

·  Significant plans have been developed and implemented to introduce additional capacity across children's social care, equating to an additional investment of £4.6 million in staffing.

·  A high profile external recruitment campaign was launched through an event at Woodlands with 200 people attending and 20,000 hits on the web page. Interviews were underway, with 126 posts to be filled and there was a good spread of experience across the localities.

·  Children's social care re-modelling had progressed to 4 distinct functions in each team; assessment and safeguarding, children in our care, children in need and professional personal advisors.

·  The demand for children's social care services continues to increase across the north-west region and this has resulted in a significant backlog of work in Lancashire. Additional capacity has been drawn down from a framework agreement and this has meant two social work agencies picking up initial work and assessments for any new referrals into children's social care and has allowed social workers to start to address the backlog of work.

·  An additional 12 week plan has been developed to sit alongside the Improvement Plan with the aim of ensuring sharper focus on some key areas and providing a challenge to address these over a short timeframe.

·  Ofsted has moved to quarterly monitoring inspections, with feedback published following the December visit.

·  Lancashire will undergo two Peer Reviews over the next 12 months. The first in October 2016 led by the Assistant Director Children's Social Care, Liverpool City Council, who will spend 4 days reviewing cases, referrals, assessments and practice, and the second in February 2017 when the LGA will facilitate a Safeguarding Peer Review.

·  A group of young people from a range of vulnerable backgrounds are working with the Improvement Board to ensure that the Board is capturing the voice and experiences of children and young people.

·  A project was launched in April to improve the quality of practice and recording of case work. An analysis of Blackburn with Darwen’s configuration of Liquidlogic was underway which would help to define a target configuration. 29 Workstart posts have been appointed across the county to provide additional business support to fixing data quality problems. It is essential that Liquidlogic is accurate by September to ensure the production of accurate information in the Annex A submission when Ofsted undertake the first monitoring inspection in September.

It was noted that a report on Liquidlogic would be presented to the Audit and Governance Committee in September.

Resolved: - That the report now presented be noted.