To review and update membership and Terms of Reference

Emily Humphreys, Support Assistant for Children and Adults Directorate introduced the report on Changes to Membership and update of the Terms of Reference to the Board.  

RESOLVED to note the Changes to Membership and the updated Terms of Reference.

Superintendent Andrea Baxter – Nottinghamshire Police

Phyllis Brackenbury – Nottingham City Care Partnership

Kate Clifford – Southwold Primary

Sarah Fielding – Nottingham Schools Trust

Scott Mason – Rosylin Park Primary & Nursery

Sally Seely – Nottingham City CCG

None.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 28 March 2018

The minutes of the meeting held on 28 March 2018 were confirmed as a true record and the minutes signed by the Chair.

Helen Blackman, Director of Children’s Integrated Services, gave an update on Foster Career recruitment and retention. She reported that there were 20 more foster carer families in 2017/18 compared to March 2015, and in Q1 of 18/19 there are an additional 9. This is working towards reducing the number of children in high cost agency foster care placements.

Clive Chambers, Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance, gave an update on the provision of Residential Home places. There are plans in the early stages to increase provision of placements in Nottingham to reduce the need to use expensive out of area placements. 

Report of the Director for Children’s Integrated Services

Sophie Russell, Head of Children’s Strategy and Improvement, presented the report on CYPP Priority Safeguarding and Supporting Children and Families. Along with Shelley Nicholls, Strategic Lead for Youth Offending they highlighted the following points:

(a)  The AQA qualifications are an innovative way to encourage children and young people into learning. There over 180 modules ranging from basic gardening and life skills, to team work, PSE and communication skills. Nearly 190 young people have achieved 1 or more qualification since they have been introduced;

(b)  During the last Ofsted inspection challenged Nottingham City to further improve its approach  to young people presenting as Homeless. There has been a strong collaborative approach across the Local Authority and Partnership organisations;

(c)  When a young person presents as homeless their initial contact is now with a family support worker who, where appropriate, works with the young person and family members towards rebuilding relationships;

(d)  Out of the 56 young people who presented as homeless the vast majority were reunited with their families, a very small percentage became children in care and a handful were supported into a tenancy by Nottingham City Homes;

(e)  The Street Aware Programme will be presented to all Nottingham City secondary schools. This programme helps young people improve their resilience, and confidence to not carry weapons. A similar, but adapted programme has been taken up by the majority of primary schools within Nottingham City. Both are presented by Police, PCSO and support workers;

(f)  Care leavers are now able to ask for services up to the age of 25. The Council will also contact all care leavers up to the age of 25 annually to remind them that they are able to access services. The Council will be contacting Partnership organisations about services they offer directly;

(g)  Nottingham City Council is ambitious for all of its care leavers and is committed to offering a percentage of jobs or apprenticeships to them. Nottingham City Council would like to invite Partner Organisations to make a commitment to offer a percentage of its available jobs or apprenticeships to care leavers;

Following questions and comments from the Board the following points were highlighted:

(h)  Schools across the City have engaged very well with the Knife Crime programme. The programme is tailored and can be more targeted where needed;

(i)  There is a work stream dedicated to collating data on incidents in school where knives have been involved. Nottingham Safeguarding Board are taking the lead and asking schools and other agencies to become involved so that a fuller picture of the extent of the issue is known;

(j)  A similarly adapted programme on knife crime can be offered out to further education colleges, again this can be tailored to suit the audience and can be more targeted where there is the need;

(k)  Care leavers have been involved in designing the local offer, feedback through the Care Leavers Council, directly from young people and Young Peoples forum have all contributed;

RESOLVED to:

(1)  Note the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Update by Stephen McLaren, Voluntary Sector Representative.

Stephen McLaren, Voluntary and Community Sector Advocate, gave presentation updating the Board on the work of the Children and Young People’s Providers Network. He described the development of the network and highlighted the following points:

(a)  The Network provides a forum for consultation and bringing forward new ideas and emerging trends. It has allowed voluntary organisations to access decision makers and to start to become involved in that process:

(b)  There are 150 registered member organisations of which between 40 and 50 are actively attending. These member organisations are actively providing services for young people aged 0-25 across the city, but are generally focused within the inner city area;

(c)  The Network is an independent safe space to discuss what members feel are the important issues without worrying about being scrutinised. It allows members to feel connected and allows them to better target services to communities;

(d)  Members for the network have access to training and consultation events. They receive regular news letters and safeguarding updates allowing them to deliver the best service they are able to;

(e)  Advocates selected from the Network contribute to strategic reference groups. These groups can help to inform decision making across the City;

RESOLVED to thank Stephen McLaren for his presentation on the work of the Children and Young Peoples Provider Network and to note its content.

Report of the Corporate Director for Children and Adults.

Jon Rea, Engagement and Participation Lead Officer, introduced the report on the activities of the Youth Cabinet. Along with Natasha Tulley, and Theresa Jennings, members of the Youth Cabinet, he highlighted the following points:

(a)  The focus of the youth groups this quarter has been Healthy and Creative You. This theme has run through all activities;

(b)  Primary Parliament has been attended by nearly  two thirds of the Primary cohort and has allowed young people to work on self-esteem, leadership skills and decision making;

(c)  At Youth Council there has been a lot of work around Knife Crime in the City. A unity event took place which enabled members to discuss the issue with partners and the wider community;

(d)  Work has also taken place to explore the role of social media in knife crime and to feed back to partners to engage 11-18 year old through community and  youth groups;

(e)  The Youth Cabinet has taken part in scoping work, looking at the Autumn term theme, Health Safe You, identifying issues and learning that is needed;

(f)  A new project, the Urban Room, is a space on Carrington Street being developed as pop up space for groups to use to encourage engagement of young people. It is being funded by various partners and will be available soon;

(g)  A small delegation of 6 young people will be heading off to China later this year to an international student summer camp hosted and paid for by the Sichuan Provincial Government. The six young people attending, all Nottingham City residents, are raising funds to pay for their airfare;

RESOLVED to thank Jon Rea, Natasha Tulley and Theresa Jennings for their attendance and to note the content of their update to the board on the activities of the Youth Council.

Presentation by Sara-Jane Brighouse, Project Manager Strategy & Improvement Children’s Integrated Services

Sara-Jane Brighouse, Programme Manager of SEND Reforms, and Carol Rowan, Team Manager for SEND introduced the report on Special Educations Needs and/or Disabilities Outcomes Framework and Guidance Document. They highlighted the following points:

(a)  The framework was developed in partnership with multiple agencies, families and young people by the Nottingham City SEND reforms programme;

(b)  Young people and families developed a board game “My Future” which allows them to have much more input to development of outcomes;

(c)  The framework can be used as a resource by practitioners with their existing assessment rather than requiring them to complete new assessments;

(d)  The Children and Families act places duties on local areas to work together to offer joined up services, rather than each individual organisation offering services in isolation;

(e)  The SEND Code of Practice focuses on families and working towards securing meaningful outcomes alongside raising aspirations and supporting family needs from a multiagency standpoint;

Following questions and comments the following points were made:

(f)  This framework and guidance is not just for children and young people with a diagnosis. It can be used with young people of all abilities;

(g)  All Education Health and Care plans have been completed by the deadline. Recognition from the Department for Education has been received on this success and on the development of the Framework and Guidance document;

RESOLVED:

(1)  To endorse the SEND Outcomes Framework and Guidance document; and

(2)  That Partners will support with dissemination and implantation of SEND Outcomes Framework and Guidance across local area agencies;

Presentation by Janine Walker, Head of Inclusion and Disability

Janine Walker, SEND Service Manager, gave a presentation on SEND provision in Nottingham City. She highlighted the following points:

(a)  Around 960 children and young people in Nottingham City have an Education, Health and Care plan. This equates to around 2% of children and young people;

(b)  Of these 960 around 600 are in special education provision and around 100 are in Further Education;

(c)  KS1 attainment is lower than national but improving and SEND/Non SEND gap slightly narrower. KS2 attainment is higher than national and Key stage 1-2 progress recorded improvements across all areas;

(d)  In KS4 attainment is lower than national but appears to be improving and the gap narrowing. Progress 8 scores are lower but there is a year on year increase. Post 16 attainment is also lower than national average;

(e)  In terms of Education, Employment and training the mainstream cohort are in line with the national average;

(f)  A Local Area inspection is likely to take place within the next year and will look at SEND provision across the city. It is not just an inspection of the Local Authority, partner organisations will also be involved;

(g)  Preparation for the inspection has begun and work programmes have started to create a matched data set and an Outcomes framework. An Accountability Board has been established and analysis of inspection outcomes from other areas is taking place to try and identify themes;

(h)  Themes identified from other areas are around strategic leadership and joint working as well as relationships with families, exclusions of young people with SEND and delays in Health assessments;

(i)  In the coming months next steps will include work around further embedding the Accountability Board and its work, implementing and embedding the SEND strategy focusing on transition, supporting inclusive provision, multi-agency support to schools and communication with stakeholders;

Following questions and comments from the Board the following further information was given:

(j)  There are early stage feasibility studies looking at the potential to extend specialist ADS provision and MLD provision for those young people with lower needs;

(k)  Exclusion rates have also been discussed at other forums with a view to shift in resources to create a more inclusive provision in main stream schools;

(l)  The level of support and provision currently within primary schools is not considered to be sustainable

RESOLVED to thanks Janine Walker for her attendance and to note the content of her report in SEND in Nottingham.

Report of the Corporate Director for Children and Adults  

Alison Michalska, Corporate Director for Children and Adults introduced the End of Year CYPP Action Plan update.  She explained that the report was a review of the last year against the Children’s plan and highlighted the following points:

(a)  A number of positive achievements have occurred around promoting the health and wellbeing of babies, children and young people. These include positive relationships with maternity services being built, breastfeeding rates remaining above the national average, a reduction in under 16 conception rates and early stage agreement to a fluoridation feasibility study;

(b)  Areas for improvements around promoting the health and wellbeing of babies, children and young people are developing a whole system approach to childhood obesity and more drive around work to reduce smoking in pregnancy;

(c)  Looking at safeguarding and supporting families, achievements over the last year include the paediatric sexual assault resource centre not being operational, completion rates of early intervention parenting support programmes are high and feedback around positive impact is high, and, the city MASH continues to respond quickly and in a joined up way to over 200 contacts per week;

(d)  Improvements needed around safeguarding and supporting families are to address the increase in violent offending and looking more closely at possible reasons for the rise in attendance at A&E of children under the age of 5 in the last 12 months;

(e)  Achievements around supporting achievement and academic attainment  include improvement in overall absence rank from 137^th to 100^th, decrease in pupils who are persistently absent, increase in early years pupils assessed as being good, and phonics assessments improving too;

(f)  Focus for work in the upcoming year will be improving KS4 GCSE Attainment 8 and Progress 8, and reducing the rate of exclusions;

(g)  In the empowering families to be strong and achieve economic wellbeing work stream NCC achieved its target of working with 941 families in 2017/18, significant and sustained outcomes were evidenced for 797. By the end of March 2018 Priority Families had invested £5.021m in services for families;

(h)  It is currently not possible to evidence the indirect link to financial benefits of the Priorities Families programme but data emerging nationally indicate that costs avoided by the programme are significant. Funding for the programme is due to end in 2020;

(i)  With universal credit being rolled out work will continue with financially vulnerable families, and work with families at risk of eviction and homelessness continues;

RESOLVED to thank Alison Michalska for her report to the Board and to note the progress on the CYPP Plan. 

Report of the Support Assistant, Children’s and Adults Directorate

RESOLVED to note the contents of the Forward Plan

To consider meeting on the following Wednesdays at 4pm:

3 October 2018

19  December 2018

20 March 2019

RESOLVED to meet on the following Wednesdays at 4pm:

3 October 2018

19 December 2018

20 March 2019