Councillor Brian Parbutt  - Personal

Councillor Josh Cook  - Personal

Councillor Neghat Khan  - Other Council Business  

Councillor Chris Tansley - Personal

None.

GC – items 26-29 inclusive

AC – items27 – 29 inclisive

To confirm the minutes of the last meeting held on 19 September 2017

The minutes of the meeting held on 19 September 2017 were confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

Clive Chambers, Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance, introduced the report on Child Sexual Exploitation updating the Committee on the ongoing work in this area. He gave a brief background to the issue. Councillor David Mellen, Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years, Helen Blackman, Director of Integrated Children’s Services and Racheal Osborne, CSE Co-Ordinator and Missing Children’s Team Manager provided additional information from a presentation and highlighted the following information:

(a)  Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is often difficult to recognise and for some time Nottingham City Council (NCC) has led work within the East Midlands region in the work to tackle this form of abuse;

(b)  In 2016 NCC ran an awareness raising event with over 50 individuals from the private security companies involved in the night time economy in Nottingham, to increase the profile of CSE and to highlight what to look for. This event was very well received by the industry and the attendees fed back to their companies;

(c)  The Z Card, a card detailing signs of CSE and primary contact details for lead agencies, was developed by Integrated Children’s Services and in August 2017 was distributed throughout Nottingham City Centre to venues involved in the night time economy. This was well received by the venues and covered by the local media;

(d)  In addition to the work with security staff NCC has developed the Multi Agency Sexual Exploitation (MASE) panel who meet monthly to pull together information on children at risk of CSE, venues where young people gather, and adults who may be involved in CSE but do not yet meet the criteria for police investigation;

(e)  The MASE panel is able to coordinate disruption tactics using community protection officers, CCTV cameras and other methods;

(f)  The MASE panel is not intended to replace work taking place elsewhere but allows a truly multi-agency approach to assessing information and adds an additional level of scrutiny and challenge;

(g)  The 9 authorities within the East Midlands have worked together to develop a series of 24 standards to provide consistency in response to CSE across the local authority boundaries. The individual regional authorities have RAG rated their performance against each standard and are addressing issues identified;

Following questions and comments from the Committee the following information was given:

(h)  The venues that the Z Cards were distributed to included fast food restaurants, bars and clubs. Security staff see a lot of what takes place outside their venue as well as inside, and it is this street activity that often is of interest. Assurance was given to the Committee that there is not an issue with excessive underage people within licenced premises;

(i)  The Z Cards detail signs and activities to be aware of and contact details for reporting concerns. If security staff feel that a person is in immediate danger then they are encouraged to contact police either via 999 or 101;

(j)  The security industry provided the resources for printing the Z Cards and is looking to roll them out nationally. They complement other work that is taking place on CSE and aim to raise awareness as CSE is challenging to recognise, they do not replace other resources available; 

(k)  It is difficult to quantify the impact of the Z Cards. The information that comes in from security staff as a result of the cards is fed into the concerns network meeting along with other bits of information and intelligence from other sources. Whilst individually the bits of intelligence would mean very little, as a whole they are helping to protect children;

(l)  Along with security staff, hotel reception staff and taxi drivers have also had awareness raising events. Taxi drivers are required to attend training as part of their license renewal;

(m)  The Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years and the Independent Chair of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board stated that they felt assured that Nottingham City was doing everything possible to reduce risk of CSE. The Independent Chair went on to state that he felt the arrangements in place were robust, the approach taken was proactive in dealing with a difficult area of work and that Nottingham should be proud of what it is doing on this issue;

(n)  Raising awareness in smaller faith schools and private faith classes is a challenge and feedback from Councillors is essential to help reach all groups of leaders across the high variety of communities within Nottingham;

(o)  The public can report concerns to the Children and Families team on 0115 8764800. If Councillors are approached by a constituent they can pass these details on. Any information will then be dealt with appropriately;

(p)  There are annual awareness campaigns directed at the general public. These aim to raise awareness of signs and things to look out for and where to report concerns. They signpost the public to online resources as well as ways to report concerns;

RESOLVED to thanks Clive Chambers, Councillor David Mellen, Helen Blackman, and Racheal Osborne for their attendance and to note the content of the report and presentation.

Chris Cook, Independent Chair of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board and John Matravers, Service Manager for Safeguarding Partnerships introduced the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board Annual Report 2016/17 and gave a presentation to the Committee highlighting the headlines from the report. They gave the following information:

(a)  In 2016/17 Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board (NCSCB) was assessed as being compliant with its statutory and legal requirements;

(b)  The Board showed good progress and a rigorous inspection of Children’s Services in February 2017 graded the service as “Good” overall. The ‘voice of the child’ work was seen as a particular strength in assessment and planning;

(c)  The inspection of the Youth Offending Team (YOT) gave an encouraging picture of an ‘overall high performing YOT with practitioners who are enthusiastic, knowledgeable and inclusive in their work’;

(d)  Partnership work has further been developed with Police investing more resources in the multi-agency hub and other partners also joining the hub;

(e)  Deprivation continues to be a challenge for Nottingham City with the City being ranked 8^th out of 326 local authorities in the 2015 indices of multiple deprivation;

(f)  There has been good work on the engagement strategy with  collaboration between Nottingham City Council and Nottingham City Clinical Commissioning Group along with the Board to develop an animation on rethinking ‘Did not attend’ to ‘Was not brought’;

(g)  Continued learning and development has reached over 670 colleagues with the Every Colleague Matters programme. Following a high profile serious case review over 2200 colleagues across the partnership were reached with case review events developed to further learning;

(h)  Neglect has remained the most frequent reason for a child being place on a Child Protection Plan in 2016/17 and 97% of Child Protection reviews took place within the timescales;

(i)  Following on from the Children and Social Work Act getting Royal Ascent in April 2017 there will be changes in organisation and framework of multi-agency protection and safeguarding arrangements which will be monitored and progressed by the Business Management Group during 2017/18;

Members of the Committee asked a number of questions and further information was given:

(j)  The rethinking of did not attend to was not brought has changed the mind-set of healthcare professionals and prompts them to ask the question why the child was not brought. There are many reasons a child is not brought to an appointment and many of them are reasonable and in no way suspicious, but the change in mind-set of professionals helps them to assess each case;

(k)  The NCC, CCG and NCSCB are working to develop an animation aimed at parents/carers to offer support if they are having trouble attending appointments and to explain the importance of attending appointments;

(l)  In an effort to be proactive following the review of cases from Rotherham and Rochdale taxi drivers are being required to complete safeguarding training as part of their license renewal. The work force is not the issue, but they are likely to notice things that could feed into soft intelligence gathering;

(m)  The upcoming changes in the Board structure can be viewed as an opportunity to rebalance the partnership working which is currently local authority led. The new arrangements will be more equitable and creates the opportunity to renew the commitment to the partnership working;

RESOLVED to:

(1)  Thank Chris Cook and John Matravers for their attendance at the Committee and note the content of the Annual Report; and

(2)  Offer comment and challenge on proposals for new arrangements to replace the Safeguarding Board at a future meeting.

Councillor David Mellen, Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years gave a presentation outlining the progress the Council has made against the Council plan 2015-2019 in relation to his Portfolio. He highlighted the following points:

(a)  Council Plan priorities that have an expected ‘green’ outcome:

·  Achieve a permanent home through adoption of special guardianship for 40% more children in care:

othere has been in increase in adoptions in the city despite the challenge.

·  Ensure at least 85% of children in the City Council’s care live within 20 miles of Nottingham.

oSometimes it is not appropriate for a child to be cared for too closely to their home area. This also reduces travel time for social workers and offers stability in schooling.

·  Increase the number of Nottingham City foster carers by 20%.

oThis has been particularly challenging due to foster carers leaving the service as well as joining, however a number of different groups have been approached such as faith groups and schools to raise the profile of fostering.

·  Offer permanent jobs or apprenticeships within the City Council to at least 10% of care leavers and encourage further employment opportunities for them across the city.

·  Create new services for babies and toddlers to work with parents of 4500 children.

oMoney from the Big Lottery Fund has helped to set up mental health screening for all new mothers in 4 areas of Nottingham, there are also a number of family mentors working alongside families and a wide range of activities run to help support families with babies and toddlers.

·  Ensure that in the evening and at weekends as well as during school holidays there are a range of positive activities for children and young people in every part of the City.

oIn the last year 2478 sessions were run across the city.

·  Increase the number of 2 year olds in nursery by 40%.

oThis has been challenging as traditionally only 3 and 4 year olds have been given nursery places. However the increase in provision and uptake of that provision has been encouraging.

·  Consult young people on important decisions and involve them in the Council’s decision making process.

oThe Youth Council is still running well, the primary council is now being held twice a month due to demand and the Children in Care council has been an important way for young people in care to feedback on decision making to the council. There was recently the youth take over day which ran very well in Loxley House.

·  Secure and provide breakfast clubs in every primary school in the city building on the ‘Cares for Kids’ and other existing provision.

oThis has been achieved and now the Council is working towards ensuring schools are able to maintain the provision through their own relationships with providers as grant funding is coming to an end.

·  Work with at least 3000 vulnerable families over the next 4 years:

oSo far 2420 priority families have been engaged and work is ongoing with a number of them.

·  Protect from cuts a network of children’s centres across the city.

oThis has taken some innovative thinking, but children’s centres have been protected. Some are now running in conjunction with schools.

·  Protect from cuts social workers keeping our most vulnerable children safe.

oThere are now more social workers employed than in 2015

(b)  Council Plan priorities with an expected ‘amber’ outcome:

·  Ensure zero tolerance of child sexual exploitation through public awareness campaign to increase early identification of concerns by a fifth.

oThis is a challenging target to measure. There are now double the amount of children and young people being monitored who’s behaviour and circumstances make them susceptible to child sexual exploitation

·  Extend free school meals to all primary school children within the next 10 years.

oKey Stage 1 pupil have free school meals, however there are currently no resources available to increase the provision for Key Stage 2 pupils.

·  Protect from cuts vital health visiting health services that give children the best start in life.

oSome health visiting services have been amalgamated with Children’s Services.

(c)  Council Plan priorities with an expected ‘red’ outcome:

·  Promote the Dolly Parton Imagination Library scheme so that every child under 5 in Nottingham receives a monthly free book.

oThere are now 4000 children in Nottingham who are part of this scheme. There is not enough recourse to ensure that all 17,000 children under 5 are included in this scheme. Work continues toward this priority.

The Committee asked questions and made observations about the work towards the Council Plan 2015-19. The following additional points were made:

(d)  Recognising the hard work of partners and colleagues is important to the Council and recognition was given to the hard work and passion of the people who start programmes and projects such as the Dolly Parton Imagination Library;

(e)  There is targeted work taking place across the city around knife crime. There are groups who the Council work with who work hard to engage the groups of young people often described as hard to reach. Both the Youth Offending Team and Nottinghamshire Police have a knife crime lead who works with young people but also with their parents.

RESOLVED to thank Councillor Mellen for his attendance and to note the contents of the update on the progress towards the Council Plan priorities within his Portfolio.

Jane Garrard, Senior Governance Officer, introduced the report on the Work Programme 2017/18.

RESOLVED to note the work programme for the municipal year 2017/18.