Agenda and minutes

None.

Of meeting held on 15 September 2014 (for confirmation).

The minutes of the meeting held on 15 October 2014 were confirmed and signed by the Chair.

Report of Director of Commissioning, Policy and Insight

Alison Michalska, Corporate Director Children and Families, presented the report identifying key headlines, challenges and an overview of all performance measures linked to the Children and Young People’s Plan strategic and operational objectives for the 2014/15 reporting year to Quarter 2.

Ms Michalska made the following points:

(a)  demand for social care and safeguarding services remains high, with higher numbers of children in care (up 3% on last year). There are currently around 590 children in care in the City. The high number of children with issues not being picked up through early intervention remains a challenge;

(b)  the adoption rate is improving, however the problem of getting older teenagers adopted remains a concern;

(c)  the Family Support Strategy and Pathway continues to be implemented and embedded, and key measures within Safeguarding services, including re-referral rates, show positive performance;

(d)  teenage pregnancy rates continue to fall and are ahead of the 2020 target;

(e)  youth-related crime rates continue to fall, with restorative justice working well;

(f)  educational attainment continues to improve across key stages;

(g)  an above average percentage of Nottingham children and young people are classed as obese, with both health and bullying implications for children;

(h)  school absence figures for both primary and secondary level have improved due to truancy campaigns, but still  remain unacceptably high;

(i)  Not in education, employment or training (NEET) levels are slightly higher than in previous years.

The key challenges for 2014/15 are;

(a)  the continuing high demand for social care and safeguarding services;

(b)   the high numbers of Children in Care;

(c)  a need to get better at identifying children at risk;

(d)   the timeliness of Children in Care being placed for adoption;

(e)   the new inspection framework and the capacity of the service to meet demand in the current financial climate;

(f)  the above average proportion of children and young people with unhealthy weight;

(g)  Partnership buy-in to Common Assessment for Families (CAF). Reductions in funding are making it harder for the voluntary sector to access CAF training;

(h)  school absence figures for primary and secondary is still ranked amongst the worst in the country. Cultural issues need to be addressed. The work of the trained Attendance Improvement Officers should assist;

(i)  the Local Authority’s ability to influence schools under the current educational system is much diminished especially with the growth of academies.  The challenge is to ensure that all City schools are good or outstanding.

RESOLVED to note the report.

Report of Strategy and Commissioning Manager, Crime and Drugs Partnership

Christine Oliver, Strategy and Commissioning Manager, presented the report updating the Board on the review of the Young People’s Substance Misuse system, the implementation of the new Young People’s Specialist Substance Misuse service, the Young Peoples Substance Misuse Treatment Services performance and the implications of budget proposals for young people’s substance misuse.

The following points were highlighted to the Board:

(a)  the Review found that whilst there were key strengths in both the current young people’s substance misuse system and the wider universal systems and services, both systems were fragmented resulting in potential missed opportunities for early interventions;

(b)  key strengths include:

·  the City has a specialist substance misuse system established for young people;

·  there are a range of good tailored interventions offered;

·  parents and carers are involved where possible to ensure a family and person centred

approach;

·  services have an holistic approach to care plans and work and involve other relevant  agencies;

·  there are some strong foundations in place to help shape a future model.

(c)  there is evidence of the following areas for improvement;

·  potential confusion around services and what they provide;

·  accessibility to information about services;

·  potential gaps in the current system;

·  the need to more fully consult with young people to drive the service planning and delivery;

·  to enhance partnership working under the wider health and wellbeing and early intervention and prevention programmes;

·  improved links to the safeguarding agenda through contract management;

·  opportunities to utilise existing assets within the City and additional external funding.

(d)  the review findings, recommendations and actions present a good opportunity to link the

  substance misuse system and wider young peoples’ provision, working towards a more efficient and effective system. All of the actions and recommendations identified are achievable through good partnership working and a lead driver for the changes to continue to take place;

(e)  recommendations from the prevalence section of the Review include:

·  continuing to develop and implement a partnership consultation programme;

·  sharing data and findings across services to help better inform delivery, planning,  monitoring and workforce development;

·  increase partnership working;

·  explore better use of technology;

(f)   as part of the review, a number of options were considered for the future model of young peoples’ substance misuse. These included the option to make some changes to the existing model to increase the focus on early intervention and prevention then to tender the specialist service. To fulfil the recommendations of the review the service specification included the need to support to the wider children and young peoples’ workforce, to increase knowledge and skills in identifying substance use and misuse and in delivering lower threshold interventions. This has the longer term aim of freeing up the service to deliver specialist treatment only to those that need it, thus reducing the cost of a service over the time. A competitive tender process took place over the summer of 2014. The successful bidder was Lifeline. Their new service, Lifeline Journey, commenced November 3rd 2014. Lifeline also delivers Explore Family in the city, a support  ...  view the full minutes text for item 43.

Interactive activity hosted by Early Intervention Partnerships Programme Manager

Chris Wallbanks, Programme Manager Early Intervention and Partnerships, advised the Board that the refresh of the Children and Young People’s Plan would cover four delivery areas;

·  safeguarding;

·  emotional health and wellbeing;

·  attainment and achievement;

·  stronger families and economic wellbeing;

The refreshed Plan will focus more on outcomes. This is the beginning of the consultation process. Board members were invited spend 15 minutes adding, deleting or amending the suggested outcomes to the delivery areas.

After members had undertaken this exercise, Chris Wallbanks agreed to look at the comments and changes and pull together suggested outcomes for further consultation.

Barriers Faced by Secondary Schools (Top Valley Academy Perspective)

S. Kelly - Head of Top Valley Academy

Sean Kelly, Head of Top Valley Academy, presented a report on the barriers facing secondary schools in Nottingham.

The following points were highlighted by Mr Kelly:

(a)  a growing lack of coherence and fragmentation in secondary education is caused by;

·  the changing educational landscape (started with Building Schools for the Future  ( BSF): academies capital programme alongside BSF);

·  a range of academy sponsors in the City (and now from outside the City), stand-alone academies, free schools/’free choice’ and now NUAST (14-19);

(b)  this leads to challenges for Nottingham City Secondary schools evidenced by;

·  a fragmented and at times, isolated City wide effort to address engrained  issues  for children of Nottingham;

·  a growing and unhealthy sense of local competition even though the sector is not

judged within a local context but against a national one;

·  direct central government challenge to local authorities coupled with the authorities

  diminishing capacity to support its schools;

·  the National framework used to judge school performance, that does not take account of contextual factors (OFSTED);

·  moving now to measure progress over time, with the same expectation regardless of how low someone's starting point may be;

·  currently being ‘monitored’ by both HMI and an ‘educational consultant’ on behalf of

the DFE, both with different interpretations of good progress in a year.

(c)  when looking for best practice models to shape Nottingham’s response to its current challenges, Nottingham is directed to the London Challenge. However, more recent research has found that once the children’s ethnic background was factored in, the London effect in pupil progress was found to disappear. White British pupils tend to achieve the lowest GCSE scores against their attainment to the end of primary school compared with those from ethnic minority backgrounds. This white British group makes up 36% of Year 11 in London and around 84%, in the rest of England;

(a)  Top Valley was rated ‘requires improvement’ by OFSTED. It serves a predominantly white British community where the Index of Multiple Deprivation shows the extent of wider contextual factors which perhaps explains why public services, including education, under perform. 83% of the pupils are white British and given the acknowledged national picture of the group’s attainment, it is unlikely that the Academy will meet or exceed national expectation;

(e)  Top Valley seeks to use this knowledge to inform judgements about the school, not as an excuse, but as an opportunity to remove some of the blame culture on an overstretched and under resourced service due to the multiple levels of need;

(f)  Top Valley Foundation is showing improvement;

·  2013/14 5.9% absence rate ;2014/15 trend improving;

·  Year 11, 1.5% increase on previous year – against a national decline for this year group;

·  NEET 2.7% (3 students);

·  low exclusion rate - 2013/14  4.6% (11/12 NA 8.5%);

·  attainment target 45-50% on track;

·  English/maths progress 60-65% on track;

(g)  the current descriptor of what constitutes a ‘good’ school is extremely limited and narrow because OFSTED refuses to deal with the complexity of the contextual factors that exist  ...  view the full minutes text for item 45.

Report of the Independent Chair of the Nottingham City Safeguarding

Children Board (NCSCB)

Paul Burnett, Independent Chair of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board (NCSCB), presented his report.

The following points were highlighted to the Board:

(a)  the NCSCB Annual Report for 2013/14 assesses the impact of the work undertaken in 2013/14 on service quality and effectiveness on outcomes for children, young people and adults in Nottingham City. It evaluates performance against the priorities set in the Business Plan 2012/13 and the other statutory functions that the LSCB must undertake;

(b)  data analysis has revealed a number of important trends that will continue to be the

  focus of the Board’s work in the coming year. For example:

·   an increase in the number of children with child protection plans;

·   referral rates that are higher than our statistical neighbours;

·   drug and alcohol related issues remaining a key concern in safeguarding referrals;

·   an increase in the number of children in care.

(c)  the Ofsted report on review of the NCSCB identifies various areas for improvement. The  NCSCB’s business priorities have been significantly influenced by the recommendations of that process. These have been formulated into an action plan;

(d)  since the last NCSCB report to the Board, Nottingham City has experienced the inspection of services for children in need of help and protection looked after and care leavers which now includes a review of the effectiveness of the local safeguarding children’s board. The overall judgement of the NCSCB was ‘requires improvement’ which matches the judgement of the other elements of the inspection framework in Nottingham City;

(e)  the Ofsted inspection provided primarily positive comments on the work being done in Nottingham in relation to child sexual exploitation;

(f)  steps are being taken to strengthen the relationship between children and  adult services in addressing safeguarding issues across families and to better evaluate the impact of training and development on safeguarding effectiveness and outcomes for children and young people;

(g)  the NCSCB and NCASPB will hold their annual development day on 23 January 2015 and priorities for the Business Plan 2015/18 will be considered there. Any one with any issues that they would like to be considered should contact Paul Burnett direct or ask their CPB representative to bring them to the Development Day.

RESOLVED:

(1)  to note the NCSCB Annual Report 2013/14;

(2)  to note the report of key developments over the last 10 months in relation to inspections, national legislative and policy developments, serious case reviews and changes to local safeguarding governance arrangements;

(3)  to consider the areas of future work headlined in the report and the means by which continued dialogue between the two Boards might be secured to ensure appropriate alignment of activity and continued scrutiny and challenge between the two Boards.

None, as items are included within the agenda.

Any requests for the Board to consider further topics, should be forwarded to Dot Veitch, Partnership Support Officer at dot.veitch@nottinghamcity.gov.uk 

It is noted that any requests for the Board to consider further topics, should be forwarded to Dot Veitch, Partnership Support Officer at dot.veitch@nottinghamcity.gov.uk