Agenda and minutes

Councillor Sam Gardiner   – Unwell

Councillor Ethan Radford   – Council Business

In the interests of transparency Councillor Georgia Power highlighted that she worked for the Children’s Society. This did not preclude her from speaking on any item.

To confirm the Minutes of the meeting held on 28 March 2024

The minutes of the meeting held on 28 March 2024 were confirmed as a true record and were signed by the Chair.

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education attended the meeting to introduce the report presenting the Tackling Child Exploitation Strategy to the Committee. Also in attendance to provide additional detailed information was Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services, John Matravers, Head of Safeguarding, Quality and Assurance and Chief Inspector Paul Lefford, Nottinghamshire Police. During the presentation the following points were highlighted:

a)  The Child Exploitation Strategy has been developed by the Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Children’s Safeguarding Board partners and a range of other stake holders to create a single, whole system response to child exploitation aiming to reduce exploitation, and extra familial harm and protect communities.

b)  The Strategy reflects the need for a cross boarder approach and the language used has been amended to reflect the need to see children as children and to ensure that all children under 18 are treated as children first and foremost. This change in language is important to ensure the victims of exploitation are not made to feel implicit in their exploitation, and to remove possible suggestion of blame on the child. Guidance from the Children’s Society has been important in creating this shift in language as has feedback from children.

c)  The Tackling Child Exploitation (TCE) Steering Group is driving the work of the Strategy and meets quarterly. On the group there are representatives from the children’s safeguarding partners. The Steering Group regularly considers the work of the Strategy using the reflection tool specifically developed to assess progress on imbedding the 8 principles into local safeguarding practices. The tool also helps the group to identify areas for additional focus and improvement.

d)  Work to implement the Strategy is based on principals from research in practice tackling child exploitation which sets out how to work with children and their families and gives a basis for strategic oversight of practice and planning across the Partnership. The 4 P’s, Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare, developed from the Serious and Organised Crime Strategy 2023 have also been adopted and integrated into the work of the strategy supporting the creation of a whole system response.

e)  As awareness of exploitation is increased, partner organisations and the public become more confident in reporting issues and the number of reported cases will increase. This initial increase in numbers is confirmation that awareness is increasing and that the messages from the partnership are being communicated efficiently. 

f)  In response to the development of the Strategy, Nottinghamshire Police have restructured teams to better respond to child exploitation issues, with more Police staff embedded into Social Care teams, and an additional Disruption Team created to work with partners proactively around the nightime economy and target centres of concern. There are improved links into strategic multi-agency meetings and increased representation on multi-agency investigation teams.

g)  Joint training has been developed so that all partners have access to the same training materials, and can benefit from experiences of other organisations and practitioners when learning. A multi-agency joint  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41.

Report of the Director for Children’s Integrated Services

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education introduced the item updating the Committee on the most recent Ofsted monitoring visit in April 2024 looking at Children in Care services. Ailsa Barr, Director of Children’s Integrated Services was also in attendance to give additional detail. Members noted that the letter highlighting the findings of the visit had been published this morning. They highlighted the following points:

a)  Inspectors felt that the improvements seen in other areas within Children’s Services inspired confidence that changes within the Children in Care Team workforce would lead to improved practice, once the recent investment had matured.

b)  The most recent monitoring visit found that additional funding, management and social work positions have built on improvements since the last visit and have helped to stabilise the workforce. Staff feel more supported and the frequency and quality of supervision is showing signs of improvement.

c)  There is still some inconsistency in practice, with better quality practice being seen in fieldwork teams. Investment into the Children in Care teams is very recent and the impact of that is yet to flow through to data although there is a good level of confidence that this improvement will be seen.

d)  Changes to social workers and higher work loads in the Children in Care Teams does impact on relationship building between social workers and children. Although visits meet statutory requirements for frequency they are not informed by individual need. The recent investment in the Children in Care team will help to address this.

e)  Creative planning and support around risk management is present throughout the fieldwork teams, with child centred decisions being evident following thorough assessment. More work needs to be done to ensure that routine assessments are updated, within the Children in Care Teams, when a child’s situation changes, and that specialist assessments are more routinely undertaken to inform risk management and planning.

f)  There are ongoing challenges around the number of foster carers meaning that children are sometimes moving into residential care rather than a family setting, this is seen nationally and is not unique to Nottingham City. Work is underway with the County Council and other neighbouring authorities to establish a regional fostering network.

g)  Children are positive and encouraged to engage with their education planning meetings. Some children do face moving schools due to placement sufficiency issues meaning it is sometimes not possible to prioritise education placement.

h)  Work by senior leaders with health colleagues has helped develop an improvement in the process around health checks for children coming into care. More work needs to be done to ensure that these changes are consistent.

i)  The next monitoring visit will likely focus on front door services again. 6 monitoring visits is usual for an improvement journey, with a full inspection typically taking place 6 months after the final monitoring visit, however these would depend on other activity being undertaken by Ofsted.

The following points were raised in discussion:

j)  Committee members asked how  ...  view the full minutes text for item 42.

To note the responses received to the Committee’s recommendations

The Chair presented the Recommendation Tracker to the Committee highlighting that there had been a number of responses.

The Committee noted the update to the Recommendation Tracker.