Agenda and minutes

Councillor Fozia Mubashir   – Personal Reasons

Councillor Adele Williams   – Leave

None

To confirm the Minutes of the meeting held on 13 November 2024

The Minutes of the meeting held on 13 November 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, Sarah Nardone, Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services and Education, Nick Lee, Director of Education and Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services were present at the meeting to discuss the Children’s Services and Education budget proposals for 2025/26. The following information was highlighted:

a)  There are no proposals from directly within Children’s Integrated Services that are subject to public consultation and savings are being created through efficiencies in internal processes and transformation work. There are no proposed cuts to services.

b)  Children’s Integrated Services have been working on Transformation projects for some time and have delivered considerable savings from this work which have also resulted in better outcomes for children.

c)  £2million will be produced in savings from a suite of efficiencies, and as an extension to the existing transformation work focusing on offering a system of family help with support from a range of partners aiming to reduce demand on statutory services. Work has been underway to look at how best to engage with families earlier with a focus on keeping children with families where it is safe to do so.

d)  There are six cross cutting proposals that are currently out for public consultation, and they focus on creating a leaner, more efficient Council that works smarter for better outcomes for people. This will result in some services being delivered in a different way to now. One example of this is the use of AI to make and record notes on electronic systems reducing time pressure on social workers.

e)  Part of the next steps in the transformation work will be to consider the structure of the directorate and ensure consistency in supervision and management levels across the service.

During discussion the following questions were asked, and additional information was given:

f)  Committee Members expressed frustration that they had been raising concerns around cuts to front line services, in particular early intervention services as false savings for a number of years. The approach going forward will be different to that taken previously with a focus on working and transforming as one Council with a focus on robust decision making and positive outcomes for people. A new model for supporting families and approach to support for different age groups of children and young people is being developed for consultation.

g)  Committee Members asked if it was possible to have more detail on the planned efficiencies that would amount to £2million. Children’s Integrated Services have had a really successful period of transformation. In terms of the savings there will be a raft of measures designed to manage demand on services, ensuring that the right children are in the system and are receiving appropriate level of intervention in terms of need. The challenge is that the early help offer is not as robust as it once used to be. The Service is moving to a Family help model, bringing it in line with Government reforms which will be challenging,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30.

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, the Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education presented a report outlining the progress made in the delivery of the Children Integrated Services Improvement Plan. Sarah Nardone, Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services and Education, and Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services were also in attendance to provide additional details. They highlighted the following information:

a)  The last Ofsted monitoring visit took place in November 2024 focusing on Children in Care and met with the Executive Member for Children, Young People and Education as well as care leavers during the visit. Feedback from the inspection was broadly as expected. This was the last in the series of monitoring visits and a full Ofsted inspection is expected in late 2025.

b)  This inspection visit considered a wide range of elements, including children in need assessments, plan reviews, plans visits and support for carers, management oversight, performance and stability of the workforce and revisited the areas from the first monitoring visit.

c)  The inspection team found that there had been sustained progress in the improvement journey despite financial pressures and changes to leadership. The newly appointed leadership roles were found to already be having a positive impact on both staff and improving outcomes for children as a result.

d)  The visit found that children were entering care at the right time and whilst there were some ongoing issues around planning and assessments these had been identified by the Council and work was underway to rectify that. Permanency planning for adoption was found to be effective, with work ongoing around permanency other than adoption to be brought up to the same level of efficiency.

e)  Workforce stability has increased and for many children this has meant that they have built a positive relationship with their social worker. However, there is additional work to do to ensure that this is the experience for all children. Staff are reporting that they feel better supported, have reduced caseloads and can spend more time with the children they support.

f)  Areas identified for focused work to drive further improvement include consistency of assessments across the service and delays to permanency planning for non-adoption plans. Delays in discharge of Care Orders can impact sufficiency of placements.

Committee Members agreed that the update paints a mostly positive picture and were pleased with the progress being made within the Service. During discussion the following questions were asked and additional information was provided:

g)  Committee Members asked whether the issues with sufficiency were leading to the use of un-registered children’s homes, and what alternatives have been considered. The number of children in unregistered children’s homes has reduced by about 50% since the Committee last discussed the issue, the number is now under 5 children, and all are placed within Nottingham City. The team work hard to keep reducing that number further. These children have an additional number of visits and extra support management in place whilst they are in unregistered placements. Using unregistered placements as a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.

To note the latest responses received to the Committee’s recommendations

The Committee noted the Recommendation Tracker.

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

The Chair introduced the Work Programme for the remaining meeting of the municipal year in March highlighting that the Committee would be holding a “deep dive” review session of the current work done to reduce permanent exclusions. This would involve talking to school leaders and Council officers to ascertain best practice and how the Council could improve the support it offers to schools in the City.

The Committee noted the work programme.