Agenda and minutes

Councillor Josh Cook – personal

Councillor Neghat Khan – other Council business

Councillor David Mellen

Councillor Sam Webster

Maria Ward, Network Officer for Nottingham Community and Voluntary Service declared that she was a member of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board. This did not preclude her from speaking on the item.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 18 October 2016

The committee confirmed the minutes of the meeting held on 18 October 2016 as a correct record and they were signed off by the chair. 

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy and Resources

Chris Cook, Independent Chair of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board introduced the Annual Report 2015/16, highlighting the following:

(a)  partnership work within Nottingham City continues to be a strong feature in the work of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board (NCSCB). Partner agency relationships are good and challenges resolved professionally. This, along with the extensive information sharing, is one of the main features that makes NCSCB effective;

(b)  in September 2015 separate independent chairs were appointed to the Children Safeguarding Board and the Adult Safeguarding Board allowing a better focus on child safeguarding issues. The two boards continue to work together on cross cutting issues;

(c)  individual member agency performance is broadly good on inspection by the relevant bodies. Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) continues to be judged as ‘good’ by Ofsted;

(d)  Nottinghamshire Police plays a lead role in a number of sub groups including the Child Sexual Exploitation Sub-Group and are key contributors to information sharing across the region;

(e)  Schools and Education services provide a range of training aimed at staff, volunteers and governors within education providers;

(f)  Nottingham City Clinical Commissioning Group (NCCCG) are key partners, contributing across a large range of issues including domestic violence, child sexual exploitation and female genital mutilation;

(g)  NCCG are also involved in a piece of work altering the mind-set of clinicians. This work aims to note children as “not bought to appointment” rather than “did not attend” and they are looking at the impact this change in mind-set may bring about. There has been interest from other clinical commissioning groups around the UK in this work;

(h)  the Child Death Overview Panel are pleased with the reduction of natural deaths within the reporting period and continues work on educating parents around preventable deaths such as unsafe sleeping;

(i)  the Quality Assurance Sub-Group is planning a series of audits of the key partner agencies;

(j)  a range of training covering various topics continues to be offered to staff and volunteers from across the partnership, including the voluntary sector. In particular the  “Every Colleague Matters” training has already been, or will be delivered to every person who works within the Children and Vulnerable Adults workforce in the city of Nottingham;

(k)  future priorities will remain the same. Work will continue to prioritise keeping children safe from harm, including child sexual exploitation and missing children.

Following questions and comments from the board the following points were made:

(l)  a newly commissioned sub group has been set up looking at emerging issues such as trafficking, modern day slavery and refugees;

(m)  at present the NCSCB is well resourced. There are financial challenges, but partnership agencies are currently able to fund projects and programmes that are necessary;

(n)  the support of the voluntary sector is essential in the work of the NCSCB. There are financial challenges around resources and how the voluntary sector as a whole can contribute to the Board financially;

(o)  all members organisations of the Volunteers Network have certain standards that their volunteers  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy and Resources

Helen Blackman, Director of Children’s Integrated Services presented a report updating the Committee on Post Safeguarding Inspection Progress since the Ofsted inspection carried out in 2014. The following points were highlighted:

(a)  In 2014 Ofsted judged that there was lots of good work taking place in Nottingham City with room for improvement in some aspects;

(b)  the workforce had issues with capacity despite the Council taking on 10 additional social workers shortly before the inspection started. This remains a challenge for the Council despite steps being taken to ease caseloads;

(c)  the IT system used, Carefirst, was considered increasingly unsuitable, no longer intuitive to the increasing workloads being experienced. A new system called Liquid Logic was commissioned and went live in December 2016. Members of staff have received training but it will take time for new system to be embedded. The system is far more intuitive and will reduce screen time;

(d)  assessment and planning issues were made worse by the issues with inadequate computer systems. This issue is being addressed with the new system and will improve as staff become comfortable with the software;

(e)  the ‘voice of the child’ approach was applied widely but the recording was not always done well enough. It did highlight good practices with younger children. As a result, all recording templates have been reassessed and re-written. The introduction of the Liquid Logic software has also improved the quality of staff recording. Additionally, the Council has introduced an app called Mind of My Own (MOMA), whichis designed to enable Children in Care to be better heard;

(f)  there was an issue with the governance and capacity of the Virtual School used by Children in Care. Following a peer review of this service there is now extra capacity and a governing body place. In addition to this, all Children in Care have a full education plan alongside a full health plan;

(g)  in the past, the Fostering Service suffered from a lack of technical leadership. This has been addressed with a restructure to ensure technical lead is in place. There is also an increased focus on finding local fostering families and a change in the way payments are made to make it easier for foster carers;

(h)  Adoption Services was also involved in the restructure to ensure technical leadership and development of specialist skills;

(i)  strategic tools like Carefirst have now been updated and corporate business plans are better communicated;

(j)  a recent peer review of Children’s Services showed that children in Nottingham City were are safe, and that the Council was not risk averse. An Ofsted inspection of the Youth Offending Team in 2016 judged them to be a good service, offering innovative work and good leadership;

(k)  new Multi-Systemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect has been introduced to work intensively with the most in need families. This work looks to break the cycle of abuse and breakdown of families and to support change for the whole family;

(l)  children’s residential  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32.

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy and Resources

Rav Kalsi, Senior Governance Officer, updated the Committee on the work programme.

RESOLVED to agree the work programme for 2016/2017