To review the draft Children's Services Self-Assessment which provides an annual position on performance of Children's Services.

The Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Bye, and the Director of Children’s Services, Nancy Meehan outlined the exempt draft 2024-25 Torbay Children’s Services Self Evaluation of Practice, which set out the Council’s self-evaluation against the Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services Framework and articulates what the Council knows about the quality and impact of practice in Torbay and plans to maintain and improve practice over the next year and responded to questions.

The Sub-Board asked questions in relation to: 

·                     recruitment and retention of staff within the Disabilities Team had been a challenge, it was projected to be staffed to capacity by May 2025, had this been achieved;

·                     was the Agency Manager impacting on budgets;

·                     what level do people have to be in order to be a lead practitioner;

·                     were parents, children and families concerned about the new Children’s Reforms;

·                     the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and agreement had ceased, what does the new commission look like;

·                     who were hidden men;

·                     29% of those Children in Need open within Operational Services have been open for over twelve months….. to ensure they are not subject to intervention for longer than they should be, was this covered by the Family First Programme;

·                     were special guardianship orders and children staying put affecting the Council’s sufficiency numbers or could they take another child; and

·                     what was being done about children’s access to dentistry.

The following responses were provided:

·                     the staff within the Disabilities Team were up to capacity but an Agency Manager was currently in post due to current restructuring and working towards the new Children’s Reforms which would change the way the Council works;

·                     there were budget pressures in 2024/2025 due to use of agency workers but it was expected that this would decrease when the new ways of working and restructuring was completed;

·                     under the Reforms the worker holding Early Help will be the lead worker as the child will no longer need to have a social worker unless they progress to child protection.  There were proposals to develop staff across the whole of the workforce including the Homelessness and Housing Teams to ensure that they were able to appropriately support families and children and know when to escalate which were due to go live from 1 September, the Council was currently reviewing each child to make sure that they were allocated to the right worker ready for this change;

·                     it was not yet known if parents, families and children were aware of the new Reforms, pathfinders have not realised that moving from early help to child in need would be the same worker, with them only moving to a social worker if they progress to child protection;

·                     the Council was currently reviewing the provision for the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and agreement and would be going out to procurement later in the year to ensure that children have their therapeutic needs met;

·                     hidden men were males involved in the child’s lives, to help understand their involvement, previously the Council had not actively engaged in speaking to men to understand their influence on the child’s lives as the focus had been on the main carer;

·                     the Children in Need open within Operational Services were part of the Family First Programme and the Council was looking at every child who was in need starting with those who have been known the longest as part of a health check to see where they were progressing;

·                     special guardianship orders and children staying had impacted on sufficiency as well as a number of retirements and concern over the sufficiency of foster carers, the Council was at minus two at the moment, but they could take on extra children if they met the criteria and had space; and

·                     the Council was working with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) about local dentistry services and it was part of the oversight of the Torbay Safeguarding Children’s Partnership Neglect Sub-Group.  It was noted that there was a lack of dentists locally taking on NHS for children.

It was suggested that the data on children placed out of area could be better quantified as some children choose to stay in an area and it also included unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC); also a footnote to be included with the Adopt South West average time from receiving court authority to placement as this can be skewed by a small number of children and could be where some were in foster care and then adopted. 

Members welcomed the catch up on the life story work, which had seen a real improvement as well as good escalation of issues through the Children’s Continuous Improvement Board carrying out deep dives on areas of concern.

Resolved (unanimously):

That the Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Board endorse the Torbay Children’s Service Self Evaluation of Practice 2024-2025 as set out in exempt Appendix 1 to the submitted report and that it is published in accordance with Council’s requirements and thank officers for all their hard work in preparing the Self Evaluation Practice.