Issue - meetings

Children's Services Self-Assessment

Meeting: 02/06/2025 - Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Board (Item 11)

11 Children's Services Self-Assessment pdf icon PDF 134 KB

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

Additional documents:

Minutes:

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  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11


Meeting: 19/05/2025 - Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Board (Item 5)

Children's Services Self-Assessment

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

Minutes:

This item was deferred to 2 June 2025 meeting.