Agenda item

[Alison Hinds, Deputy Director, Children’s Social Care, to present report]

Alison Hinds, Deputy Director, Children’s Social Care, presented a report which detailed the findings of a mid-year review of children and young people’s services as part of a self-evaluation exercise.

The Local Authority is required to produce a self-evaluation report. The information collected is helpful in understanding how the Local Authority is delivering its services, what is being doing well and what needs to be improved. The information is also a useful source for Ofsted when reviewing the performance of services. The Deputy Director referred to previous comments on the impact of the national pandemic on the service.

The Deputy Director commented on the implementation of a new electronic children’s record reporting system called Eclipse. The system went live on 21 September 2021 and enables the service to record the whole of a child’s journey to be recorded on one system.

The Deputy Director commented on the successful migration of data from the old to the new system, with only a small number of issues and overall, the whole transition has been really positive.

The Deputy Director commented on demographic profile of the City’s population and advised the panel that there are 263,357 people who live in the City, 62,276 of these are children under the age of 18. The Deputy Director provided an analysis of the number of children receiving support as at the September 2020 and commented on the reduction in the number of children and young people in care.

The service is continuing to see a reduction in the number of children young people in care and there is a program of making sure services are directed at the right level to children and families across the City. The service continues to work virtually and monitor children with a Child Protection Plan.The Deputy Director commented on the decrease in the numbers of children in need, which is lower than usual, but this may be due to impact of Covid. The Deputy Director commented on the early provision of services and the work with local partners to offer families professional support.

The Deputy Director commented on the values of the Children Services and gave details about the progress made to apply them in practice. The provision of services for children in need of help and protection The services was last inspected by Ofsted in March 2017. Ofsted made a further inspection visit in September 2018 and the findings highlighted areas for development, which have been included in service improvement plan.

The service is committed to giving children the best start in life. The Deputy Director commented on the key themes in the Plan on a Page 2020-2021 document and highlighted examples of work being done to achieve them.

The Deputy Director commented on the findings from quality assurance work and explained how the service has significantly improved the way in which audit is undertaken and the value of the information collected during the process in helping managers to understand the impact of services delivered to children and families. The feedback from the audit process has been well received by the workforce.

The Deputy Director commented on improvements in the recruitment and retention of children’s social workers and that the overall picture was very positive, with the vacancy rate at 15.8 per cent. This compares to 28 per cent vacancy rate in children’s social work posts in March 2019. The stability in workforce also helps to create greater stability for children and families.

The Deputy Director commented that the service is working hard to reduce the rate of exclusions from schools in Wolverhampton. The service has introduced the Culture of Belonging programme which is a whole system approach to supporting schools to be inclusive and to provide alternative options to exclusion. The programme is supported by schools and other partners in the sector. The service has increased resource to support children in families where there is a risk of exclusion, if extra help is needed. The Wolverhampton Child Contact Centre has now re-opened and offers a setting for more intensive family support work.

The Deputy Director commented on the range of work being done to support children at risk of exploitation and advised the panel that there will be a review of how existing services respond to reported concerns about vulnerable children. The work will be supported by a programme of training and workshops.

The Deputy Director commented on the number of missing children in Wolverhampton which has increased steadily over the last few months. This is due to the police changing their processesregarding missing and absent classification. The service expected the number of reported cases when schools reopened in September 2020 to surge, but the picture locally and nationally has been instead a small increase in the numbers. The expectation is that the number of missing children will remain stable. The stability of placements has improved during the period of the report.

The Deputy Director commented on the work of Fostering Service and reported that 127 children from across the Black Country were matched to adopters and of these 46 were Wolverhampton children. The Adoption@Heart regional adoption agency which is hosted by Wolverhampton is working well with 51 prospective adopters approved in its first year of operation.

The Deputy Director commented on the data about the health and wellbeing of children in care and the work being done to understand their emotional health and well-being particularly during this period. The service is using regular assessments to gather information and also to meet the Council’s statutory responsibilities for reporting on looked after children. The Deputy Director commented on the impact of work done by social workers and other professionals which has contributed to the improved educational outcomes for children and young people.

The rate of school attendance for children in care is high with low levels of persistent absence and there was no one who was permanently excluded from school in the 2019/20 academic year. Furthermore, six Wolverhampton care leavers graduated from University in 2020 and currently there are 26 care leavers in higher education.

The service is working hard to support employment, education and training opportunities for care leavers and is very conscious of the impact that Covid-19 has had on this particular age group.

The Deputy Director advised the panel that care leavers have a choice of accommodation provision including; supported lodgings dependent on their needs, training flats, and independent accommodation for people aged over 18. The Housing Support Service has 33 flats. Each young person living in one of these homes has a designated Housing Support Worker (HSW) who remains with them throughout their time in the service.  The level of support varies but there is a maximum of up to 30 hours available per week. As the young person progresses, the number of hours of support will decrease. The level of support would be set out in an individual support plan for each young person. 

The Deputy Director advised the panel of the summary of achievements in 2019-2020.

The panel wanted to record their formal congratulations on level of commitment across the service to support children and young people and excellent progress made as detailed in the presentation.

The panel queried the information on the number of school exclusions and the work of Culture of Belonging programme to provide alternative options. The panel requested more details about the programme. The Deputy Director advised the panel that the programme is a whole system approach which involves working together with school partners to not only reduce the number of exclusions but also to promote inclusivity in schools. There is a focus on supporting the young person with issues and taking a multi-agency approach. The programme is supported by extra workers, who will also be working with the family of the young person.

The panel queried if there was data that could be shared about the impact and effectiveness of the programme in achieving its stated aim. The Deputy Director advised a report could be presented to a future meeting but added the disruption caused Covid 19 which has led to lengthy school closures would make comparison on school exclusions to the previous period difficult.

The Deputy Director suggested than an update on the programme to a future meeting which include information on the success of the programme in reducing the number of school exclusions.

The panel queried how vulnerable children with ADHD or special needs have been affected Covid-19 restrictions and school closures and how they are coping with the disruption caused.

The Deputy Director advised the panel that child assessments have continued since the start of the pandemic and gave reassurance about the work being done to encourage and support vulnerable children to attend school.

The panel queried the support for children with special needs who may be reluctant to attend school and there was concern that issues may not picked up when they are at home. The Deputy Director reassured the panel about the work done with parents and carers to offer continuous support and encouragement to vulnerable children. The service has increased capacity. In addition, the service has increased the capacity in the Attendance Team.

The Deputy Director advised the panel that there was an expectation that attendance would not be high at the start of September but the service provides follow-up support to the more vulnerable children who either were struggling with confidence issues or who had  health and safety concerns. The service is also working closely with the increasing number of families who are chosen to home educate their children.

The panel requested that a report which gives details about the use of specialist assessment tools referred to in the presentation to a future meeting. The Deputy Director gave examples of the assessment tools used by social workers and explained that their use would depend on the needs of the family.

The Deputy Director agreed to present a report to a future meeting of the family.

Cllr Dr Michael Hardacre, Cabinet Member Education, praised the dedication and efforts of the employees working in Children Services in supporting families under very difficult circumstances since the start of the pandemic.

The Cabinet Member also highlighted the improved situation in terms of improving outcomes for children and the reduction in the number of children in care compared to that of neighbouring authorities.

Cllr John Reynolds, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People also wanted to formally record his thanks for employees who have contributed to the improvements highlighted in the report. The Cabinet Member also thanked the work of the schools and the partnerships which have contributed to this success.

Resolved:

1.    The panel agreed to note the progress.

2.      The panel agreed that the Deputy of Director, Children’s Social Care, to present a report to a future meeting of the panel on the assessment tools used by service when determining the level of support offered to families and their children.