Agenda item

[Jin Takhar, Head of Equality Diversity & Inclusion to lead presentation with colleagues]

The Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion explained to meet the requirements of the law, they were present to inform the Panel on the status of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

The Director of Adult Social Care began her presentation (a copy of which is attached to the signed minutes) to give an overview of Adult Social Care EDI KPIs. She said that they had made progress on where they were previously at, but she recognised they still had a long way to go. She said they had made progress with the protected characteristics of Age, Sex and Disability. Some of the data captured was newly captured data and therefore, not all could be displayed with a relative comparison to capture progress. Bespoke training was commissioned to allow the workforce to have sensitive conversations relating to the protected characteristics with patients, however, this had not achieved the desired outcomes. This is something that would need to be focused on and worked out as next steps.

The Director of Adult Social Care said “Direct Payments” were seen as a good thing in Adult Social Care, as it showed the independence of the person. However, there was a significantly higher portion of Black and Asian people who utilised direct payments, rather than commissioned services. Research was to be carried out to discover if this was down to any cultural insensitivities by those services and to allow alterations to service provision to be more inclusive of Black and Asian groups. Work would need to be done to ensure Black and Asian people were aware of the mental health services available in the community.

The Vice-Chair sought clarification on a quote within the presentation document which stated: “14.3% of adults were of Black, Black British, Caribbean or African ethnicity, with 15.2% detained being of the same ethnic origin.”

The Director of Adult Social Care said it meant 15.2% of the whole 14.3% were of a specific and same ethnic origin.  The Chair said it needed to be noted that quotes written in this way were not clear enough and needed to be written with better clarity.

The Chair referred to page 18 of the presentation which explained that the bespoke training had not achieved the desired outcomes. He was concerned experts were hired to train staff on this specific issue and it did not work. He wanted to understand why this was the case and have further information.

The Director of Adult Social Care explained that although the training was for all protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, they found they were unable to get people to declare their sexuality and therefore saw this as a failure which would need to be addressed in a different way. This meant that they were not getting data still on sexuality and would need to do a lesson’s learned approach as to why the training did not achieve the aims.

The Chair agreed it would be an on-going process to attempt to obtain the results needed. He stated that his constituents had struggled with the communications around Direct Payments and that it was not easy to find, understand or do them for many. He felt this was the reason many did not independently do Direct Payments and instead went through the Council to sort payments.

The Director of Adult Social Care replied that they were undertaking an Adult Social Care re-design and sought to address these issues. She thanked the Chair for his insights.

The Chair said the presentation stated that Black people in Britain were detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 at a much higher level nationally than the rest of the population. The Chair wanted to know if Wolverhampton was in line with the national trend or not. The Director of Adult Social Care stated that she did not know the specific statistics and would need to check and come back to the Chair on this.

The Chair agreed he wanted this and stated it would be used to look at whether Wolverhampton was higher or lower than the average statistics. He wanted to then find out the reasoning behind the data results.

A Panel member asked why there were sections of information which stated “not recorded”. The Director of Social Care stated this was because the participant declined to answer the question.

A Councillor discussed a case wherein a constituent was detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. She felt people were left too long without intervention. She wanted to know what the services were doing to intervene sooner to prevent people going into care.

The Director of Social Care agreed with the Panel member that they would meet outside of the meeting to go through the case and discuss the issue further in private.

A Member of the Panel said she felt it was great the information had been captured but due to the size of the presentation provided, numbering at 50 pages, she wanted to know how the data was going to be used to tackle the issues uncovered in the data.

The Director of Social Care stated in the future she would try make reports and presentations more succinct for the Panel. She said they had commissioned work to be done in response to the data, to target those areas in need of improvement.

A Councillor wanted to know the actions and timeline planned to tackle these issues.  The Chair stated that he felt the Councillors question was more relevant to the Adults Scrutiny Panel. He then addressed Officers and stated the formats presented to the Panel were too long and thick with data. He wanted a more simplified and concise format in the future.

The Director of Children’s Services opened the presentation on Children & Young People (CYP) to give a recap on previous CYP priorities and explained the data informed the actions they took as priorities. They had used the opportunities available to work with young people to work on aims they had set. The priorities for the next year were informed by a larger data sample and they were ensuring they would be representing the diverse needs of the diverse CYP with diverse staff.  This would include the setting up of some targeted groups, such as a girl’s group to work with youth offenders. A full motion was to be taken to Council to try and get full time care leavers as a protected characteristic.

A Councillor stated that the report showed people between the age of 15 and 18 were an over-represented group and she wanted to know what they were going to do to target them.

The Director of Children’s Services said it was a good opportunity to show how data was used to target groups and inform their thinking. This would be displayed through family support and peer support groups which they would now try to shape the services so that young families could access services. The over-representation meant they could reflect on how to work with young parents caring for people in those age groups.

The Councillor replied enquiring about the lack of disability data on page 45. She said in the future this data could be gathered but she wanted to know if it could be broken down into further categorisation of the types of disability present within the children to allow for more targeted responses.

The Director of Children’s Services said that they could try to do that but it would depend on the way the data was collected. She said she would take it away as feedback to look into future reports.

The Councillor wanted to know how they were ensuring short breaks for parents were indeed breaks. The Director of Children’s Services said it was a key priority for the future to ensure that breaks away from children were an option, alongside family activities.

A Panel member focused on areas of underperformance in the Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic groups. She said the outcomes always ended up being the same and wanted to know if the interventions being done were not working. She also wanted to know if qualitative data was gathered to inform policies, as opposed to just quantitative data.

The Director of Children’s Services replied that the data gathering did include both qualitative and quantitative research methods. She said they were seeing changes to outcomes by services.

A Councillor wanted to know the progress of the priority to take to cabinet the motion that care leavers would be a protected characteristic.

The Director Children’s Services confirmed this has been to cabinet and approved. Care leavers were now categorised under the protected characteristics within the City of Wolverhampton.

The Vice-Chair stated that the KPI data on pages 35, 37 and 39 showed that Asians were disproportionately represented. He wanted to know how the administration categorised “Asian”, as it could cover a very broad group of people with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. As the usage of this data and the understanding of the groups it covered would influence how strategies were informed and planned. He stated for example that Asia as a term could be used to cover people from Chinese heritage, through to Indian heritage and felt the Council needed to be clear what they were looking at when discussing EDI.

The Director of Children’s Services agreed it was a broad category used to capture data. She said the Vice-Chairs challenge was reasonable and they would listen to his feedback to look at how the data was broken down and used; similar to the previously discussed point about disability data.

A Councillor wanted to know why the data showed Asians were under-represented in adoption compared to other groups. The Director of Children’s Services said this was not specific to Wolverhampton and was relative to a national trend that Asians were under-represented in adoption.

The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager said that key themes for exclusions were a decrease in exclusions overall since 2017, but they had a long way to go to ensure all young people got the best possible outcomes. The data showed the highest over-representation was key stage 3 to key stage 4, which was in line with national data. Children with additional needs had increased and was higher than the national data; more needed to be done in Wolverhampton to address this. Males were higher than females in exclusions which was in line with trends in the national data.

The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager New stated new guidance had been developed by the Government setting out the responsibilities Local Authorities had to address low attendance by pupils in schools. The largest proportion of exclusions were from the White ethnic background. Mixed race and Black males were over-represented in exclusions, which was in line with national data. The highest exclusions by religious background were Christian, with atheists also being represented as high. An improved website with better pathways had been launched which provided parents with access to see what support was available in an inclusive system provided by the Local Authority. They had had 76 exclusion prevention meetings, which was done when a pupil was at risk of exclusion to try turn things around. 70 of the 76 people remained in their provision post-prevention meetings and this displayed the Local Authority was providing support to schools, families, and students. The Council team were currently looking to do research looking at those who were excluded to gather qualitative information on their experiences to try develop an intervention program. They were to launch an attendance pathway and risk of exclusion pathway. They had recruited additional staff to meet requirements for attendance, this would mean supportive clinics for parents and carers. They had developed inclusion workshops which identified gaps in the provision.

A Panel member sought clarity over a graduated pathway. The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager replied that they had launched the Wolverhampton Inclusive Schools for Everyone site, which offered the pathway in a condensed manner.

A Councillor stated that whilst there was work and support to reduce exclusions, she was concerned by highly disruptive behaviour in class rooms impacting on all children’s quality of education. She wanted to know if data could be compiled on this and what could be done.

The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager said they could not assume what the quality of learning was. They would need to do research to find out what the Wolverhampton specific situation was, to inform the responses. 80 to 85 of Schools were rated good in Wolverhampton by Ofsted. They had a school improvement and education excellence service which could provide support to leaders in school to deal improving education quality.

The Chair wanted to know if there was a difference between support provided to Local Authority Schools and Academy Schools.

The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager said the same statutory responsibility applied in terms of services. Attendance was changing in legislation which required to have a clear offer to all schools.

The Chair wanted to know if there was a difference between exclusion levels at Academies compared to Local Authority Maintained Schools.  The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager said that Academies had a higher rate of exclusions.  The Chair felt this was down to the Academy school format, which was more competitive and results based. He stated this needed flagging as an equalities issue.

The Inclusion and Attendance Service Manager said they were round the table with the heads of Academies and were maintaining a relationship where concerns could be raised.

There was agreement between the Panel and the Head of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion that going forwards future presentations would be more concise, with additional information added as appendices.