Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Interim Corporate Director Children and Young Peoples Services which presented Members with the final improvement plan for submission to Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) following the Ofsted Inspection of Children’s Services in February 2016 (for copy see file of minutes).

The Head of Children’s Services presented Members with an overview of the report and confirmed that the Service response was not entirely with regards to the outcome of the Ofsted Inspection, as they had already been working towards making improvements before receiving the judgement.  She reassured the Committee that the whole workforce was committed to responding to the outcome of the Inspection.

The Chairman confirmed that the work plan included a presentation to the Committee on the role of Social Workers and would give Members an idea of the problems that were faced within the Service.

Councillor Hall queried the response of Local Authorities to make improvements on the outcome Ofsted Inspections and suggested that occasionally the response was to throw money at the Service.  The Head of Children’s Services agreed that was sometimes the case and referred to Stockton Borough Council who had been offering new employees up to £10000 for signing up with them.  She was pleased to report that Durham had only lost a couple of employees because of this, however there was a worry that the Social Work Programmes which were being offered by Durham, would be used to gain excellent skills through training would then be recruited by other Councils.  There was also an issue in recruiting Managers as people didn’t seem to want the responsibility.  A Management Development Programme had been started alongside South Tyneside Council, and now Durham was continuing to offer the programme in the hope that it would give people the confidence to put in for those roles that were proving difficult to fill.

In response to a query from Councillor Hart, the Head of Children’s Service confirmed that cases were open longer, but the new model of work did take longer to complete.  In addition the Court process was taking a lot longer, which had in turn impacted on the time it took to go through the adoption process.  There had been a 20% increase in the number of care orders and interim care orders which required Court involvement and therefore impacting on cases.  Considering the problems in recruiting Social Workers, there had as also been an increase in LAC’s - there were 120 more than there had been in 2014.

Councillor Hart then queried why £360k was being spent on agency staff and the Head of Children’s Services confirmed that it was simply because agency staff were paid more.  People were signing up to agencies as they were paid twice as much for carrying out the same work and were not tied into the Councils terms and conditions.

Councillor Hart referred to the extensive amount of work the Portfolio Holder had to do and suggested that like Newcastle City Council, it could be beneficial to have a Junior Cabinet Member to share the responsibilities.  The Head of Children’s Services confirmed that the Service was well supported by the current Portfolio Holder and Councillor Armstrong confirmed that should Councillor Hart wish to make suggestions about the structure of Cabinet, that he should put them in writing to the Group Secretary.

With regards to the relationship with Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee, the Head of Children’s Services confirmed that there had always been good engagement with Members, however it was acknowledged that there had been oversights with regards to the reports presented to the Committee.  For example, Members were regularly updated on performance but there were never any performance issues and this may have led to false assurances.  One of the themes covering the 14 recommendations identified by Ofsted was to strengthen political and management oversight and Members could be assured that there would be more transparency in future.

Councillor Armstrong confirmed that all Members of the Council were Corporate Parents and Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny had a strategic role, therefore the Committee would receive an overview on the Role of the Social Worker to a future meeting of the committee.

Resolved

That the report be noted.