Meeting documents

            Meeting: Communities Scrutiny Sub-Committee (County Hall, Durham - Committee Room 1A - 01/12/2003 10:00:00 AM)

                  Item: A6 Performance Management

Scrutiny Sub-Committee Promoting Strong, Healthy & Safe Communities 1 December 2003 Performance Management

To provide Scrutiny Sub-Committee with an update on performance information with the half year results for 2003-04.

2. Background

The performance of Social Services Departments is measured using a variety of methods and tools such as Inspections and Spring and Autumn Delivery and Improvement Statements. Of universal relevance to this process are the 49 Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) indicators some of which are also Best Value indicators.

Half year performance for 2003/4 and the previous four years performance against PAF indicators can be found in Appendix A.
A copy of the detailed performance data has been circulated to members under separate cover. Results are traffic lit in the established way with dark green representing ‘very good’ performance and ranging to red as ‘investigate urgently’.

3. Current position

Children’s Services: 14 out of 18 indicators are being reported on this occasion:

2 very good (dark green)
4 good (light green)
4 acceptable (yellow)
4 ask questions (orange)

Performance against indicator A2 (Percentage of Children leaving care aged 16 of over with at least 1 GCSE at grade A-G) remains in the orange banding. However, an increase in performance by only 3% would lead to an improved banding. Work is on-going to ensure that all the data is recorded and that all Looked After Children are entered for GCSE examinations.

Indicator C18 (Final warnings and convictions of children looked after as a ratio of all children given a final warning or convicted) remains in the orange banding. This is partly as a result of the rate of offending in the general population decreasing and a concurrent increase in offending by the looked after children population. It is also the result of successfully moving some young people who were previously in expensive out of County placements back within the County’s own residential sector. Many of these children exhibit very challenging behaviours and consequently impact adversely on this indicator.

In trying to improve performance against this indicator a restorative justice project has been started, links have been established with Youth Offending Team Workers and the policy on police involvement is currently being reviewed. Funding is also being sought for a mentoring project for young offenders.

Members were informed by the last Social Services Department performance report that there had been significant changes to Indicator C20 (% of Child Protection cases reviewed in the last year). The Department of Health have issued revised banding thresholds for this indicator, which are to be applied to both 2002/03 performance as well as previous years retrospectively.

Performance is currently in the ‘good’ banding and monitoring work will continue in order to ensure that half-year performance is maintained throughout 2003/04. This is very important as C20 limits the maximum Star Rating for Children’s Services to “serving some people well” (i.e. 1 Star) where performance is less than 92.5%.

C23 (Percentage of Children Looked After who are adopted) has moved from the dark green banding in 2002/3 to the yellow banding for the first half of 2003/4. The reason for this is a reduction in the number of children looked after placed for adoption in the first half of this year as opposed to a fairly high number adopted in 2002/3. A very small improvement in performance will result in an improved banding. This indicator will be closely monitored throughout the year, not least because should performance drop into the red banding (less than 2%) it would limit the maximum Star Rating for Children’s Services to “serving some people well”.

D35 (Percentage of children who have been looked after for at least 4 years who have been in their current placement for at least 2 years) has slipped into the orange banding. Part of the reason for this has been the move referred to earlier of bringing young people who had been in expensive out of County placements back within the County’s own residential sector. A small improvement in performance to 50% will result in a change of banding.

Adult Services: - 15 out of 31 indicators are banded and reported here:

6 very good (dark green)
2 good (light green)
7 yellow (acceptable)

With no banded indicators in the red or orange categories, the half-year performance is encouraging. However, this represents less than half the PAF indicators for adults. A full picture will be available in August 2004 when all bandings should be available. (For copy of Appendix please refer to hard copy records).

Adult Services performance would seem to be relatively stable in that there has been little movement between bands for indicators this quarter.

B11 (Households receiving intensive home care as a proportion of those receiving intensive home and residential care) has achieved an improved banding, going from 29% to 30%. This change has resulted in a change from light to dark green banding.

There has also been a further reduction in the number of delayed transfers or discharges from hospital. This has resulted in D41 (Number of delayed discharges per 100,000 of the population) having an improved banding, moving from yellow to light green. Further work is on-going to improve performance against this indicator in preparation for the implementation of cross charging arrangements in January 2004.

4. Improvement Plans

Adult Services and Children’s Services PAF indicators and other results will be reported to the September round of Social Services Department Performance Days. Attention will be drawn to those indicators where improvements are most urgently needed. Such indicators will be followed up at subsequent Performance Days to ensure that any developments and remedial actions taken are impacting positively on performance.

5. Recommendations and reasons

You are recommended to:

(a) Note the information contained in this report.

 Item No. 6.doc