Agenda item

The Committee considered a report of the Corporate Director of Children and Young People’s Services that provided an analysis of the progress to date against the improvement activity across Children and Young People’s Services following the Ofsted inspection which took place between February and March 2016. The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers provided members with a presentation detailing the progress made on the action plan to address Ofsted’s recommendations to the County Council following their inspection in March 2016 (for copy of report and slides, see file of minutes).

The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers advised members that the recommendations had been grouped into four key themes, Strengthening Management and Staffing Capacity, Strengthening Political and Management Oversight, Improving the Quality of Practice and Compliance with Regulations. While it had been demonstrated that there had been good overall progress across the four themes there were priorities and future work still to be done.

Councillor Bainbridge was delighted that support for looked after children ‘staying put’ was being amended.  In relation to the results of the casefile audit information, Councillor Bainbridge was pleased to see 61% of case files being audited as good or better, however, was concerned at the 39% which required improvement or were inadequate and enquired if this was because of high vacancies.  The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers indicated that most of the 39% were in the requires improvement category and a very small fraction were judged to be inadequate. Work still needed to be done, however, a number of those that were classified as requires improvement just needed a little more to be in the good category. The Head of Service advised that staffing pressures were a major factor but not the only reason for those in the requires improvement and inadequate category.  Staff training and development on management of casefiles was being arranged.

Councillor Kennedy asked if newly qualified social workers were buddied up with existing social workers to ensure trainees were familiar with the process.  The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers agreed that this was a definite focus to ensure there was a good skill mix and a buddy up system would be in place for 12 to 18 months to support newly qualified social workers.

Councillor Brookes commented on the great progress that had been made on the political oversight theme and the positive changes to Corporate Parenting Panel which was now better joined up with Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee. 

Councillor Brookes asked why Liquid Logic was a better casefile management system than SIDD.  The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers advised that SIDD was 20 years old and was an in-house system which was not fit for purpose anymore as it was in-efficient and extremely time consuming.  From a social worker perspective, Liquid Logic was a quicker system as all the information could be input without reverting to paper files.  With the SIDD system, children’s records were in different places and records were scanned in but with Liquid Logic system, all children’s records would be in one place. The implementation for the Liquid Logic system was September 2018.

Councillor Jewell mentioned that in the past Durham County Council social workers had taken up positions at other local authorities after being offered lucrative incentives and asked if this was the reason for the creation of new posts.  The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers advised that there had been a number of new posts established, the senior leadership team had been strengthened and there had been the establishment of an 11^th Families First Social Work Team in the Easington Area.  Four social worker posts in Child Protection service and six additional social work posts in the Looked After Service and six team co-ordinator posts had been created to support the additional Families First team, Child Protection teams and Looked After teams.  There was now increased capacity in legal services to manage the increased volume in care proceedings and there was also an additional independent reviewing officer.  Additionally to the increased resource there was now a regional agreement in place to regulate the pay of agency worker staff.

Mrs Swift enquired about the wellbeing and health of social workers and was informed that staff welfare was very high on the service’s agenda.  A survey on quality of support and supervision was carried out annually and the analysis of results indicate that staff feel they receive good support and the general feedback for Durham County Council was also good.

Councillor Hopper commented that good news stories about social workers are never reported and it is only when things go wrong that it makes the headlines.  The Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers agreed and said that the service had decided to acknowledge the good work of social workers and hold an event to celebrate their work to raise their profile.  The Head of Service informed the committee that the Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People’s Services had received fantastic feedback.

The Chairman thanked the Head of Looked After Children and Care Leavers for her presentation.

Resolved:

That the report be noted