Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Chief Executive which provided an overview of progress towards achieving the key outcomes of the council’s corporate performance framework and highlight key messages to inform strategic priorities and work programmes. The report covered performance in and to the end of quarter four, 2022/23, January to March 2023 (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager was in attendance to present the report.

Mrs Gunn referred to the statistics for Educational Health Care Plans (EHCP) that had dropped off the report and asked why this was the case.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that the global EHCP in place was a headline indicator and is in relation to the level of demand. He indicated that Durham had the graduated approach and provided more support through top up funding to schools which should result in a lower level of EHCP as they were providing earlier help in schools. Monitoring the overall number gave an indicator of the wider system pressures. They had a number of processing indicators around every service in the Council and escalate the issues through different levels of process and Members may only see certain indicators, but they did have a lot of statistics for every service. He commented that there were some challenges in the EHCP processes that was largely due to high demand.

Mrs Gunn clarified that ideally EHCP should be going down but the number of SEN plans going up and indicated that it was important that the percentages and targets were shared with the committee.

Councillor Crute referred to EHCP and indicated that the report stated that the rise in request for assessments was impacting on the ability to carry them out in the statutory time scales. However, the performance indicator tracker suggested that the number of children on a EHCP was on an upward trend and had been for the last four quarters. He asked if the failure to carry out those initial assessments in time was impacting on figures.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that the number of EHCP assessments was going up, it was not necessarily a performance target but was getting better. He stated that the global number of EHCP were across all age groups up to the age of 25, so you have a moving target with plans being issued all the time. The number of plans being worked on was getting bigger and more requests were coming in, there more open assessments being worked on in the service which would have normally been processed and included another indicator.

Councillor Crute indicated that the future impact of these assessment was a concern.

Councillor Waldock asked if those who were applying for an assessment were aware that the council were not meeting the 20-week deadline. The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that he would take this back to the service and feed this back to the committee.

Councillor Waldock asked of the 197 who were over the 20 weeks, how far over were they and how near were they to completion.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager responded that it was a range but he did not have the figures to hand but the issue was that it was taking longer due to the increasing number of caseloads. They had a small number of cases where it was taking a long time since the request had been received but was due to the case complexities. These were relatively small numbers and was less than 10.

Councillor Waldock asked how the authority compared to other local authorities and whether they had they seen an increase in demand and were not hitting the 20-week target also.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager responded that historically they had performed well in this indicator and the last couple of years had seen a dramatic decline. The last published figure was 27%, the previous year was 4% that were within the 20 weeks. He commented that the national average was 40% but largely there were a number of local authorities with a relatively low performance for the 20 weeks, but others performed very well.

Councillor Waldock asked if the council could have conversations with those authorities that were doing well and commented that she knew it may be a demand issue.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that those conversations were ongoing and stated that there was a regional network and the benchmarking data had indicated an increase in requests of around 4% but the increase in Durham was above this.

Councillor Deinali referred to EHCP and asked if any analysis had been carried out to look at any correlation between factors that could impact on children’s needs and the increase in EHCP. She continued if any work had been carried out to address early support from centres and their locations and any support given to schools due to the increase in workloads from the demand of the EHCP and what support was available for families who were waiting for an assessment.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that he would pass this onto the relevant service for a response.

Councillor Mulholland referred to case load pressures and that it was reported that two thirds of social workers leave to due to the impact of the workload and asked what support was provided to alleviate these pressures.

The Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager responded that he would take this back to the service for a response.

In response to a question from Mrs Gunn, the Corporate Equality and Strategy Manager indicated that they provide some indicators as an exception when a one-off topic was been considered, the report was to flag up certain issues not necessarily every one.

Councillor Deinali asked for a more detailed report specifically around EHCP to this committee so that it can be discussed in more details.

Councillor Crute suggested that this could be raised as an item for the work programme.

Resolved: That the overall position and direction of travel in relation to quarter four performance, the continuing impact of COVID-19 pandemic recovery and the external international factors driving inflation and cost-of-living on the council’s performance; and the actions being taken to address areas of underperformance including the significant economic and well-being challenges because of the pandemic and other external factors be noted.