Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Chief Executive, which provided an overview of progress towards achieving the key priorities within the Council Plan 2023-27 in line with the Council’s corporate performance framework. The report covered performance in and to the end of quarter one, April to June 2023. (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

The Corporate Equalities and Strategy Manager was in attendance to present the report and deliver a presentation that provided a performance summary for Quarter one, 2023/24; provided details of the developing performance management and items that were going well and issues that they were addressing (for copy of presentation, see file of minutes).

Councillor Crute referred to the performance indicator in relation to the percentage of mothers smoking at the time of delivery and asked if there were any reasons why this was increasing and if there was specific target action taken to address this.

The Corporate Equalities and Strategy Manager responded that this was part of the joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and there was a work programme with some actions to address some of this. He advised of some work around a midwifery programme around collective carer where you would have the same midwife and stated that the pilot programme achieved some successes in reducing the number of mothers smoking at the time of delivery and was piloted in one area in Durham and they were looking to roll out region wide. He stated that the Performance Indicator was in the Council Plan but the reporting on that would go to the Adults, Wellbeing and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Mulholland referred to social workers and their increasing workload and stated that it was promising to see that vacancies were been filled and asked what had been done to mitigate pressures on current social workers.

The Corporate Equalities and Strategy Manager responded that there were some programmes in place within the service around supporting wellbeing and commented that the service does this well and received employer of the year as part of the national social worker awards.

Councillor Scurfield referred to the timescales for assessments and stated the delays were impacting on children and asked how far out of timescales were these and how were the service ensuring that children were getting the assessments.

The Corporate Equalities and Strategy Manager responded that it was a marginal drop and stated where the assessment was delayed it was only a few days out of timescale that was a capacity issue. He stated that a number of assessments were now in range.

The Head of Education and Skills advised Members that a session on this would be held in January 2024 to talk through some of the challenging issues and the recruitment priorities.

In conclusion, the Committee generally supported the move to the new report format, particularly welcoming the increased use of performance dashboards, charts and data.

Resolved: (i) That the overall strong position and direction of travel in relation to quarter one performance, and the actions being taken to address areas of challenge be noted.

(ii) That the changes and improvements to the new format performance report which will be used exclusively from quarter two 2023/24 be noted.