Agenda item

(To receive a report by Janice Spencer, Assistant Director Children's Services, which sets out the work undertaken across Children's Services in response to questions 8, 9, 13 and 14 from the Centre for Public Scrutiny's 21 questions guide for Councillors on Safeguarding Children)

It was reported that on 9 October 2015 the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee was asked to consider and comment on the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) 21 questions guide for Councillors on Safeguarding Children.

It was agreed following this that Officers would be requested to provide the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee with assurance in respect of the questions set out in the CfPS Guide 2015.

Consideration was given to a report which set out the work undertaken across Children's Services in response to questions 8, 9, 13 and 14, as set out below:

·         Question 8 – Does the local area have a range of effective and evidence based services in place to assess and meet the needs of local children and their families?

·         Question 9 – Are local assessments of need effective in ensuring children and their families are able to access early support and services to reduce risk and meet needs?

How effective is access to these services in preventing potential safeguarding interventions?

·         Question 13 – What evidence is there that the child is at the centre of local safeguarding arrangements?

·         Question 14 – Who are the most vulnerable children in the local area? What are their needs and how well are they met?

Members were guided through the report and were provided with the opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report, and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         In relation to Question 9 and the number of TACs/early help arrangements in place, it was queried whether this was due to increasing need or staff being better able to identify children in need of additional support.  It was noted that need was being recognised earlier, by schools and social workers and demand was increasing.  It was noted that 64% of lead professionals on TACs were school staff.

·         In relation to children being removed from families, it was queried whether this was a last option and whether work would be undertaken with the family to prevent this from happening.  It was queried whether the authority was too cautious in this regard.  Members were advised that children were best placed living in their family, but some families needed more support than others.  It was very important that excellent assessments and risk analyses through signs of safety, so that risk could be carefully considered.  It was important that this work was done so the right interventions could be put in place at the right time.  Prior to the removal of children the family would go into pre-proceedings and it was confirmed that it was the court who made decisions to remove children not the local authority.  It was confirmed by officers that mechanisms were in place to manage pre-proceedings work and that the Court made the judgement to remove children.

·         A lot of research had been done into this matter by the Association of Directors of Children's Services, and with more awareness came more identification.  It was also noted that one Head teacher had said that children in Lincolnshire were more likely to tell a teacher what was happening to them at home when compared with those children living in inner city areas due to cultural complexities.

·         It was commented that expectations about what was acceptable in society with children was changing, there was also pressure in relation to the internet and social media.  Values and attitudes towards children and young people also changed over time.

·         Neglect was a very difficult issue in terms of when it was the best time to intervene, and when should the authority give support and try and help the family and at what point there needed to be statutory intervention.  A member commented that in their work with the Adoption Panel, they were always impressed by the amount of work that was put in to keep a child in the home.  It was thought it must be very difficult for those staff on the frontline who were making these decisions on a day to day basis.  It was acknowledged that it was a very difficult judgement call to make, but that staff were professionally trained to undertake this work and there was careful management oversight of decisions.

·         It was thought that austerity measures were having an impact on demand management and were reducing every organisations capacity to deal with the demand for services.

·         There was concern about the increase in the numbers of TAC, and it was queried how schools were managing that increase, as some schools were having redundancies in pastoral support.  Members were informed that officers were seeing some excellent early help assessments from schools.  It was also noted that 8 TAC consultants had been put in place across the county who could provide additional capacity for advice, support and supervision for schools. 

·         Concerns were raised regarding the involvement of other organisations in TAC, as schools could feel that they were leading the process and not getting engagement from other agencies such as health or the Police.  It was noted that concerns in relation to health were improving and that this would be enhanced further through the insourcing of health visiting services.  There was some engagement from PCSO's and some had been seconded into the early help team through the Families Working Together service. 

·         It was queried that if there were cases where abuse was suspected, would that be when the Police got involved.  It was noted that if this was the case then a threshold would be triggered and child protection teams would be contacted and a child protection enquiry would be required. 

·         It was noted that the decision to remove children from a family was not the local authority's, but was made by the courts, and there was a need to assess the viability of all family members before and as part of an application to the court.

·         In relation to domestic violence, it was noted that were thousands of cases where police attended an incident where children were in the household.

·         It was noted that the Early Help locality teams did have a small commissioning budget of around £30K to enable them to provide bespoke services for specific areas.  It was also noted that social workers had access to Section 17 budgets if additional support was required.

RESOLVED

            That the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee be assured on the contents of the response provided.