Issue - meetings

To submit a report by the Head of Children’s Services.

It was resolved to confirm that the Executive is satisfied with the steps taken to progress the implementation of the Service Improvement Plan and the pace of progress, and also with the pace of progress and improvements made to date within the Children and Families’ Service.

The report of the Head of Children and Families’ Services documenting progress to date against the Service Improvement Plan was presented for the Executive’s consideration.

The Leader and Portfolio Member for Social Services reported that the Service despite the national shortage of Social Workers has succeeded in recruiting two experienced Social Workers and has implemented the contingency plan which is to recruit Newly Qualified Social Workers who will be supported by Agency Social Workers over capacity for a period of one year. The Independent Support Team (IST) which has been working with the Service to support improvement following the inspection by CSSIW (now CIW) in late 2016 presented its final report to the Children’s Services Improvement Panel in July. Extracts from the IST’s feedback are reproduced in the report; these are predominantly positive and they highlight a number of areas where the changes made have led to significant improvements. Notwithstanding there remain issues which require ongoing attention, the IST deems that the improvements made bode well for the future and provide a solid platform on which to build upon. The Portfolio Member also referred to the marked improvement in the Service’s performance against PIs in the last quarters as reflected in section 3 of the report; the performance in relation to achieving corporate performance standards such as sickness absence targets and completion of mandatory online training modules is also much improved.

The Executive noted that the evaluation of progress as presented in this and previous updates have provided assurance that Children and Families’ Services are improving enabling the Executive to be more confident about how the Service is now operating but with the following caveats –

•  That Children and Families’ Services need to have in place arrangements to ensure that the improvements made are sustainable over time in order to lessen the possibility of peaks and troughs in performance.

•  That the rate of attrition among experienced Social Workers is a concern and is a risk that needs to be mitigated against.

The Assistant Chief Executive/Statutory Director of Social Services acknowledged that having in place effective and robust arrangements to sustain the changes made in terms of practice, policies and staff structures is important. Supervision, quality assurance and audit processes have been developed and these will ensure that the quality of practice remains consistent on a day to day basis and that this can be evidenced. With regard to the pressures on Social Workers, the staff restructure implemented means that Children’s Social Workers now work in smaller teams, have reduced caseloads, better access to Practice Leaders and are supervised more consistently – these factors all contribute to making their work safer.

It was resolved to confirm that the Executive is satisfied with the steps taken to progress the implementation of the Service Improvement Plan and the pace of progress, and also with the pace of progress and improvements made to date within the Children and Families’ Service.