To consider the submitted report on the latest position in respect of the implementation of the Children’s Improvement Plan and to receive an update from the Chairman of the Improvement Board, Mr Nigel Richardson.

The Chairman of the Children’s Improvement Board, Nigel Richardson, outlined the submitted report which provided a summary of the latest position in respect of the Children’s Improvement Plan.  Nigel outlined the history behind the appointment of Children’s Commissioner by the Department for Education (DFE), following unsatisfactory inspections in 2010 and 2018, which had resulted in Government intervention with him taking up this role around 18 months ago.  He welcomed the establishment of the Children and Young People’s Overview and Scrutiny Board to enable dedicated time to be spent on services for children and the involvement of Charlie Hine to help give the voice of the young person.

Nigel highlighted the areas which he believed had contributed towards the improvements, particularly in the last twelve months:

(i)         political leadership – the work of the Leader of the Council, Councillor Steve Darling, and Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Councillor Law, giving a clear commitment across the Council to improve and view children as the long term future of Torbay;

(ii)        operational leadership – the crucial roles of the Director of Children’s Services, Nancy Meehan, and Interim Chief Executive, Anne-Marie Bond, who have renewed the corporate appetite to improve Children’s Services, putting the correct leadership team in place, reviewing recruitment and retention practices and ensuring that the right support and processes are in place;

(iii)       partners – ensuring that partners are on board with the improvement journey with the additional of support from the Local Government Association to add capacity; and

(iv)       a clear vision, strategy and plan – this includes ‘family friendly Torbay’, greater focus on relational and restorative practice and a push for improved outcomes for children and young people – the ‘so what’ is anyone any better off as a result.

Nigel believed that the Council has worked hard to put the right foundations in place to enable the improvement journey to be sustainable in the long term and acknowledged the particular impact Councillor Steve Darling, Councillor Law, Nancy Meehan and Anne-Marie Bond had made in driving forward the improvements.  This would enable the Council to move to the next stage in April moving from a DFE appointed Commissioner to an Improvement Advisor and a relationship with a partner in practice (another local authority who would work alongside Torbay Council to coach and mentor us).

Members noted that there were still a number of risks including the impact of Covid-19, challenges in recruitment and retention to recruit enough good quality front line practitioners and ensuring consistency of good quality social work practice.

Members also heard from the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Director of Children’s Services on their views on the progress made and acknowledged the key role of engaging with the young people to ensure that their voices are heard.

Members of the Board asked questions in relation to the following:

·         what the Board can achieve and how it can add value – ideas mentioned were already included in the work programme;

·         increase in the numbers of child sexual exploitation and missing people – this was partly due to a better understanding of the data and appropriately identifying incidences rather than an increase in numbers, a dedicated Child Exploitation Manager and Team has been established to take this forward (it was noted that the Overview and Scrutiny Board had a dedicated meeting on this issue on 13 January 2021 prior to the establishment of this board);

·         how the implementation of the new Liquid Logic software was going – data migration and testing was being carried out with the system expected to go live on 7 June 2021;

·         drop in short term and long term placement stability – it was noted that long term stability was a positive thing to ensure children remain in their placements if they have been in care for over 2 ½ years, some were as a result of moving children out of residential placements and bringing them back into a home environment - Charlie Hine explained the importance to young people of long term placements and the emotional difficulties when they move placements and also the need to ensure greater consistency with social workers so that the young person does not have to keep retelling their story each time they get a new social worker; and

·         edge of care services – there was a separate item on this later on the agenda.

The Chairman thanked Nigel Richardson, Nancy Meehan and her team and Councillor Law for all their hard work to help the Council get to this stage in its improvement journey.

It was noted that not all of the data was easy to understand and it was agreed that the Director of Children’s Services would re-run a course on understanding children’s data for members of the Board and open up to all other members.