Issue - meetings

BCP Childrens Services was inspected, under the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACs) framework in December 2021. The outcome was an overall inadequate judgement.

As a result the Secretary of State of Education issued a Statutory Direction and appointed a DfE Improvement Adviser to support the Council in their improvement of Childrens Social Care Services.

The Childrens Services Improvement Plan is in place to ensure progress is made at pace in Childrens Social Care in line with the recommendations of the December ILACs Inspection and in accordance with the statutory direction notice received by the Council in March 2022.

Overview and Scrutiny require regular updates on themes regarding improvement in order to scrutinise. In November 2023 and February 2024, Children’s Services had their fifth and sixth Monitoring Visits, the findings from the fifth inspections are presented for scrutiny. The findings from the sixth visit will be published on March 27 by Ofsted.

Please note, as set out within the report, should the Committee wish to discuss information relating to MV6 which is confidential, then it will need to move to an exempt session.

The Chair opened the item by advising the Committee that the feedback from Monitoring Visit 6 had not yet been published by Ofsted and therefore any information given or discussions regarding it would require the Committee to go into exempt session.

The Corporate Director of Children's Services, Director for Quality, Performance Improvement and Governance and Service Manager, Care Experienced Young People presented a report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'B' to these Minutes in the Minute Book.

BCP Childrens Services was inspected, under the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACs) framework in December 2021. The outcome was an overall inadequate judgement.

As a result the Secretary of State of Education issued a Statutory Direction and appointed a DfE Improvement Adviser to support the Council in their improvement of Childrens Social Care Services.

The Childrens Services Improvement Plan was in place to ensure progress was made at pace in Childrens Social Care in line with the recommendations of the December ILACs Inspection and in accordance with the statutory direction notice received by the Council in March 2022.

Overview and Scrutiny required regular updates on themes regarding improvement in order to scrutinise. In November 2023 and February 2024, Children’s Services had their fifth and sixth Monitoring Visits, the findings from the fifth inspections are presented for scrutiny. The findings from the sixth visit would published on March 27 by Ofsted.

The Committee discussed the report including:

• In response to a query regarding the continued need to improve professional curiosity, the Committee was advised that there had been a focus on making sure managers and frontline workers were equipped to ask those important questions as well as encouraging reflection to help people develop and embed those  skills.
• In response to a query raised regarding housing and what more could be done to improve the standards in the area, the Committee was advised that housing for care experienced young people included a number of different provisions. The provisions for young people were visited regularly by housing staff as well as personal advisors to check in on how young people were living and maintaining their accommodation.  Additionally, work had been done to ensure they were maintaining governance over commissioned properties for young people while making sure properties were at the right standard, and in the right location for the young person.
• In response to a query regarding the use of agency staff, the Committee was advised in December 2021 after the ILACs inspection there were only 30% permanent staff in Children’s Services, however this had now increased to 70% of permanent staff in the service.

It was Proposed, Seconded and

RESOLVED that the Committee request that the Director of Housing liaise with the Children’s Services Directorate to prepare information, either written or in the form of a verbal presentation, about the extent of environmental health services powers and the remit to ensure housing is of good quality and fit for habitation  ...  view the full minutes text for item 78