Agenda item

Report CS17089

The Committee considered an update on progress in implementing the Children’s Services Improvement Action Plan, and seeking the approval of the Council’s Executive on proposals for the allocation of Phase 3 funding which had been agreed by the Council’s Executive on 14^th September 2016.

The Council’s services for children in need of help and protection and children looked after and the Bromley Safeguarding Children Board had been inspected by Ofsted in Spring 2016.  Although the Inspection had identified some strengths, the Local Authority received an overall judgement of ‘Inadequate’ and the Bromley Safeguarding Children Board was rated with a judgement of ‘Requires Improvement’.  Following the publication of the Ofsted report, a range of actions had been undertaken to drive the improvement process, including the development of the Improvement Action Plan.  The Department for Education had also appointed a Commissioner to assess the service who subsequently recommended that a Commissioner be appointed to undertake a further six month period of scrutiny to ensure that the required progress was made.  The Council’s Executive had agreed an additional £950k funding to be released over two phases to deliver the Improvement Action Plan, with plans for a third phase of funding in early 2017 that would bring the total additional funding to £2.3m. 

The first Ofsted monitoring visit took place between 8^th and 9^th November 2016 during which a number of cases were reviewed and interviews took place with Officers and young people, parents and carers.  Ofsted subsequently confirmed that this monitoring visit had found a very limited improvement in practice, although there was progress in some areas including work undertaken by the Court Team, and that there was a need to accelerate the improvement process by the next monitoring visit in February 2017.  Since joining the Local Authority in December 2016, the Deputy Chief Executive had refocused the improvement framework to complete the required actions within the necessary timescales and had reviewed the initial Phase 3 spending plan, re-profiling the resource requirements to fund a range of additional posts across the service, including those relating to quality audits.  It had been identified that further resources would be needed in the short to medium term to fund 10-15 social worker posts to ensure caseloads were manageable, and this would be funded via existing resources within the Education, Care and Health Services Department budget and by approaching Bromley Safeguarding Children Board partners to contribute to the new Board posts.

In considering the update, the Chairman noted that a member of the Legal Service would be based with Children’s Social Care staff which would improve practice at the earliest stages and support improved outcomes for children and young people.  A Member queried if the new Information Technology (IT) offer would meet the needs of children’s social workers and the Deputy Chief Executive confirmed that the new IT provision would support children’s social workers to deliver all elements of their role, including access to computer systems and remote working, and that training would be given to social workers in using this equipment. 

In response to a question from a Member, the Deputy Chief Executive advised that he was confident that the Improvement Action Plan was progressing across the full range of children’s services and that this would be reflected in the outcome of the next Ofsted monitoring visit.  The process of improvement was a journey and was making day by day improvements in the lives of children and young people in Bromley.

The Chairman was concerned at several factual errors in the Children’s Social Care case examples appended to the report and requested that these be corrected. 

RESOLVED that the Council’s Executive be recommended to:

1)  Agree that the Phase 3 additional funding of £141k part-year and £795k in a full year be drawn down as outlined in Section 6 of Report CS17089.

2)  Agree one-off funding of £150k to be met from the Council’s Technology Fund for the purchase of the laptops and other associated hardware for children’s social care staff as set out in para 3.8 of Report CS17089.