The Committee received two presentations that provided a focus on financial overspends in Children's & Culture and Health, Adults & Community Directorates. 

The main points of the discussion on the Overspends in Children's & Culture may be summarised as follows.

Children and Culture

The Committee:

• Noted that whilst there had been a loss of income from Service Level Agreements (SLA) of £0.7m primarily because of the pandemic there had also been a reduction in spend due a fall in demand for services e.g. Contract Services.
• Noted whilst with increasing delegation and diversion of funding directly to schools there has been a reduction in income for the Councils Traded Services.  However, with the pandemic there has also been significant reduction in income as (i) schools were not operating at the same level; (ii) schools purchase their SLA’s for financial years and the lockdown of schools happened in mid-March and some schools did not take out SLA’s at all; and (iii) Schools are also now looking at increased costs for cleaning and cover.
• Commented that it wished to see a holistic approach to budget pressures by assessing expenses for all organisational activities in a structured and pragmatic way e.g. (i) some schools have delivered food to households rather than provide food vouchers which has meant that they still have had a lot of contact with children and young people; (ii) using equality impact assessment to get an insight into the factors influencing the impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities and strategies for addressing inequalities; (iii) the impact of any delays in restructuring and associated pressures on budgets.
• Noted that the Children's and Culture Directorate management team have today considered (i) how manageable restructures/savings would be; (ii) the impact of such restructures/savings on residents; children and families; (iii) how they can ensure that this was done in a way that maintain the quality and integrity of services.
• Noted that it is an exceedingly difficult situation, but the focus is being maintained on impact of Covid-19 with both rigour and consistency.
• Noted that regarding those schools that have delivered food to households rather than provide food vouchers it is felt they are best placed to decide how to manage within the various demands of the made upon them.
• Noted that equalities impact assessments would always be undertaken as part of any restructure and careful consideration would be given to the impact on any of the protected characteristics for the community and staff.
• Noted regarding Children's and Social Care staffing there are three elements to this (i) it is about recruiting newly qualified or social workers at the beginning of their career and assist in their training and by doing that and if done right they will stay loyal to LBTH; (ii) finding that blend of experienced social workers by using a recruitment company to help the source experienced social workers and now have developed an in-house recruitment programme with advertising that  can be used across all sorts of platforms and that is beginning to prove really helpful  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6