The Committee will receive a presentation on the night which will provide an update on the Children’s Services Improvement programme.

The Committee received a report that provided an update on progress in delivering improvements to Children’s Services in response to the report published by Ofsted in April 2017 which rated LBTH services as ‘inadequate’.   The Council’s improvement plan the Committee was reminded aims to achieve a standard of ‘good’ by April 2019, which seen as the minimum LBTH children and families deserve.

It was also noted that the body of this report includes commentary on progress in the four themes of the LBTH improvement plan at the end of its first stage, ‘laying the foundations.’   Whilst LBTH has met most of the aims of this first stage, giving a firm foundation for improvement, there remain significant challenges in ensuring that the service improves to meet a ‘good’ standard and sustains this improvement.  The focus in the next stage will be to build on the progress made so that improvement is achieved and sustained. 

The questions and comments from Members on the report may be summarised as follows:

The Committee:

• Noted that OfSted had stated that there are widespread and serious failures in the services provided to children who need help and protection in Tower Hamlets. As a result, too many children remain in situations of actual or potential harm for too long. Insufficient scrutiny has meant that they did not know about the extent of the failures to protect children until this inspection.  However, the current position is that that are all cases allocated all plans up to date.
• Noted that the process is under regular review so as to ensure that the child’s journey is in a better place.  This process is fully supported by the Lead Member; Strategy Policy & Performance Team; Legal Services Officers and Information Technology who all provide key support to help Children’s Service deliver their support.  Whilst the Council’s Corporate Leadership Team is updated on a regular basis [initially weekly but now monthly].
• Expressed concern with regarding (i) caseloads and were they being managed effectively; (ii) the number of agency workers being employed by LBTH and (iii) how many permanent staff left social services.  In response it was noted that LBTH is improving from a very low starting point and there is still a considerable amount of work that needs to be done.  Also LBTH must ensure that those children who have been made the subject of a care order are safe.  This has meant that numbers of agency staff have had to be brought in and it was noted that many of those individuals are fully commented to LBTH.  Whilst as part of the progress to a stronger better system LBTH is working to encourage these staff to become permanent.  Also, the Committee noted that it would be provided with details of the turnover of permanent staff;
• Indicated that that they wished to get a picture of the multi-agency response to the challenges faced in Tower Hamlets e.g. that the Housing Providers have a critical role too here to play and that all partner  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9

The Committee received a report that provided an update on progress in delivering improvements to Children’s Services in response to the report published by Ofsted in April 2017 which rated LBTH services ‘inadequate’.   The Council’s improvement plan aims to achieve a standard of ‘good’ by April 2019, which is the minimum our children and families deserve.   

The body of the report it was noted included a commentary on progress in the four themes of our improvement plan, which was submitted to the Department for Education and Ofsted in July 2017.  Whilst some progress has been made in all four themes, this first quarterly report identifies that there remain significant challenges in moving the service towards a ‘good’ standard.

The questions and comments from Members on the report may be summarised as follows:

The Committee:

Noted that:

·         Progress will be monitored by Ofsted through quarterly monitoring visits.  The first of these visits took place on 30-31 August, 2017.  In their informal feedback, Ofsted noted the considerable progress that had been made in improving the management of contacts, referrals and assessments in our Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and Assessment and Intervention service, which was the focus of their visit.  In their next visit, to take place in December, 2017 they will focus on the Family Support and Protection service where further progress needs to be made.  As this was the first monitoring visit they recognised that it is early in the improvement journey and whilst good progress has been made, there is still a lot of work to do to ensure that improvement is fully embedded and the Service meets a consistently good standard;  

·         Whilst Ofsted feel LBTH are ambitious with the initial targets the longer term aim is for an outstanding service;

·         LBTH is working to ensure that the Service needs to provide early help to families and there needs to be robust measurers in place;

·         After a judgement as received by LBTH from Ofsted the number of referrals a Service can anticipate will increase; 

·         The 3 Divisional Directors will have over sight to ensure the families have the correct offer;

·         The improvement in social work training;

·         Both Staff and Managers are getting a clear message the focus of the changes needs to be what children need in LBTH not just about performance indicators;

·         Supervision audits give social workers the support that they need and the recruitment is in hand to establish a stable work force and to lower of individual caseloads e.g. the volume of caseloads coming through the front door has surged after the Ofsted judgement and that this increase is working its way through the system;

·         Concerning the recruitment and retention strategy LBTH is working to provide incentives for staff to remain with the Council for a number of year’s e.g. Many LBTH staff have a real passion to meet the needs of those families that they are supporting; Need to use the passion of LBTH staff to illustrate why it is the best place to work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8