A presentation to be made at the meeting.

Councillor Asma Begum, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Children, Youth Services and Education introduced this item and said there would be a presentation from Mr Richard Baldwin, Divisional Director for Children Social Care followed by Officers from the service who would provide the Sub-Committee with an update on the Early Help service.

Mr Baldwin gave a presentation outlining the current position for the Early Help Service, the assurance mechanisms in place and the future developments for the service. He said the service was monitoring demand because they envisaged a higher need post-Covid19 and lockdown. He said the service was last inspected in the summer of 2019 and inspection of the service was never far away. He said the likelihood of further inspections with a focussed visit from Ofsted, a SEND inspection and Youth Justice inspection in the next twelve months. Mr Baldwin continued stating that performance data was monitored and challenged via various assurance processes such as the Improvement Board, Performance Surgeries as well as through peer reviews. He said continued efforts were being made to strengthen practice, by analysing data to ensure the quality of practice was excellent.

The Sub-Committee then heard from Mr Mohammed Jolil, Interim Head of Early Help, Nicola Mutale, Early Help Operations Manager and Karen Simpson, Early Help Coordinator.

The key points made by the Early Help Team were:

• The service helped families who did not meet the statutory thresholds, by getting involved as early as possible, with interventions to help those were in need.
• The Early Help service faced similar challenges described by social work colleagues. Face to face meetings had moved to an online platform, during the pandemic. Communication by phone and online were the methods used to engage with families, such as those shielding who required medicine and food assistance.
• 70% of referral were made via the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) process of which 60% were from the police. Cases were assessed by the MASH team who decided if the social care thresholds were met and if not, cases would be referred to the Early Help Team.
• Approximately 500 calls per week are received by the helpline of which 300 families are supported on a long-term basis over a period of six to nine months. Action plans for the families are put in place and those that are borderline are referred to the Social Inclusion Panel.
• The Early Help Hub is the front door service for accessing early help services. The hub operated a reduced service from the Town Hall throughout the pandemic as well as a phone line service to the community, their families, and other professionals within the local authority.
• Creative approaches had been used to reach out to families. For example, refugee families who had moved to the borough. They had been supported by providing housing, food vouchers as well as access to education.
• The Early Years’ Service worked with the voluntary sector and weekly meetings were held with the Home Office on the next steps to improve outcomes for these families.
• One of the positives from the pandemic was the concept of ‘the team around the family’ which involved several professional coming together to support a family. Meetings were easier to conduct virtually especially given the time strains for healthcare professionals such as GPs.
• The pandemic had provided the opportunity to build relationships with partners and this had become a real strength. Virtual working had enabled teams to support families in a holistic way with everyone pooling resources and working together to support vulnerable people. For example, the Family Liaison team had supported the Royal London Hospital by being the first point of contact for doctors trying to support families, who had loved ones in intensive care and/or coma.
• The service had also supported families where individuals who had lost their jobs; parents who were unwell and were struggling financially by signposting people and helping with benefit claims to making referrals to food banks and supporting those who were shielding.
• The Early Help transition service had supported parents with children aged over eleven and found parent involvement to be a positive. The school social work service was provided to 12 schools who buy into the service.
• Additional funding had been secured from the DfE whereby Tower Hamlets had been selected for a pilot. Sixteen schools were involved with eight being provided with a social worker in school. The purpose was to reduce the number of children coming into social care and the number of referrals made by dealing with issues locally. Due to the lockdown the pilot had been extended for another year until March 2022.

In response to questions from members the following was noted:

• Access to food was a big issue a few months ago and whilst the council has provided additional support for this, what has happened regarding access to food for refugees? The Sub-Committee were informed the Home Office allowed for a £5 voucher per day to be issued to individuals which they could use in Tesco’s. However, conversations were taking place with the Home Office asking them to replace this with the Aspen Card, which would give families more choice as to where they purchase food from. Ms Mutale said refugees were accessing food banks in the borough as well as in neighbouring boroughs and as such Hackney had been invited to a multi-agency meeting.
• There were two pathways in relation to access to social workers in schools. The first was the buy-in service, where schools purchase their social worker from the Council and the other was the pilot with the DfE. The DfE were paying for the eight social workers to be in the secondary schools.

• ACTION: Leaflet explaining the purpose of the pilot to be shared with Members of the Sub-Committee.

• The Sub-Committee were informed Tower Hamlets had been chosen for the pilot following a robust application process and results from the study were being fed back to Cardiff University who were taking forward the project. Mr Jolil said he’s be happy to come to a future meeting to share the midway and final evaluations.
• ACTION: The Sub-Committee asked for the results of the pilot to be shared with them at a future meeting showing

The Sub-Committee then heard from Mr Sam Nair, Head of the Social Work Academy.

Mr Nair said the Academy was an enabling organisation which sat behind the social care mandate, whose goal was to support teams and change the culture of the organisation to provide excellent services. He said the Academy had five objectives from enabling social workers to ensure practise excellence to investing in a more stablepermanent workforce as well as creating a culture of innovation.

Mr Nair said one of the key challenges was the recruitment of social workers and said at the beginning of 2018, 39.5% of staff were agency workers, which meant the budget was overspent. Over the last few years this had gradually improved to 13.2% agency staff, with over 87% permanent staff over the last year. Mr Nair said over 94 people had been recruited when the target was 45 people. He said what whilst several local and neighbouring boroughs had struggled with turnover and recruitment, Tower Hamlets had benefitted. He said that this was due to the culture shift in the organisation with staff feeling more confident working for the borough. He said their strategy going forward was to have specific campaigns such as ‘refer a friend’, with online campaigning getting people who know people to come and join. He said the aim for the next one to two years was to get 90 to 95% permanent workforce.

• Members had no questions for Mr Nair.

The Chair thanked the attendees for their contribution to the meeting and said their input had been invaluable, in helping members understand the work of the Early Help team and the recruitment of permanent social workers.

The Chair summarised the main points of discussions as follows:

1. That the results from the DfE pilot be shared with the Sub-Committee at a future meeting; and
2. The access to food for vulnerable families.