Agenda item
Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register
- Meeting of Audit Committee, Thursday, 29th July, 2021 6.30 p.m. (Item 5.6)
- View the background to item 5.6
Minutes:
Mr Paul Rock, Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Risk said the report presented was the regular quarterly report to the Committee, which provided an update on the Corporate Risk Register. Mr Rock said Mr James Thomas, the Corporate Director for Children and Culture was also present for any questions in relation to the Directorate’s risk register.
Mr James Thomas then addressed the Committee and said that the Corporate Risk Register set out the strategic risks for his Directorate. He said the Directorate had key responsibilities which are all about managing risks, most obviously in relation to protecting children from abuse and neglect and seeking to ensure that children and young people were not victims of serious violence or crime.
The Chair, Councillor Whitehead said the Committee had previously discussed the corporate risk CSD0016 “Death or Serious Harm to a child” and asked Mr Thomas to provide some background to this.
Mr Thomas said it was important to recognise that the risk of child death is not possible to eliminate. He said this was his sixth local authority as a Corporate Director and this risk was reflected in the same way as other local authorities. He said one of the most significant reviews into Child Protection was carried out by Professor Eileen Munro, published in 2011. Mr Thomas quoted from the report and said, “uncertainty pervades the work of child protection, risk management cannot eradicate risk, it can only try to reduce the probability of harm, the big problem for society and consequently for professionals is working at a realistic expectation of a professional’s ability to predict the future and manage risk harm to children and young people.”
Mr Thomas continued saying sadly child death does occur and occurs in every local authority area. He said Westminster Council had been rated outstanding by Ofsted for several years but have a case of child death. He said sadly in Tower Hamlets there was also a case being investigated. Mr Thomas said the job of Children Services was to take every possible mitigation against these tragic outcomes.
Mr Thomas said following the Ofsted inspections of 2017 and 2019, they had well-established core mitigations, which were rooted in systems. He said the strength and rigour of the systems as well as the people, in terms of strength and quality of staff, helped to ensure this risk was mitigated as best as possible. He said the Children and Social Care Improvement Board continued to meet monthly since the inspection of 2019. He said the use of the use of management information and data, systematic quality assurance, and the multi-agency dimension of the partnership have helped to strengthen the way in which child safeguarding practises are undertaken. Mr Thomas said there were external peers on the Improvement Board, and he was satisfied they had a robust system in place.
In response to questions and comments from the members the following was noted:
- Ms Charlotte Webster, Independent Adviser to the Committee, thanked Mr Thomas for his detailed email reply to the questions raised at the previous meeting of the Committee. She said it was a question of how the risk is captured, measured, and reflected on. She said the nub of her query related to how scoring is applied as this can be subjective, as well as reducing the probability and likelihood of the risk. Mr Rock responded saying getting the consistency for rating, impact and risk factors as well as descriptors correct was subjective and said it was hard for a descriptor to capture every area that was being assessed. He said this continued to be a challenge for risk professionals.
- In response to what impact had been experienced in relation to pupil placement planning and the intake for September 2021, Mr Thomas said Tower Hamlets had seen a 2.5% drop in intake compared to 6.5% in London overall. He said factors around demographic planning had been made more complex with the uncertainty of the economy, pandemic and Brexit.
- In reference to page 207 of the agenda, Councillor Edgar asked what planning had taken place in the event of a cyber-attack. Ms Denise Radley, Corporate Director for Health, Adults and Community stated a table-top exercise involving the Corporate Leadership team had taken place with plans to roll out to the Civil Contingency Board and senior leadership teams more widely. Ms Radley said they had drawn on the experiences of other local authorities and were working on this complex issue which would involve multiple teams.
The Audit Committee RESOLVED to:
- Note the corporate risks, and where applicable request risk owner(s) with risks requiring further scrutiny to provide a detailed update on the treatment and mitigation of their risk including impact on the corporate objectives at the next Committee meeting (or separately before the meeting if urgent).
- Note the Children’s and Culture Directorate risks and where applicable request risk owner(s) with risks requiring further scrutiny to provide a detailed update on the treatment and mitigation of their risk including impact on the directorates objectives at the next Committee meeting (or separately before the meeting if urgent).
Supporting documents:
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Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register, item 5.6
PDF 236 KB
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Appendix. 1 for Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register, item 5.6
PDF 102 KB
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Appendix. 2 for Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register, item 5.6
PDF 86 KB