Agenda item
Children's Services Improvement including Covid 19 update
Minutes:
The Sub-Committee received a verbal update in relation to the improvement in Children’s Services, including an update on the impact of Covid-19 to the services provided.
Mr James Thomas, Corporate Director for Children and Culture introduced the item saying significant pressures were being faced by the children social care service who were delivering services to support families. He said there had been a sustained increase in demand and some pressure on staffing capacity, due to illness.
Mr Thomas said overall the evidence for quality and performance was reassuring. He said when they were last inspected by Ofsted in 2019, a good judgment was received. He said the evidence showed they had sustained that good level of performance. He said there would be a resumption of external inspection and scrutiny in 2022, which he welcomed as well as a peer review by the Local Government Association, to look at front-end services and child protection work.
Lastly, Mr Thomas commented on the shocking and distressing murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, in Solihull, which had received much coverage and reaction. Mr Thomas said a reasonable question to ask would be if something as shocking could happen here in Tower Hamlets. He said there could never be a guarantee that children will not be abused however, the extreme levels of abuse in Arthur’s case are rare. Mr Thomas cited Professor Eileen Munro’s report saying all leaders must work to reduce harm and risk, but child abuse could not be eliminated. He said for this reason harm to children remained a top corporate risk and various mitigations were in place to combat this, including the Local Safeguarding Partnership, whose role is to externally quality assure the systems in place.
Mr Sam Nair, the Principal Social Worker then gave a presentation on the different aspects of social work covered by Children Services and how they had coped with changes to the way they work during to the pandemic. Mr Nair was accompanied by Ms Charlotte Moodie, Team Leader of the Edge of Care Service, Ms Johanna Burke-Richards, advanced practitioner, Assessment and Intervention Team, Ms Clare Noyes Family Support & Protection team and Ms Claudette Blake, advanced practitioner, Fostering Team.
Mr Nair commented on the restructure of the Youth Service, Early Help and the Youth Justice Service and said this was now complete. He said the linking of services meant there was a joined-up approach to delivering services. Mr Nair said there had been a significant rise in demand due to Covid-19, poverty issues associated with it, plus a rise in the number of asylum-seeking unaccompanied children. Domestic abuse and emotional wellbeing of children had also been a significant factor during the pandemic.
The Sub-Committee then heard from each service area:
Early Help
Mr Nair stated the Early Help team had been restructured August 2020, with social workers present in schools and a link to the MASH service – Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub. He said the graph, on page 25, showed the throughput from MASH to the Early Help team. Ms Charlotte Moodie, from the Edge of Care team talked through a case study relating to her service.
Edge of Care Team
The main points to note were:
- The edge of care team was a specialist adolescent service working with young people aged 11 17. The focus of the team was to work with the Individual and family to provide support.
- The focus of their work was prevention – to avoid family breakdowns and reunification work – to return children back home.
- Difficulties faced during Covid-19, were face to face visits, staff and family risk assessments, access to PPE. Developing new ways to meeting with vulnerable children, online and outside were possible.
- Ms Moodie then went through a case study outlining how they had supported a family in crisis.
Youth Justice & Young People
Mr Nair said the Youth Service and Youth Justice Service were much more integrated and were making good progress in reducing the number of first-time entrants and reoffenders. He said there was still work, to do to ensure the new service begins to function as one service as well as prepare for the Youth Justice Inspection which was expected in early 2022. Referring to Exploitation, Mr Nair said they were continuing to work with the Police to disrupt activity with a continued emphasis on risk assessments and care plans ensuring these remained robust. Mr Nair said it is for vital for the teams to continue to have face to face contact with vulnerable children and this remained a priority, despite the pandemic. Mr Nair said MASH had seen a significant increase in demand, regarding domestic violence referrals and concerns about children’s wellbeing. Ms Johanna Burke-Richards, advanced practitioner, Assessment and Intervention Teamtalked through a case study relating to her service.
Assessment and Intervention Team
The main points to note were:
- Ms Burke -Richards went through a case study outlining how they had dealt with a case of neglect and had supported a family where the farther was suffering a mental health crisis.
- Ms Burke-Richards outline the challenges faced, from increased workloads due to the number of referrals, refusal of home visits by families due to the anxiety caused by the Pandemic, to adopting innovative ways to work with children and families, be it a doorstep visit in full PPE and virtual visits via online meetings and phone calls.
- Ms Burke-Richards described the different tools they used to make their assessments and how they worked with children to obtain their views, feelings and wishes.
Family Support and Protection Service
Mr Nair stated that unlike the front-door services which take referrals, the Children and Families team worked with families to support and prevent family breakdowns. Mr Nair said there had been a rise in the number of children who required Child Protection Plans, since April 2021, when schools returned to fully in-person teaching. He said two additional posts had been agreed to cope with the demand. He said staff morale remained good and links to the LEAP (pupil referral unit) has been strengthened with a dedicated social worker dealing with child exploitation and serious youth violence. Ms Clare Noyes, Family Support & Protection talked through a case study relating to her service.
Family Support and Protection Team
The main points to note were:
- Ms Noyes went through a case study outlining how they had dealt with a case of domestic abuse and had supported the family, during the pandemic.
- She said it was vital for the social worker to meeting with the children separately and therefore they had agreed to use the a nearby school playground, to allow for face-to-face meetings.
- Ms Noyes said the risk assessment toolkit was used to assess the risk and interventions such as a ‘cool down’ space, were introduced. Information on how to access domestic abuse help groups as well as ensuring the family knew how to contact the police, using 55 to alert police of domestic abuse, were also provided.
Children in Care and Care Leavers
Mr Nair saidas the Sub-Committee had received an in-depth update on this, he would touch upon the main headlines. He said that as mentioned before there had been an increase in the number of children in care, particularly unaccompanied asylum seekers. He said the Children Living in Care Council (CLICC) had been strengthened by widening the involvement of young people with other care leavers. He said further progress was required to promote apprenticeships across the council.
Foster Care
Mr Nair, stated Foster Carers continued to manage the demand of Covid, caring for young people with resilience and ingenuity. He said the “Mockingbird” project had provided a robust level of peer support to carers, especially as the recruiting of carers has become increasingly difficult. Mr Nair said the service needed to strengthen its social media presence for recruitment of carers and possibly consider developing an offer of tax exemption for foster carers. Ms Claudette Blake, advanced practitioner from the Fostering Team talked through a case study relating to her service.
Fostering Team
The main points to note were:
- The Mockingbird foster care project was a hub and spoke model of care developed in Seattle, Washington State, USA.
- LBTH was one of 8 pilot Local Authorities trialling the new model. The aim of the model was to provide safety, stability and permanency for children and young people in local authority care.
- The mockingbird project is an evidence-based model, which has led of significant improvement in the outcomes for children and young people.
- The benefits of the project as lead to the establishment of foster ‘communities’ whereby children have a safe and stable environment to grow and learn. It has increased stability and retention of placements and as provided carers with a natural break. This has led to positive relationships for children, with social workers being able to do hands on social work.
Social Care Academy
Mr Nair provided the Sub-Committee with statistical information on how the Social Care Academy, had continued to recruit and retain staff. Mr Nair said 94 members of staff had been hired.
Assurance and Future Challenges
Lastly, Mr Nair said the key to social work was the quality assurance provided by external inspections and peer reviews, which would continue to be a feature in 2022. Mr Nair highlighted the future challenges for Children Services.
In response to questions and comments from members the following was noted:
- The Chair, Councillor Bex White commented that partnership working, and wellbeing of staff were key themes in all the case studies and said these were important pillars to ensure children and families were supported.
- The Chair asked, if Plan B was implemented by Government would face to face meetings continue to happen for those at risk? Mr James Thomas responded stating they would continue to have face to face contact under any future lockdown.
- Councillor Wood said the case studies highlighted the important role schools play in identifying cases of neglect, domestic violence etc and asked how Children Services were dealing with children that were not in school and those coming from other countries? Mr James Thomas said this had been a major focus throughout the pandemic especially with children being out of school for a prolonged period. He said additional tracking systems were in place and said they worked in partnership with the schools to ensure contact was established especially when a child had been out of school for some time. He said they were looking at ways to strengthen the link between Health Visiting and School Nursing to pick up on children that were not enrolled for a school place.
- In relation to new arrivals to the country, Mr Thomas said it was difficult to establish contact with the child or the family when there was no awareness of them. He said this was a difficult area to ensure 100%, that children were not at risk. He said this was a national issue.
- Mr Nair added that they continued to work with their health partners to assist in the scenario as described above.
- Mr Ashraf Zaman asked if Children Services worked with the GP care group, to identify at risk children, especially due to the lack of face-to-face contact? Mr Thomas responded stating this had been a key focus of the multi-agency response to the pandemic. He said he chaired the Children Partnership ‘silver group’ and this had been a standing question for the group – ‘Where are you at resuming face to face contact and are there any staffing capacity issue to deliver the service?”. Mr Thomas said it was clear that during the 1st lockdown too many services were withdrawn. Children’s social care services, schools and health visiting had resumed face to face contact, but GP services were lagging. Mr Thomas said this was due to the exceptional pressures faced by health colleagues, in primary health care.
- Councillor Salva-Macallan asked if the data for refugees and asylum seekers could be provided to the sub-committee and asked if there needed to be more joined up work. Mr Thomas said they were working jointly with others, especially given the added challenge of hosting asylum hotels within the borough.
- In relation to if there was enough PPE available, should the country go into lockdown again, Mr Thomas said there was enough and said they were well prepared for any further lockdown.
The Chair thanked the attendees for their contribution to the meeting and said their input had been invaluable in helping members understand the impact Covid-19 had on Children Services.
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