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 agencies need to be fully supportive of both Children’s and Social Services.

ACTIONS:

• Update on what progress is being made to Housing Associations be fully supportive of both Children’s and Social Services; and
• Provide details of how many permanent social workers have left the Council over the last 12 months.