Meeting documents

Apologies were received from Michael Moore, Monique Nowers and Katrina Wood.

To declare any Personal or Dislosable Pecuniary Interests.

Margaret Aston declared that she was a member of the Fostering Panel and a Trustee of Carers Bucks.

Minutes of the meetings held on 19^th November 2014 and 9^th December 2014 to be confirmed as a correct record.

The minutes of the meetings held on 19^th November 2014 and 9^th December 2014 were confirmed as a correct record.

Public Questions is an opportunity for people who live, work or study in the county to put a question to a Scrutiny Committee about any issue that has an impact on their local community or the county as a whole.

Member of public, who have given prior notice, will be invited to put their question in person.

The Cabinet Member and responsible officers will then be invited to respond. 

Further information and details on how to register can be found through the following link and by then clicking on ‘Public Questions’.

http://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=788

The Chairman welcomed Margo Parfitt who represented YC2, a young carers group in North Bucks to the meeting.  Margo Parfitt asked if Buckinghamshire County Council(BCC) would reconsider its decision to withdraw funding from her group which supports young carers living in North Bucks, especially in view of the implementation of the Children and Families Act in April 2015.  Young Carers will then be entitled to an assessment of their own needs and Carers Bucks anticipate an avalanche of requests for assessments. Margo Parfitt explained that her group was established in 2005 and plays a complimentary role to Carers Bucks.  They were contracted by BCC to deliver an activities programme for young carers which is something that Carers Bucks do not offer.  They provide a monthly activity programme and fundraise separately for anything over and above this provision, for example trips or workshops with siblings. Currently the group supports 34 young carers and most of their referrals come from schools, the local nursing team or Carers Bucks.

The Chairman thanked Margo Parfitt for her question and invited members’ questions.  A member asked for examples of the successes the group have had over the years.  Margo Parfitt reported that this year they have a young carer who is approaching 19 years of age who is studying at St Johns College, Oxford.  When he first joined the group he was 11 years old and severely depressed as he was helping to care for a severely disabled sibling.  The group managed to get him a place on a sponsored course for young carers at university which really helped to turn his life around and improve his confidence.

A member asked how the group’s funding was organised, was it an annual grant? Margo Parfitt explained that in 2008, Councillor Freda Roberts MBE discovered that there were no activities being organised for young carers in North Bucks and David Polhill, local Councillor for Buckingham at the time donated £2100 from his Community Leaders Fund to get the activities off the ground.  YC2 then won a three year contract with funding of £22,000 over the three years.  In 2010, BCC asked them to increase their numbers from 20 to 30 and reduce the age of entry to eight years old instead of ten.  The group quickly achieved this increase in numbers and were then awarded a two year contract.

A member reported that her Local Area Forum had agreed to fund an officer to visit local schools in order to identify young carers and offer them support.  Margo Parfitt commented that it was wise to support young carers as without support they would often drop out of school and end up costing the state much more.

The Chairman invited Mr Chris Munday, Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention to the meeting and asked him to respond to Margo Parfitt’s question on the funding cut to her group.  Mr Munday explained that during the Medium Term Planning (MTP) process savings were offered up from a range  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

For the chairman of the Committee to provide an update to the Committee on recent scrutiny related activity.

The Chairman reported that she had met with a man, Howard Jones, who works for BT and engages with other internet providers on internet safety. He hoped to attend the meeting later when the Committee would discuss Internet Safety.  The Chairman had also visited Corporate Parenting Panel and Foster Carers to ask for their views on Internet Safety.

For members of the Committee to update the Committee on any issue they are investigating on behalf of the Committee.

There were no updates from members on this occasion.

To receive an update on the status and implementation of the Children’s Services Improvement Plan.

Contributors

Lin Hazell – Cabinet Member for Children’s Services

Mr David Johnston – Strategic Director, Children and Young People

Fran Gosling-Thomas – Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board.

The Chairman welcomed Lin Hazell, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Mr David Johnston, Strategic Director, Children and Young People and Mrs Frances Gosling-Thomas, Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board to the meeting.  Mr David Johnston provided an update to members and the following main points were noted:

·         Mr Johnston would be presenting to Ofsted and the Department of Education this afternoon and would circulate his slides to the Committee on email after the meeting. Ofsted would be holding a workshop to provide BCC and partners with the evidence on which their judgements had been based. Unfortunately this had taken a while to organise due to juggling everyone’s availability. Then BCC would present on progress so far in response to the inspection result.

·         Engagement with partners was a focus and Mrs Gosling-Thomas would say more on this later.  The Improvement Plan had been very action focussed and was now being made more outcome focussed.  The Improvement Plan is being delivered via Inter-related project plans and progress monitoring meetings were being held once or twice a week.

·         The pace of change was being monitored by Cabinet, the Select Committee and Regulatory and Audit Committee.

·         Mr Johnston was pleased to report a number of improvements including: every child in care had an allocated social worker, risk is more recognised and owned than previously, Child Protection Assessments were happening more quickly and engagement with members and partners had been significantly enhanced.  The Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children’s Board had also been revamped and Mrs Gosling-Thomas would say more about this.

·         Mr Johnston reported that the Department of Education had advised BCC to pick up the pace of change.  They considered that the reaction in the Autumn had been too slow.  The pace had now quickened and the Department of Education wanted reassurance that this could be sustained in the coming months.  Children’s Services needed the support of partners and members in order to achieve this.  The Chairman reiterated that the Select Committee was very keen to contribute and hoped to be invited to Workstream meetings.  Mr Johnston agreed to ask Workstream Leads to contact the Committee to facilitate this.

·         In terms of Leadership and Governance, I have been appointed as the new Strategic Director and we have a new Chairman of the Safeguarding Board, there had been significant financial investment from BCC, the Local Government Association (LGA) had offered coaching and staff events, the Corporate Parenting Panel were working on a revised Pledge for looked after children and the Leader and Chief Executive were undertaking ‘back to the floor’ work with social work teams.

·         With regards to Improving Social Work Practice, five Practice Improvement Managers had been introduced and Social Work Standards have been agreed, published and shared with all Social Workers. ‘Getting to Good’ workshops focussing on different aspects or practice were being run – yesterday one was held on Assessments. Supervisions had been reviewed and clarified the process for transferring children between teams in Children’s Services to ensure this is as smooth as  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To consider leadership, governance and partnerships for Children’s Services (Workstream 1 of the Children’s Services Improvement Plan) with questions to the Leader of the Council, the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, the Strategic Director, Children and Young People and the new Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board.

Contributors

Mr Martin Tett – Leader of the Council

Lin Hazell – Cabinet Member for Children’s Services

David Johnston – Strategic Director, Children and Young People

Fran Gosling-Thomas – Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board

The Chairman welcomed Mrs Frances Gosling-Thomas, the newly appointed Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children’s Board to the meeting and asked her to give members an overview of the work she had undertaken since being appointed at the end of 2014.

Mrs Gosling-Thomas explained that she had been appointed as the Independent Chairman in November 2014 and attended her first Board meeting within a couple of days.  She took the unprecedented step of standing down the whole board at the end of the meeting, in order to draw a line under the past.  She reduced the number of attendees at the Board from 35 to 22 and in some cases she had negotiated a more senior membership.  There had been some issues with seniority of representation from Health and Police but these have now been resolved.  It was vital that the right people attended every Board meeting and the Sub Committees and attendance would be monitored and reported as part of the Annual Report.

The budget of the Board was also in deficit and one of the priorities was to conduct a comparator exercise.  This found that the Board’s total budget was approximately 50% of the lowest of other comparator authorities.  The other issue was that of contributions being made by partner agencies.  Mrs Gosling-Thomas asked for an in principle agreement for increased partner agency contributions by the end of January and to date she had only received responses from the district councils, who were engaging more effectively in comparison with other areas of the country.  Addendum – very shortly after the meeting positive responses from other partners were received.

Two weeks previously the new Board had held a whole day development workshop with an external facilitator and everyone had engaged well. Disappointingly afterwards there was a meeting to discuss the budget issues and immediately this commitment fell apart.  The budget was a fundamental way of demonstrating commitment to the Safeguarding agenda locally, so the Chairman was really pushing all agencies to sign up.

Mrs Gosling-Thomas had received feedback from Ofsted recently that the Board’s Improvement Plan needed to be sharper.  In response she had reduced the Board’s Business Plan to four key themes – Child Sexual Exploitation, Early Help, Neglect and Improving the effectiveness/impact of the Board – and had incorporated these themes and the Ofsted Improvement advice into one document.  This had been circulated to partners for feedback and would include smarter outcome measures and more realistic timescales.  The next meeting of the Board would be held in mid-March, but it was important to deliver work between the meetings also.  The Chairman asked if the Select Committee could have sight of the revised plan once the Safeguarding Board had agreed it.

The Chairman welcomed Mr Martin Tett, Leader of the Council to the meeting.  Mr Tett wished to address the Committee on the subject of Leadership, Governance and Partnership Working.  Mr Tett reported that this was a very challenging time for Children’s Services and he was grateful  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7a

To consider the progress in improving quality of social work practice

Additional Contributor:

Mrs Carol Douch, Service Director, Child and Family Service

This was considered under Item 7.

To consider foster care in Buckinghamshire, including the quality and experience of fostering, appointment of foster carers and placements strategy.

Additional Contributor:

Mrs Carol Douch, Service Director Child and Family Service

The Chairman welcomed Mrs Carol Douch, Service Director, Children and Family Service and three Foster Carers who accompanied her – Mrs Rowton, Juliet Clifton and Anita to the meeting.  Mrs Rowton explained that she fostered children from birth to five years old and had been a Foster Carer for 15 years.  She had three children living with her currently and had also taken in a young mother and her baby.  Juliet Clifton had been a Foster Carer for 31 years and was now a fostering co-ordinator.  She specialised in looking after children with disabilities from babies up to the age of 18.  Anita had been a Foster Carer for ten years and looked after children from birth to 18 years.  She specialised in taking sibling groups or children with disabilities.  She had looked after 35 children, had delivered a baby of a foster child and had adopted one of her foster children, a little girl who was now seven years old.

The Chairman invited members’ questions as follows:

What are the key things that attracted you to become a Foster Carer and to remain in the role for so long?

It is the feeling of making a difference to a child. I still get excited seeing a child smile and making progress.  For me, I loved being a Mum and loved working with children, I had been a child minder previously – it gives me great satisfaction.  It is obviously hard to let go of children when they come to leave, but if you don’t get attached then you shouldn’t be a Foster Carer. I feel the children belong to us until the time they have to leave.

We started fostering 10 years ago. We had a six bedroom house and only two children, who had reached school age. We had relatives who had fostered and they recommended it to us.  We were asked to take on a baby on a short term basis and we still had her after two years.  We then had to fight to be able to adopt her – we went to the Adoption Panel twice because we were turned down at the first attempt because I was judged to be overweight.  We couldn’t believe that we were turned down having looked after her for two years. Anyone can be a parent, but not anyone can be a Foster Carer or adoptive parent.  Once a year my daughter visits her ‘Tummy Mummy’ and she knows she is adopted. 

I have friends who foster children and they make such a difference to the lives of the children – I can see how rewarding it can be and what an impact Foster Carers can have on these children.

It is great to hear these positive stories but I think we should also hear from Foster Carers who have been in dispute with the Council to get both sides.

I have made complaints in the past when Social Workers have excluded us from meetings and moved children  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7c

To agree the report and recommendations of the Children’s Internet Safety Select Committee Inquiry.

Contributors

Mrs Val Letheren – Chairman of the Education, Skills and Children’s Services Select Committee

Lin Hazell – Cabinet member for Children’s Services

Mr Simon Billeness – Chairman of the Children’s Internet Safety BSCB Subcommittee

Mr Michael Carr – Scrutiny Policy Officer

The Chairman welcomed Mr Howard Jones from British Telecom (BT), Mr Mark Bailey, Adviser to the Select Committee and Mr Simon Billenness, Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children’s Board e-safety Committee to the meeting.  Mr Howard Jones introduced himself to members.  Mr Jones worked for BT on a joint venture with Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin Media called Internet Matters.  Internet Matters was a not for profit organisation which aimed to help parents safeguard their children online.  He also worked with Unicef UK, helping to run parent/children workshops and Train the Teacher sessions.

The Chairman reported that members had been very passionate and had found internet safety to be a massive subject.  They were very pleased with their report and the Chairman thanked Mr Michael Carr, Policy Officer Scrutiny for his work in producing the draft report for the Committee to consider.  If nothing else, the Chairman hoped that the Committee would have raised the profile of Internet Safety.

Mr Mark Bailey commented that he liked the report but he would like to see the recommendations extended to children from as young as three years old.  Howard Jones advised that there were so many messages for parents, they get confused.  It was important to get stakeholders involved but it was vital that they delivered one single coherent easy message – something similar to ‘buckle up’ before going online.

Mr Simon Billenness thanked the Committee for raising the profile of this issue.  The e-safety Sub-Committee supported the report’s recommendations and would do all they could to support their implementation. 

The Chairman proposed and the Committee agreed that the recommendations should be agreed in full subject to the suggested alteration to the age.  Members agreed that any minor editing could be signed off by the Chairman.

RESOLVED

That the recommendations should be agreed in full, subject to the suggested alteration to the age.  Members agreed that any further minor editing could be signed off by the Chairman

For the Committee to receive a report and to ask questions on the performance of the Buckinghamshire Learning Trust over its first year of operation. 

Contributors

Mr Mike Appleyard – Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Skills

Mr Chris Munday – Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention

Mrs Amanda Taylor-Hopkins – Director of Education, Bucks Learning Trust

Mr Michael Brent – Director of Finance and Resources, Bucks Learning Trust

The Chairman welcomed Mr Mike Appleyard, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, Mr Chris Munday, Service Director, Learning, Skills and Prevention, Mrs Amanda Taylor-Hopkins, Director of Education, Bucks Learning Trust (BLT) and Mr Michael Brent, Director of Finance and Resources at BLT.  The Chairman reminded the Committee that they had posed lots of questions on the BLT’s performance at the December meeting and the purpose of today’s item was to concentrate on the BLT’s accounts.  The Chairman invited members’ questions as follows:

Do you consider that BCC are receiving value for money from Bucks Learning Trust and are you happy with the governance arrangements for BLT? Members are aware that Mr Khan, the Chief Executive, left the Trust at the end of 2014.

Since 1^st December I have taken on the role of Operational Lead – I am continuing as Director of Education and am overseeing the strategic direction of the Trust. I am a Director on the Board of Trustees, which remains the same apart from the fact that the local authority have appointed Sue Imbriano as a Trustee.  I am covering the role of Chief Executive as the Trustees’ priority was to provide stability but the Board will look at the structure again for September. 

The Trust seems to be building large reserves – the accounts show £1.5million in reserves at the end of June and you are hoping to build these up to £2.2million – why so you need £2.2million in reserves?

We need reserves as BLT has to stand on its own two feet financially.  These accounts go up to June and we know we have a large redundancy bill to meet in the August of our second year of operation.  The trustees decided, on the advice of Auditors and the Charities Commission to build up six months of operation reserves.  We have to be financially independent – unlike the County Council we don’t have the luxury of being able to move budgets between different service areas.

To what extent is the staffing and salary structure of BLT a devolved matter and are there any restrictions in the BCC contract around staffing?

We inherited 80% of our workforce from BCC and as the staff were tuped over we are unable to break their terms and conditions of service.  New staff we appoint are not subject to these restrictions.  Our salaries are benchmarked by an external adviser and recommendations are put forward to the Trust’s Board to agree.  Staffing is constantly being reviewed.  The grant from BCC reduces year on year so we review staffing to ensure efficiency and value for money. 

Is there an expectation to get new work from elsewhere?

You will see from our accounts that 50% of our revenue is from BCC and the other 50% is traded income.  We are looking at ways to increase our traded income to ensure that we are not over reliant on our BCC contract.

Mr Mike Appleyard, Cabinet Member for Education and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

For the Committee to agree its updated Annual Work Programme 2014-15.

This item was deferred to the next meeting.

To note the next meeting of the Education, Skills and Children’s Services Select Committee on 10 March 2015 at 10am in Mezzanine Room 2, County Hall, Aylesbury.

To note the next meeting of the Education, Skills and Children’s Services Select Committee on 10 March 2015 at 10am in Mezzanine Room 2, County Hall, Aylesbury.