Agenda and minutes

It was noted that Councillors Adoh, Blamires, Collingwood, Cranmer, Dormer, Jones, Kayani, Osibogun and Mrs Williams had given their apologies for the meeting.

Councillor Stuchbury was attending as substitute for Councillor Kayani.

Councillor Hussein declared a personal  interest as a school Governor.

Councillor Bates declared a personal interest as a Chair of Governors.

Councillor Matthews declared a personal interest as a school governor and volunteer at Transitions UK.

Tony Wilson declared a personal interest as a Trustee of the Oxford Diocesan Bucks Schools Trust.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the previous meeting held on 20^th January 2022.

The minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 20^th January 2022 were reviewed.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 20^th January 2022 be AGREED as an accurate record and signed by the Chairman.

The Chairman, Councillor Birchley, announced with pleasure that the council’s recent Ofsted inspection of Children’s Services had shown the extensive improvements that the department had made since the last inspection in 2017 and during the time of the Covid pandemic. She thanked the Strategic Director, Richard Nash and all the staff for their hard work.

The agenda item “Public Questions” is an opportunity for people who live, work or study in Buckinghamshire to put a question to a Select Committee. The Committee will hear from members of the public who have submitted questions in advance relating to items on the agenda. The Cabinet Member, relevant key partners and responsible officers will be invited to respond. Further information on how to register can be found here:

https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/your-council/getinvolved-with-council-decisions/select-committees/

No questions have been received.

It was noted that no public questions had been received for this meeting.

It was noted that information relating to a previous public question had been included in the agenda for this meeting. Councillor Bates would follow up the issue on the provision of data for exam results with the Strategic Director.

For the Children’s and Education Select Committee to note and ask questions relating to  the positive outcome of the recent Ofsted reinspection of services for children in need of help and protection, children looked after and care leavers.

Contributors:

Richard Nash, Director of Children’s Social Care

Simon James, Director of Education

Palvinder Kudhail, Director of Children’s Services

The Chairman introduced this item on the outcome of the Ofsted inspection which was recently undertaken at the end of 2021. It related to the services provided for children in need of help and protection, children looked after and care leavers.  The service had undertaken an extensive amount of work prior to and during the pandemic. Many issues related to the retention and recruitment of social workers, and front-line managers and these were compounded by increased workloads. The Select Committee responded to this immediately and had set up a rapid review group in January to look in detail at the issue social worker recruitment and retention. The group would present their report to the committee in June.

The Chairman thanked all the staff in the Children’s Services department and the Directors for their thorough work over the last few years.

Richard Nash, Strategic Director, attended the meeting via Teams and noted that the meeting had been rescheduled due to another Ofsted inspection of the SEND services. The findings of this would be reported in due course.

Mr Nash gave details of the Council’s Ofsted history noting that the service was found to be inadequate in 2014 based on previous service provision. The service was also found to be inadequate in 2017 when it had been hoped that a different outcome would result. 2017 was the starting point of the current leadership team’s attempt to turn the service around. It is recognised that change in Children’s Services takes time to achieve. The inspection was very thorough with the outcome “requires work to be good” and so was no longer “inadequate”.

The findings, which were published in February, were as expected as the department was aware of the shortcomings through quality assurance. 400 children’s cases were reviewed and 350 documents. The inspection took place over three weeks with two weeks on site. The report showed that much good work had taken place but it was understood that there was more work to be done to keep the service improving into the future. The work that was achieved by the staff during the pandemic and with the history of poor service in Buckinghamshire was extensive and was recognised by Ofsted.

In response to points made by Councillor Hussein regarding (i) the frequency of change of social workers and therefore fragmented service in some cases and (ii) performance data not feeding through to reducing referrals, Mr Nash responded that the recruitment and retention of social workers was a national problem.

In Buckinghamshire the pandemic has caused a huge increase in volume of work (62% in child protection) which had put great pressure on the workforce, and therefore some social workers would make decisions to work in different roles. The issue was mainly in the frontline child protection area. Agency worker turnover also impacted as cases had to be transferred to other social workers.

Three things were being actioned to address this:

-          the expansion of the in-house social worker academy enabling workforce  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

For the Children’s and Education Select Committee to

(i)                  Receive a verbal update from the Chairman on the work of the Rapid Review Group on the recruitment and retention of social workers.

(ii)                To put forward further suggestions for the work programme for the 2022/2023 council year.

Contributors:

Councillor Mark Dormer: Chairman of the Rapid Review Group

Katie Dover: Senior Scrutiny Officer

a)      The Chairman noted that a rapid review group had been set up by the Select Committee to look at the recruitment and retention of social workers. The Chairman of the review group, Councillor Dormer had sent his apologies to this meeting but had provided the following words for the Chairman to read in relation to the investigations the group had made so far, as follows:

Update for Children’s & Education Select Committee Report into the Retention and Recruitment of Social Workers

With the OFSTED inspection expected in Q4 2021, members of the group took the decision to postpone the commencement of the report to allow senior Officers to focus their time and efforts on the imminent inspection. The following progress had been made:

-          Once the inspection had been completed the group began its investigations. All meetings have been held online and in an ‘open mic’ session with free two-way conversation encouraged. At all stages, the group has emphasised its approach as one of a ‘critical friend’ looking to help and support the service, but not being reticent about making firm but fair conclusions.

-          The group began its investigation with a lengthy meeting with the head of the service, Richard Nash, who provided a full assessment of the national backdrop and how this specifically affected Buckinghamshire with its then ‘inadequate’ OFSTED rating. Subsequent meetings have included members of the finance team to provide context for the financial implications of recruiting agency and overseas staff. The group has been forensic in its approach to data and costs and delved deep into the financial implications and costs of how the staffing model currently operates and how it might work in an optimal situation.

-          The group has examined the organisational workings of the service, together with the administrative burdens placed on certain sections of the organisation, the technology employed to support staff and the role and function of Human Resources.

-          In order to ensure that the group created an open forum for discussion, the decision was taken for the Head of Service to be excused from meetings with Line Managers and individual Social Workers, in addition the group itself took responsibility for encouraging participation, rather than relying on individuals proposed by others within the service.

-          A broad section of Line Management from across the service have attended meetings and there has also been two additional meetings with social workers themselves to ensure that the group has received a wide range of opinions from a variety of different people. A great deal of time has been spent in pre-meeting preparation to ensure that key topics and areas were fully examined in depth, but the group has also been keen to allow and encourage open conversations and discussions throughout all meetings. In addition, all meetings have been concluded with the reaffirmation of our approach to privacy and encouraging those attending to send in further thoughts and observations post the meetings as they see fit.

The group has now concluded the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

The date of the next meeting is to be confirmed at the annual council meeting.

The provisional date of the next meeting of the Select Committee was Thursday 16^th June 2022.

The meeting concluded at 2.55 p.m.

CHAIRMAN