Agenda item

To receive the outcome of the re inspection of Croydon’s Early help and Children’s Social Care and to scrutinise the draft Improvement Plan 2020-22.

           (The draft Children’s Continuous Plan for Improvement 2020/22 to follow)                                    

The Executive Director of Children Families and Education presented the report which detailed the draft Children’s Improvement Plan 2020/21, which had been revised following the outcome of the Ofsted standard ILACS inspection of Early Help and Children’s Social Care.

The outcome of the re-inspection in February 2020 resulted in a Good Judgement for Croydon’s Children’s Services, with the Publication of the Ofsted letter in March 2020 which detailed the dramatic improvements that had been made since the last inspection in 2017.

The transformation of the service through strong leadership both corporate and political and the investment in exceptional senior staff and social workers was commended.

There were areas highlighted as still requiring improvement with four recommendations made in the following areas:

• The quality of written plans for children in need, children in care and care leavers.
• Services provided to homeless 16- and 17-year-olds.
• Services for care leavers, particularly the range of suitable accommodation, responses to emotional health needs and preparation for independence.
• Placement sufficiency for children in care, and accommodation for care leavers.

As a result, the Improvement plan had been refreshed with actions to address these recommendations. The final plan would be presented to Cabinet in July 2020.

The Sub-Committee was given the opportunity to ask questions on the content of the report.

A Member challenged that success measures needed to be ‘smarter’ with metrics to enable the measurement and benchmarking of performance. It was felt that the current process did not enable the robust measurement of progress made. Officers acknowledged this and advised that an action plan was being drawn up which would address these concerns including a dashboard of metrics which would be sent to Ofsted and could be shared with the Sub-Committee.

A Member highlighted that the lack of up to date information on KPI dashboards had hampered the effectiveness of Scrutiny as well as impacting upon the enablement of the digital aspects of the service moving forward at pace. Officers agreed that in the past this had been an issue and made reference to the fact that this had now improved, as there was now performance rich data available as a result of the extensive work carried out by the Programme Director for the improvement journey as well as the Performance Team. It was agreed that some data was not available in real time in particular when relying on regional or national data.

It was asked how the improvement in social work practice and morale as referenced in the Ofsted report was being used in the recruitment of practitioners. Officers said that improvement in this area had been excellent for staff and Croydon’s reputation, which was getting stronger, will attract more staff. There has been a lot of work carried out using social media and networking opportunities to recruit good social workers. A successful international recruitment drive had taken place and 23 social workers from South Africa would arrive in September and October.

It was further questioned how exact the 20% average agency vacancy rate for social workers across London was, with officers confirming that this was an estimate as some borough had better rates than others, in particular those local authorities with Good and Outstanding ratings. Some inner London boroughs had better vacancy rates due to pay resources and low caseloads. Croydon’s plan to tackle its own issues was to invest in the growth of our newly qualified social workers by supporting and nurturing them to retain them in the borough over the long term.

A Member asked what measures would be taken to improve outcomes and services for looked after children and care leavers as this was an area highlighted by Ofsted as required improvement. Officers maintained that they were committed to the delivery of best quality service for care leavers and it was acknowledged that there had not been enough progress made to improve outcomes. There was focused work taking place on the development of a Care Leavers Pledge, the final review of the offer had been completed and papers would be submitted to Cabinet in July 2020.

It was asked what action had been being taken to communicate the needs of children who were in out of borough placements to their host boroughs, and the impact of the team that had been assigned to have oversight of this activity. Officers said that the post was yet to be recruited and they were working to get someone in post as quickly as possible. It was acknowledged that there had been a nationwide historic history of issues with handovers and poor risk assessments associated with out of borough placements. The department was working to fill the post as quickly as possible to ensure there was improvement in the tracking of children placed in and out of Croydon.

The Chair thanked officers for their responses to questions.

In reaching its recommendations, the sub-committee came to the following CONCLUSIONS:

1. The efforts of the whole department in improving, effecting change and the transformation of the service which resulted in the Ofsted rating was acclaimed and should be celebrated.
2. The continued efforts in reducing the use of agency staff was positive and the service was to be commended on the recruitment drive, in particular the international recruitment of 23 social workers to the service.
3. The commitment to recruiting and developing newly qualified social workers was a welcomed positive enterprise that would serve the borough in years to come.
4. The issues with shortages of social workers was recognised as a national one that required continued cross party support in lobbying government for increased funding for the sector.
5. There continued to be issues with the provision of smart data for analysis to the Sub-Committee.
6. The Sub-Committee was encouraged by the plans to recruit an officer to track and ensure information was shared about children placed in and out of the borough.
7. The importance of a quantifiable and measurable means of success was highlighted, in order to gain a full understanding of the journey of the service.

The Sub-Committee RESOLVED to recommend:

1. That in line with new governance structures, smart metrics and live data be provided to the Sub-Committee in order to enable the effectiveness of success where appropriate.
2. That the Chair and the Executive Director of Children’s Services work together to determine the key types of data that should be brought before the Committee.
3. That the Streets Environment and Scrutiny Sub-Committee work with the relevant senior officers and Cabinet Members to scrutinise the physical and environmental barriers that contribute to the recruitment and retention of social workers to Croydon.