Issue - meetings

The Trust received a report that provided an overview of performance against the Local Area Agreement (LAA) National Indicators (NIs) within its responsibility during the first quarter of 2009/10.

The Trust was advised that when the report had been compiled not all of the performance data for the first Quarter had been available.   

It was noted that NI 59 and NI60, which respectively related to the number of initial assessments for children’s social care carried out within seven working days of referral and the number of core assessments for children’s social care carried out within thirty-five working days of their announcement, had been revised down. This had been necessary as the original targets had been based on false data and were not achievable.

The Chair advised that staff had been encouraged to provide quality assessments. There was a recognition that assessments may take longer to complete, particularly until the backlog of cases was cleared, but this approach was considered appropriate.

It was noted that there was no measure in place to monitor NI ??, which was measured by the Community Safety team and the Chair requested that officers resolved this prior to the next meeting.

The Trust was advised that the HSP Performance Management Group (PMG) would be taking a more rigorous approach to performance monitoring and would require an explanation of the actions being taken to address any areas of under performance from each of the Thematic Boards. Where targets were measured annually milestones should be set to track performance.

It was requested that an explanation with respect to any areas of underperformance within the next report and that this was also included within the report received by the CT EPMG.

It was suggested that performance information in relation NI59 and NI60 should be benchmarked against performance in other Local Authorities and that milestone should be created and reported in with respect to these indicators.

RESOLVED:

1. That the report be noted.

2. That future reports should include a full explanation of any areas of under performance and the remedial action being taken address this and that milestones should be included, where appropriate, to demonstrate progress.