Issue - meetings

To receive the report of the Director of Children’s Services providing an overview of progress in refreshing the Joint Area Review (JAR) Action Plan.

The Committee received the update on progress of the Joint Area Review Action Plan, introduced by Mark Gwynne (Joint Area Review (JAR) Programme Manager). Councillor Reith (Cabinet Member for Children & Young People), Eleanor Brazil (Deputy Director – Children & Families) and Dave Grant (Borough Commander) also attended to answer the Committee’s questions.

A report on child protection would be requested from the NHS including information on processes for early intervention, GPs involvement in Children Centres and the role of Health Visitors.  This would be considered at a future meeting of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee.

The Borough Commander explained the process for assessing notifications of children at risk and referring to the correct agency so as not to inundate the Council’s First Response Team. He explained that agencies were in the process of setting up multi-disciplinary teams in order to be more effective in referrals. The multi-disciplinary team would be trained on the multi-agency database systems, including Framework-i, with a view to being operational in April 2010.

The Committee noted that the NHS had recently interviewed a number of Health Visitors which had resulted in only 1.6 posts being filled. 

The Committee were informed that a Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) review of the Health Visitor Service had concluded that Health Visitors understood their roles in referring cases to other agencies if the threshold for a child to receive Social Care was not met.

The Committee noted that the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Advisory Committee had considered information showing that large numbers of GPs had attended safeguarding training in Haringey.  This information would be circulated to Committee Members.

Members expressed concerns that GPs were being trained and still not referring potential child protection cases.  Statistics for referrals from GPs would be circulated to Members.

The Committee noted that a number of actions on the Safeguarding Plan Milestone Report (Appendix 2 of the report) had now been completed or were back on track.  An updated Milestone report would be circulated to Committee Members.

The Committee enquired about the forthcoming Ofsted/DCSF inspection in January 2010 and was informed that it would be an inspection on the progress of the Children’s Service, similar to the one undertaken in June 2009 although officers were seeking clarification about the criteria that the Service would be measured against.

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.