Issue - meetings

The report sets out the key areas for activity to continue the work of improving the quality of our services in respect of Safeguarding and Children in care. The report sets out the key tasks and ‘milestone’ reports on progress.

The Committee considered the progress against key tasks and milestones for safeguarding and children in care following the most recent Ofsted inspection.

In relation to  action 1.2, arising from the Ofsted recommendation that  the attendance of children at child protection review medicals should be reviewed and monitored,  Paediatricians were  now able to review Framework I  files and speak with social workers  to ensure that they were aware of the these appointments  to help ensure the child’s attendance at them. The Head of First Response, as a secondary monitoring measure, was also examining, on a quarterly basis, the attendance levels at these appointments. 

Assurance was sought by the Committee that children with a disability were being given equal attention by the service following communication in the report that quite low numbers of children with disabilities were subject to child protection plans.   The Committee were informed that staff from the disabilities team participated on a regular basis with the First Response team, the multi agency team which considered all referrals and contacts related to concerns about children, to provide advice on referrals relating to disabled children. There had also been training with staff on helping identify children with disabilities that were experiencing abuse.    There were detailed results available on the a recent  benchmarking exercise, conducted by the LSCB,   which had  looked at the number of children with disabilities  subject to child protection plans  which was available to the Committee . There was also a pilot project between the DCT and First Response team to monitor the referral route for disabled children. Phil De Leo the, Head of Services to Children & Young People with Additional Needs & Disabilities , could  be asked to provide an email explaining the work of the service in working with disabled children   and identifying abuse.  The Committee were asked to take account of the added complexities of working with and communicating with disabled children. To increase the Committee’s understanding of this service’s communication initiatives, it was suggested that the Head of Services to Children & Young People with Additional Needs & Disabilities could be invited to a future meeting of the Committee to discuss this work.

Attached to action 23 was the milestone to embed and enable a culture committed to supervision. The Committee were assured that supervisions were undertaken at least very four weeks with a social worker and additional sessions also held if needed.  Information on the latest progress with this milestone would be emailed to Committee Members.

 The Committee considered the areas for improvement identified from the inspection of safeguarding and looked after children undertaken in February.   A key point noted by the Committee was that all assessment work had the input of a fully qualified social worker.  The actions relating to case recording , staff supervision partnership working ,  quality control  and assessments  were crucial  given that the services was expecting an unannounced visit by Ousted   to the First Response team in the near future.  The Committee noted that unannounced inspections of children’s services were one of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18