Issue - meetings

Members will consider a briefing paper which summarises Professor Munro’s final report. The Government responded in detail to the report, and a summary of the key points of their response is attached, courtesy of Reconstruct Research Service.

Committee members considered a summary of the Munro review into   child protection along with the government’s response to the review. The key components of the recommendations from Munro report were: developing social work capacity; ensuring children were communicated with, and that the child was at the centre of the organisations process.  Overall, the government response was to agree with the recommendations of the review. However, the Independent Member of the  Children’s  Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee, advised that the  government had not set out how local authorities were able to change fully to the direction of preventative services at a time of reduced funding for Children’s services. It was anticipated that local authorities would begin to review their models of social care following this report  and it was suggested that the social work care model developed in Hackney would be worthwhile to look at. The Chair of  the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee agreed to take this forward as an action.

Clarification was sought in whether the Children’s service had undertaken a systems analysis approach to the changes that would be required following the Munro report.  The Committee were informed that separately to considering the Munro recommendations and impact on the service,  there was an equal need to examine sufficiency  to  know  the level of services that would need to be  commissioned in order to meet the needs of  children coming into the care of children’s services. For example this would mean considering whether there were right levels of accommodation available for looked after children and care leavers, now and in the future. There would also  to  follow some joint strategic assessment work   with the involvement of partners to look at  how services are provided. The  Children’s service would also  be completing an exercise on care pathways to examine how the service identifies children coming into care.

 The Committee were advised that to meet the requirements of  the prevention agenda , would mean  the service, along with partners,  looking at  incrementally  compiling  services around the support that would be needed to prevent a  child  coming into care.  This support package would  need to include voluntary sector and partner agencies with consideration given to how the services were provided in totality. The Committee noted that these were high level changes  which required consideration of the strategic direction  of the service, involved  service redesign and considering how other children related services could be  included in this  support offer.  This  could only be led  by the incoming Children’s Services Director who would be in post  on the 14 November. It was agreed that the Cllr Reith and Cllr Rice would  speak with the  new director  about how the Munro recommendations would be taken forward with a  more substantial report  likely  to be  available for consideration by both Committees in May 2012.  Members of the Committee learnt  that  in the  meantime the Safeguarding Team were already working with  the Early Intervention and Prevention service  to look at how  they can support the de-escalation  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13