Agenda and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

 Apologies for absence were noted from Sylvia Chew.

The Chair will consider the admission of late items of Urgent Business. Late items will be considered under the agenda item they appear. New items will be dealt with at Item 11 below.

There were no items of urgent business put forward to the Committee.

A member with a personal interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is being considered must disclose to that meeting the existence and nature of that interest at the commencement of the consideration, or when the interest becomes apparent.

A member with a personal interest in a matter also has a prejudicial interest in that matter if the interest is one which a member of the public with knowledge of the relevant facts would reasonably regard as so significant that it is likely to prejudice the member’ judgement of the public interest.

There were no declarations of interest put forward by Members of the Committee.

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 28 July 2011 as a correct record.

The minutes of the meeting held on the 28^th July were agreed as a correct record of the meeting.

To discuss any matters arising from the minutes above.

There  were no matters arising.

A presentation will be given.  

The Committee considered the Safeguarding and Looked after Children Plan which picked up the issues arising from the January Ofsted inspection of the Safeguarding service. Ofsted had described the service as “adequate with good prospects for improvement”.  The enclosed plan being considered by Members had been updated in August with information on the progress of developments and responses to the inspection.

Members were asked to particularly note the attention being given by the Safeguarding service to managing risk, domestic violence, quality assurance and workforce development.

In relation to action 1.7, Members queried the number of children with disabilities subject to child protection plans. There was concern that the action being undertaken did not match the recommendation.  Members asked for comparisons between the numbers of disabled children subject to care plans in similar demographic boroughs.  It was noted that in Hackney there were no children with a disability, subject to a protection plan. However, in the London Borough of Richmond, which had a dissimilar demographic to Haringey, there were higher numbers.

When considering action 1.2, the system for attendance at child protection review medicals reviewed and attendance monitored, the Committee noted there was an agreed protocol in place for paediatricians to check Framework I and communicate with the Social Worker to ensure that these appointments were kept to. There had previously been a significant number of children not attending appointments which had been dramatically reduced following the implementation of this protocol. These figures could be further shared with Members of the Committee to   help understand the impact of this protocol if requested.

The Committee discussed the effectiveness of strategy meetings. There were best practice standards for attendance at strategy meetings which involved having a considered and planned response to these meetings. Currently Social Workers were ensuring that key agency and partner representation at these meetings. The Independent Member advised that it was also important to ensure that there was wide representation at the meeting involving, for the example, the immediate referrer and not contacting them after Strategy discussions. The service usually had 20 cases a week which required a strategy meeting and getting key people from the agencies together could sometimes cause delays. The service recognised that there was a need to look at how to get people together from the key agencies in contact with the child expediently and ensure that they were able to provide constructive contributions. This did not necessarily always mean that a meeting was the best vehicle to enable this. There were other ways of collating key information which could be through phone conferences and individual calls to collate a wide intelligence about the situation of the child.  To further enable this could mean redefining strategy meetings as strategy discussions.

In relation to action 3, on establishing mechanisms to ensure that midwives, adult services and voluntary agencies were engaged with the CAF, there was interest by the Committee in looking at the areas not on track for this action. It would be useful to find out  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27.

Report from Marion Wheeler, Assistant Director for Safeguarding, Children and Young People’s Services.

Sarah Peel, LSCB Business Manager, attended the Committee on behalf of the LSCB board to discuss the work and role of the Local Children’s Safeguarding Board (LSCB). The annual report of the LSCB was due to be considered at their meeting in October and following ratification it would be published on their website. Sarah Peel agreed to circulate this to Members of the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee for reading when published.

Sarah Peel, LSCB Business Manager, continued to set out the role of the LSCB and explain that it provides policies, guidance and protocols which underpin partnership work on safeguarding.  The LSCB are signed up to Pan London safeguarding arrangements. The LSCB ensure that these agreed safeguarding practices are understood through guidance which is issued. The Committee further learned what is crucial in LSCB partnership relationship is that each agency understand their safeguarding role in relation to others.  An example of a protocol currently being worked was enabling Mental Health services to record on case files whether a user had any children. Then also enabling this information to be passed to Children’s services. This action where necessary would help build a profile of a child’s family life.

The strategic role of the of the LSCB was monitoring, along with training and evaluation of monitoring of LSCB member roles.  This would be further elucidated upon in the LCSB’s annual report.  The structure and sub groups of the LSCB were visually set out for Member consideration.  Each of the sub groups role and purpose was explained to Committee Members.  The Chair remarked on the number of   different partner representatives on the LSCB Board which made the meetings quite large.  The LSCB Business Manager explained that attending the meeting was a key part of a partner’s accountability in relation to safeguarding.  When considering the number of sub groups the LSCB had, that teachers had welcomed the establishment of the Health and Education forums as they allowed them to communicate more directly with health colleagues.

 Information was provided to Committee Members about when a Serious Case Review was completed, by whom and how the findings were then reviewed by Ofsted.  The Munro report   was advocating unpicking the organisational context   for each individual agency or body connected to the case to understand the actions taken by their representatives.   Haringey LSCB was part of a pilot project considering this and information on this could be provided to the members of the Committee.  The Committee and attendees discussed their experiences of Serious Case Review and usually how their findings were similar. They discussed:  whether there was a systemic method to incorporating the findings  of a review into  everyday practices, finding ways to assist Social Workers with  managing and dealing with the bombardment of information that needs to be acted upon on a daily basis, further focussing on the certain stages of a child’s development that will make  them more vulnerable.

The Committee thanked Sarah Peel, LSCB Business Manager for the helpful information provided which had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28.

Discussion item.

Agenda compilation error – Please see information above which was part of this item.

That the press and public be excluded from the meeting for consideration of items  as it contains exempt information as defined in Section 100a of the  Local Government Act 1972(as amended by Section 12A of the Local Government Act 1985): paragraphs 1 and 2 :namely information relating to any individual and information likely to reveal the identity of an individual.

The press and public were excluded from the meeting for consideration  the items below as they contained exempt information as defined in Section 100a of the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended by Section 12A of the Local Government Act 1985): paras 1 & 2: namely information relating to any individual, and information likely to reveal the identity of an individual.  

Report of the Independent Member of the Committee.

A programme of audits had been established by the Committee in order to monitor practice and performance in Children’s Social Care, and identify areas of good practice and areas for improvement. An audit of new referrals between July the 12^th and 19^th 2011 had been examined by the Independent Member with involvement from Cllr Amin, a Member of the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee.

There were 37 families reviewed with the work of more than one team included in the range of cases looked at. The Committee noted that, of this sample, the highest number of referrals came from the Police with Schools also providing a higher than anticipated number of referrals.  The case notes reflected the work done by the service to put the child’s wellbeing at the forefront of all decisions.   The highest category and reason for referral was abuse and according to the circumstances this required timely intervention by Children’s services.

The Independent Member reported that in the past there had been criticism of Children’s services for holding onto cases for too long but in this audit there was appropriate closures of cases seen.  The positive aspect of the audit were that there wee  circumstances of outstanding individual work  completed by a Social Worker in very complex cases which required follow  up work with a number of  agencies and constant attention being given to a family.  There were also comments on cases records from health services representatives, in contact with the family, which Social Workers could view. This was a good result of the MASH (Multi Agency, Safeguarding Hub) working together and sharing information.  The audit further reflected that there were a lot of strategy discussions taking place which would aid timely decisions being made.

 Committee Members asked the Independent member about any unsatisfactory elements of her findings. It was noted that a small number of cases had been prematurely closed when the case recordings indicated that the issues would reoccur. These findings had been referred to management and appropriate action was being taken. A further case looked at  involved a family , a mother and four children, needing immediate re - housing where  if earlier intervention  from relevant agencies had occurred they  may have been able to stay in the family home .  Learning points from this case was the need to look at the decision making process being  embarked upon when a family is assessed as being in need and  evaluating the risks involved .Then as a  Social Worker deciding whether you can gather  the required information in a timely way to assist a family .

There was a further separate case where a referral from a GP could have been quicker. In another case where a sibling had reported abuse and the actions undertaken may not have been as prompt in comparison to a father being the perpetrator of abuse.

The Committee thanked the Independent Member and Cllr Amin for their work which provided a key insight into the current work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31.

To discuss any new items of Urgent Business admitted under Item 2 above.

None

Discussion item.

The Committee noted that the Chair of the Corporate Parenting Committee  had suggested that a report on children missing from home and from care could be considered.  The Chair recommended that  items 6 and 10 could be considered at the joint meeting . It was agreed that any further suggestions  for items  to be considered at this joint meeting could be put forward to the clerk.

To confirm the date of the next meeting as 3 November 2011.

The Committee noted that the next meeting was to be held on the 03 November 2011,the Independent Member was due to carry out a  domestic violence related audit that would focus around under two year olds  living in households where domestic violence was a feature.   It was agreed that this audit cover under 5’s.