Agenda and minutes

The  Chair of  Corporate Parenting Committee and  Chair of the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee had previously agreed , outside the meeting, that they would alternate the responsibility of Chair for the joint meetings. The Chair of the Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee is due to chair this meeting.

 It was agreed that  Cllr Stewart chair the Joint Committee  meeting of the Corporate Parenting Advisory Committee and Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee.

Apologies for absence were received from Cllr Adamou.

The chair will consider the admission of any late items of urgent business.(late items will be considered under the agenda items here they appear. New Items will be dealt with at Item 9 below. New items of exempt business will be dealt with at Item 11 below.

 There were no items of urgent business put forward.

A member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a prejudicial interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered:

(i) must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest becomes apparent, and

 (ii) may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must withdraw from the meeting room.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Members’ Register of Interests or the subject of a pending notification must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal interests and prejudicial interest are defined at Paragraphs 5-7 and Appendix A of the Members’ Code of Conduct.

 There were no declarations of Interest put forward.

To consider any requests received in accordance with Standing Orders.

 There were no deputations, petitions,  or questions put forward.

To consider  key safeguarding and looked after children performance information for the half year , including available benchmark data. Report to follow

The Committee considered  performance data and trends for an agreed set of measures relating  to contacts, referrals, assessments, child protection and children  looked after.

The  agreed set of measures were grouped   according to topic and enclosed at appendix 1 , showing monthly data, performance against target , long term trends and benchmarking data where applicable.  Both the Corporate Parenting Committee and Children’s Safeguarding  Policy and Practice Committee had considered    Performance information up to August 2012 in relation to their respective areas  at their  recent meetings and the Chair asked the Assistant Director for Safeguarding to highlight any changes in performance since these meetings.

 The Assistant Director for safeguarding continued to  outlined the  following key information:

• The downward trend for children becoming looked after continued  and  it  was critical  that this  indicator continued in this  vein for the  service to move forward with their early help agenda. 

• The upward pressure on children placed on child protection plans  was being  closely examined by the service as this was out of step with statistical neighbours.

• There was a slight upturn in the number of children being placed in the borough although it was accepted that the number of children placed outside the borough was still high.

• The  Children service were aiming to ensure that all looked after children had a permanency plan  and  were continuing  to  examine  how each department had a role in supporting this plan.

Following queries from the Committee about the performance statistics, the following information was obtained:

With regards to initial  and core assessments not being completed within timescales, the Committee were assured that all families will be seen by a social worker  within a  certain amount of time.   The Committee  were further pointed to the service comments included  with the performance data which showed that  there was an improvement from the previous month. The  Committee were  assured that this was a  high priority for the service  and the services was striving to bring this up to a top quartile performance . The Children’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice Committee  had  asked  Independent Member Hilary  Corrick to  undertake a qualitative audit  into initial assessments that were  completed out of timescale  to understand the reasons for this.  There would be a   report considered on this at the  meeting on November 22^nd 2012.

 Adoption  scorecard -  there were a number of key lines of enquiry  which would require a response from different parts of the service. The Service was actively exploring how to better streamline  the process involving adoption .  It was anticipated that  a review  of adoption processes together with the additional resources from the Children’s Improvement  Board would  enable   more adoptions to be made  and  at a quicker pace.  The Director of  Children’s service advised that there was a  timescale chart  being considered by the  Children’s Service Improvement board on a regular basis and this  set out the different timescales the  service were working  to for adoption.  It was agreed to circulate this chart to the Committee.

 The Independent  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37.

Members will  consider  the commitments of the Charter and whether they are appropriate for Haringey.

The Committee noted that one of the recommendations of the  Scrutiny Review  of Children missing from care and from home was that the council gave specific consideration  to signing up to the Children’s Society Runaways charter. The Society  was calling on all local authorities to publicly sign up to the charter which contained a clear code for agencies with a duty to protect children who run away or go missing from home and care.  It was clarified that the term young run away refers to young people up to the age of 18 who have run away from their home or care placement. The council currently adheres to statutory guidance and Pan London Missing from Home and care procedures for children missing from home and care placements.

 The  Children’s Service was currently working with Barnardos on the Miss U project and there currently there  was a   Barnardos  practitioner providing support to runaways and children at risk.   Therefore as an existing working relationship with  Barnardos  existed the service would need to  gage whether there was a difference in the work  required by the charter  and the work that Barnardos  did with  missing  children .

The  merits of signing up to the charter were outlined  together with the  caution that the  charter  could  be used in assessments of the service  and  the  directorate would need to allocate additional resources to monitoring  adherence to the charter . The service already had in place existing processes and procedures to adhere to the statutory and Pan London guidance and therefore this would be an additional  detailed assignment for the service to resource. The Committee were further given assurance  about the  level of priority given to children missing from care  with an illustration of  the information shared in the  weekly updates considered  by the Cabinet Member for Children’s services  and Director  of the  Children’s  service.

 A  member  of the Committee advised that children and young people missing from council children’s homes had been a  regular concern and mentioned at previous Scrutiny  Panel meetings . The main  consideration should be that  children are kept safe  It was reassuring that   the children’s service was  tracking the   children and young people that were going missing. However  it was felt that  further assurance was needed on the process and  risk assessments in place for children in care taking unauthorised  leave from their placements as the past experience had  been that  these  children’s whereabouts were predicted by the care homes  i.e. that they were with family members . Nonetheless these absences were equally as concerning as children missing from care whose whereabouts were not known.  The committee agreed that a report come back to the December meeting of corporate parenting advising on the process and risk assessments in place for children in care taking unauthorised leave from their placements and also for children missing from care.  The report should also provide a sense of the figures over the year for children missing from care  as the figures were lower than previously  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38.

Members to consider information about the Children’s Service transitional change programme. Report to follow

The vision of the Haringey 54000 change programme was: Haringey a place where children and young people are known to thrive and achieve. The programme represented a changing relationship between the Children’s service and families in the borough.  The programme would balance services towards universal and good and outstanding early help that would sustain families, preventing the need for more costly services  being needed.

The outcomes that the service was aiming for were outlined to the committee. To achieve these  the service was aiming to release resources currently invested in higher numbers of looked after children for an earlier offer of help.  This would mean shifting the budget from  high cost interventions towards efficient and effective preventative services. The  programme approach being taken to the changes required in the service had been developed in collaboration with practitioners running programmes in  London Authorities and national experts and had been tailored to be  used flexibly in the local and regional authority context.  The programme reporting arrangements were set and   the committee noted that it will receive sector led challenge through the Sector LD Improvement Board which is chaired by the Leader of the Council with outside challenge by the London Borough of Lambeth.

An explanation was provided of early help and its priorities were set out as well as the policy guiding this work. It was noted that this was not limited to the age of the child and could occur at any point in a child’s or young person’s life. The service was engaging with users to find out what early help means to them. The policy attached was in draft form and an updated version would be sent out to committee members.  The  final policy was expected to be considered by Cabinet in March. Alongside the early help policy , the permanency policy would be about finding permanent families for  looked after children  so they spent a less time in care.

 A member of the Committee highlighted the significant reductions made to Children’s Centres in 2011 and  this  would need to be factored when taking forward the offer of early help. Comparisons were made with Islington council  who had not made reductions to their children’s centres.  In response to this, it was pointed out Islington receive higher  funding for  early years than Haringey and  are in a position  spend more on children’s centres.  The  Children’s service had been required to make these past reductions to the Children’s centres budget as there was not the funding in place to continue with the size of the service .The Children’s service was not excluded from making budget reductions in the coming financial years and  it was also not yet known if there was flexibility in the DSG grant and EIG funding to spend more on children’s centres.

Continuing the discussion on children’s centres and  their role in early help to families , the  following issues were highlighted . The Director of Children’s services. agreed to provide a written response to the  Committee as  ...  view the full minutes text for item 39.

There will be a presentation informing members about the Multi Systemic Treatment Programme  and a progress report  on its  work which will be  tabled for consideration.

Geoffrey Burach was asked by the Assistant Director for Safeguarding to attend the meeting to   present information on Multi Systemic Treatment (MST) Programme, a DFE funded project. Moira Lamond was also introduced to the committee; she was working directly with council on this initiative aimed at mainstreaming intervention for young people on the edge of care which Haringey council and Waltham Forest Council were participating in. 

There was a contractual relationship between with the council and the Brandon centre initially for a year. There were two therapists working with 9 families in Haringey where there was extreme entrenched behaviour and which statutory services had not been able to work with effectively. MST was initially developed in the US as a treatment programme for young people displaying antisocial behaviour and aimed at reducing youth criminal activity.  The outcomes of the programme are cost savings in by decreasing the public cost youth criminal activity such as imprisonment, and putting young people into care. 

The theoretical basis behind MST looks at the factors leading to delinquent behaviour.  MST involves a therapy team working with the families and targets multidiscipline risks in a comprehensive yet individualised way. The caregiver’s co-operation is paramount to the long term positive outcomes for the child. There were daily activities for the parents to complete to change the system in the family and ensure the intervention successes were sustainable.

  The theoretical principles of MST include targeting sequences of behaviour within and between multiple systems that maintain identified problems. It is evidence based intervention subject to randomised control pilots. Moira Lammond explained that practically MST is a home based with the therapist visiting the household and keeping regular contact with family for a time limited intervention.  The aim is to keep children and young people with extreme behaviours  on the edge of care at home or out of custody. The intervention can last from 3-5 months and can range from 35-75 appointments with each family.   Examples of the different issues and the types of families that the therapists dealt with were illustrated. The recent achievements of the project included:

• 2 children in care coming out of care and returning to their families
• Positive interventions at school
• One child successful in not getting excluded from school
• A pupil at the Octagon centre had progressed to college education
•  Schools  participating in the therapy and  working with the  therapist on behavioural plans

The therapist had learnt from the families that they were working with the about the different approaches each agency .The necessary input of statutory services can make the families feel less in control.

In response to questions, the committee learned that:

• That currently a therapist will work with between 4-5 for families and if the council wanted to increase the families getting this specific help they would need to procure additional therapists.

• The work with the families is conducted in the home and there is not clinic to attend.  Although there is variety of interventions this is a pragmatic therapy based  ...  view the full minutes text for item 40.

A report from the  Head of Youth , Community and Participation about the recent work of the service. Report to follow

The Committee considered a report on the  work of the Youth Community and Participation service  intervening and working with young people and children that were on  the edge of care or at risk of offending.  . This was a pilot project  which targeted young people that did not  meet the criteria to receive a  service from First Response  but where  there was enough  concern  about their behaviour and relationship with their families to  refer them to the youth, community, participation service. The committee noted the   successes of their targeted interventions and noted the longer term aim of continuing with this project with a staffing structure being put in place to enhance this model and be fully operational from January 2013.

It was clarified that the cohort of children and young people referred to the Youth, Community and Participation service did not require the same high level of care as the young people accessing the MST programme.

It was further noted that the  although the Youth , Community and Participation had received  £400k in funding   this could still not support a broad youth service  offer  and the Youth community and Participation service  would continue as a  partial service  providing  targeted universal services.

To consider any items admitted at items 2 above.

There  were no new items of urgent business.

That the press and public be excluded from the meeting for consideration of the following items as they may contain 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.

To consider any items admitted at item 2 above.

There were no new exempt items of urgent business.

16^th May 2013 7.30pm

16^th May 2013.