Agenda item

The Committee to consider the proposed restructure of Youth, Connexions and Participation services.(Report to follow)

Members of the Committee considered a report on the proposals for the restructure of the Council’s Youth, Connexions and Participation services. The context behind the recommendations and necessity for this report were the requirement for the local authority to make savings of over 84 million over the next 3 years. As part of this, the Children and Young People’s service were required to restructure the service to reduce spending by 14.1m whilst ensuring that it fulfilled its statutory duties and protected services to the borough’s most vulnerable children. The proposition was to reorganise the Council’s Youth Service, Connexions Service, and Children and Young People, Parent & Community Participation Service into a revised Youth, Participation and Community service to achieve required savings of £3,298,443 whilst keeping to the following responsibilities:

• Delivering statutory responsibilities for the Local Authority
• Prioritising provision for at risk vulnerable groups
• Meeting  the needs of the community and the aspirations of young people

It was noted that 105 staff were affected by the review which equated to 85.9 Full Time Equivalents. It involved the deletion of 44 vacant posts (30.9 Full Time Equivalent posts). The full employment position of the staff members included in the restructure was set out in section 5 of appendix 1. The Committee learned that the restructure had sought to achieve a balance between full and part time posts   as working in youth service involved flexibility and working outside normal working hours.

The key aim of the new service was to target children most at risk. This would be achieved through maximising frontline services so that through partnership with statutory and community organisations there was focus on working with young people and families which were known to the Council to have enhanced risk factors. A further priority of the new service would be community development and quality assurance  which would entail developing , agreeing and monitoring clear quality standards in conjunction with young people for services that were managed by the Council , commissioned, or those that  the Council signposted to in the voluntary, community  and third sector .  The Council would be seeking to develop relationships with these sectors to ensure that there was a shared understanding of the meaning of quality services across the borough. This would further include: addressing professional issues where required, training, staff development, ensuring safeguarding protocols were in place and that tracking systems,  which provided schools with and other agencies with data information on learning, and employment destinations of young people  were maintained to a high level. The third key priority was citizenship and involvement of young people and ensuring that they were routinely involved and engaged in decision making, shaping, and planning the service.  This would include working with children and young people through the Youth Council and CIC Council and ensuring that consultation on broader developments of the service included young people. In relation to the connection of this priority to the Voluntary Sector this would involve liaising with HAVCO to make sure that there were skilled and trained workers in the voluntary sector. In terms of volunteering, the new service would record young people’s volunteering and offer accredited training if appropriate.

Members were pointed to the new staffing structure of the service which was set out in Appendix A and asked to agree the recommendations of the report.

The Employee side were invited by the Chair to address the meeting and raise their concerns about the report and its recommendations. They began by expressing their immediate concern; on how the prevention agenda would continue to be adhered to as they felt it would be hindered greatly by the level of budget reductions to this service and they felt that in the long term there would be a greater cost to the community and the local authority. In response to this it was noted that prevention would continue as a key aim of the service and would include working with children in care colleagues to provide targeted services rather than a broad service. The Employee side referred to the formal feedback provided by Unison to the consultation which was appended to the report as part of Appendix 5 and sought the following clarifications.

• Youth Development Officer post was marked as an open ring fence post – The Deputy Director Prevention and Early Intervention agreed to review this ringfence proposal.

• Single status evaluations for Frontline workers - the consultation period had been extended to allow evaluations for single status to be undertaken.  Any potential payments associated with single status claims would be met within the budget for the service.

• New Job Descriptions for Connexions employees indicated working 4 evenings a week which had implications for the work life balance of these employees. In response it was noted that the job descriptions were compiled on the pretext of meeting the needs of young people. The figure of 4 evenings a week was a guide and it was not envisaged that this many working evening would be needed per week. The previous job descriptions for this role set evening work at one evening per week and this was altered to reflect Youth workers job descriptions which indicated as a guide working 4 evenings per week. In response to this clarification, the Employee side pointed to the difference between part time youth workers and the Connexions post holders who were working full time hours and expected to work evenings. The committee noted that the need to meet the availability of young people made it essential for these post holders to be available in the evenings. However, it was reiterated by Officers, that 4 evenings was a guide and it was unlikely that post holders would be expected to work this number of evenings per week.

• Participation Strategy Officer and Community Participation Officer  Job description changes -  It was explained  that these two posts had been transferred  from Children and Young People service along with their budget to  be located in the proposed new structure of the Youth, Connexions and Participation service.  There were no changes currently proposed to these job descriptions and therefore no current issues to resolve on ring fences. There would follow, in future, a review of these posts.

Following the Employee side deputation, members of the Committee put forward further questions on the restructure of the service to officers. The Committee understood that there   would be a significant reduction in the size of the service and this would necessitate effective targeted intervention with children most in need of the service. The Committee sought assurances on the effectiveness of the evidence source of the Children’s service to ensure that young people most in need of the new Youth, Connexions and Participation service were located and service provided. They also sought clarification on how the reliability of this source would continue to be monitored and asked how examples of previous good practices were to be shared in the service and referred to as to ensure the success of the new service going forward.  The Committee were informed that the main feedback received from young people about the service was their satisfaction with the one to one support given and there were good working relationships developed with their workers; however this was not measurable in the quantitative format.  The key information source used by the service was the database which recorded the number of Children Not in Education or, Employment or Training (NEET). This database assisted the service greatly in knowing the location and situation of all young people in the borough. The information on this database was monitored consistently as there was an overriding aim to keep the number of children classed NEET low. This was also information which was reported to the Government on a regular basis.  Where there was uncertainty about the employment, training and education situation of a young person, there were efforts made to contact them to ensure that overall the data was continually robust.

Clarification was sought on how the services provided by the Youth Offending Service would be continued in the new service. It was reported that the Youth Offending service had transferred to the Children and Young People’s service recently following the overall Council re-organisation report on the Council, Rethinking Haringey. A further task would be to examine the working relationship of the Youth Offending team and the new Youth, Connexions and Participation service over the coming year.

In response to a Committee question on the responsibility for young people with disabilities, it was reported that they would be one of the groups targeted by the new service for support.

Members referred to Appendix 6 of the report which set out the structure of the service and enquired how many of the staff listed were frontline staff.  It was noted that all staff listed could be thought of as frontline staff; including the management staff as they would all in some capacity have contact with the users of the service. It was clarified that the team leader’s primary function was to lead the teams, whilst also supervising case loads to ensure that they were manageable. They would themselves also retain a small number of cases.  The tracking assistants listed in the structure also had a frontline role as part of the interface with young people was through the youth space website where feedback from young people was collected. In response to a query on the geographical areas in the borough covered by the teams, it was clarified that the children’s network geographical model had been used to mark the responsibility for areas. Assurances were given that no area of the borough had been missed.

Having  considered the information provided at the meeting and further to considering the report, the following resolutions were  made:

RESOLVED

1. That it be noted the formal consultation on the proposals contained in the report began on 11 February 2011 and was concluded on the 20 April 2011.

2. That the comments from staff and trades unions and the management response to them set out in appendix 5 be noted.

3. That the Equalities Impact Assessments relating to these proposals set out in appendices 2 and 3 be noted.

4. That the proposed staffing restructure as set out in the consultation document in Appendix 1 be agreed. This decision took account of the outcome of the staff consultation and management response (appendices 5&6) and gave due regard to the Council’s public sector equalities duties.