Agenda item

The Head of Service, Ros Cooke, accompanied by Shubhi Raymond, will provide give a presentation on the support provided by the Early Years service and Children’s Centres on safeguarding.

The committee considered an overview of the provision for Children’s Centres in Haringey. Childcare was available in 8 children’s centres. The service was working on underdeveloped places and more work was needed to find new places   that are funded and provide a reasonable payment rate to attract parents to places.  By 2014, the council need to meet government targets the number of places will need to double. In number. From September 2013 the criteria used for free school meals will replace existing criteria to allow a wider number of children to access places. With a wider eligibility for places the early year’s service recognised the need to protect for Children in need and children on protection plans.

The Committee asked how the service ensured that vulnerable children   got    the right places. To ensure they were supported and monitored appropriately.   The committee learned that vulnerable children, as all other children, access integrated provision and they will receive  a regular  progress review, alongside this there will be  standing two weekly meetings at the children’s centres to examine the specific needs of  children that are in need or on protection plans  or have obtained a place as a result of a CAF .  Managers and staff will consider how the needs are addressed and monitor how they are managed.

The reason for looking at the role of children’s centres in safeguarding vulnerable children was that past committee members had shared their positive experience of the difference being made in other boroughs by children’s centres ensuring vulnerable children were prioritised for a place.  The Chair was advised that there was a good working relationship between the First Response and Early Years service to ensure that referrals were passed onto children’s centres.  There was already a contact person for the screening team in each of the children’s centres cluster. To further expand the focus on vulnerable children the two services were discussing ensuring places were available for vulnerable children at the cluster level.

Alongside accessing children’s centre places, parents were offered a wide range of development and skill programmes to attend whilst their child was at the centre and enquiry was made on the take up of the programmes and any experience of peer support from parents. The feedback received from children centres was positive and indicated that the parent programmes had been successful.  As part of the review of children’s centres the service were looking at expanding the sessions and considering the amount of out reach work. Good positive friendships were developed as part of parents accessing children’s centres.

In terms of the Children’s Centre’s review, this will analyse the impact of the restructure and if any improvements need to be made. There was a good relationship with the children’s centres and the associated schools. The review will check that there has been good and appropriate expenditure as there is a lower budget available than in previous years it is crucial that the budget available is appropriately spent. The review will initially be considered by the Director for Children’s services and the Cabinet Member for Children. The committee registered their interest in considering the recommendations of the review if there were implications for safeguarding.

 When Children’s Centres put forward their concerns they were listened too and they will work closely with the early year’s services to improve services to vulnerable children. There are safeguarding forums run in term time with children’s centres to raise issues,  improving communications as  it is by having meetings  that the service ensure that practice is consistent.

In considering the high numbers of children on children in need plans and on child protection  plans, understanding was sought on whether this  reflected that more children were moving into the borough  or was there a particular group of parents increasing i.e. young mums that needed  to be worked more closely with.  Although the borough had one of the highest number of teenage mums,  no significant increase had been seen in the last couple of years and the council did  work closely with health services on sexual health education and advice.  Previously, when the committee had looked at the statistics for the number of families moving to the borough with child protection plans they had seen an equal number move in as out of the borough. However, the borough had been chosen by government  to implement the benefit cap  6 months earlier than the national roll out so the Director for Children’s service would be monitoring the impact of the benefit cap on families  circumstances.

It was clarified that health workers work closely with Children’s centres and  they do make contact with the Children’s services about any children they are concerned about when making their regular  home visits.

 In terms of communicating with mothers, where English was not the first language, there were  a range of community languages spoken  by staff that worked in  children’s centres and in early years  and they could be called upon   to help  with communications as well as interpreters that worked for the council.  There were also out reach workers that  spoke   common community languages worked from children centres that were able to visit  mums  where English was not the first language.  Language help would be  part of the issues looked at in the review of children’s centres.