Agenda item

[Report of the Director for Children’s Services. To be Introduced by the Cabinet Member for Children, Education and Families.]

To provide Cabinet with the outcome from the Ofsted Focused Visit and the associated improvement plan.

The Cabinet Member for Children, Education and Families, introduced the report which provided Cabinet with an update on the 2018 Ofsted inspection action plan, the actions in place to address the findings of the Ofsted focused visit of 2019 and the actions Children’s Services is taking in response to Family Court Judgment on 20^th May in the case of Child A and Child B.

The Cabinet Member referred to the updated 2018 Ofsted inspection action plan which spoke of the improvements the service continues to make as does the 2019 focused visit action plan. However, it was noted that the Family Court Judgment was critical of the social work practice in the DCT team, and it suggested that the practice in the team may not have improved since the 2018 Ofsted inspection.

The Cabinet Member highlighted the Council vision that every child in Haringey should have the best start in life, be happy, healthy, and safe, and grow into adulthood with a successful future. For those children, young people and families that need Council support, the Cabinet Member was committed to ensuring that this was of high quality at all times. The Cabinet Member expressed that when standards fell below expectations, the Council was determined to address these issues, no matter how uncomfortable that process might be and ensure learning from them. The Council was a learning organisation committed, every day, to continuing to drive improvement in Children’s service so that the Council’s vision was realised for all the children in the community.

The report set out the actions being taken to review the practices in the DCT team and there would be a full report back to Cabinet on improvements and activity in October 2020.

In response to questions from Cllr Cawley – Harrison and Councillor das Neves, the following was noted:

·         There would be an independent review to provide assurance that there was not a systemic issue in the Disabled Children’s Team and this would be reported to Cabinet in the autumn. The review process would use similar methods to those employed in case reviews.

·         With regards to working with Islington, the Council were part of a wider programme called partners in practice. This was an established programme where a number of local authorities were working together with ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ services to get a better understanding of the best way to improve services. Although, Islington Council had been working with the Council in this programme, they were still appropriate to lead the review and were fully observant of their need to be independent. The Director for Children’s Services added that the Chair was Hannah Miller, an experienced previous statutory director with a breadth of knowledge in Adults services and safeguarding partnerships.

·         The Cabinet Member referred to the unique experience of every parent and the key part of co-production was about sharing experiences. The SEND service were committed to working with parents to enable this to work successfully.

·         The Cabinet Member remarked that the SEND services was not as poor as it was currently commented to be but nonetheless faced challenges. It was appropriate that parents were involved in the service and represented their children’s views.

·         The Cabinet Member was committed to working with parents and following publication of the AMAZE report would be working with officers to put in place an action plan which would be shared with parents about how the services can move forward.

·         The Cabinet Member was also expecting the service to learn from good practice in the Council where co – production has worked

[Clerks note – At 8pm the streaming of the meeting was interrupted, prior to agreement of the resolutions, and the Chair adjourned the meeting for 5 minutes to enable streaming to be resumed. The meeting resumed at 8.05pm and the streaming continued successfully and meeting available to the public]

RESOLVED

1.    To note the findings of the Ofsted Focused visit in December 2019 as attached as Appendix 1 of the report and endorsed the ongoing Action plan attached as Appendix 2 of the report.

2.    To note the progress of the Ofsted inspection 2018 Action plan attached as Appendix 3 of the report; and

3.    To endorse the assurance measures to improve practice in the Disabled Children’s Team set out in paragraphs 7.8 to 7.11 of the report.

Reasons for decision

Non key decision

Alternative options considered

None.