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Agenda item

Children's Social Care Improvement

Decision:

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.

Minutes:

Witnesses

Pinaki Ghoshal, Director for Children and Young People
Lucie Heyes, Director of Children’s Social Care
Sara Rahman, Director of Families, Quality and Commissioning

 

Key points from discussion

The Director of Children’s Social Care introduced the report. Key points included:

4.1.       The report was based on the Council’s 2022/23 Ofsted self-assessment. In the first half of the year, children’s services had continued to be adversely affected by the legacy of the pandemic, experiencing increased demand in combination with significant workforce challenges, including high turnover, vacancies and caseloads. Towards the end of 2022, services began to recover: demand had levelled off (at higher rate than before the Covid-19 pandemic) and the workforce had stabilised, although it was inexperienced (a mitigating strategy was in place to address associated risks).

4.2.       Two thirds to three quarters of practice was believed to be Good, up from 15 per cent in 2018. Fewer children were on child protection plans, fewer children were being removed from their families, and fewer children were in care. This was largely due to investment in services to prevent high levels of statutory interventions and the Signs of Safety practice model enabling more children to stay with their families. Caseloads were reasonable with strong management oversight in place. There was a healthy practice culture. The Joint Targeted Area Inspection on safeguarding in November 2022 had recognised improvement across children’s services and its health and police partners.

4.3.       Early Help was at an earlier stage of its improvement journey than Children’s Social Care.

The Committee then put questions to the witnesses. Key points from the discussion included:

4.4.       The staff turnover rate was better when the London boroughs formula was applied.

4.5.       The education, training and employment rate for care leavers (58 per cent) was significantly lower than for the wider cohort of young people but not dissimilar to the rate for care leavers in other boroughs. The target was 75 per cent. A new support offer for care leavers was being commissioned with the intention of launching in January.

4.6.       Due to the high number of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSWs) in the workforce, additional management oversight panels and coaching had been implemented. More-senior social workers (‘consultant social workers’) based in the Academy were supporting NQSWs’ Assessed and Supported Year in Employment to reduce the burden on managers. Team managers’ experiences of supporting such high numbers of NQSWs was being considered.

4.7.       Children’s Social Care expected it was at the peak of staff inexperience, which it expected to begin to fall in six to twelve months. The attrition rate for NQSWs was around 40 per cent. Many NQSWs had their first professional experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, when staff were working remotely, providing them with less rich pre-qualification experience. Services were, therefore, seeking to diversify their recruitment of NQSWs and introduce more family practitioners, who tended to have more life and professional experience. A recently launched recruitment campaign was aimed at experienced social workers, as there was a large pool of NQSWs to draw from.

4.8.       The latest children’s services workforce survey found staff morale to be high, which was important given recruitment and retention challenges. There was a safe environment for staff with a no blame culture, appropriate support and challenge, and offering professional autonomy.

4.9.       There was often lots of support available to care experienced young people in further education; this should be promoted to encourage declaration of their status when entering further education or changing setting. Guidance could also be provided to settings to encourage sensitive conversations about care experience.

4.10.    Personal advisors were able to provide targeted support to young people who had been in the care of Lewisham Council. It was harder to know whether young people being educated in the borough had been in the care of other boroughs, as the quality of information shared under the relevant protocols was not always good.

4.11.    The London Care Leavers Compact was seeking to agree a pan-London offer for care leavers entailing reciprocal arrangements around housing, council tax and care experience being treated as a protected characteristic.

4.12.    The new Integrated Adolescent Service comprised Safe Spaces and the Youth Justice Service. There was an aspiration for the Service to refer young people to youth services and provide targeted youth work, such as mentoring, for the most at risk young people.

4.13.    It was increasingly difficult to find appropriate and reasonably priced placements for looked-after children. The number of children in the highest cost placements had risen significantly in the past 18 months and could rise or fall in future; every child entering or leaving such placements had a significant budgetary impact.

4.14.    The Council was exploring creating in-house provision to support the most complex children.

4.15.    Due to the level of demand for residential placements for the most traumatised and complex young people, providers were able to select the least challenging young people, in addition to charging high fees. Providers were increasingly risk adverse and using higher staffing ratios. Many young people in high-cost placements were subject to deprivation of liberty orders.

4.16.    The regulation of semi-independent placements for 16- and 17-year-olds had increased the cost of such placements.

4.17.    The development of the Integrated Adolescent Service and the Sufficiency Strategy aimed to prevent young people entering care in the first place.

4.18.    Sharing costs with health partners where young people’s health needs were driving high placement costs was being explored.

4.19.    Complex factors relating to criminal exploitation also featured among the most complex looked-after children.

4.20.    There was a dedicated unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) service comprising specialist social workers. UASC were not generally challenging to place. Culturally appropriate placements were arranged where possible.

4.21.    Being in the Commissioning Alliance was preferable to acting independently but had not delivered savings, due to market volatility, but may have avoided costs. Being part of the Alliance was providing more placement options.

4.22.    The recent increases in girls and 13-year-old children going missing from home were fairly new phenomena. Data on missing children was better than previously, and the number of young people completing return home interviews had increased. Missing child cases were to be audited by the Multi-Agency Child Exploitation partnership. All young people who went missing were offered a return home interview within 24 hours of returning home. Children who had multiple missing incidents in a short period needed to be distinguished in the reporting system. There were also young people who didn’t engage in return home interviews and missing incidents where there weren’t high levels of risk, e.g. where a child was reported missing by a worried parent but then returned home.

Standing orders were suspended until 9.45 pm at 9.23 pm.

4.23.    Key areas affecting recruitment and retention were pay, terms and conditions and the authority’s Ofsted grading. A social worker pay benchmarking exercise was being undertaken.

4.24.    The high number of UASC presenting in Kent was not driving a significant increase in UASC cases in Lewisham. The maximum head count experienced was 45-55 young people. As a Borough of Sanctuary, the Council had reached out to struggling boroughs at times.

4.25.    The in-house fostering recruitment campaign had been relaunched with refreshed marketing material. A fostering hub was being established using Department for Education funding: foster carers would be employed to act as the foster carer recruitment team.

ACTIONS

1.    The Director of Children’s Social Care to provide the method for calculating the staff turnover rate.

2.    The Director of Children’s Social Care to provide an updated version of the table at paragraph 7.20 of the report.

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.

Supporting documents: