Agenda item

To update the Committee on the Improvement Plan.

The Executive Director of People and the Director of Children, Family Interventions and Children’s Social care were in attendance to provide an update on the progress of the Children’s Improvement Plan.

The Committee was informed that that the following progress had been made since the last update:

-  Key Performance Indicators (KPI) overview was presented at the December 2017 meeting of the children’s improvement board for in depth analysis

- Key challenges such as high demand, work load of staff and use of agency staff continue to be addressed

- The Executive Director’s primary role was centred on the improvement of children’s services and as a result there had been a reconfiguration of directors that report to her to ensure minimal distraction from her core role in delivering the Children’s Services Improvement Plan.

- ‘Line of Sight’ document had been produced which outlined the work and actions to be taken by the lead members of children’s services to ensure compliance with regulatory guidance and practices.

- Regular auditing of cases

- Cross practice working

- Bi Monthly meeting with Assessed Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) social workers,

- Monthly meeting with social workers and front line staff

Members’ questioned what had been done differently to communicate effectively with staff and to ensure that they were aware that their ‘voice’ was being heard. Officers responded that staff had been encouraged to make use of the staff suggestion box as a forum to give opinions on matters important to them. There was a staff group, aside from the social work forums where they were able to share experiences, group discussions and reflection opportunities were made available to ensure staff felt supported and are able to obtain different perspectives on cases.

The Committee further learned that the Executive Director of People had ensured that her presence was more visible to front line staff by regularly engaging to gain an understanding of daily issues and had been working with managers in each department on effecting a change of culture. The Director of Children’s Services informed the Committee that time had been spent accompanying social workers to visits in order to have insight into the department’s customs and practices.

In response to a Member question on recruitment and retention of social workers, officers advised that a new recruitment strategy had been agreed and a new children’s social care microsite website had been launched to encourage recruitment of good social workers. The department was continually working to encourage locum social workers to take up permanent contracts into achieve a stable workforce in all teams.

The Committee was informed that the Croydon Staff Survey would close shortly and be ready to report on in a few weeks. Members commented that it was important that as many responses as possible were received as they were key to the improvement of the service. Officers advised that they had been working with human resources department and staff reference group to determine ways to encourage increased returns and participation.

The Committee learned that outcomes in the Adoption service were robust and compared favourably with national figures. In relation to Return Home Interviews (RHI), Members were informed that a full report would be presented at the Children’s Scrutiny Sub- Committee the following week.  Progress had been made in this area,as provisional figures for January 2018 showed a total of 80% RHI’s offered and 66% taken up. The total rewards scheme that was mentioned at the December 2017 meeting was still in the development stage with the hope of going to consultation in the next few months.

In response to a Member query on addressing challenges with staff caseload, officers stated that they were looking at ways to reduce pressure on social workers so they would concentrate on core areas. In order to achieve balance, there had been increased business support staff recruited to posts. There was ongoing work to ensure that the recording systems used were practitioner friendly. There had been extra funding made available for recruitment of good quality social workers.

Members requested an update on the partnership with Camden Council, key observations taken that could be applied to Croydon and lessons learnt. Officers responded that many lessons had been learnt and this was an ongoing process. Senior managers had visited Camden to observe their process and practices. There has been some work done with their Quality Assurance Department and they had supported Croydon with the audit of cases completed recently. The structure of the Corporate Parenting Panel of Camden has also been replicated in Croydon in order to set a different style and tone. An emphasis on strong youth voice and those working directly with young people such as foster carers had been incorporated through wider elected group representation to the panel.

Officers acknowledged that the support received from Camden had assisted in understanding how the failures in the service had occurred and had assisted in understanding how to improve outcomes for the children and families that were supported by the Council.

The Committee noted poor levels of achievement against some performance indicators to which officers responded that the detrimental impact on some performance indicators were as a result of the continuous increase in volumes of contacts and referrals to the service. This increase affected adherence to timescales of assessment and caseload figures. Following a review, deputy managers had been put into the assessment teams to address the increase of families requiring assessments.

The Chair thanked officers for their response to questions asked.

RESOLVED: That

1 The Children’s improvement Plan and the Minister’s agreement that Croydon should continue to manage its own improvement, in line with the Commissioner’s recommendations be noted.

2 The progress on delivering the actions outlined in the improvement plan in December be noted.

3 The priority performance indicators for November 2017 be noted.