Wrthi'n llwytho
Y penderfyniadau fel y mae cofnodion y cyngor yn eu cofnodi. Bydd crynodeb mewn iaith glir yn dilyn pan fydd wedi'i ysgrifennu.
RESOLVED: That the Chairperson writes to the Cabinet Member on behalf of the Committee expressing their comments and observations captured during the way forward.
Apologies were received from Cllr Reid-Jones. The Chair welcomed Cllr Emma Reid-Jones to the Committee and thanked Cllr Sian-Elin Melbourne for her service to the Committee over the last five years, and wished her all the best in the future. She also congratulated Emily Gao on her election as Chair of Cardiff Youth Council.
There were none.
One Member noted that a reference in item 6 to the increase in those educated ‘other than at home’ should have read ‘other than at school’. With that change in mind, the minutes of the 10th September 2024 meeting were approved and signed as a correct record.
The Principal Scrutiny Officer updated Members on a range of issues relating to the committee. This included an update on the work programme for 2024/25, the draft scoping document for the ALN inquiry and the draft correspondence tracker, as well as links to relevant papers from other committees and to recent inspection reports. She highlighted the work programme update, noting that pre-decision scrutiny reports often arose and pushed other items back. Next month, they would look at the council’s response to the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, while there was also an upcoming school organisation planning paper regarding primary school places in the Canton area. Sport For All had moved a few times and was now confirmed for January, while the annual admissions policy paper would come in December. Members were happy with the work programme as it stood. Members were given an outline of the proposed ALN inquiry and asked for their thoughts. It was noted that the proportion of cohorts with ALN had increased significantly in what seemed to be a lasting change, leading to a different educational landscape to what had been seen before. One Member suggested adding a role in the Terms of Reference to judge the resilience of the council to that change, which the Committee agreed. Members queried the lack of reference to site visits within the scoping document. The Principal Scrutiny Officer explained that she was speaking to colleagues in education and pushing for these to be arranged. These would be part of general visits to a range of schools, and would involve the whole committee rather than just the sub-committee. She hoped to provide Members with more details and possible dates soon. The officer asked for volunteers for the inquiry, with Cllrs Ahmed, Boes, Gunter, Humphries and Moultrie indicating their interest. Patricia Arlotte (Church Representative) made herself available if needed, and it was understood that Bid Corr (Parent Governor Representative) was interested, although she was not in attendance. The officer added that the inquiry would likely take six months or so. Members queried a number of topics yet to be timetabled, including the post-16 review and oversubscription criteria. The Principal Scrutiny Officer agreed to bring an update on these to the next committee. Members noted the topic of school transport and suggested that there might be a role for this within the ALN task and finish group. The officer explained that meeting 7 of the group was due to address home to school travel, including children with ALN. Although the two and three mile rules were statutory requirements, the cost of school transport had been highlighted as a key financial risk for the council, and could either form part of the inquiry or a separate piece of work. Finally, the Principal Scrutiny Officer outlined how the correspondence tracker would seek to ensure that the responses the Committee received were satisfactory. It included dates, agenda items, Cabinet Members, a summary of the response and whether it was satisfactory, and a date when items were closed. This was also intended to ensure that Members did not find themselves asking for the same information over and over again. The Committee looked forward to seeing how the tracker progressed.
Y penderfyniad fel y'i cofnodwyd
RESOLVED: That the Chairperson writes to the Cabinet Member on behalf of the Committee expressing their comments and observations captured during the way forward.
Members were advised that this item sought to provide Committee Members with background information to facilitate their pre-decision scrutiny of the draft Local Authority Social Services Annual Report for 2023/24 prior to its consideration by the Cabinet and Council. The Chair welcomed Cllr Ash Lister (Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Tackling Poverty & Supporting Young People), Sarah McGill (Corporate Director, People & Communities) and Deborah Driffield (Director of Children’s Services). The Cabinet Member was invited to make an opening statement, in which he began by thanking all members of staff across children’s and adult services. It was a statutory report, the structure of which was prescribed by the Welsh government, and had seen substantial engagement across the public sector including a specific session with young people. This year had seen the joint inspection of child protection arrangements between children’s services, education, the health board and police, which had seen positive results. Work was continuing across partnerships to ensure these arrangements would continue to be as suitable as possible. His focus continued to be on expanding the Accommodation Strategy and in-house fostering arrangements, ensuring that a plethora of placements were available to suit each young person’s needs, and they would continue their multi-agency approach focused on early intervention. Officers gave a presentation outlining the report, which first acknowledged that it would ideally be in a different format, and they had fed into discussions with the Welsh government accordingly. This format required them to treat social services as a monolith when really it was a collection of different services to suit individuals’ needs, but it was important to ensure that the format didn’t prevent them talking about what was important. They hoped to drill down more into specifics and noted that nothing in the report would be entirely new to the Committee. They highlighted a number of central themes, including the importance of partnership working and aligning council services to meet need. Key developments included the implementation of the Children’s Services Strategy and Accommodation Strategy, as well as the Workforce Action Plan and New Operating Model. Strong partnership relationships helped to safeguard children, and locality working was key in defining a more joined-up approach alongside health, education and community colleagues. They welcomed the reduction in entrants to the Youth Justice Service, and advocated strong corporate leadership and governance arrangements. Regarding the key challenges, officers highlighted both the increasing demand and complexity of cases, particularly at the front door, and the impact this had on the budget. There had been an increase in individuals on the Child Protection Register and a lack of placements for children, which the Accommodation Strategy sought to alleviate. The ongoing issue with recruiting and retaining experienced social workers continued, while the increase in young people presenting with serious mental health and emotional well-being issues was something quite new, and was linked to the increasing number of young people experiencing exploitation. Members were invited to ask questions and make comments; the discussion is summarised below: The Committee asked how Cardiff was performing relative to neighbouring authorities on in-area care capacity, and heard that the council sought to focus on closer-to-home placements rather than out of county, but in some specific cases it could be better for individuals to be outside Cardiff. In-house capacity in the city had increased but needed to be developed further, and partners would be key to this. Officers highlighted the lack of capacity and uneven provision across Wales, and hoped that different ways of commissioning should allow local authorities greater control over their own area in the future. About 60% of the council’s cases were inside Cardiff with the remainder outside. Members noted that this had been highlighted as a key contributor to the overspend in children’s services, and asked why it was happening. Officers explained that it was a difficult market where the cost and complexity of placements was increasing rather than the demand. Homes out of the area were not necessarily more expensive, and the council might equally be commissioning from a private provider in Cardiff at a high cost. Members noted that compliments had nearly doubled since last year, and heard this was partly due to the change in culture towards a strength-based approach. In the past, all feedback was logged as a complaint, even when it was just an inquiry, but positive feedback made a real difference for staff. The Committee explored the key pressures on the service and asked how confident senior officers were that they could handle the tension between increased demand, the capacity to meet it and the resources available. Officers responded that they were both worried and optimistic. The Children’s Services Strategy would be key, especially in terms of supporting families earlier on in the process, while the current figures showing that 80% of referrals came into the safeguarding hub and 20% into early help needed to be shifted the other way. These issues were closely linked to schools too, while English local authorities also had a role to play. Members welcomed the focus on early intervention and the willingness to learn from best practice outside of Cardiff and outside of Wales. Improving access to prevention and building positive relationships with school staff would invariably help them to make better referrals. Officers agreed that the key test of how this alignment was working was whether schools knew exactly who to talk to when issues emerged. The council sought to pilot a locality approach bringing the different strands of information together, in particular the front door and social work teams. The Committee discussed care leavers and noted that while responsibility for them moved onto adult services, the history behind each young person meant that children’s services continued to play a valuable role. Members noted that the care leaver local offer was statutory in England but not in Wales, and asked whether Cardiff’s approach was suitable. Officers explained that they had a similar offer to maintain support for those leaving care until they were 25, which included steps like a guaranteed interview for care-experienced people if they met the minimum criteria. Members noted that the proportion of care leavers not in school or work had remained roughly the same. Officers explained that this was no longer a well-defined cohort of people passing through the system as it had been in the past, and accommodation and transitional safeguarding were key. As this increase in demand and complexity passed through the system, there would be a relatively rapid shift in how services would need to interact with it. Planning in this provision was a long-term process but they always wanted to do it faster, and they agreed with Members that the central focus was avoiding young people falling through the gaps. The Committee enquired as to whether any UK-wide research was being undertaken into children and young people with serious mental health issues in which Cardiff could participate. Officers noted that the Children’s Commissioner in England had published a report about a number of things to look at here, and various different workstreams were seeking to address them, such as the mental health pathway in the Starting Well program. This was a work in progress across the UK, with huge waiting lists for things like ADHD, and would rely on effective early intervention across social services, education and health. Members queried the progress of the self-assessed safeguarding document for schools, and heard that it was being piloted with a plan to launch later in the year. It was in its early stages but there was a clear need across the whole sector to see how schools responded to safeguarding concerns. Members welcomed this, although they were surprised that it was not already being done. Officers added that Cardiff’s education and safeguarding teams sat under children’s services, which was not the case in most local authorities. The Committee explored the challenges of assisting more young people than ever presenting with complex needs in a challenging financial context. These needs were not always recognised by families, and were difficult for schools to deal with. The Cabinet Member advocated multi-agency work and for staff to engage more with nurseries and receptions, supporting schools and encouraging more inclusive practices. He emphasised the importance of children being in the best possible environment for them, which was generally mainstream education. Members noted the options open to adults with serious mental health and emotional wellbeing issues, and asked what there was for children. Officers welcomed the feedback they had received from young people and emphasised that there was a lot they were doing, which they could bring a separate report on to the Committee. Members noted that only 28% of complaints about the service were either fully or partially upheld, and queried whether this could mean that a lot of the things coming through that channel were not actually complaints. Officers acknowledged this but explained that they had asked their teams to take the opposite approach, treating complaints as part of social work rather than as a bureaucratic process. Complaints were often pleas for control from people who did not currently have it, and it was important to have these conversations and understand it as part of the role. Members welcomed the focus on direct communication with service users. Members asked whether there were specific timelines for care packages, for example when a child had a stroke. Officers clarified that there were general timescales for assessment but not for implementing the plan following the assessment. It would likely depend on the nature of the issue, but they would take a look at the time taken between assessments and full implementation of care packages. Members echoed officers’ hopes that the report format would change next year, and asked whether it would be shorter, noting that the Health and Social Services Act encouraged these reports to be concise and easily read. Officers could not guarantee that it would change next year as it would remain subject to Welsh government guidelines. If they were able to change how the information was presented, it would not necessarily be shorter, but it could be more agile, better targeted and less prescriptive. RESOLVED: That the Chairperson writes to the Cabinet Member on behalf of the Committee expressing their comments and observations captured during the way forward.
Rhan o fater a ddilynwyd ar draws 7 cyfarfod
There were none.
Monday 12th November 2024 at 4:30pm.
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