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There is no summary of this meeting yet. Summaries are written once the council publishes the minutes, which are its official record of what a meeting decided. They usually appear a few weeks after the meeting.
Cllr Paxton Hood-Williams was confirmed as Convener of the Panel for 2025-26.
No disclosures of interest were received.
No declarations were made.
Panel agreed the Minutes of the meeting on 6 May 2025 as an accurate record of the meeting.
Letter to Cabinet Member following the meeting on 6 May 2025 was noted.
No questions were received.
Panel agreed its role.
Julie Davies, Head of Child and Family Services and Louise Beckett, Learning and Innovation Manager presented the performance monitoring report for May 2025. Discussion Points: · The Report included highlights against Welsh Government, Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) and local indicators and provided an overview of child and family’s contact from the front door, the Supported Care Planning and Looked After Children’s teams, Bays+ and the Youth Justice Service. Service highlights included: o Single Point of Contact: Slight decrease in contacts, but still above average. o Early Help Hub: Increase in contacts; caseloads reduced to 781. o Child Protection: Number of children on child protection register reduced to 202. o Looked After Children: Number reduced to 468; 10 children ceased to be looked after. o Adoption: Low enquiry and approval rates; marketing and family finding prioritised. o Family Support: Increase in referrals, especially related to pregnancy and substance use. o Staffing: Some improvement with returns from leave and new starters. o Trend Analysis: COVID inquiry work prioritised by the Learning and Innovation Team, delaying trend analysis. · Officers reported a positive CIW inspection of one internal residential home, which received 3 ‘Excellent’ and 1 ‘Good’ rating. The “Good” is being challenged. Panel commended the outcome and the challenge to improve the ‘Good’ rating. · Panel diiscussed a high profile neglect case in the media. Panel was reassured about the response and praised the department’s handling of it. · Panel asked questions about single assessments completion time, young people’s advisors, residential care placements, adoption challenges, number of agency workers, child abuse figures, trafficking and grooming and integrated safeguarding hub activity.
Panel considered and agreed the draft work plan. Officers suggested moving the item on Corporate Parenting Board Annual Report to an earlier meeting, in line with the report going to Council. The item has been brought forward to January 2026.
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