Agenda and minutes

Venue: Diamond Rooms 1 and 2 - Council House. View directions

Contact: Michelle Rose  Tel: 024 7697 2645 Email:  michelle.rose@coventry.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

11.

Chair

Minutes:

In the absence of the Chair, Councillor J Innes, the Board appointed the Chair of Scrutiny Co-ordination Committee, Councillor N Akhtar to Chair the meeting.

12.

Declarations of Interests

Minutes:

There were no disclosable interests.

13.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 233 KB

a)  To agree the minutes of the meeting held on 16th September, 2021

b)  Matters Arising

Minutes:

The Minutes of the meeting held on 16th September 2021 were agreed and signed as a true record.

14.

Children's Services Horizon Team (Child Exploitation Team) pdf icon PDF 231 KB

Briefing Note of the Director of Children’s Services

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Scrutiny Board considered a briefing note of the Director of Childrens Services which informed the Board of the safeguarding measures and engagement approaches adopted by the Horizon Team when working with children and young people deemed at risk of Child Exploitation.  Appended to the report were some case study examples of safety planning which were presented to the Board.

 

The Horizon Team was part of Responsive Services and worked closely alongside the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and Emergency Duty Team (EDT).  The Team were multi-disciplinary and comprised of social workers, youth workers, child and family workers, a harm reduction and victim support officer, Missing Coordinator, West Midlands Police Officers from the Child Sexual Exploitation Team, Child Criminal Exploitation, Youth Violence Reduction Unit and LOCATE Missing Police Team.  They worked with children and young people resident in Coventry aged between 10-18 years who were deemed at risk of child exploitation.

 

The Horizon Team accepted referrals directly from MASH and via the internal transfer protocol from Social Work Teams.  They hold smaller caseloads to deliver intensive and bespoke intervention plans for children and young people, allocated within the Horizon Team, Area Social Work Teams and Through Care service.

 

The briefing note detailed Collaborative Working, Safeguarding Arrangements and tackling Child Exploitation and Serious Youth Violence.  The Director of Children’s Services explained that, there had been a rise in demand for the services provided and there were significant numbers in need that the teams were responding to.  The strong collaborative work in the City enabled the safeguarding needs to be met in a timely way.  It was difficult to do justice in a briefing note to the complexities of the work that surrounds the traumatic circumstances of some young people in the City.  Safety plans were individual and gave supportive information about positive choices, they were aimed to empower the young people to voice their feelings and choices.

 

The Board praised the collaborative work in the City supporting young people and the individual approach involving listening to the young people which was evident in the keyring case study developed by Coventry officers.

 

The Board questioned officers, received responses, and discussed the following:

·  Raising awareness of safeguarding at an early age

·  Links to violence in the City

·  Data about the service, including trends over time, and views of the children

·  Gender and age trends of affected young people

·  Stigmas associated with receiving support

·  Time spent with young people

·  Preventative and reactive work

·  Transition into adulthood

·  Children Missing interviews and support

·  Exploitation experienced in schools 

·  Live cases in the City

·  Listening to Young People

 

Officers noted that the work was reactive in that thresholds were met prior to interventions in the specialist tier 4 service but also preventative in that when vulnerabilities were identified in connection with a case support would be offered.  There were a significant number of investigations currently in the city.

 

Officers recognised the challenges regarding support through the transition into adulthood in particular the complex legal frameworks and thresholds.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.

15.

Children Withdrawn from the School System to be Educated at Home (Elective Home Education) pdf icon PDF 243 KB

Briefing Note of the Director of Education and Skills

Minutes:

The Board noted the briefing note of the Director of Education & Skills regarding children withdrawn from the school system to be educated at home (Elective Home Education).  The information included the legal and national position in relation to the education of children who were home schooled, known in law as EHE.  Also, the effectiveness of the Council’s approach to delivering its statutory duty, to ensure children who were EHE were receiving a ‘suitable’ education.  The report also covered the numbers of EHE children known to the Local Authority (LA) in the context of the current pandemic and the significant increase reported nationally.

 

The decision to home school a child was supported in law through Section 7 of the Education Act 1996.  As an alternative to school attendance, parents could arrange ‘suitable’ education, which included EHE.  If the LA was aware that a child was being EHE it had a duty to determine if the provision was suitable. However, there was no legal or nationally agreed definition of what ‘suitable’ education means.  The definition was therefore determined locally and may vary across LAs.

 

The true number of children who were EHE in England was not known.  This was because there is: no national database of EHE children; no requirement for LAs to maintain a register and no requirement for parents to register their children on a voluntary register where these exist.  The Association of Directors of Children’s Services projected that as of October 2020 more than 75,000 children were being educated at home, an increase of 38 per cent from the previous year.  LAs contributing to the survey identified the increase as being partially attributable to the pandemic. Reasons included the need to protect vulnerable family members who were shielding, fear of transmission and a philosophical choice based on a positive experience of remote learning.

 

Whilst there was no requirement for a parent to inform the LA of their decision to EHE their child, under Section 436A of the Education Act 1996 LAs did have a duty to identify children who were of compulsory school age but were not registered pupils at a school and were not receiving suitable education outside of school.  This therefore created a tension, between Section 7 and Section 436A in terms of balancing a family’s right to EHE their child unfettered and the safeguarding duty Councils have for all children in their local area.

 

The Government estimate that approximately 10 to 20% of EHE children have never been to school.  It was therefore particularly difficult to identify this group through available monitoring systems, because children had never accessed services and were not on any accessible databases. Consequently, an unknown proportion of EHE children currently remained legally ‘out of sight’ which meant it was not possible to ensure that they were safeguarded.

 

In terms of provision, there was no legal requirement for parents who chose to EHE their children, to follow the national curriculum, enter their child for public examinations, follow the dates of the school year  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

16.

Work Programme pdf icon PDF 270 KB

Briefing Note of the Scrutiny Co-ordinator

Minutes:

The Scrutiny Board deferred consideration of the Work Programme until the next meeting.

17.

Any Other Business

Any other items of business which the Chair decides to take as matters of urgency because of the special circumstances involved.

Minutes:

Support for the new Fostering recruitment video

 

The Board were made aware of a new fostering recruitment video and a link to the new video would be circulated.