Agenda item

Report of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board

The Scrutiny Board considered a briefing note of the Joint Safeguarding Board Business Manager, which presented the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) Annual Report.

Coventry Children’s Services and LSCB were inspected by Ofsted in January 2014 and judged to be inadequate.  Since that time an Improvement Board had been established and the Department of Education had been monitoring progress.  A new independent Chair of the LSCB took up post in September 2014 and she reports regularly to the Secretary of State and the Improvement Board on progress.

It was noted that agencies working together to safeguard children in Coventry were working in a challenging context with a growing population, including child population, and a diverse ethnic mix and higher than average levels of poverty.  There were currently approximately 74,123 children and young people in Coventry aged 0-17, including 14,204 children under three years old.  Recent years had seen an increase in birth rates and, if current population growth trends continued, it was anticipated by 2026 the total population of Coventry would rise by 18%, with the total number of children projected to rise faster than the adult population.

The report outlined the achievements and challenges of the LSCB from September 2014 to September 2015.  It assessed progress on outcomes for children and young people.  It evaluated the impact of Coventry’s services on outcomes for children and showed how the work of the Board had contributed to improving outcomes.  It detailed the Board’s progress in implementing its former and current priorities.

The outcomes for Coventry children was reported under the headings of Child Protection; Common Assessment Framework (CAF); Looked After Children; Early Years; Missing Children and Child Sexual Exploitation; Crimes Against Young People; Youth Offending; Educational Attainment and Attendance; and Health Outcomes.

In respect of Child Protection, the Scrutiny Board were pleased to see that the number of Coventry children with child protection plans had reduced from 882 in September 2014 to 578 in September 2015.  It was acknowledged, however, that this was still much higher than normal in similar areas and work to understand why this was so and to ensure that children get help earlier, so avoiding escalation, continued.

It was noted that the number of CAF’s had steadily increased from 1,543 in April 2014 to 1,887 in September 2015.  Health colleagues, in particular, had increased their use of CAF’s, which ensured that more children and families who needed support could access it.  Diagram 4 of the report provided details on the outcomes of CAF’s.  However, the Scrutiny Board expressed concern that, at a recent meeting, members were advised that a decision had been purposely taken by Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust not to train health visitor staff on the use of e-CAF’s and were of the view that this issue should be picked up through the re-commissioning of the service in April.

With regard to educational attainment and attendance, there was a clear upward trend in reading, writing and maths at key stage 2 and the un-validated 2015 data suggested that the upward trend had been sustained.  An average of 52.3% of children in Coventry achieved 5 A* to C grades at GCSE last year.  It was reported that this was lower than the previous three years and the national average but reflected the trend seen elsewhere.  Scrutiny Board members requested clarification on whether this figure included Maths and English.

The report also set out the LSCB’s current priorities and Appendix 1 of the report submitted provided progress against these priorities covering the period from September 2014 to April 2015.

The report concluded that there had been significant improvement in the safeguarding of children in Coventry during the year, with some important outcomes for children getting better.  The Safeguarding Board was now fit for purpose and fully functioning, with partnership working good.  It was noted that where difficulties were identified, it was generally because resources pressures were affecting staffing levels.  These pressures were anticipated to continue as resources shrank and that innovative ways of working together would need to be found.  It was acknowledged that there was still much to do to ensure consistency and quality across all safeguarding work.  In particular, there were two dominant issues that would continue to need attention, which had arisen from serious case reviews during the year.  One was the need for professionals to exercise greater professional curiosity and judgement in their dealings with clients and the other was the need for more thought to be given to how services could helped to work with families that were hard to engage. 

RESOLVED that the Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2) note the annual report from the Local Safeguarding Children Board, the progress made and the areas for future development.