Agenda item

Briefing Note of the Director of Law and Governance

The Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2) received a briefing note of the Director of Law and Governance that informed the Board of the recommendations identified by the Partnership Working in Children Services Task and Finish Group and sought agreement that the recommendations being made to the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People and Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership.

At the meeting of the Board on 20th June 2019, Members received an introductory session covering both Education and Children’s Services. The purpose of this was to introduce the Board to the key priorities for the services and for the Board to identify areas for the Work Programme. As part of this process, the MASH, Early Help and Partnership Working were identified as potential areas for scrutiny to focus on. Officers were concerned that MASH resources were diverted from work on referrals into the Neighbourhood Teams, by inappropriate referrals which required no further action. A scoping document was prepared (attached as Appendix 1 to the Briefing Note) the Partnership Working in Children’s Services Task and Finish Group was established.

The Group, Chaired by the Chair of the Scrutiny Board, identified a range of questions as their key lines of enquiry (set out in Appendix 2 to the Briefing Note), which they used to identify and interview a range of partners: Coventry Safeguarding Partnership; MASH; Police; Health; Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust; UHCW (a submission from UHCW was attached as  Appendix 4 to the Briefing Note); South Warwickshire Partnership Trust; Church of England Diocese (as a representative from the voluntary/charity sector); and Education. The strategic and operational leads responsible for the MASH in Children’s Services, presented a snapshot of data during their interview with the Task and Finish Group (the snapshot was provided in Appendix 3 to the Briefing Note).

The Task and Finish Group met on seven occasions to progress the work including 2 Scoping meetings, 3 meetings of 6 interviewing sessions, and 2 meetings to analyse findings. Key themes and findings, the outcomes of interviews with partners, and the response to recommendations from Children’s Services were detailed in the Briefing Note.

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

·  The strong commitment to partnership working across the City.

·  1,000 cases open to Early Help Services at any one time.

·  Referrals for children reported at serious risk of harm

·  Legislation governing intervention

·  The increase on demand for Children’s Services due to Covid-19

·  Empowering families to support each other and reach out for help

·  Continued support provided to families where issues have been identified, e.g. absence from school, concerns raised by Health Visitor.

·  Consideration of ways to improve partnership working across the Early Help offer

RESOLVED that the Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2):

1)  Recommends to the Cabinet Member for Children and Young People that:

i)  To enable better analysis and understanding of patterns of referrals (contacts), data collection categories are amended as follows:

a)  That the different health partners, education partners, voluntary sector and charities that contact the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) are categorised separately in the data analysis.

b)  That contacts that would currently be logged as NFA are re-allocated to record the valuable signposting, advice and record keeping that these contacts provide to the MASH and partners.

ii)  That partners are made aware that the MASH has access to schools’ information during school holiday periods.

iii)  The MASH makes every effort to improve the timeliness of responses to partners who make referrals, once the referral has been assessed

 2)  Recommends to the Coventry Safeguarding Children’s’ Partnership that:

i)  The Right Help Right Time guidance is updated to include Contextual Safeguarding.

ii)  Right Help Right Time is amended to include a glossary of terms to ensure consistency of definition and use of terminology across partners.

iii)  The Safeguarding Partnership provide further information on data sharing and GDPR to all partners.

iv) The Safeguarding Partnership consider ways to improve partnership working across the Early Help offer.