Agenda item

Briefing Note of the Director of Children’s Services

Further to minute 34/19 the Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2) received a Briefing note of the Director of Children’s Services that presented the progress with Children’s Services improvement, which had been reported to the Continuous Improvement Executive Group on 9 December 2020.  The briefing note also provided an interim update to the Board on the impact of Covid on vulnerable children and families. The next Continuous Improvement Executive Group would be held on 10 February 2021.

The briefing note indicated that the Ofsted Annual Conversation with regional representatives was undertaken each year, the meeting last year took place in March 2020.  The meeting was part of a broader meeting covering education and early years.  In March 2020, Ofsted paused ILACS inspections due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Children’s Services was anticipating a standard Inspection by September 2020.  Ofsted published their interim plans for a phased return to routine inspections which commenced from September 2020. The Interim visits were paused again during the November 2020 lockdown. 

A report proposing arrangements to transfer Children’s Services Continuous Improvement to Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership was approved by the Children’s Services Continuous Improvement Executive Group on 28th October 2020.  The new arrangements would be effective from 1st April 2021, the governance in place would ensure that Children’s Services continuous improvement remained a political priority.  Education and Children’s Scrutiny Board members would continue to receive reports on Children’s Services continuous improvement and progress on a quarterly basis.

On 5 January 2021 a further national lockdown was announced.  Ofsted had confirmed that interim focused visits would be undertaken during the national lockdown period commencing from February 2021, changes would be made to make the process more manageable and proportionate.

The Continuous Improvement Plan was reviewed by Executive Group Board members on 9 December 2020.  The plan had been updated to reflect current progress and had received critical challenge from the Independent Chair on the impact of actions.  The completion of actions in the plan would be signed off by the Continuous Improvement Executive Group on 10th February 2021, before arrangements transferred to the Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership on 1st April 2021.

Children’s Services continued to maintain core service delivery, delivering ongoing protection, support and intervention to vulnerable families across Coventry during the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.  All buildings had remained open, services had continued to operate during the November 2020 national lockdown period, risk assessments were regularly updated to reflect the changes in government guidance and were disseminated to staff.  Virtual visits had continued throughout the service where it was safe to do so.  Children’s Homes had continued to operate within the operating risk assessment.  Broad Park House had remained open offering short breaks both targeted and community breaks.  Staff who could work effectively from home had continued to be based at home.  The service continued to be under pressure with the increased numbers of child in need work, increased numbers of Child Protection work and LAC numbers increasing.  Caseloads were higher than average and recruiting to experienced social worker vacancies remained a significant challenge.

The recruitment and retention of experienced frontline Children and Families Social Workers was a challenge facing all local authorities across the country. The most recent DFE Social Workforce Data indicated (2019) that there was an acute shortage of Experienced Children and Families Social Workers particularly those who were three years post qualified.  The operating environment for the recruitment of experienced social workers had become increasingly challenging since the pandemic.

The Children’s Services Workforce Development Strategy supported and improved the recruitment and retention of social workers, and children’s services practitioners by developing the training and development offer, focusing on improving the capability of staff to engage children, young people and families by enabling them to assess, make judgements, decisions and  ‘hold risk’ whilst creating solutions with families and  multi-agency partners.  The strategy had delivered a number of key initiatives:

•  A number of Recruitment Campaigns to promote Coventry City Council Childrens Services as a first-choice destination for Social Workers to practice.

•  A successful Coventry Social Work Academy has seen 58 Newly Qualified Social Workers commencing the Academy since July 2018.

•  A revised Children’s Services Social Work Progression and Career Pathway Framework

•  A Children’s Services ‘Grow our own Social Work Scheme’ and National Fast Track Pre-Qualifying Social Work Programmes; Step Up and Frontline programme.

•  The service has supported the ‘Social Work Together’ government campaign supporting the current COVID-19 pandemic enabling social workers who have retired in the last two years to be fast tracked to apply to return to practice.

•  A return to practice scheme to enable Children and Families Social Workers to return to the profession.

•  A comprehensive learning and development offer that is fit for purpose and supports practitioners to continuously improve the services provided to children and young people and their families, that improves the quality and consistency of practice.

•  The launch of a ‘refer a friend’ scheme in March 2020 has resulted in a further 3 experienced social workers joining the service. 

•  Regular engagement with agency staff to consider applying for vacancies within the service has resulted in a number of agency social workers being appointed to permanent experienced social worker roles.

•  Children’s Services launched their own local Induction in October 2020 to support the corporate Induction.

The service had been under significant pressure, the current market and demand for social workers continued to increase due to the pandemic which had increased the competition for recruiting within the region.  The number of social work vacancies remained high, and despite a range of recruitment initiatives and other approaches, the service continued to interview small numbers of candidates on a weekly basis and those successful were offered experienced social worker roles.

The COVID-19 pandemic was having significant impact on recruitment and was making it difficult to recruit experienced social workers during this period.  This had led to an increased use of agency staff and increased financial impact.  The service had also experienced difficulty in recruiting agency social workers due to insufficient experienced social workers in the region.  A shortage of social workers had led to higher caseloads and higher demand of work across all services and teams in Children’s Services.

A further 12 Newly Qualified Social Workers (Cohort 7) would commence on 25 January 2021, this was an additional cohort to address further the number of social work vacancies within the service.  A further Social Work Academy Team to manage the double cohorts of Newly Qualified Social Workers would also be established and recruited to.

Children’s Services continued to work with the recruitment team and human resource colleagues to review further targeted campaigns and innovative ways to recruit and retain experienced social workers. 

The Performance Board continued to meet monthly to review performance.  A summary of current performance showed there continued to be an increase in performance activity, the increase in demand was putting significant pressure on services.

•  Increase in Referrals in the last seven months (613 compared with 279 in April 2020)

•  Contacts in the last seven months (2,392 compared with 1582 April 2020)

•  Number of children subject to a child protection plan have increased to 462 compared with 408 in April 2020

•  S47’s has increased considerably 307 in October 2020 compared with 110 in April 2020.

•  The number of children identified as “Children in Need”  continue to rise 2010 compared with 1225 in April 2020 

•  Looked after children continue to increase 756 compared with 693 in April.

•  Assessments completed within 45 days have decreased to 78.3% compared with 85.9% in April 2020.

Children’s Services introduced Quality Assurance visits to teams in October 2019.  The aim was to ensure understanding of practice and the signs of safety framework to ensure a clearer line of sight of the senior leadership team to frontline practitioners.  The visits included direct observations, discussions with staff, and case mapping. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visits had not been undertaken during March-September 2020.  In October 2020 the third visit was held in the MASH, this was face to face whilst complying with COVID-19 guidance with some of the visit completed remotely.  The findings from the visit highlighted positive outcomes with evidence demonstrating improvement and focus on maintaining continuous improvement.

It remained a very challenging operating environment.  In the lead up to the Ofsted Interim Focused visit the Children’s senior leadership team and extended Leadership Team continued to work together to drive forward practice improvements and service changes.  This phase of significant demand and improvement relied heavily on corporate support and the support from partners to ensure that improvement continued.  There was explicit intention to ensure that Children’s Services reached a position where it was continuously achieving good outcomes for the Children of Coventry.

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

·  Administrative support for Social Workers

·  The workload of Social Workers

·  Risk Assessments

·  Extra pressure and procedures due to Covid

·  Impact on performance

·  Children with a Children In Need assessment and parental engagement

Officers noted that Covid had altered the workflow of the Service, young people were bought to their attention later and needed escalating quicker once hidden harm had been identified.  Roles had been risk assessed and redefined.  Agency availability was reduced, and workloads were exceeding what was considered manageable, additional funding was required.

Officers agreed to provide the Board with information on the number of parents not engaged with the service following Children in Need assessments.

RESOLVED that, the Board noted the update on the Continuous Improvement Progress and Covid-19 Update and requested that a letter be sent on behalf of the Board to thank all staff for their hard work and commitment particularly during this challenging time.