Agenda item

Thom Wilson attended the meeting to give a presentation on the Local Authority’s Children Young People and Learning Transformation Project, and offered to attend meetings with any partner organisation to communicate the messages.

The Transformation Programme had approached the whole of the Children, Young People and Learning directorate, in the contact of a recent strong Ofsted outcome, rising demand and the pressure of public sector finances.

The programme’s Analyse phase had sought to collect information and advise improvements which were delivered.  More time had been spent analysing social care and early help rather than education, as the majority of spend and demand was in social care.

Demand, number of contacts and pathways had been assessed across social care to ensure children were accessing the correct services. The number of contacts and referrals into social care had increased. Thom commented on the rise in referrals to social care during August when schools are closed, resulting in referrals from the police which often led to assessments. Single assessments had been examined, and practice variance across a team of social workers had been found, which would be addressed.

With regard to the Early Help and Common Assessment Framework (CAFs), there had been twice as many cases stepped down to Early Help as stepped up to Social Care during the Analyse phase. However, 284 children had been considered by the Early Intervention hub in the last year, compared with 14,000 assessments through social care.

Arising from the workstreams, three common recommendations had been made:

1. Integrated ‘frontdoor’ approach to Early Help and Social Care

2. Support for social workers undertaking Single Assessment, to better advise them of the options available

3. Performance management – different approaches in different parts of system.

There was also work ongoing to increase the number of positive outcomes from Early Help, increase timely support to a family and bring together Early Help services across all Council directorates. Thom commented that the Family Safeguarding Model was also likely to deliver significant improvements and required all organisations’ support.

To address the increase in children looked after and in residential care, the Family Safeguarding Model and Edge of Care service was being implemented to support moves to family environments.

With regard to educational resources (support to schools and traded services), the focus was on closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children. Early Years providers would need to work closely with schools, to ensure achievements in Early Years Foundation Stage was not lost at KS1.

The School Improvement service had been restructured with a new team, which had proved to be more effective.

The High Needs Block funding available to Bracknell Forest to meet needs of SEND children could be used more efficiently. Recommendations had arisen to be more effective in spending, and to align with the new SEND strategy. 

The directorate was also establishing its traded services, and was beginning to think commercially.

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

• Early Help would be integrated consistently across the directorate before exploring integrating with other areas of the Council and other organisations. The Transformation Programme had been conscious of partners at all stages, and was aware of joint commissioning opportunities.
• It was suggested that the presentation be delivered to the Bracknell Forest Corporate Parenting Advisory Panel.
• Thom was invited to give the presentation at the Primary Heads Advisory Board (PHAB).

The LSCB thanked Thom for attending and for his information presentation.