Agenda item

The Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) took place in Medway from 15 to 26 July 2019. The Council is required to submit an Action Plan to Ofsted by 28 November 2019 which identifies priority actions to address the areas for improvement identified within the inspection over the next twelve months.  The Action Plan will be sent out separately, once it is published, which is after agenda despatch.

Discussion:

The Director of People – Children and Adult Services introduced the report which detailed the Action Plan that had been submitted to Ofsted on 28 November 2019 and identified priority actions to address the areas for improvement required.  He explained there would be quarterly monitoring visits by Ofsted that would occur for the next two years.  He also reported that an Independent Chair had been appointed for the Improvement Board and that the Council was currently working with the Department for Education to identify a new partner in practice for the Council to work with.

Members then raised a number of comments and questions, which included:

·           Independent Chair – in response to a request that the Independent Chair of the Improvement Board be invited to meet with the Committee, the Director undertook to take forward the request.

·           Rate of assessment closed with no further action – in response to a question about the disparity between performance on this and the target and benchmarking figures, the Director explained that rates in Medway, of closing cases with no further action were high compared to other areas and statistical neighbours, therefore this was an area of focus to determine whether cases were being closed too early.  Analysis on this would be reported back once known.

·           Membership of the Improvement Board – in response to a question about why the Medway Task Force was not included in the membership of the Improvement Board, the Director explained that the Board comprised of 18 people across partnership agencies and professionals, including a Chief Superintendent from Kent Police. He also reassured Members that partnership working on Child Sexual Exploitation and Missing children was embedded within agencies and the Divisional Commander of the Police had identified a lead to work with the Council on this issue specifically.

·           Supporting staff – in response to a question about the wellbeing of all staff, including senior staff, while working on improving children services and the support available to them, the Director explained that there was a strong communication strategy to support and hear the voice of all staff across the workforce during the improvement journey, including the establishment of a staff reference group, of which two meetings had been held to date.  In addition, there was much external support being offered, including learning from other local authorities who had achieved good and outstanding, following a rating of inadequate.

·           Measure specificity – a Member commented that some of the measures lacked specificity. In response the Director explained that this was a plan that would evolve and develop as work progressed on the improvement journey and therefore there would be opportunities to amend and expand the detail.

·           Future scrutiny of progress – a Member suggested that the Committee consider the best way of scrutinising performance, including the possibility of doing this on a themed basis.  The Director welcomed this discussion, which could take place at agenda-planning meetings and added that officers were working with colleagues in Democratic Services to provide member training, aimed at Committee Members in particular, to strengthen Member capacity to use performance monitoring data to effectively scrutinise the performance of children’s services and the progress with improvement.

·           Acronyms – comment was made that the document had too many acronyms and the Director undertook to address this going forward.

Decision:

The Committee noted the report and action plan and that the Director would liaise with the Independent Chair about her attendance at Committee in the future.