Agenda item

The report and an accompanying introduction by the Independent Chairman of the Medway Safeguarding Children Board will enable Members to scrutinise the performance and plans of the Board. 

Discussion:

The Independent Chairman of the Medway Safeguarding Children Board, David Worlock, was welcomed to the meeting. He informed the committee that he was also the chairman of Kent’s Safeguarding Children Board, so this would allow appropriate partnership working between the boards. Mr Worlock advised that the report was a summary of the overall work of the board and that the report contained a weblink to the full documentation which set out the direction of travel for the board for the next few years.

The Independent Chairman summarised the good practice that he had found in Medway and also set out some challenges for the future:

Good practice

·        Unannounced Ofsted inspection earlier in the year had been positive about the quality of the ‘front door’ social care service provided by the council

·        The work at the secure centres was impressive and there had been real progress in the development of regimes to keep young people as safe as possible

·        A pilot scheme of partnership working with the Family Nurse Partnership indicated a good outcome for the work with vulnerable mothers.

Challenges

·        The amount of work received had increased significantly (in line with the national trend)

·        How to quantify whether the work carried out was really making a difference for young people and were their lives better for it?

·        The impact of resource changes on keeping sensible caseloads for social workers and providing quality supervision in order to make good judgements

·        Areas of concern included partnership working with mental health, domestic violence and substance misuse but in resource-driven times, partnership working was even more important.

Members asked about the issue of domestic abuse, as the report showed that not as much progress had been made in this area and that it was now a key focus for the board. The Independent Chairman responded that domestic violence was a major contributory factor as a risk for children. There were existing strategies and services but these had not been brought together in a co-ordinated way and there was insufficient direction for all the partners. The board aimed to make this more coherent and bring together the range of activities. A new strategy was being formed to cover this and the board’s Business Plan had set the objective to review the effectiveness of domestic violence services in Medway.

The committee requested that the victims themselves were involved in the compilation of the new strategy as it was critical to interview the people who received the service. Members also requested that with the future challenge over availability of resources, safeguarding remained a high priority.

In reference to a case referred to in paragraph 3.1.5 of the report, the committee requested details of what the ‘modifiable factors that could lead to the prevention of future deaths’ were and officers undertook to provide that information.

The Headteacher representative asked for an update in changes in children’s social care structures and the review of thresholds. The Director updated the committee on both the proposed changes and the review of thresholds for social care and preventative services.

Decision:

The committee agreed to note the report and welcomed a more corporate theme on QA to measure output.