Agenda item

Purpose of the report:

To provide an update on the improvement of Surrey’s children’s services and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the improvement programme and the delivery of frontline services. This report provides further information on the services and activity outlined in the last report to the Select Committee on 28 July 2020.

Witnesses:

Mary Lewis, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families

Jacquie Burke, Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding

Tina Benjamin, Director – Corporate Parenting

Mark Mapstone, Assistant Director – Performance, Intelligence and System

Key points raised during the discussion:

1. The Chairman thanked officers, social workers, the management team and Cabinet Members for their hard work during the COVID-19 pandemic and praised them for continuing to launch the initiatives within the Family Resilience improvement programme. 

2. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding introduced the report and provided the Select Committee with a summary of the improvement work that was taking place in Surrey’s children’s services and the impact that COVID-19 was having on the improvement programme and the delivery of frontline services. Overall, the service performance data showed that the Service was coping well during the pandemic, responding effectively to increased demand, ensuring that children and families were provided with the support they needed during that period, and continuing to deliver its improvement programme. The area of greatest concern was children with disabilities and the Service was endeavouring to continue progressing in this area to fulfil its aim of providing a consistently high-quality service for all children.

3. The Vice-Chairman asked whether Children’s Services were adequately resourced to meet the increased demand and whether there were any risks of which the Select Committee should be aware. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated that sophisticated modelling of capacity examined cases coming through the children’s services front door and the subsequent trickle down into the rest of the system and informed the Service how best to meet that demand. The Director emphasised that it was not desirable to continue to provide the current level of statutory support for families because issues were best resolved when identified and addressed early. The Helping Families Early Strategy aimed to bring families out of statutory services in a supported manner to help them capitalise on changes made. Resourcing and staffing continued to be one of the Service’s greatest challenges and was the motivation behind a bespoke recruitment workstream. The results of the new recruitment and retention package would hopefully be seen in January/February 2021. The Cabinet Member stated that her greatest concern was the pressure that increased caseloads placed on staff. Members were actively engaging with Surrey Members of Parliament to lobby the Government to take action to make social work a more attractive career option.

4. The Vice-Chairman noted the increased caseloads to which social work staff were subject and asked what wellbeing support was available to staff and how this was provided and funded. The Director - Family Resilience and Safeguarding informed the Select Committee that there was a significant wellbeing offer which was accompanied by mindfulness training and coaching, team trips to Surrey Outdoor Learning, corporate coaching teams, and bereavement and domestic abuse support. Service leaders were vocal about staff wellbeing and internal communications emphasised the support available and the importance of staff taking time for themselves away from work.

5. A Member stated that there was a high number of agency workers in Surrey and asked whether neighbouring counties experienced the same ongoing issue with the recruitment of social workers. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding assured the Select Committee that the recruitment of social workers was a top priority for the Service. Benchmarking with other Local Authorities showed that there was a discernible correlation between turnover and agency rates and inadequate authorities and achieving a more stable staff group was a big focus of the Service’s transformation programme. The Service was grateful to Members for approving an enhanced salary offer for the recruitment and retention of social workers. There was a programme within the transformation programme that looked at workforce and employer experiences, staff focus groups, career pathways etc. The Service had published its refreshed recruitment offer, which could be found on the council’s website.

6. A Member asked whether the appointment of 40 newly qualified social workers (NQSWs) was sufficient to satisfy the Service’s social work requirement. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated that in their first year of practice, NQSWs were permitted to work with significantly less children than experienced social workers thus teams needed to have a balance between the former and the latter. Due to COVID-19, it was also taking longer to bring NQSWs up to speed and thus the Service was measured in its employment of 40, 10 for each Quadrant. The Director stated that the real issue was the duration for which social workers remained in frontline practice and the ways in which the Service could create conditions that encouraged social workers to stay in post for longer than the average 5-7-years. The Executive Director emphasised that it was vital that the council offered excellent working environments and good career progression so that social workers were inspired to enjoy longer careers.

7. A Member noted that Essex County Council (ECC) and Surrey County Council (SCC) were improvement partners and asked whether the two Local Authorities used the same practice models for their children’s services. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding explained that the Department for Education gave SCC the opportunity to work with ECC as a partner in practice following the passing of Dave Hill, to support the service during the recruitment period for the new Executive Director of Children’s Services. The Director stated that this had been an effective relationship and it was very helpful to see ECC’s performance-management practice. A discussion needed to take place about what the relationship between the two Local Authorities would look like going forward.

8. A Member queried why re-referrals to children’s social care were increasing and asked whether the upward trend indicated anything regarding the quality of frontline practice. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated that often those families supported by the service tended to be the least resilient thus some level of re-referral was always expected. During the COVID-19 pandemic, families were unable to access their own support networks of families and friends, thus there were some pandemic-related referrals. The Service was increasing the use of family network meetings and the assessment service to ensure social workers were inviting people into the family network to help support the family.

9. A Member noted that much of the inadequate practice pertained to older children and adolescents (youth offending, missing young people, young people at risk of being referred to children’s social care) and asked whether this cohort was a specific priority area for improvement. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding confirmed that work with adolescents was a priority area for the Service and the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership and was supported by a targeted inhouse youth support team and a safeguarding adolescents team. The Surrey Youth Offending Service was rated inadequate in 2019 and thenceforth a significant amount of work was undertaken to improve the Service, culminating in increased confidence in the skills of the practitioners and the outcomes for adolescents. The Service was committed to improving the outcomes for adolescents and the Youth Justice Board had expressed a high degree of confidence that the Service was making the necessary improvements.

10. The Chairman noted that the Youth Offending Service review highlighted that 43% of children were receiving an inadequate service and suggested that the Directorate report on the improvement of the Youth Offending Service to the Select Committee at its July 2021 meeting. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated the report found an overall positive trajectory of improvements made since the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons inspection in 2019, however, the rate of improvements was variable. The Director informed Members that some of the children who were audited were from the cohort of children who were previously audited as part of the inadequate inspection. In terms of quality assurance, the (Targeted Youth Support service, where the majority of the youth offending work happens, had not been included in the audit cycle. They were now included and all of their performance data was on Tableau. The Director agreed that the Directorate should report the improvements made in the Youth Offending Service to the Select Committee. 

11. A Member asked whether officers expected frontline social work practice to be of satisfactory standard by the time Ofsted next visited or inspected the council’s children’s services. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated that the last Ofsted inspection (2018) showed that staff in the system did not know what good practice looked like, because the majority of audits were moderated down. There was now a tolerance rate of 10% moderation. In November 2020, moderation was just under 10%, showing that the managers had an improved understanding of what good practice looked like. There was significant improvement in the system and practitioners were working hard to meet their commitment of providing families with timely responses. Now, the Service was targeting its efforts on pockets of inadequacy. The monthly case audit for November highlighted 12 ‘inadequate’ cases out of 70. Of those 12, 8 were in the children with disabilities service. Recognising this, the Service had made a commitment to reviewing 402 cases of children with disabilities; since August 2020, the Service had reviewed 227. The Service was working with leaders and had undertaken a rigorous self-assessment, looking back to 2018 and at what was needed to get to ‘good’, resulting in a detailed 12-month plan. The Cabinet Member added that the former Commissioner for Surrey’s Children’s Services had declared that the Service had made significant and sustainable progress at the level of required improvement. The audits showed the vast majority of practice was deemed to be ‘good’ or ‘requires improvement’ (7% of cases audited in September 2020 were ‘inadequate’).

12. The Director – Corporate Parenting informed Members that Ofsted paused its inspection regime in March 2020. Feedback from the council’s four monitoring visits that took place between 2018 and January 2020 was positive about the work being done and reassured the Service that improvements were being made. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding informed the Select Committee that Ofsted considered the Service’s Quality Assurance Team and performance monitoring to be exemplary.

13. The Chairman referred to areas needing improvement in front line practice and asked how the Service was improving communication. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding agreed that effective communication was critical to achieving very good practice and the importance of good relationships and communications was emphasised within the improvement work planned for the following six months.

14. A Member noted that their local youth centre had been used to deliver alternate provision during the national lockdown of November 2020 and asked why some education, training and childcare was permitted in youth centre buildings during the national lockdown. The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding stated that the normal universal youth service was not able to run during the lockdown period hence the buildings were offered to other frontline services. The Service worked with the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) to establish priority services and conversations needed to take place to discuss how these centres were to be used going forward. The Director agreed to provide a written response to Members regarding the delivery of additional learning provision from youth centres and related costs.

Recommendations:

1. That the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Directorate provide a further update on the Children’s Improvement Programme to the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee in July 2021; and that update include the findings of any Ofsted monitoring and future thematic audits, with audit findings broken down by quadrant.

2. That the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Directorate report on the Youth Offending Service to the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee in July 2021.

Actions:

i.              The Director – Family Resilience and Safeguarding to provide the Select Committee with a written response detailing the use of youth centres during the national lockdown in November 2020 and the associated costs.