Agenda item

To inform the Committee of the work undertaken by Children’s Services on a day to day basis and to update on the progress and implementation of developments within the areas.

The Chairman invited Mrs Diane Booth, Director of Children’s Services to highlight key information contained within the report.

Mrs Booth drew the Committee’s attention to the School Improvement Actions and the Appendix setting out the School Families, Priority Leads and Governance arrangements. She reported that the School Improvement Board had made little progress in the previous 12 months, however, the need for a school led system had been agreed and schools had formed themselves into seven families. All funding for school improvement would be filtered through the school families, which had not necessarily been based on geographical area. She added that schools were sharing good practice and experience and that the families were challenging and supporting each other in development.

It was noted that schools could move family; however, it was important to maintain stability where possible.

The Committee discussed School Improvement priorities in detail and queried how they had been developed. Mrs Booth advised that the priorities had been developed from a number of sources such as inclusion data citing that the Educational Diversity offer in Blackpool was the largest in Europe, attainment (in particular Key Stage 4 English and Maths results) and horizon scanning for general improvement.

In response to a question, Mrs Booth advised that the School Improvement Board had developed a short term tactical response and a long term strategical response. There would be limited short term impact on attainment in 2018 and the long term response sought improvement in two to three years.

The Committee considered the Children’s Services new audit framework and had ascertained from the report that there had been issues with the setting of SMART targets. Members queried the changes required to ensure future target setting was appropriate and achievable. Mrs Booth advised that one concern was misunderstanding the difference between ‘need’ and ‘risk’. It was a key aspect of Social Workers to mitigate risk and risk sensible practice informed SMART planning. Previously, ‘need’ had also been targeted resulting in an overlap with universal service provision.

Following further consideration of the report, Members queried why the work to reduce the number of Looked After Children by identifying children and young people able to leave care was behind schedule. In response, Mrs Booth highlighted the high workload of Social Workers and advised that agency staff would be utilised in the short term to undertake administrative tasks in order to release capacity in permanent social workers to safely discharge children.

The Committee noted that historical data suggested that the number of Looked After Children increased around Christmas and was informed by Mrs Booth that an increase due to the time of year should not be usual. She added that children must not be taken into care simply because there were not enough Social Workers available over the Christmas period to manage risk or support struggling parents. In order to ensure there was no seasonal increase, preventative measures had already been put in place to support the community such as food parcels and a rota of when Senior Managers would be on duty over Christmas. Mrs Booth noted that she could not guarantee that there would be no increase as a child would be taken into care if there was a need.

Members discussed the National Anti-Bullying Week and considered whether a town wide bullying strategy was achievable. Concern was expressed by Members that bullying was of high priority and that was not always reflected in the attitude of some school headteachers. Mrs Booth agreed with the Committee regarding the importance of addressing bullying and highlighted the ongoing work she had been undertaking in order to achieve a suitable response to bullying. She commented that it had taken time to build relationships with schools and that she would develop a strategic plan regarding bullying to roll out across the town.

The Committee further discussed internet bullying and were advised that some schools had blocked access to social media in the school. However, that did not tackle any bullying that may occur on the internet outside of school. It was considered that any anti-bullying strategy would need to include parents.

Members challenged Mrs Booth to provide assurance regarding how she would ensure bullying was recognised by all headteachers. In response, she advised that it was her intention to be very firm with headteachers, to make sure they understood their responsibility in dealing with bullying, to use any warning letters available to her if necessary and to ultimately contact the Regional Schools Commissioner and Ofsted if a headteacher of an academy was still not responding appropriately to bullying as ultimately it was a safeguarding concern.