Agenda item

To receive an update on Children’s Social Care Improvement including an overview of the Children and Families Partnership Board and relationships with third sector partners.

Ms Jeanette Richards, Assistant Director of Children’s Services provided an update on Children’s Social Care improvement including an overview of the Children and Families Partnership Board. The Committee was informed that the Chief Executive and Leader of the Council, the Chief Executive of the Clinical Commissioning Group and the Chief Superintendent had established the Children and Families Partnership Board to bring together the collective strategic aims of services in Blackpool and to ensure a unified vision for children and families. It aimed to bring together key members of public, private and third sector organisations with a focus on family life in Blackpool. Ms Richards explained that the primary responsibility of the Board was to develop meaningful and productive strategic oversight to the key challenges facing children and families in Blackpool and to drive their respective organisations to develop innovative and shared approaches to addressing these with a joint sense of responsibility and ownership. 

Ms Richards provided an overview of the main priorities of the Board as well as the reporting mechanisms in place from the Getting to Good Board, Blackpool School Improvement Board and Children’s Safeguarding Assurance Partnership. In response to a question from the Committee, Ms Richards clarified that the Children and Families Partnership Board had been re-established this year and had so far met twice in that period.

The Committee received an update in relation to third sector partnership working, with Ms Richards advising that at a strategic level the third sector was represented by Mr Mike Crowther, Chief Executive at Empowerment who was a Board member on the Children and Families Partnership Board. She further explained that at an operational level, the Blackpool Families Rock Implementation Group met monthly and as well as including agencies, parents and young people and carers, there was third sector representation from the Blackpool Carers Centre and Empowerment.

Ms Richards reported that an Early Help Strategy was planned for implementation across Blackpool, with engagement with the voluntary sector planned in order to offer support in the delivery of Early Help. The Committee requested examples of the planned engagement, with Ms Richards advising of the importance of involving parents, carers and young people in all decisions and of rolling out the Blackpool Families Rock working model within the community. With regards to the inclusion of volunteers, Ms Richards advised that the Council would be aiming to engage the third sector as part of the launch of the Early Help Strategy planned for September 2021 and would be making contact with third sector organisations as part of this process. She also reported that the Family Hub Board benefitted from wider representation of organisations that worked with children and families in Blackpool including the Football Club, Boys and Girls Club, Magic Club, local churches, Fulfilling Lives and New Routes. As services planned Covid-19 recovery, Ms Richards anticipated that there would be more organisations operating services from hubs. In response to a question from the Committee regarding the involvement of Scout and Brownie groups within the Family Hub, Ms Richards confirmed that whilst such groups would not be operating from the hub, packages of support would be provided to these community-based groups.

With regards to the Early Help Strategy, the Committee questioned whether such a strategy had been implemented previously across Blackpool and asked how the new strategy differed from previous work undertaken in this area. Ms Richards advised that the new strategy would provide a much broader approach and would include third sector organisations. She added that the strategy would be considerably more detailed than previous approaches and would build upon the Blackpool Families Rock working model.

The Committee received information on the Resilience Revolution and Committee members were informed that the Revolution was a collaboration between the HeadStart Team and two Voluntary and Community Sector organisations, ‘boingboing’ and the ‘Centre of Resilience for Social Justice.’ Ms Richards explained that the Resilience Revolution had been founded upon the original concept of ‘Resilient Therapy’ and its associated inequalities-related research. Organisations were supported to embed a resilience approach and there were a number of organisations which had successfully achieved this, with Ms Richards giving the examples of the Grand Theatre, Blackpool Football Club Community Trust, Aiming Higher and the Carers Centre. Further information was requested by the Committee on Resilient Therapy, with Committee Members seeking details of what the approach consisted of and the anticipated benefits. Ms Richards offered to provide further details of the Resilient Therapy approach to the Committee following the meeting.

In response to the examples of youth engagement events offered by HeadStart’s Youth Engagement team as described by Ms Richards, the Committee asked whether the events had generally been well attended and if they had been impacted by the Covid-19 restrictions. Ms Richards confirmed that all such events had been negatively impacted by the pandemic and advised that HeadStart’s Covid recovery plan would be aiming to re-establish the youth engagement offer once restrictions allowed.

The Committee sought further details of the Brain Story training and certification offered by Better Start and asked if the training would be suitable for Councillors to access. Mr Paul Turner, Assistant Director of Children’s Services (School Improvement and Special Educational Needs) advised that the free online training course had been made available to all practitioners and had been well accessed, particularly by secondary schools. He offered to make the sessions available to any Councillors wishing to undertake the course, asking any interested Committee members to contact him directly and he would arrange access. The Committee requested specific details of the numbers of practitioners who had completed the training, which Mr Turner agreed to circulate to the Committee following the meeting.

The Committee agreed:

1.      To request that Ms Richards provide further details of the Resilient Therapy approach to Committee members following the meeting;

2.      To request that Mr Turner provide details of the numbers of practitioners who had completed the Brain Story training to Committee members following the meeting;

3.      That any Councillor interested in completing the online Brain Story training should contact Mr Turner directly to request access.