Agenda item

To present performance against the Council Plan 2015-2020 for the period 1 July – 30 September 2016.

Mrs Ruth Henshaw, Delivery Development Officer presented the performance against the Council Plan 2015/2020 for the period 1 July 2016 to 30 September 2016 and highlighted the key exceptions.

Mrs Henshaw reported that a number of the Council Plan indicators for ‘Resilient Communities’ that were due to be considered by the Committee were either annual or bi-annual and therefore could not be reported on for the quarter.

Of the indicators where data was available, it was reported to the Committee that there were three indicators in which performance had deteriorated in Quarter 2 2016/2017:

·         Achievement of five or more A* - C grades at GCSE or equivalent including English and Maths

·         Number of referrals / rate of referrals to social care per 10,000 children; and

·         Number of looked after children / rate of looked after children per 10,000 population.

The Committee raised a number of questions relating to the number of referrals to Children’s Social Care and the number of Looked After Children. Mrs Curtis advised that an audit process ensured that every child in care was appropriately placed, but that unfortunately Blackpool had the highest rate of referrals in the country, which was as a result of various factors. Members queried whether the picture in Blackpool was distorted through having a significant number of large families from which a high number of children were Looked After and queried whether data was available to show the number of families of Looked After Children. Ms Lee, Interim Head of Safeguarding and Principal Social Worker advised that she would investigate whether that data could be made available. It was however noted that the current indicator used to measure Looked After Children rates was a national indicator and that the data requested would be limited as sibling groups did not always come from the same household and there were various examples of different family dynamics.

The Committee raised questions relating to the extent to which different ethnicity demographics had an impact on the numbers of looked after children in a local authority area. Mrs Curtis advised that she was unaware of a link but noted that there could be differences in the number of looked after children as a result of the size of the wider family support network. She reported that the context of looked after children in Blackpool had changed slightly over recent times and that a significant number of children were now coming into care from intergenerational Blackpool families.

The Committee agreed to request information to be presented to the Committee relating to the number of families of children that were Looked After, rather than the absolute numbers of children.

Further questions were raised by the Committee in relation to free breakfasts in schools and potential links to childhood obesity. In response, Councillor Cross reported that schools were now considered to be ordering the correct amount of food and that it was the responsibility of the headteacher in each school to ensure appropriate monitoring of the scheme to prevent children having more than one breakfast.

The Committee agreed to note the report and request information to be presented to the Committee relating to the number of families of children that were Looked After.

Background papers: None.