Agenda and minutes

1.1 Apologies for absence were received from:

·  Cllr Sharon Patrick

·  Cllr Sade Etti

·  Cllr James Peters

·  Cllr Katie Hansen

·  Graham Hunter

1.2 Apologies for lateness were received from

·  Cllr Margaret Gordon

·  Cllr Clare Potter

2.1 The were no urgent items and the agenda was as scheduled.

3.1 The following declarations were received by members of the Commission:

·  Cllr Chauhan was a teacher at secondary school in another London borough and a member of the NEU;

·  Justine McDonald, was a Headteacher at local secondary school;

·  Jo McLeod was a Governor at a local school in Hackney.

4.1 In November 2019, Hackney Children’s Services was inspected under the Ofsted Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) framework.  The outcomes of this inspection were published in December 2019.  The overall judgement for this inspection was that Hackney Children’s Social Care ‘Requires Improvement’. The service was previously judged as ‘good’ in 2016.

4.2 The Ofsted inspection report made 6 recommendations for improvement:

1.  Quality of information sharing by partners and decision making within strategy discussions.

2.  The assessment of the impact for children of living in neglectful environments to inform authoritative and child-centred practice;

3.  The quality of assessments and planning for children subject to private fostering arrangements;

4.  Timeliness and effectiveness of pre-proceedings work, including the quality of contingency planning;

5.  The welfare of children who are missing education or who are home educated is safeguarded;

6.  The effectiveness of management oversight by leaders and managers at all levels including the effectiveness of oversight from child protection chairs.

4.3 A response from the Cabinet member for Children, Education and Children’s Social Care was presented to the Commission which highlighted key points below:

·  Children and Families Service staff had been working hard to improve services since the outcome of the focused visit by Ofsted in February 2019, thus the results of this full inspection were disappointing;

·  Local children and families should be reassured that the council was committed to improving Children and Families Service over the next two years, where there was an aim that the it would be assessed as ‘good’ in 12 months and ‘outstanding’ within 2 years;

·  Both Officer (Leadership & Development Board) and Member Oversight Board’s would be established to oversee and drive improvement across children’s social care and would be chaired by the Mayor (with the Cabinet Member) and Chief Executive (with Group Director) respectively;

·  Children and Families Service had already begun to reassess those areas of practice highlighted for improvement by Ofsted (as in 4.2) and changes had been implemented.  A more detailed action plan was being developed in response to the inspection outcomes which would need to be agreed with Ofsted;

·  It was recognised that the improvement required would be challenging given the level and complexity of needs locally, but the Council would work both corporately and with other local agencies to improve provision.

·  In developing the corporate response, members would be given the opportunity to have an induction to Children Families Service to help improve awareness of the services it provides and the challenges it faces.  To bring greater insight into local practice, there would also be an opportunity for members to ‘walk the floor’ and for CYP Scrutiny Commission members to observe some practice scenarios.

4.4 The Group Director for Children, Adults and Community Health presented to the Commission and highlighted the following key issues.

·  The Children and Families Service acknowledge that the Ofsted inspection demonstrated that some areas of the service were not as good as should be expected, but that there was a service-wide commitment to improve provision for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.1 The annual report of the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) is presented each year to the Commission as part of its oversight role. The Independent Chair of the Safeguarding Partnership presented the 2018/19 Annual Report to the Commission, highlighting key points as set out below:

·  The strategic alliance of local safeguarding partners (health, criminal justice and children’s social care) remained strong, despite ongoing austerity and service reorganisations. 

·  The criminal justice systems have been subject to multiple reorganisations, including the separation and subsequent re-merging of the National Probation Service and the Community Rehabilitation Team.  This had impacted on the ability of this service to invest in frontline personnel, particularly when services were spread over a larger geographic area.

·  The Clinical Commissioning Group, in particular the role of the Designated Doctor and Designated Nurse, had continued to play a critical role in the local safeguarding partnership.

·  There had also been structural changes to local policing (introduction of dual borough command) which had impacted on the continuity of police representation at meetings at both strategic and operational level.  This had inhibited the level of information sharing that was required and the CHSCP had provided challenge to this.

·  There had been lessons learnt from assessing how the CHSCP sought to quality assure how the safeguarding partnership supported each other, thus whilst it was clear that police had attended meetings of the safeguarding partnership, the granularity of the information provided (detail and the timeliness) was not always consistent.

·  As the Ofsted inspection had identified, the early help and prevention work of the authority is exemplary as demonstrated by the work of local Children’s Centres, Multi-Agency Teams and the Wellbeing and Mental Health Service (WAMHS).  More work was needed to understand the nature of young people’s vulnerability however, particularly how this intersects with key determinants (for example poverty, geography) to better enable services to identify children at risk earlier and provide them with support that they might need.

·  New safeguarding arrangements were introduced in Hackney in September 2019.  As part of this reorganisation the Independent Chair was now the Independent Safeguarding Commissioner with a ‘right to roam’ and was able to bring an enhanced level of scrutiny to the safeguarding partnership, and to ensure that partners were adhering to the lessons learnt and action plans that resulted  from quality assurance and investigative work.

·  The health and wellbeing of staff remained a key local priority, in particular their ability to deliver an effective safeguarding service under pressure.  In this context, it is important to understand the workload pressures of front-line staff and how they are supported.  The Hackney social work model is somewhat different to other authorities, and at times it was difficult to penetrate what level of support was provided.

·  There was good application of local thresholds for social care support, where children in immediate need of care were given help in a timely fashion.

·  There had been increased reporting to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) to whom local concerns about those  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.1 The Commission undertook an in-depth review into unregistered educational settings in Hackney in 2017/18 and an Executive response received in September 2018.  At the last meeting when this issue was considered (April 2019), the Commission noted that there had been some progress in developing safeguarding systems for improve assurance for safeguarding in unregistered settings, but the Commission agreed to continue to monitor this item to ensure that the Council continues to prioritise and make progress in this important piece of work

6.2 Officers reported that this continued to be a priority for the Council and Hackney Learning Trust (HLT) in particular.  It was noted that HLT continues to inform the Department for Education of those educational settings which are operating illegally, whereupon Ofsted will inspect these establishments to determine if they were a school or not. If settings were identified as a school by Ofsted they would be required to register as Independent School and subject to regulation within that sector or close.

6.3 The Commission’s report of 2 years ago made 10 recommendations for the Council, including the need to develop a local strategy on how it will work with unregistered settings and to lobby government for improvement in the enforcement framework for unregistered schools.  There is still no effective legal enforcement of unregistered settings and the council and safeguarding partnership continues to lobby central government to bring unregistered settings in to tighter regulatory control.  Whilst there had been progress for some recommendations, progress against other recommendations had been more challenging.

6.4 Officers highlighted that the lack of legal definition as to what constitutes a school was hindering enforcement, and that no agency had the authority to close any setting down which was not a school.  In the local context, Yeshiva in the Orthodox Jewish Community were not considered to be a school but an out of school setting which both local and national enforcement partners little authority to close. It was estimated that there are about 23 such settings locally, though it was not clear if these were unregistered settings, Yeshiva, or satellites of Yeshiva.

6.5 The local authority had safeguarding responsibilities as well as a duty to ensure children were in receipt of an appropriate education.  Whilst there may be some acceptance of the need for improved safeguarding arrangements, there was a level of anxiety within the community that this might encroach on the teaching and curriculum in Yeshiva.  As a consequence, some parents and settings were mistrustful of the local authority and would not cooperate. 

6.6 In line with the recommendations of the Commission’s report, officers indicated that further confidence building measures would be needed with the Orthodox Jewish Community to bring further improvement in safeguarding measures.  A number of developments have been made in this respect:

·  In recognition that there was a movement of young people between local registered independent schools and unregistered settings, HLT was working with local independents schools (many of which were Orthodox Jewish faith schools) to help build contact and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.1 The London Borough of Hackney and the University of Bedfordshire have worked in partnership to jointly develop and implement a whole system approach to Contextual Safeguarding since 2017.  The Commission has requested an update on this project, to understand more about the concept of this work and how this will influence and improve safeguarding practice across Hackney.

7.2 Officers presented a summary of the Contextual Safeguarding (CS) Project which was being introduced to improve safeguarding for young people who experience harm outside the family home in Hackney.

·  The Children and Families Service were provided with innovation funding to implement the theory of contextual safeguarding into practice and to develop tools and processes which can be used by other local authorities that wished to adopt this approach to improve safeguarding.

·  Contextual safeguarding expands upon traditional notions of safeguarding where identified risks to the child are centred around the family, to acknowledge that as the child grows into adolescence there are a growing number of external influences which impact on safeguarding (for example at school, in their local neighbourhood, on-line and among their peer groups).  Whilst in many cases these are all very positive influences, there are on occasions where these present a safeguarding risk.

·  After investigating, developing and testing the contextual safeguarding approach, it is now being embedded in local practice.  The CS project had developed guidance for implementation of contextual safeguarding principles and a toolkit had also been developed for use by other local authorities to use this approach.

Questions

7.3 What advice would you give to members trying to engage young people in a local ward forum to support their understanding of some of the local issues that young people face?

- Hopefully there would be some existing youth provision in the locality, and the first step would be to involve these organisations who have the skills to engage young people in the community.  This organisation would most likely have existing knowledge of and relationships with local young people.  In addition, local youth services would also work with other partner agencies supporting young people which could extend the reach and potential involvement of young people.

7.4 How do you ensure that the voice of the is child heard in the contextual safeguarding approach?

- It was important to recognise the context in which you are engaging young people and to adapt strategies accordingly. The contextual safeguarding project has undertaken focus groups, surveys and peer-led engagement to facilitate the voice of the child.  In secondary schools, surveys have not only been undertaken with young people, but have also been used to consult teachers and parents not only to corroborate issues emerging from young people, but also to obtain further insight into young people’s experiences.

7.5 A number of local schools have been greatly impacted by knife crime and in particular robberies, how is contextual safeguarding being used to support these children?

- To use an example from similar work that had taken place on a local estate where there  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

8.1 There are a number of changes in respect of the planned work programme for 2019/20:

·  The April 28^th meeting has been rescheduled to May 12^th 2020.

8.2 Members were reminded to submit questions for Cabinet member for Families, SEND and Play in readiness for the 11th March meeting 2020 by January 29^th 2020.

8.3 Whilst the Commission has yet to decide on the review topic for 2019/20 it was agreed that this would take place on Thursday 30^th April. The Commission were of the view that it would like to focus the planned in-depth review within children’s social care as this may assist the council in its response to the Ofsted inspection outcomes. There were a number of areas which the Commission were considering:

·  The context of the neglectful environment and how decisions are made;

·  Why so many adolescents were entering the care system and what could be done to prevent this?

8.4 It was agreed that the nature of the review would require further refinement which could then be discussed with the Group Director of Children Adults and Community Health and the Director of Children and Families Service.

9.1 Minutes of the 15^th January (Making Hackney a Child Friendly Borough) were not ready for distribution within this agenda.  They will be included within the next agenda.

10.1 There was not other business. Date of the next meeting was 24^th February 2020

End 9.55pm