Agenda and minutes

1.1  The O&S officer invited nominations for Chair.  Cllr Bunt nominated Cllr Plouviez and Cllr Potter seconded the nomination.  Cllr Plouviez was elected Chair.

2.1  An apology for absence was received from Cllr McShane.

3.1  There were no urgent items and the order of business was as on the agenda.

4.1  Cllr Chapman, attending as an observer, stated that he was a Trustee of Friends of the Elderly, a charity dedicated to supporting older people.

5.1  The Task Group Members noted the Terms of Reference document for the 4 Groups as agreed by Governance and Resources Scrutiny Commission.

6.1  The Group gave consideration to two papers on Proposed Areas for Savings for 2016/17, one from Children and Young People Services and one from Adult Social Care and Commissioning in Health and Community Services.

6.2  The Chair welcomed to the meeting the authors of the reports:

  Sheila Durr, AD Children and Young People’s Service (SD)

  Jackie Moylan, Assistant Director of Finance (CYPS & LHRR) (JM)

  Kim Wright, Corporate Director, Health and Community Services (KW)

  Rob Blackstone, AD Adult Social Care (RB)

  Genette Laws, AD Commissioning (GL)

  James Newman, Head of Finance, Community Services (JN) 

6.3  It was noted that the following were also present for this item:

  Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services

  Cllr Rob Chapman, Labour Group Chief Whip

  Cllr Ann Munn, Chair of Health in Hackney Scrutiny Commission

6.4  JM and SD introduced the paper from Children’s Services and took Members through the 1CYPS principles.  The following points were noted:

a)  The key approach in the service was to intervene early to prevent spend in statutory areas and this kept Hackney’s rate of statutory provision low compared to its statistical neighbours.

b)  The biggest cost was in supporting families to keep their children with intervention as prevention being the key.  Demand came from the public considering that care was a viable option for their children and there was a balance always to be stuck between the benefits of the state providing a service to a child vs the need to empower the parents to provide for their own child. 

c)  The aim was to have as few children as possible facing statutory processes because often these processes could do harm to them therefore it was important not to over intervene. Managing of rights and their resource implications became issues when the child comes in contact with social services.

d)  Some children were supported up to 18 years of age because often it was cheaper in the long run to intervene rather than not.  In times of austerity it was harder to demonstrate the effectiveness of prevention.

e)  The key with 1CYPS was that money was focused where it had the most impact and all services were measured carefully.

f)  The Youth Hubs were experiencing their biggest footfall ever

g)  Only the best staff were employed and retained by the service and this was at the forefront in any restructure.  The Service wanted most children’s social care work to happen out in the community and the aim was to be able to empower the community and address any abuse that may happen.

h)  It was important to note that the majority of children who came into care did go home again or to other next of kin and this had been useful in the community for building trust in the service.

i)  They had gone through the whole service to minimise referrals between services and have everyone working with same early-help mind-set.

6.5  Cllr Bramble  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.1  The Members agreed that following the receipt of the additional information they had requested they would confirm the need for a follow up meeting.

7.2  Wed 21 October at 7.00 pm was agreed as the provisional date.

8.1  There was none.