Issue - meetings

This report identifies the level of progress made by the Brent Social Care against the action plan following the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission Inspection of Safeguarding and Looked After Children provision in Brent.

Graham Genoni (Assistant Director Social Care Division) presented a report to the committee setting out the progress achieved by Brent Social Care against the action plan which had been developed following the recent Ofsted and Care Quality Commission Inspection of Safeguarding and Looked After Children (SLAC) provision in Brent. Brent had been awarded an adequate grading overall and a good grading for four service components. The adequate rating meant that there had been no major concerns about the safety of children in Brent, but that it had been felt that some additional aspects could have been improved. 50% of local authorities across the country had achieved and adequate rating, 25% had achieved inadequate and a further 25% had achieved a good or outstanding rating. The committee was advised that a new inspection regime was currently being designed for May 2013 and a new temporary inspection framework had been put in place for the interim period. Under this interim regime, those services which had been awarded inadequate and adequate ratings could be subject to a further inspection. The evolving inspection regime reflected a heightening of the expected service standards and it was recognised that it was becoming increasingly difficult to achieve ratings of adequate and above.

Graham Genoni explained that in preparation for this potential further inspection, the council was working hard to address the issues raised in the recent SLAC inspection and those challenges that would be faced by the service in the immediate future. At present the council was working on its own assessment of its SLAC services and would be writing a report to identify the existing strengths and weaknesses. Independent challenge and support was also being sought from colleagues in other local authorities. The council was in the process of developing its early help services. A council-wide project around early help services had just progressed to the initiation stage and work was also being done to explore how the borough’s children’s centres could be developed as a resource for children of a wider age range. It was envisaged that Children’s Centres could provide a medium through which various preventative services could be delivered to families to provide early-stage support, prior to social care intervention. It was hoped that such actions would help to reduce the number of Looked After Children (LAC) in Brent. Work was also being undertaken to reduce the number of irrelevant referrals being dealt with directly by Brent Social Care via the development of a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub, which would ensure that the most appropriate service acted on each referral. The Council was also seeking to support social workers in accessing greater learning development opportunities and had also recently conducted a survey to better understand the views of Brent’s social workers, particularly in relation to work pressures. 

In the subsequent discussion, the committee raised several issues and queries. Councillor Pavey noted that children’s centres were now forming a key focus in the development of early help services and queried why the children’s centres had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5

This report identifies the level of progress made by the Brent Social Care against the action plan following the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission Inspection of Safeguarding and Looked After Children provision in Brent.

RESOLVED

That consideration of this item be deferred to the following meeting of the committee.