Agenda and minutes

Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, any relevant financial or other interest in the items on the agenda.

None declared.

None.

The minutes are attached.

RESOLVED:

That the minutes of the meeting held on 20 November 2013 be approved as an accurate record of proceedings.

Members sought clarification regarding whether the borough employment strategy had been finalised. Members also stated that they were still waiting for a breakdown of labour demand and skills in the borough, by ward. Jacqueline Casson informed members that she would ensure that the information was disseminated to them.

Members also queried what was currently happening to the Employment and Enterprise Team, as the Navigator Pilot had concluded in December 2013 and an external review of the service was due to take place at the end of February 2014. The Chair surmised that the team were probably conducting a review of the pilot at this time.

This item is a presentation and provides an overview of Brent Children’s Social Care. The presentation highlights Children’s Social Care in the national context, regulations and current developments.

Neil MacDonald, Head of Children’s Commissioning, introduced the presentation and informed members that Graham Genoni, Operational Director Social Care, sent his apologies. Members were presented with an overview of Child social care. It was explained that Children’s services were governed by the Children Act 1989 and subsequent legislation in the Children Act 2004.

One of the main concerns for Children Social Care at the moment, due to its high public profile, was child exploitation and missing children. This had been brought to the public’s attention through a number of cases relating to children in residential care homes. It was explained that residential care homes were graded in the same way schools were by Ofsted, and Brent only used homes that had been graded as good or outstanding. Members were informed that Brent currently had 24 children in residential care. It was more expensive for the Council to have a child in residential care than it was to place them in a specialist fostering placement. Therefore the service was trying to work with children at a younger age so that they could avoid needing to place them in residential care. They were also working with families through the family intervention and support team to try and prevent family breakdowns. He explained that there were also having to undertake an increasing number of homelessness applications and that they were working closely with housing on these applications.

Neil MacDonald informed members that the Munro Review contained a number of recommendations for Children’s social services. The main focus of the review was to ensure that the child’s journey was placed back at the heart of social work. He outlined the different categories of children that the department had a statutory responsibility towards, including children with disabilities, care leavers and Children in Need. Members were informed that per 10,000 Brent’s figure was 48.5 which was lower than both Brent’s comparative neighbour, Newham, and the national average which was 59. In terms of the structure of Children’s Social Services in Brent, it was explained that there were 5 locality teams in the Borough, 4 looked after teams as well the Fostering and adoption teams and Contracts and Commissioning. The Contracts and Commissioning team accounted for £18m of the services £32m budget.

Neil MacDonald explained that in the last Ofsted expectation Brent were deemed to ‘need improvement’ which was the same as 60% of all Local Authorities. He added that it was believed that the next Ofsted inspection would be tougher. It was explained that the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board would also be inspected. Therefore it was very important that the service continued to improve. This included up skilling current social workers and reducing the length of time that an assessment takes before an outcome was determined for the child.

Members sought further clarification as to how the Children’s social services and the housing department worked closely together. They also queried why there was not much comparative information in the presentation; for example what was the caseload  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

This item is a presentation and provides an overview of Brent MASH “Front Door”. The presentation highlights the aims of the service, core elements and partnership working. The presentation also highlights the performance of the service and benefits to service users.

Grace Fagan, Principal Officer for Brent Family Front Door (BFFD), began by introducing Nicky Case from Family Solutions and Jacinth Jeffers from Health Economy as well colleagues from the Metropolitan Police and advised the Committee that they may also ask questions of these officers as well as herself in regards to MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub).

Members were informed that MASH went live in July 2013 and it provided an aligned service so that families could access the support services they needed promptly and efficiently. MASH allowed the different agencies involved to be better at matching services with the needs of the community. Grace Fagan detailed the five core elements of MASH, explaining that these elements were not specific to Brent and had been agreed by all London Stakeholders. All partners involved with MASH were located on the same floor in the Civic Centre, although not all of them were there 5 days a week, they could be reached immediately which helped with information sharing between the different partners. This was detailed as one of the benefits of MASH as joined up working meant they could intervene earlier and ensure that people were quickly signposted to a wide range of services within the community.

Members were advised that Brent had been part of research carried out by Greenwich along with five other boroughs. Greenwich had compared pre and post MASH data from all of the boroughs. In Brent, within a couple of months of MASH being introduced the number referrals had fallen by six. It was explained that once MASH had collated all the relevant intelligence from the different agencies regarding an individual or a family, they were only allowed to hold that information for six months. Grace Fagan concluded stating that MASH had been set up as a new service with One Council funding for one year and therefore the service would be reviewed in June 2014.

Members enquired why MASH was only able to keep the information for six months. They also enquired how many gangs MASH had identified as being operational in Brent and what action MASH could take against the gangs that had been identified. Members welcomed agencies within in Brent working together and asked if they also worked with other boroughs. They concluded their questions by asking how the financial benefits of the service would be calculated.

Grace Fagan responded by informing members that although they were only able to hold on to the collated information in regards to a referral for 6 months, the individual agencies still had the intelligence they held themselves. Therefore the intelligence gathered on a family or individual was not lost after 6 months. Also Brent did work with other MASHs in other boroughs when needed. In regards to the number of gangs operational in Brent, it was stated that MASH had identified 33 gangs. It was explained that this may be a higher number than the committee were aware of as MASH processed all gang activity even small gangs  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

This item is a presentation and provides an overview of the partnership working of Housing Services alongside the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).

Laurence Coaker, Head of Housing Needs, began by stating that although his team did not sit with the MASH team, they did have a single point of contact within their team that MASH could contact. Members were then informed that the cap on benefits had not yet had as big of an impact on the service as predicted. However rent arrears were now starting to accrue in the Borough. He stated that there were a number of families that Brent had assumed a duty too that were in temporary accommodation that would have to be relocated outside of the Borough. He stated that before they made a decision to move a family with children they did contact Children’s Social Services to ensure that there were no safeguarding issues. They had also set up a system to track children to make sure that they appeared back on the radar in the area that they had been moved too. He added that Chris Spencer had interviewed him to identify the gaps in safeguarding in housing. It was identified that more training was needed for front line staff to recognise abuse and what to do with that information.

Members questioned how many families had been moved outside of the borough and they also queried how the ‘Safe and Secure’ initiative was working in Brent.

Laurence Coaker explained to members that the families that were in temporary accommodation were the families that Brent had accepted that it had homeless duty too. Since October 2012, 7 of these families had chosen to leave the borough voluntarily. Since the change in legislation in September 2012 the authority could discharge its duty to house to the private sector. He stated that they received around 100 applications a week for housing and they accepted a duty to around 900 a year. He added that they were hoping that they would be able to discharge at least 50% of those applications to the private sector. Currently they were discharging 26 a month to the private sector.

In regards to safe and secure, Laurence Coaker esplained that its success was inconsistent in Brent. This was primarily due to most of the London Boroughs not having suitable 2 or more bedroom properties for people to move into. He stated that they received no more 12 applications a year as it was initiative that was designed to only support a small number of people.

Members thanked Laurence Coaker and noted the presentation.

This item is a presentation supported by the Adult Safeguarding annual report. The presentation provides an overview of the service, performance analysis and the department’s priorities for 2014/15.

Phil Porter introduced the presentation explaining that safeguarding adults  did not have the same legislative framework as children social services did. The assumption was that those over the age of 18 were able to make decisions for themselves. Therefore the Council worked to safeguard all vulnerable adults against significant harm or exploitation.

Members were then informed that although safeguarding adults was everyone’s responsibility, Brent Safeguarding Adults Board and the Adult Safeguarding operational team had specific responsibility for safeguarding adults. The operational team were focussed on outcomes and like Children’s Social Services they tried to ensure that the person was at the centre of the process and the team’s first priority was to ensure that the person was safe. The team consisted of a range of professionals including social workers, a previous police officer and a nurse.  Adult Safeguarding did not have a legislative framework but was framed by ‘No Secrets’ guidance and Pan London Safeguarding Procedures.

Phil Porter detailed the different types of Safeguarding Adults investigations including Office of the Public Guardian Matters which took place when a vulnerable adult whose money was managed by a friend of relative through a Power of Attornery was financially abused. In regards to investigations against an individual person who were not employed to provide services, the Safeguarding Adults Operational Team were able to investigate and determine their outcome on a balance of probabilities which was a less stringent burden of proof than the police needed to investigate.

In regards to the investigations that Safeguarding Adults Operation Team carried out they did take, on average, longer to complete than the 25 days target. However Brent was getting better at ensuring that all investigations had a conclusive outcome rather than being deemed ‘Not Determined /Inconclusive’. Alerts to the team had almost doubled since 2010 yet the number of referrals had stayed the same. This was encouraging as it meant that more people were aware of vulnerable adults and were reporting instances.

Phil Porter concluded his presentation by informing members that Adult Safeguarding had two priorities for 2014. The first was to reduce financial abuse, as a significant proportion of it could be avoided. The second was to reduce the number of pressure ulcer incidents as again, in a number of instances, they were avoidable.

Members discussed the presentation and raised a number of queries. They questioned what the budget was for delivering the Adult Social Services safeguarding adults priorities and how they would quantify the savings they made by achieving these priorities. Members also sought clarification as to who regulated private care homes and ensured they were safeguarding their residents. Details were also requested as to why vulnerable adults did not feel safe in the Borough. The Committee asked what the main issues were facing Adult Social Services and concluded their questioning by asking how officers got the message out to the diverse community in Brent.

Responding to the queries raised, Phil Porter informed members that it would be hard to quantify the financial benefits.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

A presentation on the Police Forces work safeguarding adults and working in partnership with Brent Council.

The Committee noted that these issues had been discussed in previous items.

A verbal update on the on the Fire Services work safeguarding adults and working in partnership with Brent Council.

Terry Harrington, Borough Commander Brent, London Fire Brigade gave a presentation on how the fire brigade in Brent were currently safeguarding adults in the borough. Members were informed that the key performance indicators (KPIs) on the monthly statistical bulletin were colour coded green, amber and red depending on how well the fire brigade were achieving each indicator. Terry Harrington highlighted to members that there were four indicators that were red.

Members were informed that based on the number of dwelling fires that had already occurred, the brigade were on target to meet there end of year targets for dwelling fires. It was explained that a number of the fires had occurred in multiple occupancy, rented properties due to a number of reasons including substandard conditions and overuse of the property. In light of this, the Fire Brigade, were in support of Brent Council’s potential initiative to ensure that all private landlords were licensed. 

It was explained that the reason they had not met their KPI for outdoor rubbish fires was due to an on-going issue regarding the amount of rubbish on the streets in Brent. It was hoped that having a more effective reporting mechanism between the fire brigade and the council would help ensure that rubbish was being dealt with promptly. Once this mechanism was put in place, Terry Harrington hoped to roll out a volunteer cycle scheme which had proved successful in other boroughs. They had also not met their KPI for outbreaks of fires in residential homes and sheltered housing. It was explained that this was primarily due to people who had been assessed to be able to live independently having some difficulties with certain tasks. Terry Harrington stated that he believed that because of this it would be a good idea for the fire brigade to be involved in the case management of these vulnerable adults to ensure that fire safety risk assessments were conducted. Phil Porter, Head of Adult Social Care stated that he would be happy to work with the fire brigade on this. Terry Harrington stated that they had already exceeded their KPI target for all non-domestic fires in PRO properties. He added that this was due to Brent having the largest industrial estate in Europe as well as a high density of industrial units elsewhere. Therefore they were seeking an evaluation of this KPI target in Brent. It was added that a number of these industrial units had been converted illegally to domestic dwellings and that more was needed to deter people from doing this.

In regards to people being stuck in lifts in Brent, it was explained that London Fire Brigade had developed a strategy with Brent Housing Partnership (BHP) to ensure that if people called 999 the control room would divert the calls to Brent lift engineers as opposed to the fire brigade. This was because a lot of the calls that the Fire Brigade were responding too were non-emergency calls. It was concluded that this arrangement was working well  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

The work programme is attached.

Members noted the work programme.

The next meeting of the Partnership and Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting is scheduled to take place on 20 March 2014.

The next meeting of the Partnership and Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee has been scheduled to take place on 20 March 2014.

Notice of items raised under this heading must be given in writing to the Democratic Services Manager or his representative before the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 64.

None.