Agenda item

To receive a report on the Council’s management of the education and wellbeing recovery from the impact of the pandemic.

Councillor Stephens (Lead Member for Education, Employment and Skills) introduced the report. He highlighted the considerable pressures schools colleagues had faced over the pandemic, as well the disruption faced by pupils which he felt was one of the greatest any set of pupil had faced over the last ten years. In many areas, Brent was a national exemplar, such as having the fifth highest attendance of anywhere in England during the pandemic, and the work carried out to improve educational outcomes for boys of Black Caribbean heritage. There was also good work with the Local Cultural Education Project. Councillor Stephens felt encouraged by the collaboration with school clusters. There was work between clusters on education recovery and bringing in matched funding. He also praised the holiday activity programme where 3,000 places had been offered to children and 50 providers had worked to deliver that. He felt it would only further improve over the years with collaboration between the Council and Family Wellbeing Centres. He concluded his introduction by highlighting the £900k Covid-19 recovery funding that had been provided by the Council as part of its £17m for Covid-19 recovery, which had gone towards mental health support, amongst other projects.

Councillor McLennan added that the report detailed the work being done around mental health and young people. There had been a large increase of requirements for mental health services in children, identified by children themselves, and the report detailed what was being done to alleviate those pressures which were getting more complex.

The Chair thanked councillors for their introduction and invited the Committee to raise comments and questions, with the following issues raised:

The Committee asked about the impact and outcomes of education and wellbeing recovery initiatives. Councillor Stephens was encouraged by the way Brent schools had worked regarding education. He felt there was an opportunity to engage and interact with young people around their mental health, as for many pupils the pandemic had been quite a large proportion of their lives. He attributed face to face engagement, such as the Holiday Activity and Food programme (HAF), as a key part of what the Council had done to stop children losing out on developmental activities. HAF had helped pupils to feel entitled, confident and assertive. He felt it was important to help pupils focus on activities outside of their academic life that would enable them to be assertive and confident. He also highlighted the work on the Black Community Action Plan to help young people become more assertive in explaining what they want from services.

Brian Grady (Operational Director for Safeguarding Performance and Strategy, Brent Council) drew the Committee’s attention to the data from CAMHS in the report, which showed a 35-45% increase in referrals to CAMHS for the 2021 year. There were regular discussions across the Brent Children’s Trust (BCT) in relation to that, and it was a key consideration for the BCT. The paper set out the preventative and early help work being done to ensure young people got better access to mental health support in schools, better access to peer support and better access digitally. An increased level of capacity had been introduced to the system to try to meet the emotional wellbeing needs of young people outside of CAMHS. It was anticipated that the BCT would measure a reduction in referrals to CAMHS, with more young people having their needs met without having to use CAMHS, and so the BCT were measuring the impact over the next year via reduction in referrals to CAMHS and improved emotional health and wellbeing.

In terms of where emotional needs would be met going forward, if not CAMHS, Brian Grady advised that they were ensuring support to schools to be able to provide mental health support, such as through Mental Health First Aid Training, training of Senior Leaders, and Mental Health Support Teams in schools. There were a series of interventions to build capacity in schools, and the BCT had been working to ensure Kooth, an online digital resource, was better accessed by Brent young people. Early help services were providing counselling and emotional support. He highlighted that there was a small cohort of young people where a CAMHS referral was the only appropriate response, but there was more that could be done to meet more emotional health and wellbeing needs earlier. Gail Tolley (Strategic Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) added that CAMHS referrals were for the higher level of need and there was a risk that emotional health and wellbeing needs were medicalised if they were only thought about in the context of CAMHS, and that was where the preventative services approach came in to play.

In relation to the Mental Health First Aid Training referred to, the Committee queried how success would be measured. They heard that Mental Health First Aid was a well-established, evidence based programme measured through the competencies of the individual, through self-reporting mechanisms, e.g. whether they felt more confident. There were also metrics in place to understand how many young people felt well supported. The training was offered by the Department for Education (DfE) and as it was not a direct offer, the local authority could not capture the number of Senior Leaders who had taken up the training. However, Brian Grady had attended a recent Designated Safeguarding Lead (DLS) networking meeting where he heard that 22 senior leaders had taken it up, out of a possible 88 schools, so felt that was a good start, and the Council would continue to promote that.

A representative from Brent Youth Parliament was invited to address the Committee. He highlighted that the Children’s Commissioner’s Briefing of mental health provision in 2020-21 had identified Brent CCG as 1 of 10 least well performing CCGs in relation to mental health provision. He asked officers whether they were confident that the plans and steps outlined in the report would address the current problems. Brian Grady advised that the metrics of the briefing, published in February, were around funding, waiting times, and proportion of young people being supported. The CAMHS response within the Brent Children’s Trust partnership was for those young people with the most intense need and was critical, and he reassured the Committee that the BCT, chaired by the Strategic Director Children and Young People, was overseeing a granular focus on ensuring the improvement of CAMHS with health colleagues, including the CCG. CAMHS was a health led provision but the local authority were working with health on those improvements on the level of resources for Brent young people and the number of young people accessing CAMHS.

The Committee asked what the experience of parents and children was in relation to childcare and daycare, and what work was done to understand the quality of childcare children were receiving. Brian Grady advised that the report detailed that the take-up of places had varied, and there had been lower uptake of entitlements. That was expected to change as working arrangements shifted and that was being tracked. He offered the Committee assurance that, through the Early Years Team, the local authority was in regular contact, connection and network support with providers to ensure they remained stable. They had not seen the significant amount of exit from the marketplace they had been anticipating as a result of the pandemic, detailed in the June 2020 Committee report, but were closely monitoring the market. The Early Years Team had been providing support, advice and guidance on quality of care as well as business management and development, which was highly valued by the sector particularly throughout the pandemic. At the moment there were no quality concerns identified following the pandemic, as providers had been rigorously and robustly supported, but the market was being monitored. The introduction of Family Wellbeing Centres in Brent, ahead of the national picture where they were now seen as crucial in the new generation of early help, would be a key part of assurance for the Committee, as they would increasingly provide that hub of early help. Through the Family Wellbeing Centres it was hoped that they could give the right support for current pressures, such as the impact of poverty on families and presenting the higher level of demand for referrals to the Brent Family Front Door (BFFD).

The Committee noted that with shocks to the system like the pandemic, it could validate what the system was doing well and expose what the system was not doing well, demonstrating how effective services were. They queried what had been learned from this in terms of processes, Brent young people, and resilience. Councillor Stephens felt the pandemic had shown there was a role for local authorities as brokers to engage with schools, communities and organisations on projects of support. This had been particularly prevalent in the HAF programme, where because a funding stream had been developed, the Council had been able to work in ways it could not before to look very clearly at a summer, winter and Easter holiday programme. There was also key learning around the need to address the mental health needs of young people. Brian Grady agreed that there was a need to be mindful of emotional wellbeing services and ensure there was a good offer, through having strong collaboration with schools. Councillor McLennan also agreed that the pandemic had exposed the level of unmet need for children’s mental health, where children were now discussing that loud and clear. She felt they had learnt more preventative services were needed, but as these were not statutory services they became difficult to fund.

The Chair drew the item to a close and invited the Committee to make recommendations, with the following RESOLVED:

i)      To note the content of the report.

An information request had also been made during the course of the discussion, recorded as follows:

i)              That the Committee receive a briefing note on Brent Children’s Trust, including its governance arrangements, membership, key priorities and work programme.