Meeting documents

To receive presentation.

The purpose of this item is to give the Committee the opportunity to gain an understanding of issues and the opportunity to discuss them.

The presentation and links to relevant background papers / information will be circulated prior to the meeting.

Note – the Chair will allow 45 minutes for this agenda item.

The Chair welcomed the Council’s Strategic Commissioner, in Children’s Services Louise Palmer and the Council’s Head of Service for Assessment and Safeguarding in Children’s Social Care, Paul Shawcross to the meeting for this agenda item.

Ms Palmer and Mr Shawcross gave a PowerPoint presentation providing an implementation update on Family Safeguarding in Somerset. Some of the key points highlighted were –

·         Provided details about Family Solutions Somerset and the family safeguarding model in Somerset and the timeline

·         Outlined what has been learnt so far in terms of strengthening partnerships and the challenges around virtual recruitment, induction and team building, accelerated phasing due to the impact of the pandemic and the need for virtual recruitment and inductions etc

·         Provided details on number of children looked after and number of child protection plans

·         Detailed the positive impact and highlighted a case study, and feedback from a family, social workers and adult practitioners

·         SCC commissioned York Consulting to undertake an evaluation. The interim evaluation report received in November 2021, had been positive and highlighted some issues for consideration – impact of the pandemic on the implementation; the ‘workbook’; increasing complexity of cases.

The Committee discussed the presentation, and the following questions and issues were raised and responded to, as follows: -

·         Success of the work – it was agreed that the Evaluation Report will be circulated to the Committee for information

·         Pleased to see the fall in numbers of child protection plans and children in care, but could this be attributed to identification of families – there are a number of ways to provide support to children and families and its around providing support the most effective way and to escalate / statutory interventions where it is appropriate to do so; the early support teams have also increased to support families as well

·         The ‘technical issues’ mentioned about adoption – explained that this related to issues around reporting by the Medical Advisor and the Courts and is a national issue; this was resolved early this year and have made some adjustments to how the medical advice is presented; the Courts Service has a backlog of cases which are being expedited and the backlog of cases will be dealt with soon

·         Increase in behaviours that challenge and whether is this being reflected in the numbers / cases coming through in social care – referred to the slide which highlighted that there are particular factors which are impacting on the work being done in family safeguarding and across the service as a whole and there is a significant and noticeable increase in complexity, particularly based around parental and child mental and emotional health and some of that is reflected in what is happening in schools and are now seeing an increase in numbers of referrals and requests for help

·         Suggestion made that there should be focus on looking at children committing domestic abuse against their parents – this area will be looked at

·         Question about threshold for referral into social care – clarified that the thresholds have not changed in terms of support offered and what families are able to receive; the focus is on the child’s needs and for them to get the right help they need at the right time

·         Question asked about the ‘workbook’ issue raised earlier – explained this is an issue for practitioners and mentioned Liquid Logic, which is the system used in Somerset

·         Query about what perhaps is not working so well currently and what the Evaluation Report may say – the team has been working closely with the consultants and know that the issue of the workbook and caseloads will come up in the evaluation - in terms of the of the actual practice model and the way that it's working / implemented, is largely positive; issue of recruitment and filling posts to begin with may also feature – are catching up with up that now and recruitment is much better in terms of the adult focus support

·         Query whether the teams have adequate staffing numbers – the staffing numbers for the teams in each area was outlined; each of the teams has 6 social workers each and specialist practitioners working alongside them in each team; also mentioned the recent successful recruitment to the mental health posts and a number of new social workers starting; mentioned the ‘step up to social work’ graduate programme

·         Query about adoption and if there are adequate families to adopt – mention made of partnership approach and do promote adoption as a permanent option for those children who need it; mentioned Special Guardianships; are also seeking foster carers too

·         Are there any issues around data sharing and will the unitary journey impact this going forward – confirmed that data sharing is not an issue, due to work done when the service was commissioned; already have good / positive joint working across the 5 Councils

·         Asked for details and information on Somerset’s statistical neighbours for Children’s Services – confirmed that they are Devon, Suffolk, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cornwall, Dorset, Norfolk, Gloucestershire, East Sussex, Wiltshire. The Chair asked that this information is included in the glossary of acronyms.

On behalf of the Committee the Chair thanked Ms Palmer and Mr Shawcross for the excellent presentation.