(a)

the number of children in care included those placed outside of the city in independent fostering agency placements or in residential placements; costs attributed to children in care placed outside of the city would be provided to Members;

(b)

a large piece of work was currently being undertaken to review all children in care in higher cost placements, including those placed away from the city. It was highlighted that some children were placed further away because of the potential risks posed to them locally, however all placements were regularly monitored and reviewed.

1.

costs attributed to children in care placed outside of the city would be provided to Members;

2.

information upon the number of children in care, specifically regarding data on those with SEN, special guardianship orders and those subject to a care plan, would be provided to Members; this information would also form part of the ‘Number of Children in Care’ update at future scrutiny meetings.

(a)

Pledge 43 was due to be signed off imminently – the STEM Conference had taken place with great success and events had also gone ahead on the same date in Plymouth Lido encouraging young people to have greater exposure to STEM activities;

(b)

Pledge 48 focused upon support provided to young people in care with their career aspirations. It was highlighted that every young person in care between the ages of 14 and 17 had been asked what their career aspirations were; 102 young people had clear aspirations and it was now for officers to facilitate work experience opportunities. Work was also ongoing with Barnardos in partnership with the Council regarding care journeys; aspiration audits were to be undertaken with children in care to identify what support was required to help them fulfil their aspirations.

(c)

data linked to the proportion of care leavers that were in Education, Employment or Training (EET) and Accommodation was provided in percentages in order to prevent the identification of any young person; it was acknowledged that this information could be provided in more detail at the Corporate Parenting Group;

(d)

44.4% of young people leaving the care system were NEET (not in Education, Employment or Training) however personal advisors were responsible for supporting young people up until the age of 25 to find education, training and employment opportunities. It was highlighted that there were a range of reasons as to why a proportion of care leavers were NEET however a work plan was being developed to improve outcomes for the care leaver group, including support and guidance on accommodation and other factors to enable them to be independent adults. Progress and improvement of outcomes contained in the work plan would be reported back to Members in approximately 6 months’ time;

(e)

career aspiration work linked to the 17-25 age bracket was the subject of a report that went to Cabinet in July 2019; a small cohort of young people had been identified as needing their aspirations explored and identified. This work had been completed and this group of young people would join the 102 young people from the 14-17 age bracket in coming forward for work experience;

(f)

the Young Carers Champion was responsible for working with schools to identify numbers of young carers however specific names or the breakdown of young carers via year group was not recorded;

(g)

the increasing burden of young carers was deeply concerning and was one of the reasons it was identified as a Pledge; the Council was working with schools to identify young carers in order to provide the required support. Any safeguarding issues would be monitored and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27.

(a)

in July 2019 Cabinet approved an initial business case to carry out engagement regarding the proposed future design of Early Help and Targeted Support services in Plymouth (up to the age of 19); the programme of engagement would take place between August and October 2019 with Children’s Centres, families and targeted support services; scrutiny was asked to engage in the process;

(b)

the aim of the project was to create a network of family hubs that were warm, welcoming, friendly and non-stigmatising to encourage children, young people and families to receive support, socialise, learn new skills and connect with community links to build resilience.

(c)

it may be beneficial to set up a pilot scheme in a deprived part of the city to test success;

(d)

youth centres should be engaged with as part of the consultation and overall programme; it was queried if youth centres were currently being utilised effectively;

(e)

this project was a good idea and should fill a gap in provision left by Surestart;

(f)

it was questioned if other services such as pop-up libraries could be brought into the programme, how the programme could be used to help support young people with ASB behaviours, and if the programme would connect with the CAMHS pathway?;

(g)

the distribution of centres didn’t appear to be even across the city;

(h)

access for dental services was important as well as input from the police;

(i)

concerned that the budget may be restricted and affect the project’s success;

(j)

emphasise the need for a joined up approach with health colleagues;

(k)

the voice of the child was important – where were officers interacting with young people?

(l)

the programme findings were to be presented to Cabinet in November 2019 with an expectation that procurement (if any) would take place in the Spring of 2020 with implementation in Spring 2021; it was anticipated that the programme would have time to run pilots;

(m)

youth centres were being consulted as part of the engagement process; officers were conscious that they tended to operate at different hours across the city and it was vital that the needs of all users, from parents with young children to teenagers, were met;

(n)

officers were assessing how buildings, which would form part of the programme, were being used in order to fill potential gaps and make the best use of them;

(o)

officers were approaching a multitude of providers, including the DWP, health visitors, school nurses, education providers and early years providers, to see how they could better work together;

(p)

there was a desire to create a couple of dedicated spaces for the targeted support practitioners,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 28.

(a)

Together for Childhood was a 10 year multi-agency project run in Ernesettle which was co-led between Plymouth City Council and the NSPCC; the aim was to try and build resilience in the community to prevent child abuse happening, to create a place where children felt safe to disclose abuse and where perpetrators didn’t feel safe to act;

(b)

the five building blocks of the project included:

·          

Relationships and sex education

·          

Community engagement

·          

Trauma informed system

·          

Public health messaging

·          

Preventing offending and harmful sexual behaviour

(c)

for the past two years the project had been in an active delivery mode and 1900 individuals had been engaged with since April 2019; a wide range of work had been undertaken including workshops with young children to identify what was important to them, a collection of women in the community knitting pairs of pants to go on Build a Bear’s,  inter-generational work involving young people from the youth group and Tea and Toast group and the integration of the team into the community;

(d)

the Pants campaign was due to be launched on 28 September 2019 at the Life Centre;

(e)

the project was successful in being awarded a three year funding grant from the Samworth Foundation of just under £280,000. This money would go towards focusing on peer to peer abuse and restorative approaches;

(f)

work would be undertaken with the Safeguarding Board and Safer Plymouth to undertake a system wide harmful sexual behaviour audit. This would identify strengths and weaknesses and what could be done to address them;

(g)

a schools service called the Speak Out Stay Safe programme was run by the NSPCC and had reached 93% of schools in Plymouth.

(h)

the Together for Childhood project was using a child sexual abuse matrix which consisted of a public health approach and primary, secondary and tertiary prevention to target interventions in the right area;.

(i)

the project had a 10 year lifespan however it was hoped that work would continue after this timeframe, led by the community, to continue to generate ideas and work to prevent child abuse;

(j)

the youth parliament were due to join with young people from the Together for Childhood project to think about safe spaces; scoping for this piece of work was yet to be completed however it was hoped that with time, ideas would be discussed, tested and developed;

(k)

the NSPCC selected four sites nationally for the Together for Childhood project; Plymouth and Stoke-on-Trent were to focus on the prevention of child sexual abuse and Grimsby and Govan (Glasgow) were to focus on families facing multi adversity; learning was shared across the four sites however it was highlighted that Plymouth had significantly more  ...  view the full minutes text for item 29.

(a)

in 2016, a full scrutiny review was conducted into child exploitation in Plymouth; this review came up with a range of recommendations all of which had been completed;

(b)

it was highlighted that young people could be exploited in a number of ways, including County Lines (drug running), sexual exploitation, human trafficking and criminal exploitation;

(c)

the oversight for the work surrounding child exploitation in Plymouth was with the Local Safeguarding Board (PSCB) however this was to transfer to Local Safeguarding Arrangements soon; Safer Plymouth also had an oversight of a number of strands of the work, particularly regarding their role to address cyber-crime and fraud. In Plymouth, child exploitation work was overseen by the strategic Missing and  Child Exploitation (MACE) subgroup of the PSCB and was chaired by the NSPCC;

(d)

examples of work linked to child exploitation in Plymouth included: Operation Greywild (which targeted and disrupted large groups of young people who were becoming involved in criminal activity or ASB); Operation Dalitron (focused upon engaging fairground owners and operatives to prevent child exploitation); Barnardos have delivered ‘in plain site’ (targeting awareness raising in the night time economy);

(e)

MACE had developed a new screening tool for all professionals concerned about potential child exploitation; this would support better intelligence gathering about prevalence and types of child exploitation in Plymouth.

(f)

officers had been working with young people to discuss what cyber bullying and peer to peer bullying looked like to them; it was now for messages/ a campaign to be developed with young people to clearly explain what cyber bullying consisted of in order to encourage others to recognise the signs and receive help and support if required;

(g)

as part of the child exploitation scrutiny review in 2016 there was a call for evidence sent out to a variety of partners and organisations requesting for more information on this subject; the call for evidence had a poor response rate and members of the review were concerned what that implied to the importance of child exploitation at the time.  Since 2016, the local authority, partners and other organisations had worked well together on safeguarding courses, annual conferences, seminars and training sessions;

(h)

one of the focuses of the Together for Childhood project was to develop key messages and training, in conjunction with Barnardos, for Early Years Practitioners; work was also ongoing as to how this could link in with the early years curriculum. It was also highlighted that the council’s early years team had an action plan consisting of safeguarding, training programmes and audits for childminders/ nurserys etc;

(i)

the Safeguarding Board was the lead for child exploitation in the city; whilst there was a lot of information on their website regarding this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30.

(a)

the Ofsted Improvement plan set out the key priorities following Ofsted’s visit in November 2018; the improvement plan had been in place since February 2019 following receipt of the letter and detailed report from Ofsted. Six areas of improvement were identified; some linked to specific parts of the council’s processes including strategic meetings and how children’s plans were completed. It was considered that there was still work to be done however progress was being made;

(b)

the quality of written plans were being audited and month on month improvements had been made;

(c)

work around care leavers was considered to need more accelerated work; the service had been asked to developed a task and finish group with a clear work plan around all of the areas relevant to care experienced young people including education, training and employment, suitable accommodation, quality of preparation for independent living, quality of visiting and the quality of plans in place. This piece of work was about to commence;

(d)

the other three areas of improvement identified in the report (sufficiency of local placements/  supervision and management/ auditing of casework) were considered to be making progress and were on track. Ofsted were keen that the council had an effective system of self-evaluation – that had been accelerated significantly since November – there was now considered to be a good approach to audit good practice and where there was need for improvement;

(e)

there was an aim for the plan itself to be transformed into a plan on a page to aid good scrutiny.

(f)

there were no additional resources or budgets linked to the work of the Ofsted Improvement Plan;

(g)

it was recognised that the Ofsted Improvement Plan was a detailed document which served a better purpose as an internal document; it was hoped that the plan on a page would highlight would allow easier scrutiny and would detail lowlight and highlights of progress made;

(h)

Officers accepted and understood that Ofsted inspections and external scrutiny was important and part of the business as usual.

(a)

work surrounding raising standards, leadership and the peer mentoring programme were ongoing;

(b)

a well-regarded National Leader in Education from the Teaching Schools Council had visited several schools in Plymouth providing advice whilst helping to write bids for funding support;

(c)

subject hubs arranged via the Plymouth Teaching School Alliance for secondary schools had been adjusted as new alliances had been formed; they were sharing good practice and focusing upon different areas of improvement;

(d)

the Education Series events organised by the Department for Education had taken place and were designed for schools to hear from system leaders, Ofsted and national experts; they were well attended;

(e)

the local authority continued to develop the Aspiration strand of the Plymouth Challenge and a lot of work had been done regarding STEM activities over the summer;

(f)

GCSE results for the city were not yet known however it was acknowledged that results may not rise significantly this year with many school leaders new in role and several schools struggling to rise from a low baseline;

(g)

the coordination of the challenge was something that was being discussed between the Regional Schools Commissioner and the local authority; it was highlighted that the LA was unable to understand the impact of measures put in place as they weren’t provided with clear information on the long term picture.