Agenda and minutes

Venue: Warspite Room, Council House

Contact: Helen Rickman, Democratic Support Officer 

Media

Items
No. Item

1.

To Note the Appointment of the Chair and Vice Chair

The Committee will be asked to note the appointment of the Chair and Vice Chair for the forthcoming municipal year 2019/ 2020.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Committee noted the appointment of Councillor Mrs Johnson as Chair and Councillor Murphy as Vice Chair for the forthcoming municipal year 2019/ 2020. 

2.

Declarations of Interest

Councillors will be asked to make any declarations of interest in respect of items on the agenda.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The following declarations of interest were made by Members in accordance with the code of conduct:

 

Member

Subject

Reason

Interest

Mrs Nicky Williams

All items

She is a Parent Governor at High View Primary and sits on the Plymouth Teaching School Alliance.

Personal

Councillor Downie

All items

Employed by an academy school in Plymouth

Personal

Councillor Mrs Johnson

All items

She is a Governor at Compton Primary School.

Personal

 

 

 

3.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 106 KB

To confirm the minutes of the previous meeting held on 13 March 2019.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Members agreed the minutes of the meeting held on 13 March 2019 as an accurate record.

4.

Chair's Urgent Business

To receive reports on business which in the opinion of the Chair, should be brought forward for urgent consideration.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Under this item the Chair thanked Councillor Mrs Beer for her work in chairing the Education and Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel for the municipal year 2018/2019. Councillor Murphy as Vice Chair for the previous year was also thanked for her work and for returning to the committee as Vice Chair for 2019/2020.

5.

Terms of Reference pdf icon PDF 132 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Under this item the Chair highlighted to Members the creation of the new Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee and drew attention to the specific terms of reference for the Education and Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

 

Members noted the terms of reference document.

6.

Co-opted Representative Update (verbal)

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair, Councillor Mrs Johnson, advised Members that the Panel had been approached in the previous municipal year by an individual wanting to be co-opted onto the panel. The Chair advised that the following questions were posed with the expectation that responses would be discussed by Members at the meeting:

 

1.    Reasons why you are interested in the role;

2.    A brief description of your background;

3.    What skills and experience you could bring to the panel;

4.    What you hope to get out of the position, is successful;

 

The Chair advised Members that in response to the questions it was highlighted that the individual worked with the Plymouth Parent Carer Voice, had worked with supporting families over 10 years and had a variety of experience in this role, worked for PIAS for 5 years and aimed to bring a voice for parents, carers, young carers and those with SEND to the scrutiny panel.

 

Members discussed the following:

 

·          

how the Council’s website was used/ could be used to encourage co-opted representatives and attract a broad range of people;

 

·          

how the individual contacted the Council to seek co-option;

 

·          

the process by which Mrs Nicky Williams was co-opted onto the panel, via the governors network;

 

·          

that the panel’s terms of reference referred to two statutory parent governor representatives whereby the panel still had one current vacancy and two diocesan representatives whereby the panel had two current vacancies;

 

·          

the difficulties the panel may encounter in recruiting a further parent governor representative due to the requirement in statue of the representative to come from a local authority maintained school; it was questioned if this was still relevant due to the diverse education system;

 

·          

the benefits of having a report submitted to the next scheduled scrutiny meeting detailing the requirement for statutory co-opted representatives onto the Education scrutiny panel, the broad landscape of Plymouth’s schools and the implications of co-opting an individual onto the panel who, via her employment, was commissioned by the Council;

 

·          

the suggestion that the individual is invited along to the next scrutiny meeting in order to allow them to get a sense of the working of the committee and how to contribute.

 

Agreed that a report would be submitted to a future Education and Children’s Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel detailing the statutory responsibilities (where relevant) and clarifying the position regarding co-opted representatives on the panel.

7.

Overview of Children's Directorate - Presentation pdf icon PDF 557 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Neelam Bhardwaja (Service Director for Children, Young People and Families), Judith Harwood (Service Director for Education, Participation and Skills) and Jo Siney (Head of Special Educational Needs and Disability) provided an overview of the children’s directorate – a copy of the presentation was attached to the main agenda pack.

 

Neelam highlighted the following key points to Members:

 

(a)

the Children’s Directorate (formally the People Directorate) was created in April 2018 to reflect the wider scope of the Torbay Children’s Services contract and the integration of services;

 

(b)

both Education and social care, as part of the Children’s Directorate, had been changing since 2014. Progress included: creation of alternative delivery vehicles (CATERed, On Course South West); new partnership working with Torbay; roll out of mobile devices to enable more flexible working; a comprehensive accommodation review was being undertaken to establish how staff could be brought together over fewer buildings; further integration of the Early Help Offer and Targeted Support;

 

(c)

the Children’s Safeguarding Board devised a threshold document to clearly set out what the ‘need’ of an individual contacting the Council was, and to help point people in the right direction as to what support, and by whom, they could access;

 

(d)

best practice standards focused around the importance of making sure the child was central to everything undertaken by the Directorate; Officers aimed to provide a timely service in a targeted way and to work efficiently with partners in order to provide early help at a very early stage other than escalating things to acute and multi-agency level;

 

(e)

what children and young people expect from the Children’s Directorate: for officers to practice good communication, to work together with agencies and for the children themselves to not have to repeat their story to several individuals. In response the Council aimed to make a real difference to the lives of the young people, to not take too long in making changes, to work effectively with other agencies and to keep children safe;

 

(f)

quality assurance systems were built in to the work of the Children’s Directorate in order to highlight to officers how they were performing, what progress was made and if there were any gaps that needed to be addressed. Following the ILACS (Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services) Inspection in 2018, the OFSTED improvement plan had been finalised;

(g)

Business Plan Priorities for 2019/20 included: increased resilience for children, young people and families through the Early Help and Targeted Support framework; timely permanence plans for children in care; increased permanent foster care placements; increased resilience for care leavers;

 

(h)

the Early Help support was in the process of being restructured to ensure officers in this area would be working 7 days a week from 8am to 8pm instead of 5 days a week until 5pm;

 

(i)

partnership and innovation highlights included: Plymouth was chosen to take part in the NSPCC Together for Childhood (to prevent child sexual exploitation); Plymouth was 1 of 3 local authorities nationally involved  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

8.

Draft Work Programme pdf icon PDF 131 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Members discussed the draft work programme as set out in the agenda and agreed the allocation of dates to items as follows:

 

10 July 2019 meeting:

 

·       Elective Home Education (to include rise and reasons.  What are the drivers?)

·       Bullying and Attendance/code of conduct (to include consideration of cyber bulling)

·       Early Help Offer and plans for development (to include Commissioning and CAMHS developments)

·       Care Leavers and NEET – plan

·       Post 18 Education (to present the government review findings and provide a perspective on HEI in the City)

 

11 September 2019

 

·       Child Exploitation (to include a progress report on Together for Childhood)

·       Plymouth Challenge update (a progress report)

 

 

13 November 2019

 

·       Budget Monitoring (to include areas of pressure)

·       Young Carers

·       STEM refresh of plan (to provide a retrospective and looking forwards approach with the STEM plan.

 

8 January 2020

 

·       Report on PAUSE project

 

 

Transition to Adulthood – not yet allocated a date.

 

Under this item is was also agreed that the data book for children’s’ and pupils’ education performance for 2018 would be provided to Members.

9.

Tracking Resolutions pdf icon PDF 32 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Members noted the tracking resolutions document.