a)     

There were six red risks which would increase to seven and the new risk concerned CaterEd, which fell within the remit of Children’s Services. There had been increasing costs due to cost of living issues, inflation, energy costs and increased costs to food pricing. There were concerns of its long term sustainability;

b)     

There was a red risk scored at 20 for ‘failure to meet statutory duties due to growing volume and complexity of demand for Children’s Social Care services’. There was however additional mitigation provided such as enhanced oversight of the improvement plan and service redesign which was underway;

c)     

Further risks included:

·         Sustainability of the Schools Improvement Partnership which would be removed from the risk register but monitored;

·         and failure to deliver required improvements following an Ofsted inspection.

d)     

The council would seek to recruit to an Interim Director of Children’s services following the resignation of Sharon Muldoon (Director of Children’s Services) before looking to recruit to the permanent Director of Children’s Services position. The service also had an interim Service Director for Children, young people and families but below that there was a professional, dedicated and passionate workforce who wanted improvement to happen;

e)     

The Department for Education had been happy with the improvement plan and the improvement work that was underway;

f)      

Tracey Lee (Chief Executive) was chairing the Children’s Services Transition Board on a fortnightly basis in which key people within the service were meeting to discuss progress and ensure the improvement journey was continuing in the same trajectory;

g)     

74% of looked after children and young people would be within 20 miles of the city, those that are outside of the city would have reason to be there either because they were in a specialist provision or because they had extended family elsewhere. There had been placement sufficiency difficulties for 16/17 year olds which had meant that some young people were living outside of the city;

h)     

The service had implemented a new edge of care offering for the city which was seeing a reduction in the number of 15/16 year olds coming into care;

i)      

The reduction in the number of children on Child Protection (CP) plans had followed a review of the cohort in ensuring that there was no drift or delay for those families. The number of children on CP plans had stabilised since the reports release and the service would continue to monitor the data in relation to families on repeat CP plans;

j)      

Plymouth had launched its attendance strategy which would dovetail with the national strategy and would look to get children back into school which COVID seemed to have affected. Attendance workers from the Council would start working in localities and would work with children/young people that had the most severe absence (attendance below 50%);

k)     

The council was issuing fines for children that were taken on holidays during school term time.