Decision details

Geoff Little, Chief Executive of Bury Council, provided an update on the progress of the Children’s Services Improvement Programme. Members noted that good progress was being made on developing the improvement plan which was due to be submitted by 31 March. The detail of this plan was currently being drafted and would be considered by the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee at its meeting next week.

The plan was aligned to seven principles – listening to children and young people, supporting children to stay within their families when it’s safe to do so, taking a whole family approach, building positive relationships, early intervention, taking a place-based approach, and striving to do ‘with’ children and families not ‘to’ them. The plan would also have three priorities to improve the quality of practice (improving how we identify and support children and families in need of help and protection, more purposeful and timely care planning, and better support for care leavers) and four underpinning conditions to support these: better partnership governance, more stable and effective management, skilled and experienced workforce, and improvement of performance management and quality assurance metrics.

With regards to the three areas identified for immediate action, it was noted that the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) had introduced monthly tracking and monitoring of cases feeding into performance monitoring meetings; a number of permanent management positions had been made to secure stability in the team and improve decision making; and the MASH steering group was working well and had started to refresh all policies.

With regards to quality assurance, independent auditors had been commissioned to undertake a baseline assessment of quality activity which would help us ensure quality assurance and auditing was focussed on issues raised by Ofsted. In addition, more moderation was being added into the process to lead to improvements in practice and give an evidence base for the next inspection.

With regards to workforce, management of initial response and safeguarding teams had been strengthened. Caseloads had reduced but this needed to go further. Rolling recruitment was being implemented to prevent vacancies, a recruitment taskforce was in place, and temporary support was being brought in to reduce caseloads in the immediate term.

Councillor O’Brien advised that he and Councillor Tariq had been for a walkaround with the teams to speak with them directly about the improvements and remaining challenges and advised that this had been enormously helpful in understanding he situation beyond the written reports. This experience was also being offered out to Members of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Tariq advised the council was reaching out directly to schools and headteachers to ask for their views and to improve the relationship with the Council. He also advised that Social Work Week was coming up and advised Members to look out for communications around that.

Decision:

Cabinet noted the update.

Reasons for the decision:

This update was provided in response to a resolution of Council at the meeting held on 19 January 2022.

Other options considered and rejected:

N/A