5d
BLACKPOOL COUNCIL
EXECUTIVE MEMBER REPORT TO THE COUNCIL
Report of the Cabinet Member for: /Children’s Services
at the Council meeting held on: / 25th November 2009This report updates the Council on actions within my portfolio that have delivered towards the Goals and Objectives of the Council’s Corporate Plan that will make Blackpool.
“A great place to visit, an even better place to live”.
Goal 1: Improve Blackpool’s Economic Prosperity – creating local jobs and opportunities for local people
Objective 3: Promote Enterprise
The Work Focus Services Pilot, now re named ‘Works 4 Us’, went live in January 2009 with three Jobcentre Plus Personal Adviser’s based in each of the three Sure Starts. The Pilot focuses on parents within the three Sure Start areas with a child under the age of 5 years. Currently there are 190 individuals on the Pilot, 94 of which are lone parents working with the Jobcentre Plus advisers to become work ready. There are 54 individuals receiving training through the Children’s Centre Senior Outreach Worker for Worklessness, they will hopefully access the Pilot once their confidence has grown. Through the Family Commissioning Budget, seven families have accessed funding to enable them to gain further qualifications via training courses and/or college.
The Children’s Services Directorate and Barnardo’s have jointly funded a ‘Worklessness Officer’ post. The aim of the post is to support those over 16 on the Think Family/ Family Intervention Project back into employment and be work ready. The worker is using a number of routes to help and support this process by engaging the service users back into education, training or volunteering and removing the barriers in order for them to achieve this. Since taking up post at the end of July to date there are 22 open cases. Processes
and procedures are in place to track outcomes, which are:
1 – Into employment
3 – Into Education
3 – Into training
1 – Into Volunteering
Barnardo’s have been successful in applying for funds to run courses in First Aid, Food Hygiene and work ready skills for people aged 19 years and over. The intension is to offer places to the family intervention service users to aid progression. This is providing additional capacity for the hard to reach families and is complimenting the other work focused projects within the town.
Blackpool Young People Services has led a partnership approach to developing a Pledge to provide employment and training opportunities for Care Leavers. The next step is to lead the Local Authority response to the national Care2work initiative to support more Care Leavers into work.
Following a recent meeting between the Executive Director and other senior officers from the Children Service's directorate, with the Department for Children Schools and Families, we have good reason to believe that we are still very much on track towards the establishment of our proposed new, small 14-19 Studio School. This has the potential not only to make a significant contribution to the diversity of the 14-19 offer for Blackpool young people, but also to act as the local hub for enterprise education and to provide an important catalyst for further local regeneration. Currently, we are working towards the completion of the formal Expression of Interest stage by the end of February 2010, with some places available for students as early as September 2011.
Goal 2: Develop a Safe, Clean and Pleasant Place to Live, Work and Visit
Objective 5: Safeguarding our children
On the 26th October a team of inspectors from OFSTED came into the authority to undertake a ten day inspection of Children’s Services, focusing upon Safeguarding and Services to Looked After Children. Draft feedback from the inspection was received on 16th November 2009 and the Authority had five working days to check the factual accuracy of the report. The final report will be released on 27th November 2009 and published on 4th December 2009.
The Youth Offending Service was inspected by HMI Probation in the current, new phase of inspection over the course of a week in July 2009. The 'core case inspection' focused on a sample of youth offending service users, assessing the quality of the practice undertaken with them. Inspectors examined a representative sample of youth offending cases from the area, judging how often the Public Protection and the Safeguarding aspects of the work were done to a sufficiently high level of quality.
Their findings will feed into the wider annual Comprehensive Area Assessment process. A more detailed analysis of their findings is provided in a full report, which was published on 23rd September and can be found at http://www.justice.gov.uk/inspectorates/hmi-probation/docs/Blackpool_CCI_Report-rps.pdf.
Overall, the Chief Inspector concluded that this is an encouraging set of findings for Blackpool, especially given that a re-inspection took place in 2008 because of the poor performance of the Youth Offending Team on the first inspection. In his foreword to the draft report, he commented that these findings reflect the progress made in the past 12 months. He acknowledged that the Youth Offending Team is now fully staffed and that inspectors found the practitioners and managers to be positive and committed to their work. They saw “clear evidence of improved practice over recent months and consider that Blackpool Youth Offending Team has good prospects for the future.”
An action plan addressing areas for improvement has been submitted to HMI Probation within one month of publication of the final report.
The CATALYST team is a joint development between Targeted Services, Police and Health, to provide an integrated response to families experiencing Domestic Violence.
The team became operational on 14th July 2009 and responds to direct referrals via police incident reports. A screening process is used based upon information held on Police and Targeted Services data bases, this screening determines service eligibility and subsequent response into four broad categories:
1) Information recorded on police system only.
2) Information noted but no further action deemed appropriate.
3) Assessment required by Social Worker as Children potentially in need in some cases a joint visit may be undertaken with a police officer – the CATALYST team or a community officer.
4) Joint assessment by Police and Social Worker deemed appropriate. This will be undertaken by a Detective Constable or Detective Sergeant on the CATALYST team.
Between 14th July and 28th September, 568 contacts were recorded on the Targeted Services system, in addition the team recorded a further 200 police incident reports. Of the 568 contacts, 154 led to referrals and 139 Initial Assessments were started by social work staff. Of the cases that remain open after Initial Assessment, the outcomes have either been a more detailed assessment (Core Assessment) or the development of a Children and Young People Plan. At the end of September only one case had proceeded to Child Protection Conference.
The team is working pro-actively with schools and partners to further enhance support to schools. Bloomfield Ward has been identified as one in which incidents of Domestic Abuse is particularly high and as the team develops consideration is being given as to how best to support victims through a community activity.
The Leaving Care Civic Awards ceremony took place on the evening of 3rd November 2009 at the Imperial Hotel and was well attended both by young people and their carers.
Goal 3: Improve Skill Levels and Educational Achievement
Objective 1: Improve educational achievement and raise the aspirations of all Blackpool’s children and young people
During 2009 Blackpool has seen pupils achieve the best GCSE results ever. The percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) including English and Mathematics (sometimes referred to as the gold standard) has risen to 39.1%, a significant increase of nearly 5 percentage points from 2008 figures.
All four of Blackpool’s National Challenge schools have shown significant improvement from 2008 to 2009, with an average rise of 12 percentage points. Three of the four schools now show attainment levels above the 30% threshold, although one other school has dropped below the threshold.
The percentage of Blackpool pupils achieving 5 or more A*-C GCSEs (or equivalent) in 2009 was 65.4%. This represents a significant increase of 11.9 percentage points from 2008 and an increase of 15.9 percentage points from 2007 figures.
We have now narrowed the gap between local and national performance in 5A*-C GCSE’s in 2009. Overall, all of Blackpool’s Secondary schools have shown improvement in their results from 2008 to 2009. Five of our eight schools have shown an improvement of over 10 percentage points, with one school improving by 24 percentage points. The average improvement in these schools was 12.3 percentage points, with three schools now performing above the national average for 2009.
Objective 3: Ensure the whole population has at least basic literacy and numeracy skills
Blackpool’s schools all have literacy and numeracy at the core of the curriculum and have aspirational targets to ensure continual progress in literacy and numeracy. At the end of primary school education our year 6 pupils are now achieving in line with national averages, and secondary schools all have improvement plans to ensure that the numbers of young people leaving secondary school with 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths increases. By 2011 we expect to equal national performance.
Objective 4: Foster a workforce with the vocational skills to meet the needs of Blackpool’s economy
A national strategy for Information Advice and Guidance is to be launched shortly which will support Blackpool’s 14-19 strategy for learners. The Department for Children Schools and Families is developing statutory guidance which will also be published shortly for consultation.
A renewed young people not in education employment or training (NEET) national strategy is likely to be published in November in response to the current economic challenges. Blackpool was visited by Ofsted Inspectors earlier this year to identify good practice which will inform the new strategy. Blackpool is currently holding its own in performance against the not in education employment or training target (reducing the proportion of 16-18year olds not in education, employment or training). This is largely due to more young people entering education and training that is off-setting the reduction in the number of young people entering work.
The overview business case has been submitted to the Big Lottery for Blackpool’s My Place Youth Hub Centre, Southpoint. Feedback is now awaited and it is anticipated that full approval for funding to be released will be received by February 2010.
Objective 5: Improve the provision of quality learning spaces contributing to the wider regeneration of Blackpool
The Building Schools for the Future programme has progressed into competitive dialogue with the approval of two high quality consortia. Working with Partnerships for Schools we have reduced the 75 week negotiation process down to 62 weeks.
Goal 4: Improve the Health and Well-being of the Population
Objective 2: Encourage healthy lifestyles and emotional wellbeing for the whole population
In 2008, Blackpool’s Child Health Division in conjunction with NHS Blackpool were successful in a pathfinder bid to improve Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services and provide swift and easy access to Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services for children and young people. The service was jointly commissioned, culminating in an integrated mental health team targeting clusters of schools incorporating children and young people aged 5-16 years. Following the commencement of Phase 1 in September 2008, we are pleased to confirm that we are looking to roll out Phase 2 of the above project November 2009. A further nine schools will receive support from a new team consisting of Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services workers, Social worker and Family Support Workers as part of this service development.
A three year strategy for maternity services was developed earlier this year, which aimed to address the most significant gaps in the current service provision. One of the gaps identified was Breastfeeding, which is an important issue for Blackpool and to help increase the number of mothers who choose to breastfeed. Three part- time health trainer posts have been commissioned on a two-year contract. These posts will provide breastfeeding advice and support to mothers in the community and will be in situ in Sure Start and Children’s Centres.
In addition, a named midwife was commissioned to improve support, raise awareness of domestic abuse and safeguarding issues and improve communication, training and audit for Safeguarding Children/ Domestic Violence
The Consultant Midwife post has been commissioned for a further year to continue work on encouraging normal delivery and aiming towards a midwife led unit.
Mental Health training has been commissioned so that all midwifery staff will have an opportunity to receive training in this very relevant area and a part- time Teenage Pregnancy Midwife has been commissioned to ensure our young expectant mothers receive all appropriate support.
The Maternity Services Liaison Committee (MSLC) is a meeting, which combines health professionals, commissioners and service users and is developing into an excellent tool for shaping the maternity services.
You’re Welcome is a quality mark that providers need to achieve in order to demonstrate that they are young people friendly. It is hoped that if a service displays this ‘kite mark’ young people will know that this service provider has been through a thorough scrutiny by commissioners, a panel consisting of professionals, young people providing the internal verification and external verifiers.