% Children Subject to a Child Protection Plan (CPP) Not Allocated to a Qualified Social Worker

Priority 3. Ensure a positive childhood
Contents

Indicators

% Children subject to a Child Protection Plan (CPP) not allocated to a qualified social worker

% CLA allocated to a named qualified social worker

% CLA who Participated in their Review

NI 51 - Effectiveness of child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) services

NI 54 - Services for disabled children

NI 59 - Percentage of initial assessments for children’s social care carried out within 7 working days of referral

NI 60 - Percentage of core assessments for children’s social care that were carried out within 35 working days of their commencement

NI 66 - Looked after children cases which were reviewed within required timescales

NI 69 - Children who have experienced bullying

NI 88 - Percentage of schools providing access to extended services

NI 109 - Number of Sure Start Children’s Centres

2. High Risk Budgets

Independent Placements (Social Care)

Support for Children with Disabilities

Social Care Staffing

Placement and Provider Services

3. Risk Register

CSF0055

CSF0056

Assessment of Current Performance
Service managers and Team managers have initiated a process of de-allocating lower priority work in order to make space for this very high priority work. The lower priority work will be managed in the duty system until much of it is transferred to the newly qualified social worker academy in September/October. An additional duty and assessment team and locality team are in the process of being set up to relieve pressures in the existing teams. The teams continue to experience an extraordinarily high level of referrals and are challenged to recruit permanent or temporary staff to undertake these duties. A wide ranging recruitment and retention programme is under way to supplement prioritisation work within the service.
Actions Required
An additional duty and assessment team and locality team are in the process of being set up to relieve pressures in the existing teams.
Risks: The major risk would be a lack of qualified staff.

Assessment of Current Performance
We are currently unable to allocate all CLA to a qualified SW due to shortages in some teams. This is across a number of different teams such as CLA, ISS, a disability team and one locality team. We are ensuring that all children have a suitably qualified worker such as a PA to progress plans etc.. Risks: The performance could be viewed by OfSTED as evidence of inadequate safeguarding practice. Young people have said that they are finding it difficult when they experience changes in their SW, this is likely to impact on placement stability
Actions Required
We are actively recruiting but there is a national problem in recruiting SWs.

Assessment of Current Performance
Rolling year has reduced slightly. Significant impact from PN7 reports relating to missing Asylum seeking young people.
Monthly figure remains at or above target
Risks: Stresses in staffing levels would be likely to impact on the work undertaken with children to make sure they understand their reviews and participate in a way that would suit them.
Actions Required
It is not possible to increase participation when reason for failing the indicator is the young person is missing..

Assessment of Current Performance
We are currently scoring 3 out of 4 for each of the 4 indicators. This means plans and protocols are in place, some services are in place, some are still to be developed so as to provide cover across the whole council area. We should reach 14 by quarter 4 of 2009/10 and 16 by quarter 1 of 2010/11. This will allow time for key developments to take effect such as Forest House Adolescent Unit, Community Psychology Service, Challenging Behaviour pathway and Development of Early Intervention Services.
Risks: The access to CAMHS for children with a learning disability target includes provision of and access to inpatient services. No services are currently commissioned and cases are responded to as
Assessment of Current Performance (continued)
they arise however this does significantly impact the budget as these are low volume but often very high cost admissions. The regional commissioning agenda may address this as there may be resources commissioned across the Eastern Region which will be cost effective however this still requires funding from the Emotional Wellbeing budget. This matter will be discussed in detail at the September Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Commissioning Group.
Actions Required
Indicator 1 - CAMHS for children with LDD: New investment from 1/4/08 (community Psychology) will ensure equitable access to services for children with a learning disability and a more consistent pathway for those withchallenging behaviour.
Indicator 2 - Age appropriate services for 16/17 year olds: The new model of service at Forest House will provide integrated services for C&YP aged 13 to their 18th birthday and the adolescent outreach team provide specific support to older adolescents.
Indicator 3 - 24/7 access to specialist MH assessments: The new Forest House service will open from Sept 2009 providing a dedicated 24/7 acute and therapeutic psychiatric service for C&YP.
Indicator 4 - Jointly commissioned Prevention and Early Intervention: A key focus of the 2009/12 strategy will be early intervention and prevention. Extra investment has been agreed from April 2009 to develop community based mental health workers (Early Intervention Service) to provide early support to C&YP, their families and carers and other non specialist workers. We will map services to support CAMHS and ensure pathways are clear and consistent and links between universal, targeted and specialist services are appropriate.
Assessment of Current Performance
N/A - the indicator has not been previously measured.
Actions Required
An explanatory leaflet was designed for parents as a precursor to a screening survey planned for late July to go to 750, 000 households. Following this in late September the main survey will ask parents / carers (estimated 60,000) their experiences of local disabled children's services.

Assessment of Current Performance
Performance has fallen slightly this month due to continued increase in rate of referrals and lack of availability of permanent and agency staff to fill vacancies. Risks: Failure to recruit suitable permanent staff.
Actions Required
Persistent high profile recruitment campaigns continue to try to attract permanent staff to the service in UK and overseas recruitment scheduled for Autumn 2009. Recruitment and retention incentives have been revised and a final report is due for circulation to CSF Board. Access to agency social workers remains problematic across the South East of England. LAs in London and surrounding areas report an average of with an average of 20% vacancies.
An Academy has been set up to support newly qualified staff who have been recruited to the service and this has attracted high numbers of good quality applicants. The academy should prove invaluable in retaining newly qualified staff in this challenging role and is expected to contribute to improved performance from April 2010 onwards.

Assessment of Current Performance
Performance is slightly improved this month due to additional temporary staffing resources provided to teams, but remains below target due to significantly increased demand.
Risks: Failure to recruit suitable staff.
Actions Required
Performance is being closely monitored and attempts to recruit permanent and agency social workers continues to be prioritised in order to maintain and improve performance.
Assessment of Current Performance
Rolling year figure has dropped as direct result of out of time reviews 3 and 6 months ago. 75% of these came from one area team who were experiencing significant difficulties, this has now improved. Although month on month figures remain at or above target it will take up to a further 6 months for consistent increase in rolling year figures
Risks: Shortage of experienced and qualified staff would have an impact on this indicator. We still need to concentrate on the quality of our reviews.
Actions Required
Continuing to work closely with CPS and the Area teams to ensure all children subject to S20/ICO and placement with Family and Friends are notified
Assessment of Current Performance
In the 2008 TellUs survey in response to the question 'how often, if at all, have you been bullied?' children and young people were asked to respond on both the frequency (never, once or more in the last year, once or more in the last four weeks, about once a week, most days and don't know) and whether this was 'at school' or 'somewhere else' (including the journey to and from school). In 2007 the OfSTED TellUs Survey reported how often children had experienced bullying in the past 4 weeks, therefore the data for this year is not comparable. In 2007 the authority's performance was better than the national average. In 2008 it was just below the national average.
Risks: The data used to measure this NI is taken from the annual Tell Us Survey. There are a number of risks associated with this: i) All Secondary schools are invited to take part. For primary and special schools this is by invitation only; this has implications for the sample size; ii) Lack of participation by schools in the survey has implications on the authority receiving a statistical robust data set; iii) Media and/or school events on anti-bullying issues at the time the survey is completed have the potential to significantly influence children and young people's response; iv) In light of the identified risks above the Health Related Behaviour Questionnaire is in place to ensure a larger sample size. The HRBQ contains the same Tell Us questions in order that comparisons can be made.
Actions Required
During the Summer term 09 a key priority has been the Hertfordshire Anti-Bullying Accreditation Programme. A training session has been delivered and schools have received one to one support visits. One school has successfully met all the criteria and achieved accreditation. A wider community group focusing on anti bullying has been established to support the dissemination on the new DCSF guidance.
Priorities for the Autumn term 09 include a series of Anti Bullying review visits with Secondary Schools. Children and young people's involvement through HABI is being remodelled to ensure wider participation. The pilot mediation service established within parentline plus and mediation Herts. will operate a county wide service from September 2009.
Assessment of Current Performance
77% of all school are now reaching full core offer status, the improvement in performance is partly due to the introduction of the moderation tool and a better return from the consortia in the data update. The extended school co-ordinators (Esco's) and district partnership team staff have received training to use the tool resulting in a clearer understanding and interpretation of the core offer. Most consortia have now employed additional extended school staff (parent support workers and children and young people's workers). These new workers specifically support the parent support and swift and easy access elements of the core offer.
Risks: The main risk continues to be the demand and sustainability of childcare provision and lack of childcare providers in some areas, and the challenges for special schools where transport and higher staffing requirements makes provision more costly.
Actions Required
The action plan from the Performance Clinic is now in place. There is a specific action plan for childcare which remains the most challenging area of the core offer. The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) have given advice and support and have facilitated a couple of events involving special schools and consortia partnership groups. More are planned for the autumn term. The target for September is 85% which should be achieved if the planned service delivery dates are adhered to.
Some individual school visits have taken place to offer support where data returns indicated issues in engagement with the Extended Schools (ES) agenda. 5 new Esco's have received a central induction session.
Assessment of Current Performance
A schedule for the designation of all Phase 3 Children's centres has been drawn up and agreed with all lead agencies and with Vicki Lant from Together for Children (the organisation authorised by DCSF to designate centres). This shows that all Phase 3 centres will be designated by 31st March 2010 to meet our targets. All Phase 3 lead agencies are focused on meeting the designation criteria and are being well prepared and supported by ICS 01-13 team andDistrict Partnership Teams.
On 17th July the first of the 32 Phase 3 centres was designated - so at 17th July 2009. Hertfordshire now has 51 designated centres.
Risks: Children's centres are unable to be designated due to lack of suitable premises or delays due to complicated partnership or lease arrangements
Actions Required
Extra support from Herts Property, School Planning and District Partnership Teams to identify and agree premises solutions. Partner organisations (Mace and Lambert Smith Hampton) provide timely support

CHILDREN SCHS & FAMILIES HIGH RISK BUDGETS

CHILDRENSCHOOLS AND FAMILIES HIGH RISK BUDGETS