To receive a report from the Corporate Director of Children’s Services.

The Corporate Director for Children’s Services gave a brief introduction stating that the slides looked at the highlights but also identified the areas where work was still needed.

The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care introduced the presentation and informed the Committee that the inspection had been a full three-week inspection which was of greater depth than previous inspections. The Council had welcomed the inspection as it was a way to ensure self-assessments had been accurate and the outcomes aligned with those of the self-assessment. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care spoke of the previous finding of inadequate, the issues that the Council had had, and how the Council had improved since 2019 in areas including leadership, first response service, and partnership work. The Committee were informed of the areas where the Council still required improvement and the measures the service was taking to address them. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care stated that the Council wanted to keep improving and did not want to be rated “requires improvement” but to be rated a “good” or “outstanding” across all services. The Committee were informed of a peer review the Council were conducting with Bolton Council in March to help to develop the service further.

Trafford had been very honest with the inspectors when the complex and additional needs service was inspected about the work that needed to be done for the service to be where they wanted to be. The service had just appointed a new manager at the time of the inspection and the Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care spoke to the Committee about issues the service faced, which were national problems, caused by a lack of qualified professional able to support children and young people in care with additional needs.

The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care informed the Committee that the service was reviewing the Council’s Corporate Parenting strategy and the way Board meetings were delivered. A key element of the revised approach was having the young people attend all of the meetings. Worked had also been done to review the care leaver offer and the results would be going to the next meeting of the Corporate Parenting Board for approval.

The service was looking to strengthen the Council’s approach to life story work. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care spoke to Committee Members about the importance of front-line managers in improving the service and the work to strengthen the management accountability within the service. very honest with the inspectors highlighted that the inspection had noted that practice was inconsistent across the service but assured the Committee that the service was looking to improve in a number of ways including through the introduction of a mentoring programme.

The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care had picked out some of the quotes from the inspection report to share with the Committee which included that Trafford had some of the best child centred plan recording they had seen. Councillor Maitland noted the quotes and emphasised how good they were. Councillor Maitland then asked about the life stories and later life letters and whether any examples could be shared with the Committee. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care responded to Councill Maitland and informed her that a presentation was going to Corporate Parenting Board on the review of the care leaver offer which could be shared with the Committee. The Corporate Director for Children’s Services stated that the Committee could be shown examples of elements of the life stories, but the work was a culmination of lots of pieces of work that were taken and stored by the Council and included reports, notes, photographs, and other little pieces that add to recollection. The service previously focused upon addressing gaps in the recording, but this work focused on the richness of the recording.

Councillor Proctor welcomed the outcome of the inspection and the improvements Ofsted had acknowledged, but also welcomed the services attitude and response to the inspection where they were clearly focused upon where things still needed to improve. Councillor Procter also welcome the planned work to improve the out of hours service. Councillor Procter then asked a series of questions about the inconsistent service for housing of 16 and 17-year-olds, lack of consistency in foster care, and lack of consistency in supervision of social workers. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services expressed her disappointed in herself about the service for 16 and 17-year-olds as a lot of work had been done in the area but it had not been delivered in time for the Ofsted inspection. The biggest issues identified by Ofsted related to policies and procedures that needed updating. The service had been very focused on sorting out placements but not looking into the deeper causes of the need for the provision of the young person.  A session was planned with staff from a range of stakeholders to look into addressing the deeper causes and the Council would soon publish the updated offer for young people in Trafford. The issues identified by Ofsted relating to social workers were mainly due to the inspector looking at the last 12 months when the Council had achieved a large amount of improvement within the last six months.

With regards to looking after staff, providing them with supervision, and all of the support that they needed The Corporate Director for Children’s service noted that Ofsted had said that staff they spoke to reported that they received support and supervision, but it had not been captured in the documentation. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care added that the service was focused upon providing consistency for children and foster carers. A report had recently been delivered to the Corporate Parenting Board about all the work that had gone into increasing stability within the workforce. The service faced multiple difficulties due to turnover of staff and work was ongoing to reduce turnover and managing transitions to minimise the impact when they did happen. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care felt that the service was improving and she spoke of the important role foster cares had on the Corporate Parenting Board and the Have Your Say Board in providing feedback and challenge and ensuring their views were heard.

Councillor Blackburn asked whether there was adequate time for reflection for social workers. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services responded that Trafford was undertaking a piece of work which looked at case supervision and differentiating it from reflective supervision, which linked to the quality assurance framework. This piece of work was to enable staff to take a well-rounded approach to their job and enable them to identify areas where they needed to improve. Work was also being done with managers to embed the approach within the service. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care spoke about the importance of having peer support available throughout the team and how the service was looking to build that approach into team structures, as the covid 19 pandemic had shown the importance and value of working together and building relationships when working together.

Councillor Blackburn asked whether a time frame for improvement of out of hours service could be given. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services responded that it was hoped that the work would be done in March and April 2023. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services was planning to meet with the Corporate Director of Adults to look at actions that could be taken from work they had done and would like to start that work in the summer. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services added that some parts of the work were already underway and that the aim was to ensure a smooth handover from day workers to out of hours workers.

Councillor Blackburn asked how the service was performing around young people in custody. The Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care informed the Committee that the service had had challenges around visiting during covid and there were currently a number of vacancies within the after-care service. Once those vacancies were filled the workload would reduce and help to lead to improvements within the service. They were vulnerable young people and the service was looking at improving the support and planning to enable them to fit into society following their time spent in custody.

The Executive Member for Children’s Services noted the excellent work of the Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care and the Corporate Director of Childrens Services. The Executive Member noted the work of the Committee in scrutinising and supporting the service in the journey between the inadequate and the latest review. The Committee were assured that the Council’s improvement journey would continue moving forward. The Executive Member pulled out the Minister’s comments in the letter about the change in culture in Trafford to one that was focused upon the child. The Executive Member spoke to the Committee about how the voice of the child was key in all that the council did which could be seen in the way services had changed in the last year.

The Chair echoed the thanks of the Executive Member for Children’s Services for the work of the Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care and the Corporate Director of Childrens Services on behalf of the Committee for all their working in improving Trafford’s Children’s services.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the report be noted.

2)    That the Director of Early Help and Children's Social Care and the Corporate Director of Childrens Services be thanked for all of their work on improving Children’s Services in Trafford by the Committee and the Executive Member for Children’s Services.