Agenda and minutes

Gaynor Mullins; Sara Barnes; Alison Naismith;

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 9^th September, 2014.

Item 4.   The Domestic Abuse strategy has now been published.

Item 6.  Pupil Premium Strategy: Alan Beswick updated that Andrea Cox has met colleagues and Virtual School will be carrying out a workshop with relevant stakeholders.  Andrea Cox has also attended child poverty strategy meetings and a useful dialogue has taken place.

i) 2^nd Quarter 2014/15 Stockport Children’s Trust Performance Report

2^nd Quarter 2014/15 Stockport Children's Trust Performance Report

Early years

Viki Packman (VP) summarised key highlights:

Breast Feeding maintenance rate is one of the highest recorded; VP commended colleagues across services for their consistent improvements and consolidation of joint working.

The number of 2 year olds benefiting from the 2 year old offer is the highest in NW and is in the top 5 in the country.

Pre-school provision continues to improve across both the maintained and PVI sectors -

outcomes for children are continually improving.  Phil Beswick (PB) mentioned that some small 2 year old settings are classed as requiring improvement (RI) which VP and PB’s teams will continue to work on. 

Early Help

Early help: continues to have an increase in CAF completion and training for colleagues in Ecaf. Work continues on quality assurance across agencies and increased holistic treatment around the child.  Referrals to CSC have increased over the year but in terms of last quarter demonstrate a decrease. 

Youth Offending Service:  continues to work effectively in preventing first time entrants – 3^rd in country.

Parenting: there has been a reduction in unplanned conceptions. 

VP would like to celebrate colleagues at Moathouse who received the gold award for outstanding team of the year in the National Pearson Teaching awards. Cllr Alexander and PB visited Moathouse and were extremely impressed by the achievements of the team and the young mothers there.

Emotional and physical health:

Duncan Weldrake (DW) summarised report. 

Children Looked After: the new statutory guidance on promoting health and welfare has been published in draft and there is little change from previous guidance documents.

School nursing development programme: School Nurses will come over the Local Authority in October, 2015.  The team are still working on the details of the move, and will update a future board. 

The Care Quality Commission has inspected the safeguarding aspects of Clinical Commissioning Group and immediate feedback is largely positive, but the report has not yet been received.  Children’s Trust to be updated at the next board meeting; the CQC report to come to the next LSCB.

David Mellor commented on the absence of intervention for 14-16 year olds for obesity apart from a referral to Stepping Hill.  DW stated that this is a resource issue, although work could be carried out through schools, but this could target minorities and has problems associated with it.

Education and Skills:

Phil Beswick updated the board.

CYP senior team met with Ofsted’s regional team yesterday morning (8^th December, 2014) Stockport schools are doing well, although some schools have recently gone into a category and we are working to help those schools.  HMI inspection report is due out tomorrow (10^th December 2014).

Attendance rates have improved. The new integrated children’s service will be looking at this as part of its development and will report back to the Education Partnership Board.                                                                          

Staying safe:

David Mellor (DM) stated that the LSCB welcomes the work of the recently appointed child accident prevention co-ordinator.

Serious Case Review: lessons learnt from Operation Windermere. 

DM summarised questions posed from the report to SMBC. There are 9 questions in all and the LSCB’s newly revised CSE sub-group is addressing these questions and working on the actions arising from them.

Child poverty:

Viki Packman summarised the report. 

The LA should be able to report back on the universal credit at the next meeting.    Foodbanks have extended their coverage in Stockport. All Stockport foodbanks operate by referrals, are monitored, and you can only go a certain amount of times, and there is definitely an increased demand. A considerable amount of the families using foodbanks are working families. Worklessness is decreasing, but wages are not increasing. There are more children living in poverty in working families in Stockport than receiving benefits.  The Social Fund will not be funded after this year so this cost will be borne by the LAs  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The annual report on the effectiveness of child safeguarding and the promotion of the welfare of children in Stockport. 

David Mellor updated the board.

TheLSCB is legally required to publish a yearly report.  DM summarised the report and asked if there were any questions.  

PB commented that free school meals numbers did not seem to be correct. DM will adjust as soon as the correct information is received. PB is looking at a possible ‘opt out’ option for free school meals recipients with the revenue and benefits team.  PB to update the board once a way forward has been agreed.

ACTION: PB to update board on progress of ‘opt out’ option at a future meeting.

Update on the Stockport submission to the Innovation Fund. 

CML update the board:

Children’s Social Care are working to secure some additional funding to support work on further integration in four localities linking CSC with ICS to progress earlier intervention,  and a stronger team around a community: increasing the impact of CSC on whole families.  The panel sat last week and the team received feedback requiring expansion of 3 sections. Work is being carried out on to be returned to the panel tomorrow (10^th December). CSC will go forward with the synchronisation of services, but the funding would help considerably. 

ACTION: CTB to be updated at next meeting.

DVD presentation.

CTB watched the video and then there was a roundtable discussion about the use of alcohol and educating the public about it including the following:

Public Health can carry out demonstrations/workshops within schools.

Kingsway are creating a tab online which parents can go into at home.

VP picked up alcopops: for some reason, these are not seen to be ‘alcoholic’ in the way that other spirits are.  Mosaic offer workshops for parents to all schools and it often comes up that parents give alcopops to children to take to parties. 

Stockport is an outlier on all indicators to do with alcohol, so work needs to be continuously highlighting the issues. 

Could DS draw up an evidence informed policy for the Children’s Trust Board (CTB) and would the CTB be interested in taking a lead on it alongside Youth Partnership and Public Health.

CTB updated about the ‘How U getting Home?’ campaign set up by Stockport Youth Partnership (SYP) after the death of Adam Pickup on his way home from a night out in Manchester.  The launch is on the 16^th December, 2014 at Aquinas College.  The LA to look at an app with SYP and see if we can support that: discuss with SYP to see if they could design an app, and how schools could access this.            

John Berry reminded the board that Manchester street angels were also set up after Adam’s death.

ACTION: DS to forward Healthy Stockport website link to Kingsway. DS to draw up the alcohol policy and to progress the app with SYP.

Update on reports going to Executive for decision re: Investing in Stockport.  Papers to follow.

The Council’s budget making process is going to Executive next week on 16^th December, 2014 (see link: 16.12.14 Executive )

 If you have any questions, please get in touch People Senior Management team, or go direct to Cllrs Alexander and Meikle.