Agenda item

The Committee moved to consideration of the first item, the Quarter 1 Performance report. In the discussion, the following points were raised:

• Responses to the Committee’s outstanding queries from the Committee for the Quarter Four report, had been embedded within this report.
• The Committee were told that with regard to resilient children and families, the performance on social care indicators remained high.
• The Committee were told that with regards to the inequalities monitoring measure for children and young people of Black Caribbean heritage, the re-referral rate had been reduced to below the average for Q1, as a result of targeted work by officers.
• The Committee were told that there had been an overall reduction in the number of looked-after children, even when excluding the cohort of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, due to concerted efforts to solve issues within families and communities, and wraparound families in different and innovative ways.
• It was noted that Islington had always been above its quota with regard to unaccompanied asylum seeker children. A recent reassessment by the Home Office of the appropriate capacity for each hotel room, meant that there were new vacancies at hotels within the borough. Unaccompanied asylum-seeker children needed to be looked after until they could be age assessed. While this did have an impact on service delivery it was not to the extent that it had been in previous years, and not to the extent of the situation faced by other councils.
• In response to questions from the Committee, officers advised that youth engagement rates had increased to pre-Covid levels at the borough’s youth centres and hubs, but the number of contacts had not. While Islington had a more comprehensive offer than most local authorities, officers acknowledged the need to better promote it. Previously, data had suggested that children of the Kurdish, Turkish, Cypriot, Somali, and Bengali communities were not being adequately reached, but this had improved following concerted efforts to address this. Officers were focusing on going out into communities to engage with young people rather than expecting them to attend in-person. Prospects had been contracted to fulfil some outreach work, as did Jigsaw for localised issues in the Highbury area. Engagement work at the Rose Bowl Youth Centre, Andover & Elthorne estates were also highlighted.
• In response to questions from the Committee regarding the average length of care proceedings and young people moving more regularly as part of assessment process, officers advised that Covid had led to huge delays in the court process, and in-turn delaying permanency for the children affected to which legal officers had written to the High Court highlighting the effect it was having on the borough’s children. Officers had since been in receipt of a letter from the president of the Family Division, stating its intention to prioritise the cases of younger children.
• In response to questions from the Committee, officers advised that the report data was lagged, and data outcomes were routinely being filtering through the lens of children with poorer outcomes, but the report did capture live data, which showed that the live suspension rate was lower than it had been in the last five years. The significant improvement in current data was attributed to targeted intervention for cohorts that had been a cause for concern. Officers also noted that for the primary school data, there were two primary schools with really high suspension rates that somewhat skewed the data and who officers were actively working with to reduce that.
• In response to questions from the Committee concerning incorporating the feedback of young people into the youth offer, officers informed members that this was indeed important and when recently redesigning the youth offer in the north of the borough, officers went into schools and community spaces to find out what young people needed. Officers also advised that youth workers were encouraged to elicit feedback from young people, and the Executive Member also noted that the service always worked side by side with young people to ensure their voice was heard.
• The service’s current practice was that children’s voices were at the heart of every aspect of what it does.
• In response to the Committee’s request for any benchmarking on the borough’s electively home-educated children that could be compared with statistical neighbours, officers advised that this could be provided, and noted that since the last meeting of the Committee, officers had explored about flexi-learning. Islington had over 300 electively home-educated children, the equivalent of approximately £1.9million pounds of school funding. Flexi-learning would involve the child being educated on a part-time basis by the school, resulting in the restoration of funding for that child to the school, as well as increased oversight of that child, and providing the opportunities for them to socialise. Officers were looking to pilot this model with one of the borough’s schools.
• In response to members’ concerns that children’s voices were potentially being missed in the design of youth provision on housing estates and in parks, officers advised that they had been working closely with services across the council, including the Community Wealth Building directorate, to ensure that they were responsive to the voice of children and young people.
• Officers advised the Committee that the main reason for non-attendance was illness. To address this issue, officers bought together sixteen primary schools at Robert Blair Primary for a session to share best practice. In organising the session, officers broke from previous convention and bought together schools that had a different range of issues, rather than forming a group all facing the same issue, so that there could be greater learning and knowledge-sharing. The issue most highlighted from the session was parental mental health.
• Members were reminded that Islington had a parent carer forum, and the Parent Champions Network where support was available too. An evaluation report had been completed by London Metropolitan University and launched at City Hall, which captured the work of the Parent Champions Network.
• The Committee were advised that the offer of free childcare to two-year-olds, was a nationally targeted, nationally means-tested offer. Islington had spent over £5 million subsidising childcare above and beyond the criteria set by government. Some communities remained underrepresented in the offer, but targeted work was underway to address that.
• The Committee were informed that there was a daily, cross-agency meeting dedicated to ensuring better outcomes for survivors of domestic abuse. Members expressed an interest for officers to return to the Committee with further information on the Council’s strategy to protect young girls and women.
• Officers advised that there continued to be real difficulty with the availability of housing stock for the borough’s care-experienced young people, with approximately 96 currently ready to move into permanent accommodation. Fifty 1-bed properties were allocated to the service each year and there was also a shortage of temporary accommodation within the borough leading to high numbers being temporarily housed out of the borough. Funding options remained open to all of these young people, some of whom may also be pursuing further and higher education and these young people should be assured that officers would support them at each stage of the process.
• Members commended officers on the percentage of young people that had been diverted away from the criminal justice system.

ACTION:

Officers to provide the Committee with comparative data on electively home educated children that could be benchmarked with statistical neighbours.

ACTION:

Officers to provide the Committee with the evaluation report that had been completed by London Metropolitan University.