Minutes for Children & Young People Scrutiny Commission meeting, Jun 10 2009, 7.00PM official page

Apologies received from Cllr Bell, Cllr Unluer, Cllr Kelly, Cllr Taylor, Ralf Bergman, Salah Ahmeed. Cllr Landu (Lateness)

The Chair suggested that as there are two sets of minutes to approve, this will be discussed in item 10.

There were no none

The Chair suggested that as there are two sets of minutes to approve, this will be discussed in item 10.

There were no updates from other Overview and Scrutiny Commissions

The Chair welcomed Yvonne Servante and Val Wesolowicz from the Learning Trust, and invited them to make their comments. 

Yvonne Servante further elaborated on updates from the Learning Trust.  The officer spoke about the issue of teaching parental skills and the work of the Qualification Curriculum Authority (QCA). The QCA is the regulatory body for public examinations and publicly funded qualifications. It is currently consulting on statutory personal, social and health education (PSHE). The Learning Trust will be involved in this consultation process, in terms of offering advice on what future PSHE lesson should include, parenting skills may be one of the topics.  Schools have a requirement to follow the national curriculum, and teaching parental skills at present is not inclusive.

Questions and Answers

The Chair asked the officers to clarify their written response to recommendation 3. The Learning Trust stated that they will provide guidelines and briefing documents for schools, but then state in their update that ‘this’ lies outside the national curriculum framework.

Yvonne Servante explained that the Learning Trust initially thought it would be beneficial to provide guidelines for schools to recommend teaching ‘parenting skills’ to young people. However schools are required to follow the National Curriculum and ‘parenting skills was outside of this remit.

Members requested further clarification on the QCA consultation process.  

The officer explained that it is a national consultation. Its target group are  young people and children in schools, but confirmed that it is open to anybody wishing to respond.  It should be concluded in the next few months, at which point the Learning Trust can update the Commission on the outcome. 

Cllr Icoz raised her concern that the teaching of parenting skills / sex, to young people may increase their desire to get into sexual relationships at an earlier age. 

The officer agreed that this issue could be a problem, but reassured the committee that the content of the sex and relationship education is balanced in order to address this issue.

Cllr Icoz further stated that the curriculum should emphasis the important of a stable healthy relationship within to raise a family. 

The Chair explained that some young people have grown up in difficult family circumstances and so do not have knowledge or examples of good parenting skills around them.  Hence, teaching ‘parenting skills’ will equip young people to raise a child effectively when the time comes.

The officer commented that schools do try to deal with this matter sensitively, and that it is the responsibility of the school’s governing body to make sure that subjects are being taught effectively. 

Cllr Siddiqui made reference to the issue of sexual awareness among very young children and raised his concern about the content of PHSE education. 

The officer emphasised that it is important and the responsibility of the various school governing bodies to ensure that delivery of PSHE education is consistent with the ethos of the school and its governing body.

Alan Wood explained that schools are keen to listen to the views of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Alan Wood explained that the world of safeguarding has been in the headlines for the best part of 2 years. It is not just baby Peter but other issues such as the murder of two children by their mother in Hackney that has kept this issue alive. So the highlighting of this problem has meant that people are thinking and reviewing how to improve services in order to keep children safe. 

Hackney has been looking at ways in which social workers engage with families, an approach called reclaiming social work. This approach focuses on ensuring that all partners fully understand what has taken place within the family, it also encourages all agencies involved to be much more challenging in the analysis of the information they have received.

That programme has involved creating a whole new service which is working to safeguard children. To further increase the new systems effectiveness,  The London School of Economics has been commissioned to review the programme, and after nine months we are encouraged that their findings indicates a high quality of judgement being shown in how case work are dealt with. 

We have also asked all agencies in Hackney including each school to review the arrangements they have in place to protect children, and responses from schools and partners have been positive, as everyone recognise how imperative this is. 

CYP have produced a report which explains how Hackney is working to ensure that systems in place are effective in safeguarding children.  No Director can give an assurance that children are not going to be harmed, but what we can do is insist that systems and agencies are working effectively and are sharing information with each other to ensure that children are protected. 

Sophie Humphreys further explained that there have been in the last year a lot of changes in safeguarding rules, and there is evidence of strong commitment from staff to uphold this.  What we have done in Hackney successfully, is to secured contribution from all agencies, which has given us a good budget to further our work.  We have currently carried out a full audit of each agency to update us on any issue they may have, and of support they may need.

The Chair asked the officers to submit a written report to the commission, and for it to include information on what all the different partners are doing.

The Chair asked two questions: firstly how Hackney measure up against the recommendation from the Haringey Joint Area Review. Secondly to what extant has the council taken a more risk adverse approach since the Haringey case and how are staff being supported in a more pressurised environment.

Alan Wood explained that the response to this will be included in the forthcoming report to the commission. It compares Hackney’s progress against each of the 39 recommendations, and Hackney is working hard to reach all its targets.

With regards to the second question, he stated that he does not think Hackney is taking a more risk  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Verbal update from the Director of Children and Young People’s Service.

The Chair welcomed Sarah Gibbs and Sarah Wilson to the commission. 

The Chair asked members to comment on the final draft of the CAMHS report.

Recommendation 7: Page 36

“The Commission supports the efforts of ELFT in working to influence national training programmes with a view to persuading young people…”

Cllr Plouviez stated that it is not only young people that can benefit from the training programmes, and asked whether this section  can be changed or further expanded

The officer explained that the emphasis in this section was on people who leave school and going into a profession, hence the reference to young people. The officer however agreed to expand on this further. 

Cllr Icoz explained that this recommendation was suggested because the Commission felt there were a lot of young people from minority groups who have a degree in psychology and would benefit from working in this area. 

The officers commented that the report suggested that the workforce in Hackney does not reflect the community’s ethnic mix, which is not correct.  This was a quote from one part of the organisation and does not reflect the whole group’s view. The report does not clarify the source of its information. 

Cllr Plouviez expressed her concern with the implication of paragraph 3.  She felt that a lot of the statements made were general and could be deemed offensive. She asked that it be reviewed.

Under Substance Misuse, Cllr Khan suggested that lessons should include teaching from someone with experience of substance misuse in order to further highlight the dangers; he requested that this be added as a recommendation.  

The officer clarified that the drug action team work with PCT and the Local Authority and is responsible for commissioning drug training. It is not a CAMHS service but part of a universal service for children and young people. 

Members felt that the draft report should be reviewed again, in order to rectify the numerous typos and concerns raised. 

The Chair asked Cllr Krishna if she would like to update the commission on the Children’s Trust Board. 

Cllr Krishna explained that all partner agencies were informed of the proposal of nominating non-executive members from each organisation. Our proposal was that there should be executives from each of the agencies and that the membership level should be the same as other boards, there was confusion about the two parallel systems. 

It emerged that VCSs want to have greater representation  and a lot of questions have been asked about principles of how we were getting our executive elected, as our proposal have been just to have an elected member from each of the agencies.

The position at the moment is that in order to meet the need of the VCSs we going to ask the board to ask the Chair and Chief executive of Learning Trust to nominate a head teacher and ask PCT to nominate general practitioners from their board.  It was accepted that a GP had the local knowledge and access to the community and so could confidently be the voice of the community. There should be in place a board which can form a robust challenge to senior officers.  The board will be nominated by early July. The terms of reference and planned activities won’t be agreed until the first meeting of the CTB in August. 

Lisa Neidich asked why a head teacher and not a Governor is selected, if what is needed is a volunteer?

Cllr Krishna explained that it is a statutory requirement that there should be a head teacher on board.

The Chair requested that the Children’s Trust Board provide the Commission with a progress update at the next meeting in July.

Minutes

The minutes of the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Commission meeting on 18^th March 09 and 6^th April 09 were agreed as true and accurate record.

Cllr Khan stated that his apologies for previous meetings were not acknowledged and requested that the record be amended.