Minutes for Children & Young People Scrutiny Commission meeting, Sep 2 2009, 7.00PM official page

Cllr Icoz, Cllr Unluer, Cllr Siddiqui, Cllr Kelly, Cllr Akhoon, Saleh Ahmed, Ralph Bergmann, and Mary Ludlow Cllr Faizullah Khan (late apology)

There were no urgent business and the order is as laid out

Cllr Taylor declared that he is a member of the Children’s Trust Board.

The minutes of July 6^th were AGREED as an accurate account subject to the following changes:

1. The spelling of Mr Seals should be changed to Mr  Sills
2. 5.2, should be changed to the following

Cllr Taylor commended the DCS for its work and foresight on the ‘Reclaiming Social Work’ approach but raised concern that measuring the quality of meetings does not focus on the quality of safeguarding procedures.

There were no update

The Chair welcomed Cllr Krishna and invited her to provide  the update to the Commission.

Cllr Krishna stated that the first meeting of the Children’s Trust Board will be taking place on September 9^th.  . She also informed the commission that Cllr Taylor has been appointed as a member of the Trust Board.

Cllr Krishna stated that the Chair of the CYP Commission had enquired out of session why the process of forming the new Trust Board had taken long, and she felt that it was important to emphasis to the Commission that the Children Trust arrangement that is currently in place will continue, and that this process is a review of how the Trust Board operates. Cllr Krishna commented that the reason the process has taken some time is because there has been a lot of debate on finding non executive members. It was formally decided that it should be a Headteacher from the Learning Trust and a GP from the PCT, but both of the organisations have pushed back on that, on the grounds that these practitioners are in demand in providing their expertise in a number of arenas and so are already over committed.

Cllr Krishna stated that the first meeting will not have resolved these issues, but there is confirmation that the Chief Officers, the Chair of the Safeguarding Board and the Borough Commander will be in attendance; so all main statutory agencies with a duty to cooperate will be present. The council’s non-executive members and the two voluntary sector groups have also confirmed their attendance. There will therefore be a cross section of all of the agencies at the first meeting.

Cllr Krishna reminded the Commission that the current Children and Young People Plan with its 8 priorities, which have been agreed across the partnership is still in operation.

There were no questions

The Chair welcomed Helen McNaulty, the 14-19 Strategy Co-ordinator from the Learning Trust and asked her to present her paper to the commission.

The Strategy Coordinator stated that there are a number of changes happening post 16. This is the time in young people’s life that important decisions are being made about the next phase of their life.  The Government has provided various tools to help young people during this process:

Raising Participation Age (RPA). This means that current year 8 secondary school will continue in education or training to 17 and currently year 6 will continue until they are 18. The change does not mean staying in school, but will mean:

• Full-time education such as in school or in college
• Work-based learning , such as an apprenticeship
• Part-time education or training, if they are employed, self-employed or volunteering for more than 20 hours a week

The real discussion about RPA is finding ways to ensure that young people are participating, but there is an awareness that a lot needs to be done to make this happen, and the commission will be kept updated on progress.

The September Guarantee is a very useful tool. Essentially, it is about asking schools and colleagues where their current year 8 will be progressing to, and enquiring whether they have been offered a place in education, training or employment with training for September 2009. However, young people do not have to take up the offers given to them, but it is useful by making head of year 11 think about where their young people are going. 82% have currently got an offer.

Essentially what the government wants to do is think about 14-19 education falling into four strand:

• Apprenticeships – there is now a huge push for this, it is expected that 1 in 5 young persons will be in apprenticeship by 2020. By 2013 every young person who wants apprenticeships is expected to access one. This is a huge target for the borough. There is a cohort of 6000 of 16-19 year olds, and there are 169 apprenticeships available, however is the story across the boroughs. There is a task force working on this and they are asking the public services to get involved and offer places. So a support package is being put together for everyone offering apprenticeships.
• Foundation Learning Tier – is all qualification that are level 1 and below, that is the equivalent of GCSE grades D-G and below. The aim of the Foundation Learning Tier (FLT) is to raise participation and attainment among learners aged 14 and over who are working at Entry level and Level 1. This is a great opportunity, as young people working in this level will usually be dipping in and out of various qualifications. This is a way of getting all those qualification and putting it together and building up a portfolio which will give their employers or further education institution an idea of what they have gained. Every young person doing the FLT  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

The Chair referred members to the terms of reference for the Child Poverty review and asked if they had further comments. 

Cllr Bell suggested that another question should be added to the list of core questions: ‘How do environmental factors, including housing conditions and Health, impact Child Poverty’.  Cllr Bell acknowledged that this question is ambitious but felt that these issues are significant to the subject matter. 

With regards to the second core question, Cllr Taylor suggested adding a sub question, ‘ what is being done to assist children whose parents do not benefit from these policies’

Cllr Plouviez questioned why the core questions did not include income issues. She also suggested looking at children services and the work they do on raising income as another possible avenue.

The Chair explained to the Commission that this review is focusing on Raising Aspiration as a means of breaking intergenerational poverty. Previous reviews have already focused on worklessnes and overcrowding.

Cllr Krishna questioned whether enough had been done to raise awareness in the broader community. She further stated that in terms of raising aspiration, there has to be information on what the local services is going to be doing - advertising the fact that something different is happening and therefore it needs to be broader than just what children services are doing on income.

The Head of Policy and Research highlighted that the CYP review is in a context of a broader cross cutting review on child poverty that is taking place. There is not enough time to give great depth in the cross cutting review to look at the parenting strategy because that will be a contribution from the scrutiny commission, in much the same way that the social inclusion commission looked at key element of work that fed in the cross cutting review on worklessness that was taking place.

The Chair suggested that the commission can receive either reports or updates on work that has already been done in these areas, for example on overcrowding. 

Cllr Krishna felt that the first core question was not phrase appropriately as the council essentially is not responsible for creating parenting strategies. 

The Chair agreed that the wording on the first question needs to be reviewed. The Chair further emphasised that due to the fact that the CYP review is to feed into the cross cutting review, and also that time is limited, it is important that the review remains focus on  raising aspiration.

The Chair stated that all further suggestions should be emailed to the Scrutiny Officer. 

The Chair welcomed Pamela Baldwin, the CYP Policy Advisor, to present her paper.

The Policy Advisor stated that there is a strategic cross cutting policy review on child poverty currently being undertaken. She talked on some of the thinking being done to form the frame work of the review, and the frame work to the council’s approach to child poverty as set out in the sustainable community strategy and the action plan that goes with it.

The Policy Advisor stated that Child poverty is mainstreamed in Hackney’s Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS)

“ As a partnership our priorities are tackling poverty and inequality through raising the aspirations of our residents, especially Hackney’s children and young people, to interrupt the cycle of deprivation, and supporting people to improve their life chances and to achieve their ambitions”.

This quote is taken from the Sustainable Community Strategy which summarises Hackney’s approach. Raising aspirations, especially of Children and young people is critical as well as supporting people to improve their chances.

Hackney’s approach is a broad one which aims to tackle the poverty of today, but also to interrupt cycles of deprivation to address the poverty of tomorrow. The Government is measuring child poverty using NI 116, part of our LAA, which is based on measuring incomes to define child poverty. While supporting household incomes is an essential strand of tackling poverty of today,  the  inequality of opportunities and inter-generational cycles of poverty needs to be tackled. 

The capabilities approach is an enabling one which helps people to build resilience in order to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.

An exclusive focus on supporting household incomes runs the risk of the child poverty agenda being subsumed under employment strategies to increase parental incomes – which are only half the picture. Good housing, health and educational attainment are all important factors in improving employability.

Parenting is fundamental to the capabilities approach in raising educational attainment and aspirations and ensuring the health and wellbeing of children – so the outcomes of the scrutiny review will be important.

Hackney has the second highest rate of child poverty in London after Tower Hamlets, which underlines the borough’s need for multi-faceted approach.

There are higher concentrations of income deprivation affecting children in the South of the Borough, although there are some concentrations in the centre of the Borough.

Hackney has 37% children living in poverty when 2007/08 baseline was measured using an interim measure of proportion of children living in families on out of work benefits. Apart from Islington and Tower Hamlets, Hackney has higher levels of child poverty than several of its neighbours. 

There are a broad range of initiatives in place to address child poverty, i.e.: 

• City Strategy pathfinder “ Ways into Work” takes a unique approach to tackling unemployment by working with housing providers to identify residents who would benefit from training and support to find a job.
• Skills Strategy: The aim of the Strategy is to improve the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

The Chair welcomed Andreas Adimides from The Learning Trust, and asked him to present his paper on the parenting strategy.

We know that parenting has the single biggest impact on outcomes for children and young people. Strong parental involvement will help to improve achievement and behaviour and ensure that children are healthy, able to learn and more likely to become responsible adults.

All Local Authorities are required to have a Parenting Strategy in place.  Hackney’s first Parenting Strategy was put in place in January 2008. This was followed up by an action plan focusing on the following two priority areas:

§  parents as first carers and educators

§  employment and learning opportunities for parents

A multi-agency Parenting Strategy Steering Group was set up to oversee implementation of the Parenting Strategy. 

The parenting strategy is currently under review, which will focus on how well parents are being engaged through our universal offer and test the effectiveness of systemic interventions targeted at families.

The draft priorities and objectives set out below are intended to shape the refreshed strategy to enable parents to support their children to fulfil their potential, as well as having the opportunities to fulfil their own potential.  Implicit in this is that a family cannot always address a child’s identified vulnerability without support.  The strategy must provide a coherent framework which addresses:

good quality universal support for all families; targeted support where families have additional difficulties (tier 2); and specialist services for families with complex challenges (tier 3).

Hackney provides a range of local services and programmes that support and feed into parenting approaches. Examples include:

·  The Family Information Service (FIS) (formerly the Children's Information Service) which provides information and advice on childcare as well as general information on a wide range of services for children and young people aged 0-19 years and their families in the borough.

·  Family support is a key element of the core offer for Hackney’s children’s centres.

·  Parent Support Advisers (PSA) in all 6 children service’s clusters. Each PSA focuses on 4 primary schools working with parents on a casework basis and working with groups of parents in formal and informal settings.

Schools have a key role in supporting and engaging parents.  Ofsted have introduced a new inspection framework for schools, coming into effect from September 2009.  One of the key judgement areas is the effectiveness of a school’s engagement with parents and carers.  Inspectors will focus on the following areas:

·  the extent to which the school takes account of parents’ and carers’ views and how well they are involved in contributing to decision-making about whole-school matters;

·  the extent to which a school enables parents and carers to support and make decisions about their own child’s learning, well-being and development;

·  the quality of a school’s communication with parents and carers.

A government White Paper sets out plans to reform the school system including establishing a new Parent Guarantee.  The guarantee to parents is that every child will go  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

The Chair asked for final comment from members before the report is agreed. 

The commission AGREED the report subject to the following changes:

• The date in Recommendation should read February 2010 and not February 2009

There were no questions on this item

Members were unhappy with the information produced by CAMHS PCT and EFLT on the percentage of different ethnicity of those in the borough as compared to the same ethnicity represented in the two organisations. The Commission therefore requested that this paper should be reproduced.