Powys County Councils Children’s Services - Update
Improvement Plan
The Improvement Plan is a working document and will evolve over the
course of the coming year; its development and actions being informed by “feedback from staff, children and young
people, parents and carers, external review, audit and challenge”.
The Plan focuses upon the four broad
areas that were identified as requiring improvement in the CSSIW’s report:
·
Priority Improvement Area A – Leadership,
Governance and Partnership
·
Priority Improvement Area B - Case Management
/Strategy and Models of Care
·
Priority Improvement Area C – Workforce
·
Priority Improvement Area D – Practice and
Quality Assurance
The Plan sets out a range of
immediate, medium and long term actions to be taken against all four of these
areas.
Importantly, the Plan also sets out
four ‘key aims’ which set out the purposes and quality of services that the
improvement process aims to achieve:
1. To support families to stay together and
reduce the need for children to be looked after, by focusing on services which
provide timely help, build on a family’s strengths and prevent greater problems
arising.
2. To manage risk confidently and effectively
when providing support to families where children and young people need to be
safeguarded or they are judged to be on the ‘edge of care’ by making sure that
their needs are accurately assessed and met effectively, with positive outcomes
for them. This includes supporting families to avoid children becoming
accommodated unnecessarily and by making private arrangements within their
wider family networks so that children become looked after by the Council only
where this is clearly in their best interests.
3. To provide and commission a flexible and
affordable mix of high quality placements for children who are looked after to
meet the diverse range of their needs and circumstances.
4. To give children and young people clearly
planned journeys through care and into adulthood which remain focused on
achieving care and support plans, prevent drift, enable them to be reunited
with family and friends where possible, have stable placements and exit the
care system with good prospects for improved life chances.
Improvement
Board and Improvement Partnership
An Improvement Board has been established under the powers contained
in the Social Services and Well-being Wales Act, to oversee and report upon the
improvements required of Children’s Services. Its role is to hold the Council
accountable for improvement and seeking to help deliver improvement in both
Social Services and the Council as a whole. Its membership is independent of
the Local Authority and the Minister for Social Services has determined that it
shall be:
·
Jack Straw (former Local Authority Chief
Executive) - Chair
·
Phil Hodgson (former Director of Social
Services)
·
Geoff Burrows (former Portfolio Holder in
another Local Authority)
·
A representative from the Children’s Commissioner
As previously reported, the Council
has also established a multi-agency Improvement
Partnership which will work closely with the Improvement Board. The role of the Improvement Partnership will be to take forward and oversee the
actions contained in the Improvement
Plan. Membership of the Improvement Partnership includes:
·
Cllr Rosemarie Harris (PCC Leader) – Chair
·
Carl Cooper (PAVO)
·
Chief Executive of PCC
·
Portfolio Holder Children’s Services, PCC
·
Portfolio Holder Education, PCC
·
Director of Social Services, PCC
·
Director of Education, PCC
·
Section 151 Officer, PCC
·
Head of Children’s Services, PCC
·
Director of Workforce & Organisation
Development, PCC
·
Chief Executive of PAVO
·
PTHB
·
Police
·
Regional Safeguarding Chair
·
Improvement Programme Manager, PCC
·
Primary Head Representative
·
Secondary Head Representative
Others in Attendance:
·
Senior colleagues from Children’s Services,
Education and partner organisations will attend and report into the Board as
required.
·
PCC Scrutiny Chair to Observe.
The
Sector’s Role
The establishment of the Improvement Partnership and PAVO’s
membership of it offers a significant opportunity for voluntary organisations
in Powys to help inform the actions to be taken to improve Children’s Services.
Although the activity of the Improvement Partnership is still in its
early stages, PAVO believes the experiences and insights of voluntary
organisations and community groups who work with Children's Services or support
users of Children's Services are an essential element in helping the Improvement Partnership achieve its
aims. We shall be looking to agree arrangements with the Improvement Partnership for how these can be best shared with it to
support its work.
An initial meeting of interested
voluntary organisations and PAVO
earlier this month to consider the issues raised in CSSIW’s report identified a
wide range of different experiences, evidence, ideas and potential
opportunities. We are currently working up on these and are also setting up
some easy ways for you to feed into to PAVO your organisation’s own comments
and will be sharing further information with you shortly.
