Children’s Services in Newham

1. Children’s Services in Newham Tuesday 6th February 2018

2. Where we’ve been 2014 Inspection findings • Areas for continued development: • Thresholds at the front door were not always consistently applied. Early help services are in development and too many take part in social care assessments that are not needed • There are delays in Triage and Assessment which means that some children did not always receive support at the earliest opportunity • The quality of recording, chronologies and assessment can be variable • Quality of supervision and management oversight • Children experience too many changes of social worker who have high caseloads • Greater focus and analysis for children and young people who are missing • Many Positives • Senior leadership team know strengths and weaknesses • Children in need of immediate protection are appropriately identified • Risk reduces for many children on child protection plans and the independent chairs of child protection conferences analyse risk effectively • Effective and well-attended multi-agency meetings ensure that plans for vulnerable groups are robust • There is purposeful communication and good relationships between social workers and children • LADO arrangements are effective • Improved use of performance information at all levels

3. Our challenges and opportunities • Developing the system conditions • Azeus • Throughput and demand management – Early Help, Triage • Strengthen leadership and governance structure and ensure robust quality assurance and performance • Embedding INW model and Assessment team • Develop a stable and skilled workforce • Managing turnover • Supporting an inexperienced workforce • Ensuring consistent high quality social work • Purposeful use of systemic ideas and approaches • Consistency of approach and outcomes across the neighbourhoods • Strengthen management oversight • Review and strengthen arrangements in place to protect vulnerable groups • CSE/Missing/PREVENT/children criminally exploited by gangs • Domestic abuse • Strengthen partnership working

4. Quality/Practice Improvement • Ensure a continued and sustained focus on improving core social work practice • Ensure that social work practice and decision making for children focus on understanding their lived experiences • Ensure that all children identified as being at risk of harm benefit from effective safety planning • Ensure robust arrangements of Triage • Relaunch the QA Framework • Improve performance management tools and business analysis

5. System Conditions • Refresh Children and Young People’s Plan • Strengthen partnership • Strengthen the Learning and Improvement Plan with accompanying dataset • Secure political buy-in (potential changes in political landscape) • Create a sustainable model for Childrens Social Care • Develop a robust workforce strategy • Continued focus on Corporate Parenting