Transcript Document

CHILDREN AND ADULTS – LEARNING AND CARING
Our assessments:
• Outcomes of the 2011 Announced
Inspection of Safeguarding and
Children in Care across the
Medway Partnership: Ofsted &
CQC
• Annual Children’s Services rating
for 2011
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what is the announced?
• part of a wider system of inspection of
Children’s Services
• deep look at safeguarding and support for
LAC across the partnership
• two groups of inspectors: Ofsted and
CQC
• implemented on a 3 yearly cycle unless
concerns raised by other inspections
• results in 2 reports – CQC and Ofsted
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approach of the announced
• reviewing our own self evaluations
• discussions, interviews and focus
groups with key staff and
stakeholders
• analysing and evaluating reports and
data
• reviewing a sample of case files
• following up findings of previous
inspections
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safeguarding judgements on our
partnership
• children and young people in Medway are
safe and feel safe
• overall effectiveness is adequate, with
good ambition and prioritisation and good
partnership working
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our safeguarding headlines
working well:
• children and young people in Medway are
safe in schools and feel safer in the wider
community.
• cross party, there is political support to
ensure children are safe
• partners across Medway know our
vulnerable children and joint working and
commissioning is effective between
health, police, children’s social care and
education to keep children safe and cared
for
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our safeguarding headlines
working well:
• preventative services are wide
ranging and make a real difference
for children
• schools and early years provision
support vulnerable children to
achieve good educational outcomes
• the views of all children, young
people and parents contribute well to
service design and delivery
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our safeguarding headlines
working well:
• regulated care services are
consistently good or better, eg.
fostering, adoption, respite care
• senior leadership is effective in
driving improvement and managers
are clear about the quality of
standards they aim to achieve
• the Medway Safeguarding Children’s
Board and the Medway Children’s
Trust have clear and ambitious
targets to improve life for all children,
especially the most vulnerable
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our safeguarding headlines
working well:
• plans are clear, effective and
influenced by children’s views
• resources are adequate across the
partnership
• staff feel well supported across the
partnership
• thresholds are clear and generally
understood
• good and effective approaches to
support community cohesion and
counteract discrimination
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our safeguarding headlines
more to do on:
• practice
– quality and consistency of social care practice
– communicating well with people making referrals
– making sure families understand all aspects of child
protection planning
– involving children in their child protection conferences
• systems
– checking qualifications
– improving IT recording systems
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our safeguarding headlines
more to do on:
• health
– security at A&E
– mental health place of safety, advice and
assessments
– children always seen separately from adults
- equality of access to forensic facility
- capacity to do CAFs
- safeguarding training
• partnership
– access to CAMHS for practitioners
– timely information from partners to each other
about domestic violence
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looked after children judgements
on our partnership
• services for children in care are
improving
• overall effectiveness is adequate,
with good outcomes for children and
young people on enjoy and achieve
and making a positive contribution
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our children in care headlines
working well:
• children and young people in care have
good opportunities to contribute to key
decisions in their life
• children and young people feel valued and
listened to by senior managers, their views
are taken seriously and contribute to
service improvements
• the Old Vicarage, the council’s own
children’s home is outstanding and the
standards of care and support are highly
valued by the young people who live there
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our children in care headlines
working well:
• the Children in Care Council makes a real
difference, for example, establishing a
laptop library, securing better housing
choices for care leavers and increasing the
leaving care grant and contributing to social
work training
• the Pledge to Children in Care is well
understood and supported by councillors,
who are proactive in representing looked
after children’s interests and lobbying for
improvements to provision
CHILDREN AND ADULTS – LEARNING AND CARING
our children in care headlines
working well:
• partnerships are productive with effective
joint working, to make sure children in care
are safe, happy, healthy and with a bright
future
• children and young people have good
access to positive activities, they value
Challengers, appreciate leisure passes,
youth service activities, summer schools
and involvement in the Duke of Edinburgh
award scheme
• children and young people are in stable,
settled placements, which meet their needs
well with minimal use of external
placements
CHILDREN AND ADULTS – LEARNING AND CARING
our children in care headlines
working well:
• there is a committed workforce across the
partnership working well together and
making effective use of resources for
children and young people in care
• there are good permanency outcomes for
looked after children, with high numbers of
children placed in adoptive families and in
special guardianship arrangements
• schools are inclusive, avoid exclusion and
work well to achieve good educational
outcomes for LAC; young people rate
school based support highly
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our children in care headlines
working well:
• care leavers are well supported to continue
in education or training and those who wish
to go to University are given every
encouragement and financial support.
• energetic and skilled leadership by senior
managers has improved the quality of
services
CHILDREN AND ADULTS – LEARNING AND CARING
our children in care headlines
more to do on:
• health
– providing children with their health histories
– improving health assessments
– reducing ‘do not attend’ rates
• practice
– everyone committed to importance of ‘life story
work’
• system
– making sure all foster carers know about training
and development and recompense arrangements
for children with complex needs
– external placements that provide maximum value
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our next steps
agree a joint action plan to cover key
improvements:
• improving the quality of practice in social
care – Medway Model of Practice
• improved facilities at A&E for children and
young people
• provide a clear place of safety for young
people who may have mental ill health out
of hours
• procure a new ICT system to support social
care
CHILDREN AND ADULTS – LEARNING AND CARING
our next steps:
• better partnership working on SPA for
CAMHS and domestic violence
• improve health assessments of LAC
• improve commissioning of external
placements
• improve information to foster carers on
children with complex needs
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the vital social care signs:
• delay and drift in responding to needs of
children
• poor quality partnership working
• lack of shared understanding of systems,
processes and thresholds
• performance management, development &
oversight of social workers
• LSB challenge
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children’s services assessment
rating
• performing well
• informed by data and judgement
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working well
-
sustaining improvements between 2010/11
EYFS achievements of young children
KS4 standards and L2/3 attainment
narrowing gaps for:
– Black and Asian young people;
– students from families on low incomes
- educational outcomes for LAC and
opportunities for them to contribute to key
decisions
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children’s services assessment
rating
more to do:
- improve the quality of childminders
- accelerate improvements in KS2
- enable 19 years olds from families with
lower income to achieve well at L3
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the vital school signs
Schools that succeed and, many in Medway
do, are characterised by:
• high expectations, no excuses – both for
academic success and behaviour that
supports learning
• clear, shared values and moral purpose that
every member of the school community
endorses and puts into practice
• every lesson counts: teaching time is
maximised
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the vital school signs
• focus on the fundamentals. Children need
a firm foundation in literacy and numeracy
in order to be able to access the wider
curriculum
• ‘this is the way we do things here’ evident in
consistent approaches to teaching and
learning, school and classroom routines
and behaviour policies, supported by
monitoring, performance management and
staff development
• feedback to children and staff that is
constructive and developmental
• cultivating aspiration, achievement and
ambition for all children.