To receive any questions of which Members of the Council have given notice.

Deadline for notification: 5.00pm on Friday 27 March 2015

82.1  Cllr. Mrs Kidd had asked the following questions and the Director of Children’s Services had provided the following responses.

1. Much was made of using the youth service to deliver safeguarding around child sexual exploitation. With a reduced youth service, how are we going to have a robust service, especially in the rural areas?

Keeping children safe is everybody’s business – and the children’s workforce play an important role in identifying risk, seeking advice and support, and making appropriate referrals.  A recent campaign “Say Something if you See Something” has been launched to raise public and professional awareness. 

Shropshire Council will commission positive activities at a locality level through LJCs, with resources allocated to areas with most need, i.e. vulnerable children and young people.  This means that youth activities will continue but delivered in a different way.  Following “Working Together” requirements (multi-agency guidelines for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people 2103) the commissioning of services requires providers to meet safeguarding requirements in relation to training and safe recruitment of staff.

 All youth providers will be expected to follow established procedures where they have concerns about the safety or welfare of children.

To ensure a consistent level of quality, engagement with young people and support for all local providers of youth activities the Council has commissioned an infrastructure support provider (SYA and Energize).  The purpose of the contract is to support the LJC's to become confident commissioners of youth activities and to provide training, policy and procedure development, equipment loan, opportunities to collaborate, added skill and expertise to providers. 

The infrastructure support provider is starting by training the Community Enablement Team in safeguarding awareness, in order they have a good awareness of promoting the welfare of children and safeguarding when they are working with the LJC's and community in identifying needs.  We have also asked this team to have a specific training in relation to child sexual exploitation (CSE) from one of the children’s safeguarding training officers.

Our aim is to increase knowledge and awareness, not reduce it. 

Targeted Youth Support provision has been retained by the Council.  This team has developed and run Empower, a targeted youth programme for young people at risk of CSE – they have received specialist training, and receive referrals direct from the CSE panel. This programme is evaluated and reviewed regularly and used as evidence in the Shropshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (SSCB) Annual Report.

Targeted Youth Support is made up of 11 workers and a senior practitioner.  This team work across the county, working closely with schools, receiving targeted early help referrals and at Compass assisting in the triage and assessment of early help.  This team also conduct 'return from missing interviews' with young people.

The SSCB Multi-agency Strategy and Pathway established and endorsed by the SSCB in 2011 (under review) sets out a CSE Pathway and Panel to identify and respond to CSE.

Raising Awareness of CSE activity across Shropshire involves raising awareness of both statutory, non-statutory partners and the Community and Voluntary Sector in the following ways:

·           The SSCB has recently commissioned an e-learning module, soon to be promoted widely and is free of charge to all.

·           The SSCB also promote the PACE e-learning module for parents and carers.

·           CSE Briefings to raise awareness to the following colleagues:

·           Members training

·           Licencing members and Public Protection

·           SSCB trainers and members of the board and sub-groups

·           Small business and hotels ‘Say something if you see something’ campaign

·           Foster carers training is being developed and due to be rolled out soon by Shropshire Council L&D Team

·           First Point of Contact, Initial Contact Team non-social work staff

·           Residential staff – local authority and private

·           Targeted Youth Support staff

·           In schools:

·           Designated leads have specific CSE Training

·           Whole school training to all staff will highlight CSE – delivered by the School Improvement Service

·           Raising Awareness to students; Chelsea’s Choice is soon to be commissioned to tour around Shropshire schools funded by the Police and Crime Commissioner.

·           Multi-agency Training – over 300 people working with young people have received multi agency training on CSE.

2. We have many small 'homes across the County with up to 3 young people in them. They are registered with OFSTED but we frequently do not have them on our horizons. We may not be responsible but could act as a focus for child sexual exploitation. What have we in place to monitor these and help nip anything in the bud. I have 8 such homes in my Division and young women run away from them on occasions and are always desperate to get to Shrewsbury. This concerns me.

Local authorities have always had a statutory duty to inform host local authorities when placing a child in a local authority outside of their own. 

We have updated the electronic notification system for the placing local authority to share all information regarding risk factors identified at the earliest point of placement so that we can have awareness of how they are managing these in the placement

We have a named senior manager responsible for children placed in Shropshire by other local authorities whose role it is to support private providers and authorities and raise any issues of concern with them.

The Director of Children’s Services (DCS) and nominated officers receive a monthly list of children homes from Ofsted that are registered and operating in Shropshire so we are kept up to date with providers located in Shropshire. 

The DCS and partner agencies such as Fire and Rescue and Police meet with the senior managers (as a group) of private children’s homes providers in Shropshire on a quarterly basis.  This has been the case since 2012.  Ultimately the aim of the meetings is to ensure that public services (Police and Local Authority etc) and private care providers are clear about expectations of each other in relation to safeguarding children, particularly when they are reported as missing, and to identify issues for collective action.  As a result of these meetings, there have been improvements in the working relationship between public services and the private care providers.  For example, the required notification, when a child is placed in Shropshire from another Local Authority, is sent from the residential children home to a central point in Children’s Social Care.  This notification was enhanced and includes a risk assessment in relation to Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and Missing.  Where risks are identified this is shared with colleagues in the police.  This has been in operation for over 18 months and was a direct result from these regular meetings with private providers.  More recently, the Missing Person Co-Ordinator from the police attends the private providers’ quarterly meetings and also attends CSE panel on a monthly basis.  All missing persons are required to have a return interview.  Private providers have agreed to confirm this has taken place.

82.2  Mr Evans commented that he had been informed that funding for LJC for youth services would now not be available until September and that it would be reduced pro-rata.  He asked whether all LJC’s and Parish Councils had been made aware of this.  The Director of Children’s Services agreed to check that this had been done.  The Chair asked that an update be brought to the next meeting.