Presentation.

Ms Deborah Gornik, the Interim Director of Children’s Services introduced her presentation that provided Members with an update on the Council’s Improvement Plan and a number of actions that had been taken since her last report to the Committee in June. These included:

·  The appointment of a new Director of Children’s Services - Mr Paul Boyce, currently Executive Director for Children and Knowsley, had been appointed and would be taking up the role early December;

·  The Council Budget Setting process had begun, looking at 3 year budget cycle, with continued pressures for the Children and Young People’s (CYP) services;

·  Overview and Scrutiny - a successful Joint Workshop had been held with the Wirral Safeguarding Children Board on 23 August, with the new work programme very much aligned to the improvement journey; and

·  Elected Member training - CSE training had taken place and a full member training programme was currently being developed.

The Interim Director of Children’s Services informed the Committee that the revised improvement plan focussed on the connectivity between the required improvement and transformation and how a number of the blockages in the system could be removed to enable practice improvement to flourish. She informed that some areas would require a quick, agile response (Sprint), with others requiring a much more committed project approach.

Ms Gornik explained how, by keeping an eye on the now and the future CYP services would continue to strive to achieve the most effective improvements through sustained activity and will ‘circle the cause’ until officers felt the solution had delivered the most effective long term improvements - using the Sprint methodology to drive the identification of the action and the delivery of the solution. Ms Gornik further explained that the Tracker that had been developed would capture detail against each action so that the service can track, and demonstrate, how improvement was being managed and implemented. This information was to be reported back to the Wirral Safeguarding Children Board (WSCB) each month.

The Interim Director of Children’s Services also informed that, working with the Council’s Digital Service it had been agreed that a mobile working trial using Windows 10 functionality would be supported and a team of social workers and support staff to trial the kit over a 1 month period from Sept-Oct had been identified. During the trial they would capture their thoughts and feedback into a diary. At the end of the month the feedback would be collated and assessed. This would determine whether the trial had been a success and consideration would be given as to whether a rollout across the wider department would be actioned. Ms Gornik reported that the staff who have received the training have provided positive feedback already and were excited to be able to use the kit to help them be more flexible in the day to day work.

The Interim Director of Children’s Services concluded her report with information on sickness absence statistics for the August period – informing that long terms sickness equated to 16 staff out of an establishment figure of 220 full time equivalent positions (primarily stress related due to the area of business / frontline service). Eight of these were Social Workers, the remaining staff being support officers or form other areas of the business. The sickness outturn for these 8 was 15.8 days and individuals were in some form of absence management process.

The Chair thanked the Interim Director of Children’s Services for her presentation.

Resolved – That the presentation be noted.