The Director of Children, Families and Education presented their report which provided a quarterly performance report in relation to the Council Plan: Wirral Working Together 2023-27 for the Theme early help for children and families.

Following the approval of the Council Plan a performance management framework was developed through working group activity with members from all Policy Committees and Planning and Resources Committee between February and April 2024. A reporting approach was approved providing quarterly reporting on the measures identified in the framework. Each Policy Committee would receive a report related to their key theme, for Children, Young People and Education Committee this was the ‘Early help for children and families’ theme. In the reporting cycle once individual Policy Committees had reviewed their key theme reports they would then be referred up to Policy and Resources Committee to provide that committee with one complete performance report for all themes of the Council Plan The reporting provided the most recent performance for the measures and included performance context and mitigations in place where underperformance was identified.

Members asked for further detail on the service’s performance relating to children and young people achieving their potential and being prepared for adulthood.

The Director of Children, Families and Education responded that this was an area that required more information and suggested bringing a more detailed report to committee in future.

At the suggestion of Members, the Director of Children, Families and Education also suggested bringing a further report to committee on Child Protection Plans.

Members stated that they would like to see more information on Wirral’s performance in comparison to other local authorities.

Members raised concerns over the increased number of home-schooled children in Wirral and how the Council was ensuring that those children were receiving a good quality education.

The Assistant Director for Education responded that the current legislation allowed parents to decide whether to home school their children, he noted that the Council had invested in additional officers to support elective home education visits to make sure that the education being offered was within the legislation but that the expectations around the curriculum offered within the home were quite minimal. He noted that the Council did support families when they wanted their child to return to school and would process those requests as quickly as possible to ensure that the child got back into the school system.

Members noted that the report gave figures for the domestic abuse rate for 16-17 year olds and asked if there was similar information for under 16s.

The Head of Service, Quality and Safeguarding responded that there were 396 children on Child Protection Plans, and approximately 55% of those children were impacted by domestic abuse.

The Director of Children, Families and Education added that since 2022 the Domestic Abuse Act changed how the Council recorded and reported victims of domestic abuse, the service had undertaken a lot of training and had an Independent Domestic Violence Advisor (IDVA) who undertook a lot of outreach work. She reflected that the reported increase in cases was, in part, due to the additional referrals generated by this outreach work.

Resolved – That the report be noted and referred to the Policy and Resources Committee.