Wednesday’s ‘Children and Familes’ Select Committee meeting was the first since Surrey’s Joint Area Review. This was the highly critical inspection of Children’s services in Surrey that came out in July, which showed Surrey service to be ’inadequate’ in too many ways.  (See posts 22nd July and 29th July)

There is a lot of work going on around the required post-JAR action plan, but that hasn’t come to the Committee as yet. Instead we had the Performance Figures for the first quarter, ie May, June and July.

They were better presented than sometimes in the past - in large enough print that I didn’t have to get out my magnifying glass (you think I’m joking?), extra information for the indicators on ’red’ and ‘amber’ and some clear explanations in the ‘analysis’ column.  

Officers and Politics

One of the problems with select committees is getting enough information to carry out any useful scrutiny or contribute to policy development. This is certainly the case in Surrey, where the Conservatives have such an overwhelmingly large majority that they can fit several factions the size of our 12-person Liberal Democrat group comfortably within their numbers, so that it sometimes feels as if Committees can be easily side-lined. The Chair’s opening remarks on this item included the view that one of our problems in scrutinising is was how we could ’get good information into this committee.’

Jim Leivers, who has been Interim Head of Children’s Service since taking over as the headline JAR became known within the higher levels of the organisation, said:

‘One of my worries about being very frank and very open is that this [committee] will be [used] politically’ and was concerned that the information provided by is Officers should be used ‘not to pursue a political aim or ambition’.  

I felt obliged to point out that this was a public meeting, and anything said could be reported freely. I report it now as a small example of the tension between accepting the existing balance of power in order to work co-operatively within a democratic framework to influence outcomes, and using every legitimate means to show what is wrong with those outcomes and change the balance of power. 

I generally find Mr. Leivers frankness about the real politics and genuine political choices underlying the work of this Committee refreshing, and will continue to quote his insights when they are made in public. Should he read this, I hope he will be pleased to see some of his more positive statements included below. (For convenience, I’ll attribute them ‘JL’)

There were questions about whether the all the ‘reds’ showing a significant failure to meet targets would be eliminated, with the answer ‘You will not see a removal of all your reds … [there is] a very, very difficult agenda for us all … there is a focus that we’ve not had before on ensuring that our performance improves … within two years you will be able to say your indicators are not on red and you are moving into good … ‘ (JL) 

What was happening this spring    

When you look at the figures, there is an awful lot of red around - only just over half the indicators are green, and a third are red. For example, the number of children in care went up; the proportion of them placed more than twenty miles from their home has nearly doubled; none of the children who left care aged 16 or over during that 3 months had as many as five A*-C GCSEs. 

The emergency review of cases that was carried out pre-publication of the JAR but when the results were known to a number of senior Officers and politicians saw more children being brought into the care system, which accounts to some extent for the first two indicators, while some of the young people leaving care in that first quarter took exams but the results were not yet out.

All children in care should have a Personal Education Plan, but the proportion fell from a peak of 79% in February to 61% in April, recovering only to 66.9% in June. (’ … the excuses really aren’t there’ J.L.)

However there are positive steps in hand to resolve this particular problem, with the appointment of a ‘Virtual Head’ supervising the education of Looked After Children, and an additional PEP co-ordinator. We’ll be hearing from the new ‘Virtual Head’ in a later Committee meeting, and no-one could disagree with Chairman Yvonna Lay’s comment: ‘I would like to see the PEPs sorted out by the next quarter.’ 

The Risk Register

On the ‘risk register’ for the service, the big areas of red are no surprise: we are depending on improving and unifying multiple computer systems, some of which are ‘dysfunctional’, and which en masse prevent the effective introduction of better record keeping. Poor record keeping and processing of information is a major issue. The continued high use of agency staff is another long-standing problem.

The ‘continued growth in population of Children with a disability because of better medical care’ is also a long-standing risk, and the ‘mitigation actions’ to ‘develop a long-term strategy  … as part of overall corporate Business Delivery Planning process’ is repeating what has been said many times before, with its underlying political implications: the ‘key issues’ section of the paper says ‘This cannot be addressed through existing resources in Children’s Services’.

Money 

Not surprisingly, given that the Inspection and the Government response to it has forced Surrey to take action to bring services up to an acceptable level, there are significant overspends. A £5.1 million shortfall is currently projected on the current year’s budget.  The overspends I think are most irritating are the ones that were predictable and/or should have been prevented. For example:

SEN transport in the ‘best case scenario’ faces an overspend of £1.6m. Previous budgets had assumed efficiency savings of £0.9m from reorganisation around the Transport Co-odination Centre.  This is a complex story, with situation-normal-all-fouled-up software problems, and also organisational ones.

‘Core establishment’ staffing has an overspend of £0.2 million, but it would have been £1.2m if there hadn’t been an underspend on staff in residential services, mainly because of the failure to open Ruth House for respite care. This £1m overspend is because of an ‘unachievable vacancy factor’  - empty posts that were reckoned not to be filled, but had to be filled to do the essential work of the service, and so were filled by expensive agency staff. There was supposed tobe a reduction of agency staff from 40 to ten by the end of this financial year, but at the end of June there were 94 of them, covering posts which include ’social care, education officers, and business support.’  

 It was confirmed in committee that the ‘vacancy factor’ that is one root of these problems goes back to the BDR, but as Jim Leivers also said, as an Officer: ‘We really can’t comment on why it was set in the first place.’ But as a Liberal Democrat, I can have the pleasure of saying to the Conservative Executive, ‘we told you so’.

Ruth House - an adequately full story at last

Ruth House is the residential facility linked with Freemantles School in Mayford Green, Woking. It’s intended to offer week-day boarding to some pupils at the school, which is for children on the autistic spectrum, and respite care for for children with complex needs at weekends and in the school holidays.

I became aware of it a year ago, when visiting Freemantles School with the Committee, but in spite of asking questions both in Committee and in Full Council have not until now got an adequately full account of why it was not open, saving the County money, and making life better for children and families.

This year’s budget assumed that opening just one of the four units at Ruth House would save £0.4m by offering respite care for children with complex needs in a Surrey-provided home. Multiply this up by four, and you’re more than compensating for the £0.8m saved on residential staff costs this year.

Building it has been a complex project, staring in 2001 which has suffered many delays and set-backs, and is only partially open now. In those seven years, among other things it fell foul of the BDR. Hazel Buxton, from Estates Planning and Management, explained that there had been one person in charge of managing the project until April 2006, but after he left he was not directly replaced. There have been problems with construction, with understanding and providing exactly what was needed by way of kitchens, bathrooms and laundry areas, with making sure the money was available to recruit staff, and then with recruiting them and training them on the right time-scale to fit with the readyness of the building.

We were given a long and serious paper explaining the history of Freemantles’ move to Woking and the  building of Ruth House in detail, how lessons have been learned, and how the County’s new organisational structure would prevent this happening again. You can read it on the SCC website - it’s in the committee papers at item 8.  There’s also been a good Ofsted report on the one open residential unit out of the final four.

Of the four units, the first was working fully in July; the second will be fully open from October; the third by the end of the year; and the fourth early in 2009. We were assured by Mr. Leivers that the staff was now in place, and the project was now on line, on target, and would open on the time-frames in the report.

I was still not entirely reassured, and asked about Chetwode House, another new facility for respite care at risk of delay.  But the Tories can’t be blamed for this one - the site is the home of Great Crested Newts and agreement has to be arrived at with English nature for their ‘humane removal’.