Any questions, representations and statements of case submitted in accordance with the Council’s procedures will be reported.
Mr Nizamuddin Patel asks:
Who overlooks children's social services to ensure they are following process/procedures. What internal processes are there to ensure quality is maintained and there are no service failures?
The reports do not include the level of complaints raised by parents/professionals for children socials services. This will be useful to help compared to previous quarters to ensure levels of services are maintained and if any intervention or further scrutiny is required.
How does the children's social services manage to ensure quality and accountability when it comes to agency social workers? If a family who are receiving help from the CIN/CPP team are having constant change in social workers which leads to no continuity and thus a service failure at what point will the council appoint a full time, non-agency employee to ensure no further service failures.
Are there equality reportings conducted for those professionals who are present at Child Protection Conference to ensure there are representatives of different backgrounds, gender, race, culture etc? If not, what plans do they have to start recording this to ensure conferences understand parents and children's background and culture.
Also:
There is a huge disproportion of male social workers in Leicester Children's social services.
1. What plans/incentives do children's social care have to recruit more male social workers?
2. Child Protection conferences memberships should include both male and female participants to ensure an understanding and reflection of cultural and diversity needs. In my own personal experience of 2 Child protection conferences and multiple core group meetings, I have not come across one male in any of those meetings. Does Children's social care have systems in place to ensure at least 1 male is present in child protection conferences? If not, what plans do they have to ensure fair equality and diversity in child protection conferences?
3. I understand there are 5 independent chairs for Child Protection Conferences. how many are males/females? What plans do you have to have more male independent chairs?
4. In the last 3 years how many warnings of the vexatious policy have been given by Children's Social Care to parents who's children are under a child protection plan? Who makes this decision and how is this managed to ensure the vexatious policy is not misused by the council and the parents’ views are able to be shared.
5. According to FOI submitted in Nov 24, Agency social workers are paid on average £5440/month, whereas directly employed staff in the same department are paid £3495/month. This is almost £2000/month/worker extra for agency workers and does not include agency fees etc. Just under 20% of staff in CIN, CASP and LAC are agency workers. What plans do the council have to recruit social workers to ensure public money is not overspent in agency staff?
Minutes:
Questions were presented to the commission by Mr Nizamuddin Patel regarding processes and procedures within Children’s Social Care. The following responses were given by The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help:
Mr Patel asked:
Who overlooks children's social services to ensure they are following process/procedures? What internal processes are there to ensure quality is maintained and there are no service failures?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
Children’s social work service delivery is inspected periodically by Ofsted. Internally case supervision between an allocated keyworker and their manager takes place monthly and will review progress on key processes and procedures. Within child protection and looked after children procedures, there are also independent chairs who review case progress at key intervals and there is an established escalation process in place they can use if they have concerns about practice. Social Work England is the professional regulator for registered social workers, and they have the power to investigate concerns about social work practice that is not in keeping with professional standards as detailed in their codes of practice.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
If a parent or professional has a complaint and has used the complaints process, is there anything else that they can do to have the complaint fully investigated?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
The complaints process is a statutory process with 3 stages, if the parents or the young person are not happy with the response after the 3 stages, they can progress the matter to the local government ombudsman.
Mr Patel asked:
The reports do not include the level of complaints raised by parents/professionals for children socials services. This will be useful to help compare to previous quarters to ensure levels of services are maintained and if any intervention or further scrutiny is required.
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
A dedicated report outlining levels of complaints and key themes comes to CYPE scrutiny twice a year.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
Do you have the title of the reports please?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
The Council’s website contains these reports in the committee meetings section.
Mr Patel asked:
How does the children's social services manage to ensure quality and accountability when it comes to agency social workers? If a family who are receiving help from the CIN/CPP team are having constant change in social workers, which leads to no continuity and thus a service failure, at what point will the council appoint a full time, non-agency employee to ensure no further service failures?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
Social work recruitment is a national challenge and unfortunately like most other local authorities we rely on agency workers to ensure we have sufficient capacity to deliver our statutory services. Often, they are covering long term sick leave or maternity leave, as is the case in other roles working with children, for example supply teacher cover. Just like permanent social work staff all agency social workers receive monthly supervision with their line manager which provides an opportunity to review progress of their cases. Some changes in social worker are as a result of the progression of the case through the council’s current workflows as some teams fulfil specific roles in the workflow. Turnover of social work staff is high in most local authorities due to the challenging nature of the role and the levels of trauma and challenging behaviour they experience from some families they work with who do not welcome their intervention when there are child protection concerns. It is unfortunate when a worker leaves the council, and as a result this does mean that families will experience a change of social workers. There will always been planning (when possible) to ensure that there is a planned transition between workers. We only use agency workers who are highly experienced.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
What is the council’s plan? There is a family we have been liaising with who have been with Social Care for 9 months with 6 social workers so there is no continuity there.
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
We always allocate cases according to best fit for the case at that time. We cannot totally control whether or not staff choose to leave us, particularly with agency staff. The government has made some attempts to deal with that. They have now extended the minimum notice period agency staff have to give before they leave. Cases first go to the Duty Team, then the Assessment Team, then to the Long-Term Team. This means that 3 Social Workers will have been involved in that first phase. Normally the Social Worker allocated will be for the long-term but people can go off sick and need to be replaced. Permanent Social Workers can also leave and need to be replaced and this is the same for temporary Social Workers.
Mr Patel asked:
Are there equality reportings conducted for those professionals who are present at Child Protection Conference to ensure there are representatives of different backgrounds, gender, race, culture etc? If not what plans do they have to start recording this to ensure conferences understand parents and children's background and culture?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
There is no requirement to undertake equality monitoring in the statutory child protection guidance. The purpose of the conference is to bring together the group of professionals working with a family to ensure that the best information is shared and informs good decision making so that children are well protected. As a result it would not be in any child’s interests to shape attendance at conferences just to ensure that those present are representative of a wide range of backgrounds and culture. Children’s services have a widely diverse workforce and will always take into consideration issues of diversity when allocating a worker to a family, but it is not always possible to allocate a worker that reflects a family’s background or culture. All of our staff take unconscious bias training.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
The purpose of that question was that mainly independent chairs are female and so are most Social Care professionals. Does that mean that there’s not much male representation, so they won’t be able to understand from a male’s point of view? Are there any plans for that so conferences can understand parent’s and children’s backgrounds more appropriately?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
When we recruit workers for vacant posts, we recruit the best workers that we can. We take diversity issues into account. We follow employment legislation. But it’s true that across a wide range of social care professions, male workers are underrepresented, and this is not unique to Leicester.
Mr Patel asked:
There is a huge disproportion of male social workers in Leicester Children's social services. What plans/incentives do Children's Social Care have to recruit more male social workers?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
The council’s approach to recruitment and retention is based on our ability to “Grow our Own” social work workforce due to the continuing national challenges in this area of work. This includes Social Work Apprenticeships, the national Frontline programme that looks to attract graduates with high level degrees to undertake intensive workplace learning, overseas recruitment of qualified social workers, and recruiting newly qualified social workers and providing them with learning and development opportunities so that they can complete there Assessed and Supported Year in Employment as required by Social Work England. In all of the recruitment activity we undertake we adhere to current legislation to ensure that there is no discrimination against any candidate, and current legislation would not allow us to use incentives specifically for one group on workers based on a protected characteristic. Like most caring professions the majority of workers are women. Currently 5% of our front-line social workers are male.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
I am a teacher. In my profession there are flexible working arrangements for females due to pregnancy, family etc. I don’t know of similar incentives for male Social Workers.
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
The local council offer support for parents allows them flexibility to take leave and work flexibly.
Mr Patel asked:
Child Protection conferences memberships should include both male and female participants to ensure an understanding and reflection of cultural and diversity needs. In my own personal experience of 2 Child protection conferences and multiple core group meetings, I have not come across one male in any of those meetings. Does Children's social care have systems in place to ensure at least 1 male is present in child protection conferences? If not, what plans do they have to ensure fair equality and diversity in child protection conferences?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
As outlined in my response to question 3, the purpose of a child protection conference is to ensure that an appropriate safety plan is put in place for the child so that the child’s needs are met, based on the knowledge of those working with the family. All of our staff receive training in anti-discriminatory practice, and it is also a fundamental requirement within Social Work England’s practice standards. It is not appropriate to put in place such a requirement when a male worker attending a conference may have no knowledge or involvement with the family. The focus of the conference is ensuring the child’s needs are met (under the principles of the Children Act with a child’s welfare being paramount), and they are safeguarded from any risks that adults may pose to them.
Mr Patel asked:
I understand there are five independent chairs for Child Protection Conferences. how many are males/females? What plans do you have to have more male independent chairs?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
We recruit on the basis of appropriate skills rather than gender, in line with current legislation. If a suitable male applicant applies for any role and has the required skills and knowledge and through the selection process they are the best candidate then they will be appointed and employed by us.
Mr Patel asked:
In the last three years how many warnings of the vexatious policy have been given by Children's Social Care to parents who's children are under a child protection plan? Who makes this decision and how is this managed to ensure the vexatious policy is not misused by the council and the parent’s views are able to be shared?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
In the last three years we have issued three warnings to families and placed restrictions on their contacts with us. The warnings have been issued due to a number of factors, including some or all of the following; the number of contacts, the tone of communication, the language used, and threats made to staff. The decisions have always been joint decisions between the service manager responsible for the case and the complaints manager, with oversight from Heads of Service and the Divisional Director. Such action is permitted under the statutory complaints guidance. This is managed by staff logging contacts both before and after the warnings are given to ensure the restrictions are proportionate. Any improvement can lead to the restrictions being lifted. Continued inappropriate contacts/communication will lead to the complainant being classed as vexatious.
The letter informing people that we are restricting their contacts always tells them that any complaints they make will be read but not necessarily responded to. This ensures that any ‘legitimate’ complaints are not missed as they would be put through the complaints process. It also allows parents to express their views.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
If a warning of vexation is given to a parent and they have a valid complaint, how will that be responded to, and will it just get ignored?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
If the complaint is valid and has not already been made, it will be addressed and progressed through the stages of the complaints procedure.
Mr Patel asked:
According to FOI submitted in Nov 24, agency social workers are paid on average £5440/month, whereas directly employed staff in the same department are paid £3495/month. This is almost £2000/month/worker extra for agency workers and does not include agency fees etc. Just under 20% of staff in CIN, CASP and LAC are agency workers. What plans do the council have to recruit social workers to ensure public money is not overspent in agency staff?”
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
The council’s approach to recruitment and retention is based on our ability to “Grow our Own” social work workforce due to the continuing national challenges in this area of work. This includes Social Work Apprenticeships, the national Frontline programme that looks to attract graduates with high level degrees to undertake intensive workplace learning, overseas recruitment, and recruiting newly qualified social workers and providing them with learning and development opportunities so that they can complete there Assessed and Supported Year in Employment as required by Social Work England. We have also developed career progression pathways to strengthen our ability to retain staff. Agency workers are in certain circumstances necessary to cover absences through maternity leave and long-term sickness absence so that we can fulfil our statutory duties.
Mr Patel asked a supplementary question:
At what point would the agency Social Worker be offered a permanent post?
The Director of Children’s Social Work and Early Help responded:
After a period of 20-30 weeks to ensure we are confident in their practice, we would engage any agency worker to ask if wanting to become a permanent member of staff.