A Sefton councillor has likened an improvement board set up to oversee changes to the borough’s troubled children’s services to a “disco” amid confusion over its function.
The comments were made by deputy chair Cllr Paula Spencer during a meeting of Sefton’s children scrutiny committee held at Southport town hall last night (March 6) amid confusion over what was said at a previous meeting.
Councillors discussed differing accounts of remarks made by children’s services commissioner Paul Boyce at a meeting of the same committee held last month.
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Mr Boyce was appointed by the Department for Education following the council’s inadequate Ofsted inspection last year. At the last scrutiny meeting, held on January 30, he warned councillors they were “chasing a red herring while the world burns around you” over multiple requests to see the minutes from the improvement board meetings.
Cllr Paula Murphy said that the record of that meeting should reflect that members of the scrutiny committee would be allowed to see the improvement board minutes.
Cllr Judy Hardman said that “wasn’t my recollection” while committee chair Cllr June Burns said: “I think everyone in that room has a different perception of what was said that night” adding that it was “clear as mud.”
Cllr Paula Murphy said: “I know the commissioner said he doesn’t know what we want them for, but the fact is we were asking for nine months and not getting them.
“The minutes of the meeting decide what will happen for an improvement plan for our children in Sefton and is relevant to this meeting. The reports of that board are greatly appreciated.
“The alternative is we say we want nothing to do with it and carry on and we’ll just do other things and job done but we’re supposed to be here to scrutinise what happens to our children in Sefton. We’re not saying we’re scrutinising the improvement board but I think we need to know what’s going on.”
Cllr Spencer said she was “sick of and tired of hearing” about the improvement board and questioned what its function was.
She said: “We seem to be stuck on this improvement board, what has it got to do with overview and scrutiny, what is the relativity of the improvement board as our role of overview and scrutiny? Is there anything on the improvement board for and against overview and scrutiny?”
Cllr Spencer continued: “Is it a disco or something like that because there seems to be this big massive secrecy about this meeting that we can’t seem to see” adding: “I don’t know what it’s for.”
Cllr Hardman said: “From what I understand the commissioner to be saying is the point of the improvement board is to look at the whole of the council including all of us, because us included is seen as not being able to manage to keep our children safe. The improvement board is looking at us rather than us looking at it.”
NHS Merseyside and Chesire commissioning lead Peter Wong then spoke about children and youth services, referring to waiting times for ASD and ADHD assessments and the challenges of carrying out assessments in the light of acute shortages of paediatricians and speech therapists.
He said that commissioners were looking at options around using less qualified staff for assessments given the ongoing shortages, stating: “Part of the improvement plan is recognising you can’t get the staff if they don’t exist.”
Mr Wong added the local response was to “try and flex the workforce” with the use of advanced practitioners, assistants and apprentices for cases that do not need advanced specialist input.
The committee also discussed the backlog in education and health care plan assessments, with officers advising there had been “significant headway” in tackling some of the backlogs and prioritising those who had been waiting for the longest.
Problems with the borough’s safeguarding partnership was also discussed, particularly around the lack of escalation taken for some cases in the light of a review carried out by an independent scrutineer which referred to issues around “drift and delay” and culture within the partnership.
Officers spoke of the challenges of bringing about culture change especially given high “churn” within the partnership and the need to provide ongoing training for members of the partnership, training that has a relatively low take-up rate of 65%.
It was said that improvements in data collection were giving a “clearer line of sight” although this revealed services would still be judged “inadequate.”
Chief legal and democratic officer David McCulloch made a request to reduce the number of scrutiny meetings down to five a year and deemed the number of gatherings “too onerous” for officers after being increased following the council’s critical Ofsted assessment.
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