Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 3 December 2024, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 3rd December 2024 at 7:30pm 

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Forums

Speakers

Votes

 
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
  1. Webcast Finished

Welcome to the Children's
Overview and Scrutiny Committee this evening as I've just said my name is Sheila Boswell
And I'm I'm the chair of this committee, so we have formalities to go through first
I just need to do a roll call, so I'm going to call out
Councillors some names
Councillor Apps
Good evening chair
Councillor Burchall
Good evening.
Councillor Corner.
Good evening.
Councillor Crivelli.
Good evening.
Councillor Davies.
Good evening.
Councillor Lee.
Good evening.
Councillor Paul.
Good evening.
Councillor Osborne.
Good evening everybody.
And Councillor Owens.
Good evening everyone.
Now this committee also has a number of items.
of co -opted members. So I would like to welcome our co -opted members, Mr. Anthony Langdon,
a parent governor, Ms. Haroon, parent governor, Mrs. Irene Wolfson -Holm from the Southwark
Diocese Board of Education, Church of England. And I believe joining us online is Ms. Sam
Gower from the Catholic Diocese. Is she with me? Welcome, Sam. I know this is the first
time you're joining us, so you are most welcome.
Thank you.
I would also like to welcome our cabinet member for children, Councillor Kate Stock.
Good evening, everybody.
So we always have just an introduction of what's topical at these committee meetings
as we open.
And there's some very, very good news, something for us all at Wandsworth Council to be proud of,
because we have won the Gold Award for Supportive Employer of the Year
at the Social Worker of the Year Awards, which is really commendable.
It's an impressive accolade and it is a testament, of course, to the dedication and hard work
of our skilled social workers and the very special supportive ethos that is championed
here at Wandsworth Children's Services.
Very, very important to support our staff, particularly in this directorate.
By investing in well -being and professional development, our social workers achieve amazing
outcomes for our children and deliver exceptional services for all our children and families.
And this award is a wonderful reflection of their collective commitment, our collective
commitment to excellence and the outstanding contributions of our social workers.
So congratulations everybody, officers, social workers, everyone involved, really fantastic.
And then also we've had White Ribbon Day, which was held on the 25th of November, which
you'll know is a day dedicated to raising awareness about violence against women and
girls promoting gender equality.
And those of you who were at the last committee will be aware that we heard from the voices
of those with lived experience of domestic abuse at the last committee and their firsthand
experience and I know it made a really big impact on us all.
And one of the purposes of White Ribbon Day is to have these conversations to talk about
violence against women and to talk about it in the community and with our partners so
that we all work together and have a collective action on this to create a safer society.
And then finally I wanted to say as we consider the information presented to us tonight in
in all the papers, we should keep in mind that our collective aim is to ensure that
all children have the opportunities and resources that they need to thrive, that all our children
have that.
And by working together and collaboratively closely with our communities, that we strive
to create an inclusive environment where all our children feel safe and valued and empowered.
and through our commitment to working in partnership
with our families, schools, and community organizations,
we build this supportive network that fosters
the well -being and development of all our children
in Wandsworth.
Thank you.
We can now move to agenda items.
The first thing I have to do is ask for
declarations of interest.
Are there any declarations of interest?
Co -opted members, I just need to remind you on voting that you only vote on papers that

2 Minutes, 8th October 2024

have an education function, and there are three papers this evening which you will be
voting on because they have an education function, and I'll signal that when we get to them,
but it should also be indicated.
I'm just getting to the minutes and Ms. Walson -Home,
we've received some amendments to the minutes.
I've got them here.
Do you have them there?
Yes.
I can read them out so that you know that we've got them.
The first point was you said that you are not employed by the SDBE,
that you're a board member and representing the SDBE,
the cybodiasis at the meeting.
We've corrected that
And in item five page four it says apps Cox and Wyatt
stated that she would be abstaining from the vote because of the declaration of interest and this should say
Miss Wilson home stated that she would be
Abstaining from the vote because of the direct the declaration of interest. Is that correct? That's correct. Yes. Thank you
We can sign that off now. Thank you. Thank you so much for that
Right.
That's it.
Does anybody else have anything on the minutes?
Any comments on the minutes?
Are they going to be updated from based – are the minutes that are currently published going
to be updated or was your – did you just say that they have already been updated?
It will be included in the meeting.
Okay, I just wanted to quickly say something
about the order of the agenda.
Now, I'm aware that we have many people
in the public gallery from Bradstow School
School and that we have that item are quite low down on on the agenda
I'm not going to bring it to the front of the agenda to number one
Because we have a paper on our forthcoming use strategy
and we also then have a paper on play and
enormous amount of work has gone into both of those papers
by officers, staff, people in the community,
and those have been put back for this meeting.
So we're going to take those two papers,
but we will take the Bradstow paper after that at three.
So we're bringing that forward in the agenda.
Sorry, that will be five, number five.
We will take the Bradstow paper.
Is that agreed?
Yeah.
Great, thank you very much.
So we can go to the first paper then.

3 Young Wandsworth Youth Strategy (Paper No. 24-335)

The Young Wandsworth Strategy, paper number 24335,
before got in front of you or have it online.
This council is committed to providing all young people
with the support they need and deserve
to fulfill their lifetime ambitions.
And we want to do this in partnership with our partners, schools, health, community,
voluntary and faith groups.
And together we want to create opportunities for education, employment and personal development,
fostering a supportive environment where all our young people can thrive.
And this is what this strategy is setting out to do.
Engaging our young people empowers them to contribute to the community's overall growth
and resilience.
And I am going to hand over to Cat Wyatt to introduce this paper.
Thank you, Councillor Boswell.
And good evening, committee.
I am absolutely delighted to be here today and share with you the Young Wandsworth Strategy.
As our vision sets out, all Wandsworth young people deserve the best opportunities to enable
them to thrive.
And that is why, in conjunction with feedback from our community, voluntary organisations,
stakeholders and our young people, we've devised this strategy. Genuine co -production
is at the heart of this strategy. You will see that the strategy is bold and ambitious,
and rightly so. Our young people's lives don't stand still, so nor can the services
and support that we deliver. The strategy will deliver a responsive, dynamic and modern
youth offer, reflective of one's worth young people's needs, developed with clear guiding
principles, a robust delivery plan and with clear success measures. We're
already working with the National Youth Agency to undertake a gap analysis to
inform the delivery of our youth strategy, but also support our
aspirations as a borough to achieve the National Youth Agency quality mark by
2026. The external scrutiny that we provided by the National Youth Agency
is invaluable as we undertake this learning journey to delivering
outstanding youth services across the partnership.
The Youth Strategy will support improving life course outcomes for young people aged 5 to 18 and up to 25 years of age with additional needs.
Committee will note that I've said 5 to 18. Nationally, the provision and model for youth services is 8 to 18.
We know that in Wandsworth we have a fabulous 0 to 5 offer through our children's centres, but there are 13 ,000 5 to 8 year olds living in Wandsworth.
The Youth Strategy will ensure services support all young people by extending the reach.
We'll work with our schools to identify the right youth work interventions and identify
locations to deliver youth services support to our 5 -8 year olds.
We will build trusted relationships with all young people, 5 -18 and up to 25 with additional
needs.
We know that to deliver our ambitious Youth Strategy we can't do this alone.
We are working hard to forge relationships with community and voluntary organisations,
and as part of the new youth strategy, we will develop a Wandsworth Youth Partnership
Board.
I'm delighted to share with committee that having shared the draft terms of reference,
we've had an overwhelmingly positive response from our community and voluntary organisations
about their willingness to be involved.
This board will bring together partners across the youth sector in Wandsworth to have data -led
conversations.
It will enable equity in decision making and draw on the collective knowledge and skills
to equip the partnership to deliver outstanding youth services.
Importantly, by bringing together resources, we enable the partnership to be responsive
to young people's needs and to collectively explore the delivery of services.
This is a really exciting chapter for Wandsworth and all young people, and I welcome comments
and questions from committee.
Thank you very much.
Straight out of the box, lots of questions on
this great paper.
Councillor Davies.
Thank you so much for this paper.
It is really very exciting.
I recognise the importance of targeting
the earlier years
to create the very best opportunities
for all children to thrive.
And this expanded offer to include children as young as eight is very welcome.
But can you tell us more about how our settings across Wandsworth will meet all the needs of the different needs,
sorry, will meet the different needs of children across the diverse age range?
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor.
So within the strategy, we plan to build on the existing offer for our 8 to 18 year olds.
So really reaching out into our communities to find young people who are not already accessing those youth services.
So really thinking in terms of expanding our visibility and accessibility through our outreach youth work
and actually mobilizing out of our youth bases to go and meet those young people in the spaces and places where they are.
Building those trusted relationships and supporting young people through the provision of youth work.
We're also looking to expand our detached youth offer as well.
So actually reaching into our estates and places using our mobile assets where our young people are
To engage them in the places and spaces where they are build those trusted relationships and support them to access services
We also take a taking a place -based approach to working with our community voluntary and faith organizations who already have well established
Relationships with young people in our communities and how we can develop and build on those trusted relationships
Through listening to our children of that five to eight age group
They tell us that actually for that informal youth work offer they want to explore arts,
movement, dance, physical activity to really help to bolster their social and emotional
development.
We've seen some fantastic work already in some of our primary schools in terms of that
informal education youth work after school provision.
So we're really keen to learn and develop that offer working with our community and
voluntary organisations around how we can expand that offer to our five to eight year
olds.
Councillor Osbourne and then Councillor Kwonner.
Yes, the first thing to say is it is noteworthy how ambitious this program is and I think
that's welcome and it's important that this committee takes note of it.
I think it's a dramatic departure for this council to put youth provisions so close to
the center of what we do.
Very important and very much to be welcome.
But I'm interested in what you say about work
with the National Youth Agency.
I used to work in the sector many years ago
when I was young and knew the National Youth Agency
very well some decades ago.
And I'm interested in that and its quality mark.
If there's anything extra you want to say about that,
please feel free, because I'm interested in you
developing your comments on that,
if there's anything more to say this evening.
But I suppose I do have a question.
The question is, this is so dramatic, so central,
to put this provision so central
in the work of the Council.
What do you really feel this means for young people?
What does it mean for our own officer team?
What do you think it means for the partner community organisations that we work with?
Thank you, Councillor.
In response to your question regarding the quality mark, so we're ambitious for all young
people in Wandsworth, and actually in terms of those succession measures, the quality
mark will help us to hold ourselves to account for those succession measures.
So the ambition is that we want to push boundaries with our offer,
that actually we want to be innovative,
but also that we want our youth provision to be owned by our own people.
And the quality mark will help us to do that.
Working with the youth agency to undertake the gap analysis
will really help us to think about how we're delivering it
to three national occupational standards for youth work
and the framework that's set.
And just to touch on those, so in terms of the first one,
is young people's personal and social development
at the heart of what we're talking about in our ambition and our strategy.
The quality of youth work and again about ensuring that our officers have the tools and skills
to deliver outstanding youth work, but also in terms of that leadership and management as well
in terms of the direction of travel.
In order to achieve the quality kite mark, the Youth Offer provision has to demonstrate
a culture of learning, reflection, innovation and ambition.
And hopefully that's what you felt through this strategy
in terms of measuring that success
of what we're planning to deliver.
In terms of what this means for our young people,
this is about saying that actually we want to change
the life course for young people in Wandsworth.
We want to give them the skills to enable them to thrive.
Whether that is the skills through social,
emotional development, through giving tools
through digital devices, but also about giving those tools
through just having somebody to talk to.
We know that growing up is difficult,
is difficult for many young people,
and actually building those trusted relationships with young people is so important to help them to really thrive.
In terms of our officers, and when we think about our workforce across our youth partnership,
we want to think about our whole youth partnership.
We've touched on working in collaboration with our youth and community organisations,
and we want to share those skills and knowledge across so that everybody working with young people
is equipped with the tools to deliver outstanding youth work,
so that actually the quality of provision is the same wherever a young person attends.
And for our partners and our community organisations, they're really keen to work with us. They
want to be part of this journey, they want to be alongside us, they're ambitious in
the strategy as well, they are committed as we are to delivering the best outcomes for
our young people in Wandsworth, so they're really excited by the opportunity and I think
the response to the terms of reference for the Youth Partnership Board demonstrates the
of energy, excitement and commitment
from our colleagues across the sector.
Councilor Corner and then Councilor Butch.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Watt,
for coming to the committee with this paper
and for your presentation.
I think it's got some excellent stuff in it,
and I associate myself with Councilor Osborne's comments
about how ambitious it is.
One question I do have is around what success looks like,
and that's detailed quite extensively in the pack,
along with what it means for young children.
But what is perhaps missing is how we will measure success
and how we know we've been successful.
Would you be able to comment on that
and maybe commit to bringing forward more information
on that in the future if you can't provide it today?
Thank you, Councillor.
In terms of how we measure the success,
We've set some ambitious, tangible targets as part of our strategy, but as a reflective,
co -production is at the heart of this strategy, Councillor.
So actually, it needs to be iterative.
We need to be working with our young people along the way.
And actually, as I've expressed as part of the national quality mark, it's about that
learning journey.
So actually, along that learning journey, seeing where we're doing well, being reflective,
and where we need to make changes along that.
The National Quality Framework will help us to hold ourselves to account in terms of those
measures because actually we may not see initially the impact of youth work but actually this
is about changing the life course outcomes for our young people in Wandsworth.
So I'm sure along the journey we'd welcome to come back to the committee and share other
progress.
Councillor Burchill, then Councillor Owens, then Councillor Apps.
I would like to agree that this is an exciting paper and a lot of hard work, so thank you
for doing it. I was just wondering what you will be offering the children with special
needs and yes, all of the children with special needs all the way up. What's it going to
look like?
Thank you, Councillor, and a very important question. So we'll be working with our colleagues
across the country through the short breaks offer that is offered to our children with
additional needs in Wandsworth.
We have an exemplary offer to our children
with additional needs.
But it's recognized that actually, at the moment,
that offer doesn't extend beyond 18.
So actually, there's some dialogue around,
how do we continue to support young people
with additional needs to access informal education up to 25,
as is the youth work framework?
So we're already exploring with providers
who are already providing some of that support about how
that could potentially be extended up to 25.
So we talk about those trusted relationships.
We talk about continuity for children,
particularly where they have additional needs.
So how that we can extend that offer to them up to 25.
Councilor Owens.
Thank you.
Just a couple of points.
Obviously, like everyone else, very much welcome
this fantastic paper.
I was particularly pleased to see that obviously,
unlike the national strategy,
you're doing something for five to eight year olds
because they are particularly, as we know,
a cohort that were badly affected by the pandemic.
And obviously they were sort of not necessarily at school at that time and missed out on playing
time with other nurseries and learning.
I also know that during the pandemic there was money available, it was at the time from
the government, for some form of outreach for children going back.
I know that because one of my children was that age at the time.
And it was lots of voluntary groups quite happy to get involved with that setup.
My other question was to do with the digital side.
Are you planning to work with the schools that are not community schools in terms of laptops?
Because my children are at an academy and I certainly know children that don't have laptops and we have all had to buy them.
But obviously those from disadvantaged backgrounds should perhaps have them even in the academies.
And my final point was just on this map.
And I noticed my cancer to my left's ward wasn't on it, which was on page five.
I didn't see ones with common on that little map of the most recent school census census data with the 50 highest population areas
But she's in ones with common. That's not should be on the map. Thank you
I'm sorry, it's not a fair, it's not a name.
It's quite a long name.
I'll name it.
Apologies, Councillor Willard, ensure that's amended on the map.
If I take the first question regarding five to eight year olds,
it's as you say, these are children who were growing up through the pandemic
and actually in terms of particularly around their social and emotional development
and having had dialogue with primary head teachers that's recognized
and they're really excited in terms of this offer to our five to eight year olds.
And I think it's exciting conversations to have through our Youth Partnership Board as well.
of them actually as a collective partnership, we're thinking about how we're supporting
those five to eight year olds, feeding in the voice of the child through that co -production
to ensure that the support that we're offering is the support that they need and they're
going to engage with.
Michael, did you want to take a question?
So we work through Power to Connect obviously on digital skills in the borough and our digital
inequalities.
As part of that, we recycle council laptops on the whole.
Power to Connect has provided nearly 4 ,000 laptops throughout the council and throughout
the borough over the last couple of years, of which the council has been the predominant
donator of those laptops.
Power to Connect goes out to every single school in the borough asking whether they
have demand.
So that is where we work with the schools.
I don't think there is a school that hasn't received laptops from Power to Connect over
the years.
I think you had the next question and then Councillor Corner would like to come back.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Looking at the scale of ambition in this paper, it's really clear that we can only really
achieve this by working in collaboration with community, the voluntary, the faith sectors.
So it's great that you've kind of an hunt harness that power
I'm really interested to know how you involve them in shaping the strategy as a whole and
What kind of ideas they input into that?
Thank You councillor
Having been in Wandsworth now for just under 12 weeks
But actually a lot of that time has been spent out and about meeting our community voluntary and faith sector organizations
and alongside our young people as well.
I think I've reached about 835 youth
and voluntary organizations to just spend time listening
about what's working well, what are the challenges,
but also what are the opportunities.
Also, I think it was three days into my role as well,
I met with the youth council as well,
because whilst everyone in this room is incredibly important,
they are the most important people.
So really hearing from our young people
about what they're looking for as well.
We've also had the benefit of a number of surveys
and strategies that have been written recently in terms of our place that you're going to
hear about in a moment, but also in terms of our leisure strategy, our library strategy
of how we've drawn on the input as well from our partners.
And Wandsworth is a really diverse borough and there's some fantastic work being delivered
by a real range of community and voluntary organizations and drawing their voices around
actually saying we want to be alongside you on this journey, allow us to be alongside
utilize our expertise.
We know, for example, that we have pockets in Wandsworth
where there's high levels of youth provision currently
and other areas where it lacks.
And actually what our community
and voluntary organization is saying to us,
we want to come together and actually think creatively
how together we can actually more evenly distribute
those resources across so that we can support
all young people.
And we really see the Wandsworth Youth Partnership Board
as being the driving vehicle for that
by having a shared and equitable seat around the table
in terms of decision making and thinking how we work together
to work through the challenges in response to our young people.
So whilst it's been great to hear from the partnership
and organisations as part of shaping the strategy,
actually it continues to be an iterative process.
And they will be instrumental in helping us to deliver it.
Yes, Councillor Stock would like to come in.
I just wanted to come in on that point as well,
Councillor Apps, just to affirm what Ms. Wyatt said in terms of youth voice and that being
at the centre of this strategy and at the centre of what we hope to deliver going forward,
but just to really emphasise that partnership working as is in cats or Mr. White's title
is absolutely central to how we want to work with children and families going forward and
I'm really, really pleased to hear how it sounds like there's been a positive reception
for our voluntary community and faith partners, really thinking about how we're going to recognize
and understand the need, using our data kind of collectively, and how we're going to think
who is best placed to meet that need in the place, at the right place, at the right time.
And it might not always be the council, we recognize that, but what's important is that
children have kind of trusted relationships in order to deliver the best outcomes and deliver a positive future for them.
So I just wanted to emphasize how important that is to the way we want to move forward with this strategy.
And thank you for the work that she has done going out and speaking to all those partners so far.
Thank you, Councillor Stock. Councillor Corner and then Councillor Crivelli.
Thank you, Jay. I'd just like to ask a question on
A follow up question really to Councillor Owen's question
on the subject of laptops.
On page 17 of the pack, it said that this strategy
will deliver 600 laptops to ensure that all young people
are better connected and still in digital literacy.
I think that's commendable.
In the KPIs report on page 149,
it actually says that more laptops are needed
is demand exceeds supply at the moment and it's I assume that's where the 600 figures
come from.
And the committee should also note that I think it's page 18 of Labour's 2022 manifesto
said that we will keep in place successful schemes to make sure that all children have
the laptops and data that they need to learn.
So a question really for Councillor Stock is, is she satisfied that this strategy will
deliver on this policy and will the children have the amount of data they need along with
the laptops?
And finally, can she give the committee assurances that by the end of this council term not a
single child or school will say that they need a laptop or data for a child in the borough?
Thank you, Councillor Kourner, for that question. Absolutely. That is our ambition. I'm sure,
Councillor, you're aware of the Council, across the Council's ambition in relation to access
for all. Our work will always be targeted, first of all, on those who need those resources,
and that is right. And we've got to make sure that those pupils who don't have access to
and data and I'm very clear on that.
I think you're entirely right about that.
It's not just about laptop.
I agree we need to identify those children.
We also need to get the devices working with partners.
And I know the council has provided a lot of laptops
itself to power to connect, but I know power to connect
and Miss Tallet can come in and perhaps share
some more information, are working hard with other partners
to ensure that we are working towards that figure
and working towards our ambition of all children.
I think you've previously asked a question about the data
and the monitoring of that.
And I think Ms. O 'Connor has shared
that we don't have access to that type of data.
So that would be something that is difficult.
But absolutely, that is our ambition.
And it goes further than that.
I'm really proud of the work we're
doing in terms of our partnership with Apple
to make sure that within schools,
children have access to the latest technology,
and that's really being embedded in
their learning in the classroom.
I've seen some excellent examples of that very
recently at Johns Burns Primary School.
There's a lot to be proud of there,
and that partnership is continuing to
make sure not only devices are in the classroom with children,
but also they're having digital coding lessons,
digital skills lessons, and working with parents as well to ensure they have
the necessary skills to support children out at home,
and with their own professional development,
and returning to work or continuing work as well.
I'll hand over to Miss Talich,
perhaps for a little bit more information
on our partnership with Path to Connect.
Just a little bit more.
So probably since that was written,
the council's donated 250 laptops in the last four weeks.
So we're a long way to that demand just in a month.
So they are going through a replenishing cycle,
so that means more laptops are coming.
And there's definite commitment behind it for more.
Very briefly, I just think it's, I think that all sounds good.
But it's really clear that we, it's really important that we need to be clear on what data is.
Data is like, you know, the ability to connect the laptops to the internet where families can't afford the internet connection.
I think it's really important that that's looked into in order for that pledge to be delivered,
because I think it's actually a pledge that, you know, command forward support.
Again, I know that how to connect also provide data, so perhaps Mr. Hallett can share some
information around that.
We do rely on people coming to us and the majority of that is schools or voluntary organizations.
So where there is a request, we log that and we do facilitate it.
We don't find a huge, huge amount of demand for the data, especially as much as we used
to.
My colleague here, Matthew Edie, just mentioned there's free Wi -Fi in libraries and quite
a few places that does support that as well.
So I don't believe we have any unmet actual request.
It doesn't mean there isn't out there, but what we know of.
Obviously, we have digital champions in the community.
We have a lot of work going on, digital sessions every single day of the week now from Kappow
to Conectby.
Every single session, people can ask whether they want data.
and at the end of those sessions they get a laptop as well,
the full course.
So yeah, there's a lot being done.
And obviously private providers also provide
on top of the council, but the council is the biggest
provider by quite a bit.
Thank you very much.
I have Councillor Cuvelli and then I have Ms. Wilson.
I think, Madam Chairman, I might be queue skipping
if you call me.
I think Ms. Haroon's are a hand up well in advance of me.
I do have a question, but I'll cede to Ms. Haroon.
Thank you very much.
I'm so sorry I didn't see you there.
Ms. Haroon.
Yes, okay, thank you.
So you mentioned about universal and targeted offer.
So what comes under both?
And secondly, what is the threshold to get this targeted youth offer?
Thank you for your question.
Universal is about reaching out to enabling open sessions,
so open youth work sessions where children
and young people can attend.
So it's kind of unstructured universal youth work activity.
Targeted would be when I talk about the detached activity,
for example, so there's targeted activity
in terms of identifying an area to reach out to young people
into spaces and places where they are taking
our mobile assets to go out with them.
But also it might be that actually through that engagement
with a young person, there's a piece of work around supporting them to access ongoing services.
So for example, so it could be around sexual health, substance misuse, employment needs.
So again, there would be that targeted piece of work with that child to support them.
So it isn't just about that initial context, but how we support them to access other services
as well.
And, sorry, I ask what is the threshold for the targeted, because normally when you talk
about the targeted sport, it's always like a threshold.
It's not for everyone.
So that's my understanding.
So is there any specific threshold
so they can get this targeted support, or is it for everyone?
So we move away from threshold, because actually it's about the needs of each young person,
and that will be different depending on the young person.
So actually every young person will receive the support that they need.
And that will look very different to different young people,
and that could be just a conversation, support to access information online,
but others they need more in terms of hand -holding.
So certainly when we're talking about a youth off -goal, we don't talk about thresholds.
Okay, and on page number 30, you mentioned about extended offer for the San children.
So what do you mean by extended offer?
So in terms of the question we had slightly earlier in terms of at the moment, we have
a fantastic short breaks offer for our children and young people in Wandsworth that's highly
accessed across our children with additional needs.
At the moment, that stops at 18 because that's a statutory framework.
But actually we know through our youth offer we want to extend that informal youth work up to 25 for children and young adults with additional needs.
So how do we extend that offer in terms of still meeting the needs?
And that will be a range of needs for our young people in terms of somewhere we want to promote inclusivity through those open access youth work sessions.
But there will be some young people where they need more specialist youth work provisions to support them.
Thank you very much, Ms White.
I have Mr Crivelli, Councillor Crivelli, have you got a question?
Yes, I do.
Can I ask page 7, you talk about recognising mental health as a public priority, paragraph
13, and I'm really glad to see that we're putting such a strong emphasis on the issue
of mental health for young people.
When I originally read this paragraph and you said you wanted every young person to
access to someone who they can talk to and who they trust.
Originally thought you were talking about somebody who could steer them onto the mental
health pathway or engage them with mental health services, but rereading it, I thought
perhaps maybe what you actually mean is access to someone they can talk to and who they trust.
You're talking about a confidant, maybe a teacher or a youth worker or somebody who
would be able to listen to them, not necessarily give them mental health counseling, but at
least listen to them so that they feel that they're being listened to.
I was wondering, first of all, I got that interpretation correct.
And secondly, can you tell me how you think you can bring that about?
Can I ask a second question on page 17?
You've talked about increasing attendance and participation at youth hubs and clubs
by 20 percent.
And I think that's, you know, a great idea and a great initiative to – a great ambition
to have.
I was just wondering about where do you get the target from, and do you think you can
Do you realise that target?
I do like a challenge, Councillor.
We did say the strategy is ambitious and bold.
In response to your first question,
both of your summaries are correct,
because actually when we think about emotional
and mental health support for young people,
it's a broad spectrum.
There are some young people that will need
a targeted intervention, whether that's structured
or through our places to be offer, for example,
through our schools, also operating through some of our family hubs.
Some young people will need a more formal mental health intervention
through some of our statutory services.
But many of our young people say, I just want someone to talk to.
Actually, I've had a really naff day at school,
and I'd just like somebody who understands what I've experienced
and be able to offload to them, talk them through,
to understand that actually part of that could be about growing up.
So there's a huge investment as part of this strategy about upskilling our youth workers around feeling confident to have those conversations.
Giving them those skills to have those conversations, but also recognize when those conversations,
when the child might need more support than they can actually offer.
So it's about the spectrum of need, but really understanding that not every child suddenly needs to be referred to CAMS or for some form of structured intervention.
It's about giving them the space to listen and to be heard.
And the target?
And the target?
Yes, so through the strategy we've talked about increasing our outreach.
So lots of our young people don't necessarily have that social capital to be able to know
what's on offer in our youth hubs, for example.
So what we really want to do is to go out and reach those children and young people.
So go out and find the seldom seen and seldom heard young people, engage those young people
into our youth hubs and youth spaces to access the provision that's on offer.
So the 20 % is ambitious, but I think it's realistic.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Wollstoneholme, and then I think we'll go to voting.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to ask about the sustainability of this.
So we've got some fantastically ambitious targets for 2026.
But of course, children take more than two years to grow up.
And so therefore, we need to to continue this for well,
So I was really wanting to ask how you could ensure that this wouldn't just be a flash
in the pan.
Thank you for your question.
And absolutely.
And that's why the Wandsworth Youth Partnership Board is so important.
Because actually through working in collaboration with our community, voluntary and faith sector,
it is about that sustainable modeling.
But also in terms of being responsive to young people's needs, children's needs are changing
all the time.
So in terms of how we're being responsive to that,
but also thinking creatively about how
we bring our resources together so we have that sustainable
model of delivery.
Also that continuum of exploring funding opportunities,
for example, so that we can be creative and innovative
and as we continue on that culture of learning journey.
Thank you very much.
And thank you everybody for your questions and your interest
in this very exciting paper.
And thank you Ms. Work for all your work on this.
So if we can go to the recommendations,
you'll find them on page four.
And the committee is recommended to support
the recommendations at paragraph two.
Do we support the recommendations at paragraph two?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Now we can move to the play strategy paper.

4 Play in Wandsworth (Paper No. 24-336)

which sits very well with the youth
strategy.
And in the interest of
time, I'm not going to do the
preamble.
I'm going to go straight
to Ms McKelligott who introduced
this paper.
Thank you,
Councillor.
Good evening, everyone.
I'm delighted to be
here today to talk to you about our
vision for play in Wandsworth.
We want
Wandsworth to be the absolute best
place for children to grow up in.
We want it to be a place where
everyone values play as a life
enriching experience. We want to raise awareness about the importance of play,
working with our partners, our schools, our libraries, health colleagues, the
faith sector and local community organizations to ensure that every
child in the borough has access to exciting and inclusive play
opportunities in their local area.
We know that opportunities for play have diminished in recent years. The
pandemic meant that families lost access to play spaces and those all
important opportunities for socializing and connecting with others.
The rising cost of living means that many families now can't afford play activities
or even the travel to get their own back.
We know how important play is for children and families.
It's crucial for healthy development, for establishing independence, for better health
and well -being, for relationship building and connecting within local communities.
We want to put play back at the top of everyone's agenda.
So how exactly do we do that?
Earlier this year we went out to the community to find out what the children and families and Wandsworth want.
We ran an online consultation, went out to events, held focus groups, and used this feedback to shape our vision for play and our key priorities.
At the heart of our pledge for play is a commitment to access for all.
We want Wandsworth to have the most compassionate and generous play offer there is.
An investment of four million pounds into Wandsworth play spaces as part of our decade of renewal.
This is in addition to money that's already been pledged to spaces such as Tooting Lido's
Splash Zone or George Shearing Football Pitch.
We're committed to piloting our play shaping approach for playing Roehampton as part of
the Alton region.
We're continuing to invest in our family hubs and children's centres, ensuring they're welcoming
and friendly places for families to spend time in, socialise, connect and play.
We're going to be supporting our children and families to play at home with a strong
focus on strengthening family bonds.
We'll be developing once with own 10 by 10 program,
supporting Children to experience 10 exciting and life enriching activities
before the age of 10.
And we'll harness the power of our status as London Borough of Culture in
2025 to drive forward our vision for play.
And we're going to do all of this by focusing on three key areas. People at
play communities that play an environment for play closely aligning
with the Wontwith Move Together strategy
that launched earlier this year.
We want Wontwith to be a place where every child
and young person can access high quality play provision
close to where they live and participate in fun,
safe and inclusive activities
that meet their unique needs and interests.
Together with partners will support children and families
to become empowered to explore the world through play.
We know we already have a rich and exciting play provision
in Wontwith but we're really excited
about how this could be even better.
This paper really is just the beginning.
We will be spending the next few months
planning and focusing on the key actions
outlined in the paper.
And then next year we will be launching the
year of play alongside London Borough of
Culture
and start embedding Wandsworth's legacy as
the best place to play.
I welcome any comments or questions.
Thank you
so much.
It is such an exciting paper.
I can see
there are lots of questions already.
Councillor
Burchill, Councillor Apps,
Councillor
Thank you, Chair. Yes, all very exciting and play is important. Play for young children
is their work and it is vital that they have an enriched environment to do that. There's
not much talked about libraries and there used to be in some places toy libraries. Would
Would you be creating those, supporting those, enhancing those?
Good evening, committee.
Thank you for the question.
I'm Matthew Ealy.
I'm the director of culture and leisure.
I'm going to be honest, I'm not going to be able to answer well on about toy libraries,
but I can definitely find out if there's someone in the children's team that can do that.
But in terms of our libraries, play is fundamental to the offer within our libraries.
We are developing a library strategy as we speak.
We're going to be bringing that forward in February for approval at the Environment Committee.
And lots of the ambition that's in the Wandsworth moves together and this play strategy will form part of that library strategy.
You know, from the key things like rhyme time with parents and, you know, little babies to more structured play.
And we've got baby yoga and things like that going in our library.
So we do a really fantastic diverse offer
and this strategy just builds on the excitement of that
so we can be bigger, bolder, and better.
Counselor Apps.
Yeah, well let me start by saying how much I congratulate
you for this paper.
It's a tremendous start.
Really pleased to see the ambition within it again.
I think one of the things that one's worth
often been criticized for in the past is working in silos. And what's really great about this
is the fact that it's so cross -cutting. It's something I'm really passionate about, making
sure the Council does more of. So you're kind of looking across children's leisure, you
know, making sure that we're managing, bringing in libraries, bringing in housing, all really
good. Can you explain more about how you've kind of made sure that you've brought those
colleagues and those partnerships on board through this journey and how we will make
sure that collective approach continues as the strategy develops into practice.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor.
Yes, I think this paper and piece of work has been a real success story and collaboration
across the organization.
As you mentioned, we've had obviously colleagues from Children's, but also leisure, assets,
housing, public health, insight and analytics, all coming together to form a board, a sort
of working group where we were reviewing local population data, reflecting on feedback from
children and families, and sort of inputting into that vision and key priority areas as
the paper evolved.
And I think this approach really ensured that we were aligning with various strategies coming
up, for example, one to move the youth vision and ongoing work with libraries as well.
We will continue working closely
together.
We will be reviewing
membership of that board and
setting up strong and robust
governance to take our plans
forward and make sure those
work streams are delivered.
And Councillor, just to echo
what my
colleague said, that actually
I will be chairing that
governance board moving
forward to ensure that it is
that synergy and also ensuring
that we hold to account our
colleagues across the council
in terms of the delivery.
Councillor Stockard, cabinet
member,
would you like to come in?
Thank you, thank you chair. I just wanted to reinforce again that I think this aspect
of this new approach that we are launching here in terms of play is really important
to me. I think we've said before we want to put children at the heart of everything
we do at the council and I think this is really where we are trying to advocate for children,
not just that the services are excellent within Children's Services Directorate itself, but
across the council and we're ensuring that every director
at the council is really putting play at the top
of the agenda, putting children and families
at the top of their agenda, like it's been said,
whether it's our leisure, whether it's our green spaces,
whether it's community safety, or traffic
and our play streets, and that's really important.
And the opportunity for us to take our work
and our advocacy for children across the council,
So I think this is a really good way for us to do that.
And I'd really welcome other councillors
kind of being mindful of this approach
that the council is endorsing here
when there are other committees and thinking
about how we can really advocate for children
in the borough having the very best start in life.
Councilor Corner.
Thank you, chair.
And I really do want to agree with all of the comments made
about how valuable this paper and proposal is,
so thank you for bringing it to committee.
I do want to continue my theme on how we know
we'll have been successful.
I think there's some excellent measures here on page 56,
and it'll be really fantastic to achieve these.
I do have one question on 2025 and ELBOC.
On the second bullet point, it says that we want
at least 10 % of the local population of all ages to describe their well -being positively.
I assume that's a typo, 10 % seems quite low, I'd want it to be maybe 90%.
So I wondered if there could be a comment on that.
But my substantive question is about the agenda for 2526 on page 65 on the relaunch of Free
play streets and getting those done.
So that will be quite easy to see that those have happened.
This committee and of course any colleagues interested
in transport policy will know that closing streets
has been highly controversial in recent years.
So I'd like to just have a bit of a comment
on what the free play streets will look like
and how residents will be able to know
that their streets are being closed
for the purposes of play.
I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing,
but clearly that process would need to be transparent
and communicated to residents appropriately.
I'm so sorry, Council,
can you repeat the second part of the question?
Yeah, so on page 65, one of the success criteria
was the 25, 26, and the re -launch of the project.
sorry okay so on page 65 one of the success criteria for 25 26 is that we
want to relaunch the free play streets in recent years closing streets for
whatever reason has been quite controversial and a lot of feedback has
been given to the council about about you know lack of resident awareness of
when their streets will be closed
or there'll be a lack of access to them.
So can you just explain a little bit
about what the play streets will entail
and how residents will know that their street
will be part of that program?
Sorry, I'm struggling with technology there.
Thank you, Councillor.
Yep, so play streets, like you said,
involve closing roads for a specific period of time
and creating safe spaces for children to play outside.
This is something I think that was lost a bit
over the pandemic, obviously with social distancing,
but has sort of experienced a bit of,
a bit of more popularity in the last couple of years
with things like the King's Coronation,
street parties, et cetera.
This is something that we really, really want
to sort of push forward because safety was sort of
the key concern that came out in our engagement,
particularly safe spaces outside
for children and young people to play.
And so we think this will benefit local families
and it will sort of promote that sort of connecting,
socializing, strengthening community bonds,
which is evident, sort of part of our ambition
throughout the whole paper.
We have liaised with colleagues in transport.
I think that's sort of a bridge we'll have to cross
when we come to it, but it's definitely something
that we want to promote going forward.
OK, as long as there's due kind of warning given
to residents about when their street might be up
for being a play street.
I'm not saying if, you know, I think that's really important.
And could you also answer my question
about the measure on page 56 about describing well -being?
I think that the cabinet member wants
to come in because it's really more addressed at us,
I think rather than the Miss Gillicott about this school street. Yeah, just coming back to the point about
Play streets. I think the point that we made before I just I'm cautioned against the council of sharing some disinformation
Really or misinformation. Should I say about what a play street is? I think you should be really
Careful here and I hope the councilor wouldn't miss describe what what this is articulating because I think we have had
really
positive feedback about our work around school streets, which is exactly what a
play street is as well, closing streets around schools for a time -limited time
so children can get to school safely and in a more pleasant environment, thinking
about air quality, you know, we've reached that and exceeded our targets, I
understand, earlier than expected, so my taking of that is there definitely is
appetite looking at how successful the school streets program has been and
And also, as was being described, we have got really successful teams and schemes and
positive schemes that have been well received by residents across the borough in relation
to free play streets on car free day, coronation day, and I don't share anxieties that the
council is sharing about those events, which is what this paper is talking about, and other
types of schemes.
Thank you for that clarity.
Can I just come back quickly?
I don't accept the assertion that I'm spreading
misinformation, obviously.
I'm referring, of course, to LTNs,
which actually, to be fair, happened before the council
terms.
But it is an example of where a street is,
the use of a street is changed.
And they were controversial, and no one can deny that.
Now, a school street is when the street
is closed during the opening and closing hours of the school.
a play street might result in a street being closed for a lot longer and it might cause
significantly more disruption or it might not depending on how well it's rolled out
and communicated.
So that was the point I wish to make.
I'm not opposing play streets, just saying that it's an important consideration and I
look forward to the council managing their rollouts extremely well.
Thank you for your comments, Councillor Corner.
I think your colleague, Councillor Owens, would like to come in now.
I get the amendment to the metric on page 56.
Is that accurate that we only want 10 % of people to describe their well -being as good?
Or is it a misalign?
So, if they are 10%, this was us aligning with other strategies, so that was a success
measure and in another strategy we obviously wouldn't want to sort of go above and misalign
with that.
But it's something I think we can revisit.
Thank you.
Now I'm going to go to Councillor Owens and then Councillor Osborne, Councillor Davies
and Councillor Apps.
Thank you.
Just picking up a bit on libraries and a couple of other points as well, but they mainly relate
to teenagers.
I was just sort of curious and unconscious rather that obviously teenagers are the ones
which we also particularly need to reach out to.
It's wonderful to see about some of the refurbishments of playgrounds.
But obviously, with some of our refurbished libraries,
we have teenage sections, for example,
and of course, they're only open on three days a week.
And obviously, particularly in Northcott,
our brand new library was designed to be opened
on more days because obviously,
the private sector can use the meeting rooms
within the building.
Similarly on teenagers, but also younger children,
sport is obviously huge in the borough.
And you make a reference to some of the waterlog pictures.
I also know, because I'm involved in four different sports
across the borough that the cost of hiring the pitches now in the last couple of years
is almost doubled.
And what has happened is that the cost is obviously passed on to families.
So if your children play with Fit for Kids, for example, or Broomwood Football Club, or
one of them on a Saturday, the fees are much higher than they would have been, and it's
becoming less sustainable.
Finally on swims and gyms, curious as to take up on that.
Obviously that's been rolled out more extensively to include 17 and 18 -year -olds since the beginning
of the year.
But, you know, obviously that would be interesting to know about Jacob.
And just some playgrounds.
Thank you very much, Lady Anne.
I know it's a different Lady Anne to the one in Northcote, but it's great to see all playgrounds
finally being refurbished.
Thank you.
Thanks for the question.
I'll try and answer all those questions.
They were pretty fast.
So I think one was about library opening hours.
And I'm really pleased to say that we have quite good teenage engagement in our libraries
and programs that we run, but we want to be more ambitious, and we've been listening to
young people and families as part of the development of the library strategy, and we will be presenting
further enhancements to what we want to do as part of our proposals for the next strategy.
That strategy will also include a review of the opening hours as well to make sure they're
fit for purpose and meet the needs of the communities, and particularly the people that
need them the most.
So hopefully that's answered your question,
even though I'm pushing it down the road,
so I apologize for that.
In terms of pitches, the council has invested
1 .4 million pound in improving our pitches.
So the first year we've done about half of that.
It has to be done at a certain time of the year,
so at the end of this season there'll be another
significant investment in those pitches as well.
On the fees and charges, it concerns me,
because we want to be really inclusive and accessible.
and we've literally just taken our fees and charges
to Environment Committee and got them approved
and they were, most of them were about 2 % increase.
So there's not, if there's been a huge increase
over the last two years, that's not been while
I've been here, but I'm happy to look into it.
And we do support clubs, we have,
lots of our clubs have subsidized access.
So whether or not those clubs or those groups
are passing that on, that's difficult for me to say.
But I do know that lots of our groups and clubs have subsidized access to our pitches and don't pay the full rate
But I'm happy to look into that in terms of access for all I think this is something the council should be really really proud
of
Every month we get more and more people signing up every month the offer gets bigger and better
You know we've got
360 places every day in the Lido when the Lido is open for access for all for free and subsidized access
We had over a thousand people benefit from fireworks,
tickets as part of our Access for All offer,
and this is on top of the fact that any child
that lives in Wandsworth that's under eight
can swim for free anyway.
And we've recently been piloting swimming lessons
for children that are on free school meals
because that's the target group for us.
And in January, at the Environment Committee,
we agreed to extend that offer
because it was only eligible for years five, six, and seven.
it's going to be from years 2 to 7 and that was agreed at Environment Committee.
So building on that ambition, you know, just shows that this strategy is articulating that,
but we want to go further and harder and faster and any feedback that you want to give on
how we might be able to do that, let me know.
I'm on the council system and happy to consider it.
Thank you so much.
I think Councillor Osborne actually, I had you down wanting to ask the next question
and I'm sure you'll build on what's just been said.
I shall actually.
Well, first I want to make a comment about the paper.
I promise I will enter into a more interrogative mood towards the end of my contribution.
But the thing I want to say about the paper, at the risk of repeating everybody else,
is praise is to say, I don't want to present myself
as an expert on this, but I get the feeling
that the paper kind of gets it.
It understands what play really is
and the importance of play.
And it isn't just about a child getting on a swing
or a roundabout or a climbing frame or a slide.
It's about that child measuring itself
against the rest of the world
and establishing how it fits in to a local community
and a local area.
And it's about the family around that child
measuring itself against its own community.
And play is so important for all of those things.
And I think that has to be said here
in this discussion this evening.
If I've got a question, I think it's,
I'm wondering whether you can elaborate a bit
on how we are getting at that, how we are getting ourselves into a position where we think we're doing the right things.
What are the families saying, how are we getting a response from the families, and how is that continually going to be the case?
I want to see that as an organic part of the programme forever and a day.
Thank you, Councillor. So, yeah, I mean, engagement with local children and families was absolutely
key to sort of shaping and development, developing this paper. And we wanted to ensure that it
was really sort of truly representative of families across the whole borough. For this
particular piece of work, we kicked off our engagement with an online survey early this
year, asking families what were their views on play spaces, what did they like, what wasn't
working, what is working. And then our fantastic participation team were also involved going
out to events, community spaces such as the Rose Centre, Roehampton Food Bank, going to
family hubs, children's centres and engaging with forums such as our Youth Council and
youth clubs, talking to children at schools, engaging with young people at Kimba, Skate
Park, it was a really, really big piece of engagement.
And also as part of this, we were asking what are the barriers that children and families
are facing in terms of play.
I think some of the key concerns, obviously cost was a big one.
I mentioned safety earlier.
and
Families will want also wanted to see more inclusive and age -specific
Equipment they don't want to go to your park for you know
They're five year old and then have to go somewhere else for their ten year old for example
So you asked what are we doing sort of to address that feedback?
We're going to be
Assessing the needs of all the local playgrounds and ones with making sure that they're brought up to a high standard by making upgrades and improvements
In terms of safety, we're working with community safety.
As Councilor Stock mentioned earlier,
we're also gonna be expanding
supervised sessions for young people,
strengthening our play offering provision,
as Kat mentioned earlier,
and also looking at improving lighting in playgrounds
so people just feel safe walking home in the evenings.
Families also said they wanted longer opening hours,
so we're gonna look at piloting
longer opening hours and playgrounds, opening school playgrounds outside of school hours,
trialing that in Roehampton first and potentially piloting opening hours at family hubs as well.
And in terms of play activities being too expensive, we've mentioned sort of our access
for all offer, offering free soft play to under -eight leisure centres. We're also going
to be opening up counselling spaces for local voluntary organisations to use for free or low
cosplay activities which we hope will expand once we play
off even further. As we acknowledge this is just the
start, we do need to keep listening and engaging with
families.
I think we will be developing a strong engagement plan as part
of the new governance, the new program, but key to that is our
participation team, our cluster partnerships and our existing
forums if they're fantastic in getting that feedback.
Councillor Davies.
Yeah, hi.
So you know that I'm the council's family's champion and I was really delighted to be
able to take the privilege really of speaking with the children's director and the whole
team and persuade them of the rationale for the baby boxes.
And we're all very proud that this has been introduced.
We're the only London council doing this.
And it just shows how differently we're thinking
about play really.
And the importance of it, the serious business
and how it really impacts child development
and the child's right to thrive
and have the right resources thrown at them.
And what I'd really like to hear is if you can,
you know, so I'm a convert, I know about
all the different benefits for it,
but I think it's quite important if we can explain
to the committees what is special,
what are the benefits for this, about this initiative,
particularly for play at home,
and then how the family connects as they work
with and with for and with the families.
And then I suppose yeah, how's it going and what are the ideas for rollouts?
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor, and I'll take that question.
So the Baby Box is a fantastic initiative, the only in the borough to be delivering the
Baby Box currently.
It's a fantastic initiative and a programme that really offers wraparound support for
vulnerable parents.
So we work with our colleagues across the health partnership to identify vulnerable parents who in need of support
often in first -time pregnancies
often between the age of 16 to 23
And that support very much is about that practical support. So we talk about the baby box, which is full of fantastic toys and
support mechanisms for that being a first -time parent but also about that
emotional support as well in terms of navigating through pregnancy, but also in terms of navigating
access to the support services both in terms of those those wider aspects as
well but also those social interactions as well as you're navigating through to
become a new parent. I'm delighted to share with committee that actually that
since the launch of the baby boxes we've had 17 parents identified. On average
each year there's about between 40 and 50 parents who would be eligible for
scheme so already we're doing really well in terms of identifying parents who
may be suitable, of those 17 we've delivered six boxes so far.
So the baby, we start supporting parents at about up to 34 weeks of gestation.
That's the point we deliver the baby box to them, which has all the bits in it in terms of supporting them.
And then we continue to work with the parents right through to birth and beyond for up to six months to a year in terms of supporting with that transition.
So delighted that we've been able to deliver six baby boxes.
We've got another nine boxes that are due to be delivered
before April, so again, we're already engaging
with those parents around that support.
But equally, as the discussion has led this evening already
around success measures, so again,
we've got a really strong evaluation program in place
to consider actually what's been the impact
and what's been the success of the baby boxes,
so we're working through that with the parents
that we're engaging with now.
And we're also ambitious, as always,
in terms of looking at how we can expand that program
for other parents as part of the access rule.
Thank you very much, Ms. White.
Can I suggest, because we've got many papers to get through,
that we move to recommendations now?
So page 34, the committee is recommended
to support the recommendations in paragraph two,
A, B, and C.
Do we support the recommendations?
We're agreed, agreed, agreed, unanimous.
Thank you very much.
Now, as I said at the outset,

7 Proposal to Consult on the Closure of Bradstow Residential School and Children’s Homes (Paper No. 24-339)

we are going to bring forward the paper that was at seven.
That is now going to be at five.
And we have many people in the public gallery
who I know have been waiting patiently,
and thank you very much.
I tried to bring that in for you in the hour,
but we are slightly over that.
But thank you very, very much for your patience.
So the paper that we move to
is the proposal to consult on the closure
of Bradstow Special Residential School
and the children's homes there.
It's paper number 24 to 339.
And we will go into this, and I know Ms. Popovici is going to introduce the paper,
but I think just at the outset, we want to acknowledge how hard this is and
how challenging this topic is, and the proposal to consult
on the closure of the residential school and the children's homes in Kent,
which I believe has stood there for over 35 years,
for Wandsworth taking over in 1990.
So there's a big history to this as well.
I think we all want to thank the principal, Sarah,
who I know, Sarah, you're in the public gallery
in the group of teachers, and all of you
who are with us tonight in the public gallery.
and we want to recognize the significant impact.
The discussion that we are now going to have to have
will be on students, families, teachers,
and the whole community down at Broadstairs.
We're very, very aware of that.
And also to say that we want to emphasize
that the recommendation for closure is not,
it is not a reflection of the quality of the leadership
or the dedication of you, the staff.
Absolutely on the contrary, we welcome Sarah
and the teachers who are with us now
and we want to praise the remarkable team
who have worked so hard to provide an enriched experience,
educational and care for the students at Broadstairs
and your commitment and passion and service.
They really have not gone unnoticed
and we wholeheartedly want to thank you for that, but we do recognize how hard this is.
So I'm now going to hand over to our Director of Children's Services, Ms. Popovici,
to provide an overview on the paper.
Thank you, Chair. I feel quite emotional actually introducing this paper because it's absolutely
not the conversation that any of us around this table has actually anticipated.
Since my tenure in Wandsworth and working and serving Wandsworth residents,
this conversation has been omnipresent in my professional life,
week on week from my day one in the job, which was five years ago.
Bradstow School in Kent has for many years been providing highly specialized
education, care and support to young children with severe and complex needs.
Bradstow has been a valuable part of our Wentworth family of schools. For our
family of schools, the geography didn't matter. We have been a team since 1990
and we know and I have directly heard on many occasions that the school is much
loved and valued by all the family it serves. The love and respect I know is
echoed by this council in the words of a pet parent. And I quote, the life of
my child and our wider family has been significantly positively impacted by
the fully integrated 24 hour high quality care and education and support
provided at Bratstow, dramatically improving our son's future life
prospects. Now I want you to pause and multiply this by the 33 Children and
young people currently at Bradstow.
And you can see how this school is held in such regard
that's holding a special place in the hearts of many.
And I know that because those heartfelt messages
and comments have reached me directly
from parents individually, as a group,
from staff, from the wider community.
These views reflect the exceptional support
provided by staff across education and care provision.
and sometimes in difficult circumstances.
Their commitment has never been in question.
Sadly, this proposal is one which has come as a last resort,
and that is due to the school's financial position,
a position which makes the school now, in the medium term and long term,
not sustainable, and not sustainable without a direct impact
on the quality of provision for children.
This committee knows that as a council, as a department, every single one in this room
is actually committed to special educational needs agenda and we've worked tirelessly
and in partnership with our community of schools at pace on our vision to keep children with
special educational needs local in Wandsworth close to their family and friends.
A £41 million investment in local provision has actually helped us create an additional
271 places since 2021.
The success of this work has in turn meant that over time we placed fewer and fewer children
at Bradstow because we wanted to keep our wants for children local.
and the current number of residents placed at the Bratstow stands at four.
The conversation today is not something we wanted to have and we have worked really,
really hard to avoid, avoid the proposal to consult on a closure of this school.
However, with the plan to transfer the provision to Kent, not progressing, coupled with other
local authorities unwillingness to pay outstanding bills or agree to uplift payments required
to provide the right support for the children placed at Braslow, we are unable to secure
the future financial viability in a way in which will not impact on the delivery of services
for children.
We do believe hand on heart that progressing this proposal has been taken in children's
best interest, and it is a difficult decision and an emotional decision for us all.
We acknowledge that this proposal will be really hard for the community of schools to accept,
especially given the challenges the school has faced over the last few years.
But we are really committed to working with everyone impacted on a transparent and in a compassionate way
throughout a proper, real, meaningful consultation process to really enable all stakeholders to have their voices heard
and really help decision makers to arrive at the right outcome.
Our chair has already referenced the fact that we've got a number of colleagues that
have taken the time to travel from Kent at the end of a busy day knowing that they have
to go back tonight to continue to serve those children and families back, you know.
And if that's not commitment, I don't really know what real commitment is.
And I really want to take this opportunity to thank them for their dedication, passion,
and for everything they do day in, day out to benefit the children and families of Bradstow
School.
Colleagues, your hard work has been instrumental in building the school's reputation for what
it stands for, for the specialized care and support.
Again, to reiterate, this proposal is absolutely not a reflection on the quality of the current
leadership and the education and care provided at Bradstow, it's absolutely linked to a financial
conversation which I know, we know, makes the provision unsustainable now and in the long term.
Chair, over to you. Thank you very much Ana. So questions, I can see Councillor Corner.
Thank you chair and I'd like to really express my gratitude to the members of staff at Bradstow
who have come here this evening and spent the time to be with us and in some cases give
me their views directly to help inform the debate tonight.
I'd also like to thank you Miss Popovici, I think that introduction really struck the
tone about the gravity of this decision that we are being asked to take today. I
do have a couple of things I'd like to read out in terms of representations
from the school community and those are things that the rest of the committee
should I think in the interests of having a properly informed debate
should hear. Although obviously as we have heard there are multiple sides of
this argument that need to be considered.
One letter that I've received states,
the announcement of the intention to close the school
now creates enormous anxiety and life -changing implications
for the young people and the families
and the wider community.
Many, if not all, of the current cohorts of young people
face the very real risk of finding
no suitable alternative placement if and when Bradstow
is closed.
With the likelihood of significant regression in their well -being and
future prospects, it is noted that schools like ours are also desperately
needed to support the increasing demand for specialist schools such as ours with
local ones already being over subscribed. Another member of staff at Bradstow's
said that she wishes to express my deep concern and distress over this
announcement and to highlight the enormous impact that it will have on the
lives of the young people, their families, our staff team, and the community Bradstone
serves.
Families have had to fight to secure places at this special school, often against tremendous
resistance from local authorities, despite the fine needs in EHCP documents.
Many like us needing to pursue their cases through tribunal processes.
I think those are important considerations for the committee to consider today.
I would like to make the argument and point out to the committee that I do not feel that
this is a similar case to the previous two cases of schools we've been asked to take
a decision on whether to close during this council term, Christchurch in Battersea and
Broadwater in Tooting.
The first point is that it's not the case that there are falling rolls.
There is a falling rolls issue at Bradstow.
In fact, as we've just heard from the letters, in one of the letters, it even says the phone
is ringing off the hook with people asking for provision at Bradstow.
And also, I don't feel it's right to describe the new provision being created at the Broadwater
site as the same as the provision being offered at Bradstow.
Bradstow offers unique residential support,
whereas the paddock expansion would only be day provision.
And also this is not about closing a school,
but offering the same, or at least very similar provision
at a nearby school.
It has been noted in the discussions that I've had
with members of the school community at Bradstow
that the council, Wandsworth Council,
has moved very quickly to help identify alternative provision for the children at the school and
that is appreciated and that's in the best traditions of the children's directorate here.
However it hasn't been possible to offer these children similar provision.
One of the children that of our Wandsworth council children has been offered provision,
an alternative provision at a school in Birmingham, which is just not similar provision at all.
It's in a completely different part of the country entirely.
So I don't feel that comparison with those two cases of schools being closed in the borough
recently is valid.
It's a completely different case that we need to consider.
I also feel that despite the paper doing a good job of presenting some of the options
that have been considered for the sites at Bradstow, I don't feel that all the options
have been given due consideration yet.
For example, it's been determined that the part selling of the land and the buildings
rather than the complete sale of the land and buildings could be possible whilst maintaining
the provision that Bradstow currently provides on that site, on just part of the site.
So for example, the paper makes reference to the large building.
that isn't necessarily required to provide for the children at that site
according to some of the representations I've received from the
school community. Also I don't think that the option of Kent County Council paying
up for the provision of the children that they've placed there has been taken
through to its final conclusion so it might be premature to launch a
consultation yet and I think there are still options around legal action that could be
taken.
I appreciate there are arguments to say that that would be too expensive and I'm sure there
are arguments to not do that as well but we need to carefully consider that.
And also there could be more work done to partner with other local authorities including
King County Council and others and have political leadership in order to make sure that local
authorities can work together to keep this provision in place.
So those are some reflections.
I'd like to, I would welcome further debates on those.
I do have some further questions as well,
but I'll let others speak for now.
Thank you very much for speaking on behalf of others,
which is the role of opposition.
I know we did it when we were in opposition,
but we must move to questions.
However, I think, Councillor Stott,
would you like to respond?
And not at this point.
Okay, so Councilor Osborne, I had next for a question.
Then Councilor Lee and then Councilor Carrelli.
Yeah, I know it's different circumstances, but
it's always heartbreaking to be faced with these kind of decisions as a committee.
But the difference in circumstances is important here.
As has been pointed out, we're not looking at a problem with a falling role, as we have
done previously.
This is very much about the finances of the school.
And the blunt fact of the matter is that, terrible though it may be as we've got to
look at it, we can't provide the kind of educational, quality education that we should be providing.
providing if, as we go forward, we're not getting the funds to do so.
A deficit is going to impact on the quality of education, and there's just no way around
that.
And, I mean, it's interesting that one of the letters you were quoting from there, Councilor
Corner, talks about how families have had to fight local authorities in order to get
provision at Bradstow.
And at the moment, a number of local authorities are struggling to pay their way at Bradstow.
So I think that is very much central to our decision this evening.
As you say, very different from previous dilemmas we've faced, but central to it now is the
financing of the school which we've inherited through a series of
historical accidents and ended up in a fairly unusual position with this
school down in Kent. So my question I suppose is can we be told what
actions have been taken with the local authorities to try and get them to pay
their deficits, pay up their debts to ensure that the education in this school is properly
funded.
Mr. Halleck, would you?
So I'll take that.
We've been working with the school ever since I joined here seven years ago.
I would say I couldn't have given more effort to try and work with the school, work with
other councils to recover their funds.
We have monthly task groups with the school nearly for that entire time because the finances have been precarious for the entire time.
I think in the second year here we had an in -year deficit of 200 ,000 that we had to start to look at.
And after that, COVID hit a high inflationary period with support staff being the most affected by pay rises.
Made us have to uplift charges in those periods more than we had ever before in the last 10 years.
on a percentage basis.
It is a very support staff heavy school.
As you can see from the paper, 24 seven,
a lot of support staff all getting
what was probably 20 ,000 pounds,
going into over 30 ,000 within two to three years.
That's a 30 % increase that has to be charged somewhere.
Someone has to pay for that.
We have my teams are dedicated to recovering funds
for special schools.
schools. We have to cash flow them. They could not survive on their own, which makes the
reason why the academy option is just very unlikely. At any one time, we are cash flowing
between 8 million pounds and 3 million pounds of debt that we still have to go and recover.
We do that for all our special schools. But I have a – because the risk is so high on
this, I have a 30 -minute briefing every two weeks from my director or assistant director
of finance to go through the debt and the entire conversation is nearly Bradstow and
every conversation is has this council paid, what are the reasons not?
No they don't want to pay for one to one, no they don't want to pay the inflation.
Inflation if you decline paying inflation of 2 % one year and the baseline falls and
you don't and then build on that, say it was meant to be 5 % you're paying 2%, next year
you're paying they agree only 2 % but it's meant to be another 5%.
That compounding effect can be 30 % over time,
very, very quickly that you become a deficit.
So Kent in particular, we normally get our money
eventually after a lot of hard work and begging.
There is a part where record keeping hasn't been that great.
So we don't have a signed document
to say this one -to -one is in place.
It should be paid for.
There might be an email trail or something.
Provision has been put in sometimes without a signed form.
Collecting that money has not been easy.
So at the moment, historic debts are a million pounds
due to last year, and we have had letters in writing
saying we're not paying the new fees required
to support the provision at the moment.
Since September, the reduced provision,
which is outlined in the paper as well.
That whole impact accumulates every single term,
and it'll easily be two million pounds
with a school that already got the 1 .2 deficit
coming into this year.
That can easily be four million within a very, very short time.
Myself and Anna, we met the DFE to ask what options it is a commissioner's power.
They have to agree uplifts.
Yes, when you replace the child, you have the power to negotiate fees, but the fee is
set.
You basically have to take that place, take the fee.
But when it comes to the annual increases, the commissioner has a lot of power.
And we met in that meeting.
It was quite clear.
We had very few options.
And one of them is the only solution is to walk away.
We can go to court.
So we had got to that point earlier this year.
We've gone to solicitors.
We'd written to the big council in particular.
And we got a response from their lawyers that could go to judicial.
But we paused it in good faith under the precept of working on the due diligence.
Myself and other teams and the school gave up a lot of the summer holiday to work on
geologists but by the end of it the conclusion was that the building is not fit for being
any type of school and that they weren't prepared to pay the fees required, especially
on the new ones that were uplifted because it was a smaller provision.
You lose economies of scale, even though we're committed to bring those prices down, but
it will take a restructure.
talking millions of pounds of restructure
just to get fit for purpose staffing.
Thank you very much, Mr. Halleck.
It's really clear that he'll have bent over backwards here
at Wantsworth to try and find a solution.
And it's just been impossible.
I had Councillor Lee next and then Councillor Govelli
and then Councillor Corner.
Yeah, I think we all acknowledge the concerns of the school community about the proposal
of disclosure.
I wanted to go back a bit to the quality of care and education that has been mentioned
by Rex and how if we do if we did try to keep the school open how might how would that be impacted?
Thank you I can take that that question thank you Councillor. The delivery of high standards
of education and care is central to our work with schools and important to us all in children's.
It's for this reason that we made the decision
to close the 52 -week homes to place our shared commitment
and focus on quality and safeguarding children
further to the care home inspections at Bradstow.
During this time, as is mentioned,
we were also working towards plans with Kent
on transferring the provision,
and hence it wasn't appropriate at that time
to commence a major staffing restructure
which would be needed given the significant reduction
in pupil numbers that we've noted alongside not accepting new placements
while significant work was undertaken to address the inspection findings.
Sadly, that transfer, as we know, isn't progressing and given the budget
position and large deficit, the cuts to staffing levels, which would be needed
to address this deficit and put the school in a sustainable position moving
forward, would inevitably mean that the level of support for Children would be
reduced compared to that currently provided.
This coupled with the ongoing investment needed
in the buildings and the site,
capital investment which we have committed to spend locally
would be in the longer term have a detrimental effect
on the quality of delivery, something which we all agree
we are not prepared to compromise on
in order to keep the school open.
Thank you very much.
Councillor Crivelli.
Can I say that on the face of the papers it would appear that it is economically viable
for Wandsworth.
It makes sense economically for Wandsworth not to be engaged with the school any more
if we have only got four pupils there.
But what I think we should be concerned about is that the existing 29 pupils that are already
there, can we see what is going to happen to them?
Because in effect, if we pull the plug on the school, where are they going to go?
It's quite clear that the school's offering a very specific sort of service.
I think we should be concerned about where the next, what's going to happen with those
29 people who will no longer be able to be at Bradstow.
Can I ask that question?
I wanted to ask Mr Halleck again, we have talked about the fact that this £3 .6 million
deficit, £2 million of it is caused by Kent not paying their fees.
I appreciate you have talked about the fact that we have tried to engage them.
In a legal context, surely they must be liable for those fees and consequently they have
legal obligation to honor those fees to ones with council, do they not?
So as commissioners, they have quite a lot of power themselves on inflationary increased
negotiation.
They do need to agree the fees on an annual basis.
So what was explained to us was that they either need to pay what's sustainable, agree
what's sustainable, or we have no other option but to close the provision.
That was pretty much as simple as that.
We can go to judiciary, but we're
going to struggle in some areas where
we don't have evidence, clear evidence,
of some of the provision that was charged for by the school.
And we'd probably get some of that money back,
but it's unlikely to get all of it.
And we'd probably go through that over and over again.
I don't know if that's, yeah.
I'll leave it there.
So, I mean, in relation to all of the children at Bradstow, you know, we recognize the importance
of thinking about transition for those children, you know, as we do for all children, but none
more so than children with special needs.
As with all transitions, whether it be in year placements or phase transfers, we would
obviously work with school leaders, parents and communicate with other local
authorities who hold the statutory responsibility for send provision to
ensure that planning is taking place with regard to alternative provision
should the decision be taken to close Bradstow. I think the key to this are
parents because any placement is around parental preference for their child
working in in relationship with responsible local authorities to consult
with schools and settings.
One thing I would say, we have liaised with other directors
of children's services because obviously we notified all
of them of this intention.
We haven't received any contact outlining concerns
about placement.
Now, that's not to say, you know, that won't be the case
but nobody has indicated to us that there are concerns.
We've liaised with other local authorities
that have got children currently placed
and they have got their brokerage teams conducting
intensive searches to find the most suitable placement
as I've alluded to in Wandsworth,
we have already undertaken a bit of a matching exercise
in relation to need and placement suitability.
And that's for the three children that we have there
because actually the further child that's there we have
is actually due to leave at the end of this year.
And actually consultation on that future placement
has already been, is underway.
And again, in terms of your response to us finding
or placing somebody, we can't place any child
in a provision without parental permission. That is how it works. And families would fight
us if it was inappropriate to place their child in a provision that they didn't deem
suitable. So actually, those conversations have started because it is very important
to us that whatever decision is taken, that we find provision for children and that we
ensure that any transition is as smooth as possible.
Councillor Corner, you wanted to come back and then I've got Councillor Burchill and
Councillor Owens.
Thank you, Chair, and I really do appreciate Mr. Hallock and his team's work on this over
such a long period of time and I'm very reassured about the work that they have done to make
sure that this is, from their perspective, the right proposal.
However, I feel that is more that could be done that the committee should be aware of now
It's regrettable perhaps that miss Adams the principal of Bradstow
Has been unable to address the committee this evening. She is in the public gallery
But she are in my discussions with her. She did confirm that she is
as a new leader at the school
able to
confident that she's able to come up with a financially sustainable plan for the school within the next term.
And indeed, there's a new business and finance manager at the school who will be able to support with the delivery of that.
She's also offered to come to address this committee personally to play a part in our decision making.
And it's important that the council knows that.
Nonetheless, I do think that there is more that can be done, but I don't think it's actually something that Mr. Halleck and his team are reasonably placed to be able to do.
It is something that would fall to politicians.
So, for example, Councillor Stock could meet with the cabinet member for education and children's at Kent County Council to understand what can be done there to make Kent pay up for the provision.
And also there could be a meeting with lead members
for education and children's across the local authorities
that are interested in the continued provision at Bradstow
to come to an arrangement to ensure the continued provision
at Bradstow for the foreseeable future.
Why can that not happen?
Should we not pause?
Allow that political process to happen
and then reassess. Thank you very much. Councillor Stock, do you want to respond?
Yes, thank you, Councillor Corner, for your request to consider some pause in the process. I just want to come in as well to
agree with what's been said by members of the committee and the officers about
the amazing work that goes on to support children and families with really complex needs at
Bradstow.
I'm sorry I haven't been able to attend the school yet, but I hope to be able to witness
the work that's going on there and see pupils and understand the care and education that
is provided and the amazing impact that they have.
And I really recognise the work of leaders, particularly the new head teacher in the work
that's gone on to the school and to echo what's been said before, that this proposal is no
reflection on the leadership, the current leadership of the school.
But I do agree with the comments that have been said about the entanglement of the financial
viability of the school and the quality of education that needs to be provided for children.
And that will always be my priority, is to make sure that children have high quality
care and the education that they need that meets their needs.
In relation to a pause, I think we've been clear, the paper is very clear, that this
is going to be a transparent and inclusive consultation process.
We are in listening mode.
We are open to options coming forward during this process.
We are keen that there is time to be able to do that, but what I think the paper does
also touch on that, you know, I think we've said it before in this committee that, you
know, CLIR is kind.
You know, we have – this is the position that we face ourselves with at the moment
because of the response that we've had from Kent because the school is within their borough.
They have the most children there, but they at the moment aren't willing to countenance
a transfer and as Mr. Hallock said, the position seems to be that the building isn't fit
for any type of school, for any type of children.
So my view is that those options can be taken forward during the consultation process.
I have met with political leaders in Kent, I haven't, it's right to speak to the
chair cabinet leader or the committee chair, I'm happy to do so directly.
I
Think that can be done through the consultation process. I think at the moment. I'm not aware that that appears to
Be something that will lead to any necessity to pause the console the proposal to consult in the new year
Thank you very much councilor stock for such a
Comprehensive response there. I've got councilor Burchill and councilor Owens and then councillor Osborne
Thank you so much.
These children have such profound needs that they need a special school, don't they?
I mean, we're spending a lot of money on expanding Paddock, but I don't think it's going to be
the answer for children that are at Bradstow.
And so some, you know, and there is going to be an increase
in the number of these profoundly disabled children
going forward, and there will be a need, I think,
because I don't, a lot of parents can't cope
with this level of need, looking after them at home.
And I don't probably need to have an answer.
I just think that I know that you've worked really hard.
I know the school is working really hard
and it's just a bit of a tragedy.
Thank you very much, Councillor Burchill.
Councillor Owens, I think I had next.
Yes, thank you.
I concur with everything that's been said.
I just had a thought.
I'm sure it's all been looked at, but I do realise what Councillor Corner was talking
about with the pause and perhaps going to the discussions with the other local authorities,
not just Kent County Council, but the others are listed, for example, Medway and Surrey and Newham.
But the school obviously was a sort of fully, fully 52 week a year school until recently.
We went down to obviously the school year as opposed to the calendar year in terms of residential.
I think at the moment 32 children, but with a capacity for more double 62.
And I was sort of conscious that obviously, so she's been raised about the building and
and the type of care because obviously a lot of our children as well have come from Paddock and Garrett Park, I think in particular to the school.
But I was just wondering, obviously you've looked at providing, using it as a facility for day pupils as well,
because that would be another route, just feeding into the thought of the pause, but thank you.
I think I had Councillor Osbourne next, then Councillor Lee, and then Councillor Davies.
please.
Yeah, of course everyone agrees that it's tragic.
Nobody is trying to say anything different from that.
Everybody understands how heartbreaking this is.
But we have to take a decision on what we're going to do with this school, and it has to
face the financial reality of where the council now finds itself.
I think it's right to say that the children come first and it's the provision for the
children that we should be concerned about.
Three of them are ours and therefore we have a duty and a priority to look after them and
make sure that they're properly provided for by Wandsworth.
I'm using ballpark figures.
forgive me if I've got the figures slightly wrong, but about a dozen come
from a range of other local authorities who have failed to pay up and are not
covering the cost for those children in this very, very special kind of education.
Now, they know what their responsibilities are and they know the
way we are thinking at the moment. We've heard that they have not responded and
said that they're worried about that at the moment.
That doesn't mean that they won't, but at the moment,
we're not getting anything from them
to say that that is clearly a problem.
I think we're right to worry about it, but at the moment,
we're not getting anything from them.
That leaves us with the approximate dozen 14
or so from Kent County Council.
And I think the fact of the matter
over a period of years we've tried to deal with Kent County Council.
I think we've really reached a stage where it's too late now to have any kind of negotiation
or anything else with Kent County Council.
Kent County Council have even been offered the site for nothing by Wandsworth and turned
it down.
They don't see it as viable.
And the blunt fact of the matter is I think Kent County Council have let us down.
They've let us down financially, they've let us down professionally on this, and I don't
think we owe them any kind of a meeting to sort this out at the moment with their political
leadership.
The fact of the matter is we've moved to a stage where things are far too advanced and
we need to take a decision and act decisively.
We need to grasp the nettle and move forward on this.
That is what the paper is offering up and I think that is why we should support this
paper.
Thank you, Councillor Osborne.
We certainly share those sentiments and I think also just from the chair, I was going
to say that we have to think about taxpayers in this as well.
They elect us.
We are responsible to them
And one's worth is carrying the cost of a lot of this
With such goodwill that we can't continue to do that
And I think would be in dereliction of our duties the people that voted for us in one's worth if we continued to do so
Forgive me from the chair. I've got council lead then councillor Davies and then councillor Correa
Yeah, I think I want to
to sort of draw attention to the staff at Bradstow.
I think firstly, to praise the staff
for everything they do for these children.
And as it's been said by many,
this isn't a reflection of the staff
or leadership at the school.
I wanted to ask, obviously this is gonna be
a very difficult period if we do decide to move forward
with the consultation for staff.
what are we doing or are we going to do to support staff at the school?
Thank you I will take that Councillor. Like you said I think we all acknowledge this
very difficult decision for the entire school community to process and our
approach has always been to be as transparent as possible and deliver
messages with kindness and clarity because clear is kind. I also want to
recognize that leaders are managing the impact of this proposal on a day -to -day basis.
And our focus will be on supporting them to manage the impact and bring all on the journey
of understanding.
In order to do that, we will maintain regular touch -based meetings with the head and chair
of governors to understand and respond to emerging needs.
Even though this school is very different, this is still a statutory process.
We've been through it twice before.
We've done a lot of learning from previous experiences in terms of how we move forward.
And I think the most important thing for me is always to listen to what leaders are telling
us in terms of what they need and what they're seeing in terms of emerging needs as a consequence
of the impact of this process.
Our school's HR will be instrumental in ensuring that all staff have the information that they
need to make informed decisions about the next steps.
This means also offering careers advice and linking in with other
employers Kent County Council to ensure that the highly skilled staff at Bradstow
And I do say that they are highly skilled can be retained in other local Kent provisions should Bradstow close
Or you know, we will support them in whatever they want to do next in terms of offering that that support
The school has a link advisor and this support will continue alongside the ongoing financial support that we have provided
We will make the best use of available ones with resources such as our education psychologists,
but also because of the distance, which has always been a challenge,
we will also look to commission local support as required and as informed by the needs
that are identified by the school leaders as we move through this process.
Thank you. I've got Councillor Davies and then Councillor Crivelli and then I
think we should move to the recommendations.
I'd just like to see clarity please about whether, following from Councillor Burchill's point she made, is the
Wandsworth in -borrow provision appropriate and will properly and
meet the needs of the three children who are currently at Bradstow, you know, and
you know and then what type of out -of -school care provision is there to support families?
Yeah I mean I think it's too early to have that conversation yet because it
like I said it is guided by parental preference in terms of provision as I
said we have done matching exercises and what we will do is what's most suitable
for those children but we can't make that decision for families that that
decision has to be with them alongside them but I'm confident that we will be
able to support children in alternative provision should this decision be made
to close.
Councillor Crivelli.
Just two technical questions the first one is about the fact that
Kent County Council are saying they don't want to engage on the the building
they're not interested in transfer and they've described the structure of the
buildings on the site as unfit for any type of school, but it's being used as a school
just now. I was just wondering if that point, that contradiction could be explained or expanded
on. The second thing is I make an assumption, Mr. Halleck can correct me on this, that the
land and buildings is an asset that belongs to Wandsworth Council. Is it our intention
if the school is closed to realize that asset by the sale of the land and the buildings?
So let me take the first one.
I think they did explain that's the school building.
So they were looking at PMLD, which is Profound Learning Disabilities, a lot of disabled children.
It's inaccessible.
But what they said was one of the reasons why the average cost is 350 ,000 pounds a child
is because you have to have so much staff to support just getting around the building
because it can be a bit of a labyrinth of stairs and all the rest.
The purpose built children's homes and boarding school is slightly different.
They were built in the last 10 years.
We spent 3 .5 million pounds on them.
So yeah, that's something different.
I won't take the one about selling.
That's a policy decision.
Councillor Stott, do you want to respond to that?
I think in relation to the asset, I think it's a premature conversation.
I think that this, the paper that's before committee today is around proposing on a consultation.
We've been very clear that we're trying to look to meet the needs of the children.
We're prioritizing that, but clearly the school's financial viability is very difficult,
and I think we need to focus on this process first, and the conversation in relation to that is too premature.
Thank you very much.
So I'm going to suggest that we now very slightly move to recommendations.
They're on page 134.
Do you have an amendment?
Yeah, I'd just like to explain our side's position on these recommendations.
I'd like to thank everyone on the committee for the mature conduct of this debate.
We do have some concerns about these amendments.
Firstly, 2B. Well firstly actually, we are making a recommended amendments to the
recommendations, yes. Firstly, recommendation 2B, they're very simple
amendments, even you'll be able to understand them, don't worry.
So, recommendation 2B.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, we've got you so far.
Carry on, Councillor Corner.
But please don't make remarks like that.
Okay. 2B, really we shouldn't be delegating authority to officers on this.
We should keep oversight as a committee.
And this is really important.
If we surrender oversight to officers at this meeting, then principally the administration
will bear all the political risk for this monumentous decision that is likely to be taken.
So instead we should reject that part of the recommendation and keep the decision with the committee.
Secondly, the amendment in the second part of the amendment is to amend to a to pause
the pre -proposal consultation stage for a term so that Bradstow School Management can
make their recommendations to the committee.
Thank you very much for those.
I think normally we would have these written down, but they are quite straightforward.
Counselor Apps, did you have something that's relevant to this?
Yeah, I had a question actually, forgive me, which is have you checked with the monitoring officer
if they would still be valid as part of the consultation?
What, that the recommend, that the amendments would be?
that the amendments would be workable, that they would be legal and tight.
You know, this is a formal consultation process.
It's not just something that we're just running through for, we get advice on this.
I want to know if you've had advice on your amendments.
I'm 100 % confident that these amendments are in order.
And by the way, the recommendation is to begin an informal pre -proposal consultation, not
a formal consultation.
My question was if you'd had advice from the monitoring office, if you'd had these
checked for due diligence? No I haven't but I don't need to and this committee
should have the confidence to consider these amendments itself and assert its
will because there are reasonable amendments that keep us in control of
the decision -making on this monumental decision that we're about to take that
was described as a tragedy by Councillor Osborne. We should be sure and that we
want to take this decision when it needs to be taken rather than delegate the
authority to do so.
Okay, well it seems to me that we can do one of two things here.
Oh, Mr. Halleck.
I think Lisa and I just want to clarify a few things just so that people make informed
decisions.
I'll let Lisa talk about what that means for actual transition of children and the possibility
that it actually means another year probably.
But almost every term we will lose a million pounds.
So just so everyone knows that.
And also just to say in terms of the process,
the timeline we have is very tight to ensure we give sufficient
notification to staff should the decision be made to close.
Failure to do that and to extend this means we would go into another academic year.
So you're then talking about another year's worth of costs if children then
transition through, cuz you couldn't ask them to move if you're keeping the school
open for another year and that has got huge implications for budget and quality of education.
Can I ask a question that follows from that because it does say and it says the executive
are recommended to approve an informal pre -proposal consultation stage. It doesn't sound like
it's informal then if it's got statutory ramifications.
It is part of the statutory process. You have to do a six -week prepublication consultation,
followed by the notification, then you go into formal consultation for four weeks, and
then you can move to a decision and closure. So you have to. This is all part of a statutory
process, and there is an informal element and a formal element.
And if we were to remove that delegation, we'd have to come back to committee in between,
Thank you very much, officers, for adding and giving us more information of what is
in front of us.
I think that we should move to a vote on this.
Parent representatives and the diocese representative can vote on this, but the diocese representative
who's joining us online cannot because you have to be present. So where we have
an amendment and I think we all understand the amendment that Councillor
corner put before us at a it was to pause so if we take the amendment first
I just wanted to add in relation, if it assists the opposition, in relation to their concerns
around moving from the informal consultation stage, albeit part of the statutory process,
to the formal consultation stage.
I know we have a good tradition in this committee of having cross -party briefings.
I am happy for the outcomes of the informal consultation to be shared in that manner with
the entirety of the committee so that it is kind of an open, transparent process for all
councillors understanding before we move into any formal process.
I know that's not something we've done with other schools, but I am, as you have rightly
noted, the different situation that this proposal is in, willing for us to have a cross -party
briefing at that stage.
I just wanted to add that in case that makes any difference to the way you vote in relation
to proposal 2B.
Thank you very much, Councillor Stock.
I'm really grateful for that offer.
I think it's vital that when,
even when the informal consultation takes place,
that those are shared with the committee.
I do feel that a failure to delay for a term
means that the management at Bradstow School
can't make their representations
and also that there won't be time for that political process to take place
amongst political leadership of the various local authorities. I really do
appreciate the representations made by officers about the money here. It's a
significant factor but we mustn't balance the books on the backs of the
most vulnerable children in our care and it is something that I still want the
committee to consider this amendment. Thank you very much Councillor. This
really has to come to an end and we have to get to the recommendations and we're
not getting into a situation of last say. Councillor Stough. Thank you very much
Chair. Just in relation to 2A and the proposal in relation to delay I think as
I've said before I do think those matters can be dealt with during the
consultation process and to be clear you know as I said before I have had
engagement with the MP where Bradstow is located,
Pauline Billington, MP.
And I know that she is, I would say, possibly even
in a better place than I really to lobby Kent County
Council on behalf of her own constituents.
And I know that she's engaging with other MPs who
are the relevant MPs for the children who
attend Bradstow in order to be able to have
that political conversation with Kent County Council.
I know that's already happening.
And in relation to children and the prospect of delay, you know, as Ms. Benaroli said,
I think that is a real concern that the committee need to be mindful
of the impacts of delay on children.
Thank you very much.
Right. Now we are going to move to a vote on this.
We're on page 134.
It's the recommendations and it's at 2.
And we're going to take the amendment first at A. At A we're going to take the amendment
that you're all clear that that was to call for a pause.
So we're going to vote for, against and abstain on this.
I'll take 4 first.
who is for the amendment?
One, two, three, one, two, three.
Five.
Any abstentions?
One, two.
Two abstentions.
Five, four, two abstentions.
And all those against the amendment.
That's six against the amendment, so the amendment falls.
We now move to point A, sorry, point B. And the amendment there was for the delegated
authority to go to the committee, to come to the committee.
I think it's assumed that it's already at the committee so essentially the
amendment is to remove that from recommendation point two.
Thank you for clarifying.
Yes or we can just take A and B separately if that's what the chair wants.
Okay, so we're now going to move to the recommendation as it stands at A. This is the recommendation
at A. All those for the recommendation at A. That's six for the recommendation at A.
Abstentions? Any abstentions? Thank you very much.
One, two, three. Three abstentions.
And all those against the recommendation at A.
Four. Thank you so much.
So we now go to B, the recommendation at B as it stands and is written on page 134,
all those for the recommendation at B.
Seven for the recommendation at B.
Abstentions?
Two abstentions.
And against the recommendation that be?
Four.
Four against the recommendation that be?
Thank you very much everybody.
So we now move to the next item on the agenda, which brings us to Children's Services Statutory Complaints.
I think our cabinet member is just coming to say goodbye to everybody from Bradstow.
So that brings us to our Children's Services Statute of Complaints Paper, pages 77 to 112,
to paper number 24 to 337.
And that paper is for information.
I don't know if we've got anybody
who is going to speak on it.
Hi, Nancy Carissa,
the Completeness Service Manager.
I was going to do an extremely brief introduction.
I think it might be appreciated at the moment.
Yes, if you could, thank you very much.
I was just going to say,
Well, thank you for the opportunity to present this report to committee.
I really appreciate having member oversight of complaints.
The report's very positive.
It captures learning from complaints through case studies.
And at the end of the report, it gives examples of some of the fantastic compliments sent
to Children's Social Services.
So we're also learning from what we're doing well.
The report demonstrates that when things go wrong, Children's Services are proactive
at putting things right quickly.
the themes are what we expect to see each year
and performance against time scales has really improved
and if there are any questions,
I'd be very happy to take them.

6 New Children's Act 1989 Statutory Complaints Policy (Paper No. 24-338)

Thank you, thank you so much.
And I really like it that we're including compliments
and how important that is for staff morale.
So I'm not surprised we won this social workers gold award.
Are there any questions?
Yes, Miss.
How many complaints were made against the wounds worth to children services this year?
This financial year? Yes. How many complaints?
I don't have the data to hand, but for quarters one and two.
No, this year. I've got the data in the report for last financial year.
I'd need to come back to you after the committee if it's not the data containing the reports. I wouldn't want to give you the wrong
figures
Thank you very much are there any other questions anybody else got miss Haroon
So when I ask about you know complaints I meant like the corporate complaints
statutory non -stretchery all type of exactly on the page number 91 and there's another column which is added this year and
That's complaint disengaged.
What does it mean?
Yeah, thank you.
Complaint disengaged means when somebody's started
the complaints process and they've asked to make
a formal complaint and then partway through the process
they've decided that they don't want to continue
for a variety of reasons.
Thank you for your scrutiny, Ms. Haroon.
Does anybody else have any further questions?
Nope, okay.
Okay, one more.
And then that's the limit.
Yeah, it's about the corporate complaints.
Sorry, let me just...
Yes.
So page number 106.
So last year, you know, the STEM education was higher compared to the social complaints.
and this year I can clearly see there is improvement,
which is 25 % reduction,
whereas the other side is 120 % increase,
is a social care.
So could you explain the reasons and how you can balance?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think the percentage increase is quite misleading
because it's a small number of complaints,
So proportionally, it's pushed it up.
Absolutely.
I think it's three better to use of the statutory complaints
procedure.
The next item we're moving on to is a new policy
we've got in place, which better sets out
how we apply the statutory complaint regulations.
So we have been making decisions in the statutory complaints
team to put some of the social care complaints
through the corporate process that
aren't part of the Children Act complaints procedure.
And I think that might account for the slightly higher number
of Social Care Corporate Complaints.
Thank you.
Okay, so I get to ask the committee to note this report.
You note this report?
Agreed?
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ms. Carissa.
So we can now move to the next item on the agenda,
Children's Act 1989 Statutory Complaints Policy,
paper number 24238.
And again, Ms. Karissa, if you could just briefly introduce this.
Thank you, Chair.
So, yeah, we've known for some time that it would be good practice to have a public facing
complaints policy that sets out how we apply the statutory complaint regulations because
they are complicated and they are difficult to understand.
It was identified by the Ombudsman that we didn't have the policy in place and that was
in relation to an adult social care complaint.
And we've mirrored this in adult social care
and put a statutory complaints policy in place.
So as I said, it's good practice
and it's to help people who are making complaints
understand how we apply the complaint regulations
in simple terms.
Thank you very much.
I thought it was pretty straightforward.
Has anybody got any questions on that?
No?
Okay, well this paper is actually for decision.
But our parent governors and our diocese representatives would not vote on this because it's council
business rather than an education function.
Have I got that correct?
Yes.
Yes.
So can I take a vote on this?
We're all agreed.
Agreed.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Okay.
Now we can move to the next item, which is eight.
Ones with corporate plan actions
and key performance indicators for 24 -25.

8 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) (Paper No. 24-340)

This report provides a mid -year progress update
on the delivery of our ambitious corporate plan
and quarter two performance indicator results
related to the remit of this committee.
and I believe Ms O 'Connor will now provide an overview to the paper. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you. So as you saw eloquently put, Chair, this is the routine report that comes to this committee every six months.
It contains the performance at the end of the quarter two for the indicators within the remit of this committee.
And just to refresh you, those are the indicators that you agreed back in June.
It also provides an update against the actions within the corporate plan.
That is the actions that fall specifically within the remit of this committee.
And again, those are actions that you agreed back in June.
You'll note there's only one red rated indicator.
There's a full explanation included for the performance there.
My team work very closely, that's the corporate performance team, work very closely with children's services.
So I'm happy to report that we're seeing improved performance on that red rated indicator in quarter three.
But I'm sure colleagues from Children's can take any questions on that or anything else in the committee report
Thank you so much
Has anybody got any questions on with we're so lucky on this committee because we have so much narrative with our key
Indicators. I know the other committees don't get that
And it really really is appreciated it. I always find this paper extremely interesting
Have we got any questions on it?
Anybody would like to ask?
Can see Ms. Haroon.
So when I look at the actions, it's quite a lot.
So some of the actions I can see really smart.
But, and I can see the explanations, it makes sense to me.
However, some of the actions are not smart.
So, because it's hard to measure, so I can give an example.
So at page number 150, so I can read it.
As a power -fover outreach offer, through working in partnership with Little Village, we will
deliver baby boxes which contain much needed essentials for the partners and so on.
But there is no numbers, you know.
What is before?
What is after?
So how we can measure and you can explain the data.
So that's a really good example of where it's a new program that's been put in place.
So we were talking about that earlier.
So we generally don't set targets for new programs.
we allow them to baseline.
What we do with the actions is that we set specific targets
for something to be delivered within the year.
So that's where the kind of smart element comes in.
And what you would see, for example, if there were no baby
boxes that had been delivered, which obviously isn't the case
because we talked about that earlier, you'd see that reported
there together with what action we were taking.
Thank you very much.
Any other questions?
Yes, I can see councillor apps
Sorry, I'm struggling to find the page reference again, but it relates to the initial health assessments for children
Which for looked after children rather which is below target?
but the reviews for the health assessments are consistently high and
Be good to understand some more about the context for this
Is there an impact on children from this?
And is there anything the committee needs to do
in order to support that work?
Thank you.
Thank you, yeah.
The initial health assessments have been
an ongoing challenge.
There's a couple of reasons for that.
The demographic of the children that we're bringing
into care at the moment is generally between 13 to 17.
And they're children who display a lot of difficult,
challenging behavior.
We have a timeline for their initial health assessments
and engaging and encouraging them often to see a doctor,
they have to see a pediatrician who they haven't met before
is quite a challenge to get them in the time scale.
We're also dealing with medics that have
particular appointment times.
So we're working with St. George's, with the NHS,
and we've got a task and finish group
that my service manager is chairing at the moment
in order to get those to be more timely.
The reviews are more regularly booked in, we've worked with the children longer,
they're more settled in their placements, so we're able to get them to those
appointments in a way that meets their health needs. Now those, the initial
health assessments may be slightly low but all of our children looked after are
having their health needs met so we can ensure the committee today is happening
and they just might not be getting to those initial appointments in the time
scales that are identified.
Councillor Osbourne.
Mr. Roon, can you turn your microphone on?
Thank you.
Yeah, also on children looked after, it's – I couldn't help but notice how regularly
the children get moved from one placement to another.
And I wonder if you can tell us why does that happen?
But perhaps more importantly, what support is there for the children that get moved?
And it's something to make sure that they start and end well, their placement.
Of course.
Thank you.
Given the behaviour and the presenting issues for many of our children at that age, generally
between 13 and 17, their needs are quite high.
So they've often suffered early abuse neglect,
trauma, signs of chronic trauma ongoing.
They're engaging or they're being exploited
sexually, criminally, and often have
emotionally abusive relationships with their parents.
Often these children are difficult to place
in foster families because foster families
find them difficult to manage.
So we will move them into residential care
for a targeted period of time in order to offer them
an intensive therapeutic program.
And often to kind of, as a circuit breaker in many ways,
to break some of the cycles and patterns
of currently abusive behavior that they're suffering with,
but also to give them space to engage
in a psychological intervention
before we then step them down
into a lower support residential
and then back into a foster family.
And those moves can happen quite,
kind of within a kind of 18 month period.
They're all planned, they're supported,
and we work with our children to make sure
that they get what they need.
We have a virtual therapeutic hub full of these children
who are in these placements,
which comprises of a social worker,
placement stability worker, a therapist,
who follow the children around,
so they're not constantly making new relationships
that those, that hub around them follows
and enable the kind of, the work with the placement
to be what they need, but also to step them down
into a family environment as soon as we can.
Councillor Crivelli.
One of the measures that we've always used is the off -state measure about their rating
of schools and, you know, obviously we are very proud of our outstanding rating for,
you know, 95 % is a very good record.
The problem is that Ofsted won't be making these judgments on schools anymore.
Do you know how we're going to use that metric?
Because I think that metric right now is something that we rely on and it seems to have run in our favor.
What are we going to do when that metric's not there?
Yeah, we're starting to look at that and we're actually looking at the judgment areas and we're going to be reporting those.
So I mean, one of the things that we were looking at
is the consistency, sort of leadership amount.
But they've changed the areas slightly.
So it's quite difficult to compare like for like.
But moving forward, we're going to look at a sort of a score
card approach in terms of looking at the areas
that they judge on and seeing how our schools perform
within those various judgments.
And that's going to be easier, better for us.
Because then actually, it allows us
to see the areas in which our schools need to work on
and we need to support them with
as opposed to looking at this overarching judgment,
which quite frankly doesn't mean too much.
These new areas are gonna mean more to schools
and actually probably more to parents
and it will be easier for us to then work with schools
in terms of developing their work
in these specific areas moving forward.
Councilor Owens.
Just picking up on that,
We have had a school in Wandsworth, it's the secondary school my son's attend,
that has just been ofsted and inspected under the new regime.
Just wanted to ask the question, George.
And actually it came out as outstanding overall, it was good before that.
And I realize obviously we have this new system in place,
but I was quite astonished to see that yes, you have to be in all five ranks as before,
and it will be broken down.
But actually it was exactly the same in some ways as the old regime
because it has come out as an outstanding school.
There's none of this, it's just outstanding,
this and that, whatever.
So yes, there have been changes, but obviously, they
haven't in other ways.
Thank you.
So a comment rather than a question, please.
Sorry.
I was just picking up on George, because it actually,
it's not as complicated as it sounds.
Thank you.
Thank you for the comment.
I'm probably touching on political things
here, because there's obviously the new government that's
brought this in.
and overall it is going to be much better,
as Ms. Finaroli has said.
Councillor Burchell.
I just wanted to ask you about school absences.
I see that we are better than the London average,
but still, you know, 18 % of secondary school children
is a depressingly large number of children
not taking up their opportunity for education.
How are we, what are we doing on this?
Oh, page 178, the very last thing, absence in schools.
I mean, one thing I would say, like I said, we are performing better.
We have a lot of work going on around attendance at the moment.
We have the internal think attendance group, which I chair, which is cross agency, cross
directorate.
We also have a schools attendance group, which has a vast range of attendees from a range
of schools at different levels and is chaired by the head of the Education
Welfare Service. We are currently looking at a piece of work around
emotional -based school avoidance, so EBSA, which we are seeing is one of the
things that we are noting in terms of that absent piece and I was actually
working with Kat and speaking with her earlier about how we include that in our
early help work and also we were discussing how the youth strategy might
also help us with the attendance piece because actually if you can engage
children that don't attend school through a youth offer and build that
trusted relationship and there's evidence from some local authorities
that that youth offer can actually impact quite significantly on school
attendance so we're really trying to work like I said so that our strategies
aren't in isolation that they actually impact lots of different areas of work
So as much as as I said we want every child to be attending school every single day because
For a child not in school means they're not learning and that's going to impact on their outcomes and their life chances
So just to reassure you that there are significant pieces of work around attendance and within the think attendance group
Actually, our focus has always been
Severely absent children. So that 50 % and below
So what we've obviously started to do, we started there to really focus on those children who we have most concern about.
And because we're having such a significant impact on that severely absent group, we're now obviously moving the levels up.
So we're now looking at our persistent absent group, obviously below 90%.
But we, as I said, we want every child to attend.
And we have very, very good data sets because now obviously with the government
introducing that statutory requirement for schools to return data, we actually
have day -by -day information so it's real -time data as opposed to what we
used to have which was the lag data through the census. So as I said it's
there's some really positive work going on we're working very hard to address
non -attendance of children attending Wandsworth schools. Thank you very much.
So you really are sort of identifying why some cohorts are not attending schools.
That's good. Thank you.
Absolutely. And on an individual student basis.
So we actually have the children, which schools they attend,
so we know exactly who they are.
And then we look at what agencies are already involved with those children,
because this isn't something that schools can just do themselves,
that parents can do.
We have to take a whole collective approach to non -attendance,
because like we say, attendance is everyone's business.
So that's our approach to improving outcomes
when it comes to attendance.
Let's just start.
I just wanted to add one of the areas
I think is particularly worth noting
in terms of think attendance group again
is that kind of cross -directorate working
in terms of our directorate's engagement with housing
and thinking about the impact of temporary accommodation
and the high levels of family and temporary accommodation
and how that can have an impact on an absence.
And I know that Ms. Fennerone is doing a lot of work
working with housing and they're involved in that think attendance group.
Thank you for all the work being done in this incredibly important area.
Thank you, Councillor Burch, for that question, which has elicited a lot of interest from
everybody.
This paper is for information, so do we take it for information?
we note the report.
Agreed?
Thank you very much.
We now move to the final paper on tonight's agenda, which is quarter to budget monitoring
paper number 24 -343.

9 2024-25 Quarter 2 Budget Monitoring (Paper No. 24-343)

And I think, Mr. Halleck, I'm going to skip the introduction, although I did enjoy it
very much.
In a world grappling with economic turbulence and societal changes, our budget serves as
beacon of hope and resilience for many children and families.
And I totally agree.
Mr. Halleck, if you'd like to introduce the final paper.
Yeah.
I'll just say, I don't know, I'll take questions.
But the positions move very slightly.
I think that we'll be a little bit repetitive, the story.
I'll allow to come out in the questions, but maybe I'll save
the time. We are managing all the things that we control. The controllables is really in
the right direction. All the agency costs, staffing, etc., etc. It's those demand budgets.
Anything linked with SEND is a pressure. And obviously social care placements. And we're
talking small numbers. We've done a lot of demand. And I might include some of that in
the paper next. But really our demand management stats are excellent. And you can compare them
against any benchmark.
Small numbers just move the needle so much,
which makes it really, really hard.
And I can't say it won't get worse,
but it will not get terribly worse, that's what I can say.
Thank you very much, Mr. Halligan.
Yeah, joking aside,
thank you for all the work that you and your team do.
I know that you were leading on this
for the whole of London in some areas.
So really outstanding work.
Has anybody got any questions?
Councillor Apps.
It's kind of a compliment kind of a question,
but one thing that I've really admired
from seeing the work of Children's Close Up
is the fact that something that I might just at first sight
think, well, that's just demand -led pressure
that you can't have any impact on that budget -wise.
That how creatively, but still with children
at the center, the children's team look on that.
So that's the first thing to say.
But just to check with you, is there anything
that you've got your sights on at the moment
that you think like there's an area where we're
going to focus on trying to make sure we manage
that budgetary pressure?
Difficult question, maybe.
I think you're right.
There's problems on national, most of these.
but we do our best to do what we can locally
as best as possible and we can see that.
And a lot of it comes down to Rashid and his team
and the decision making.
Those do make, that makes a difference.
One placement's a million pounds these days.
That's a big decision to make
as we've just discussed earlier.
So I think there is we can look at.
It does probably on every billboard at the moment
but AI is the future.
It is going to improve the way we work,
productivity definitely, whether that means staffing reductions,
definitely means making life easier where we can focus on the important stuff and
take away administrative tasks.
You can summarize your week's emails in a second these days with co -pilot and
things like that.
There's so many things that are gonna happen.
We really want to embrace that.
We do have a little automation process.
We've been developed in the last term that makes it easy in the front door for
our referrals to be processed without a person doing it.
So that leave alleviates pressure there
The next step is to make that right into mosaic and access and do more which we will get to
So I think there's quite a lot in that space
Councillor corner, did you have a question? Yes. Thank you. Just a brief question. Thank you. Mr. Halleck are very comprehensive and
I do have a question around the use of taxis
which is detailed on page 189.
I know we have briefly discussed this before in a meeting.
Clearly the taxi costs are going up substantially
even when the director is doing an excellent job
of controlling other costs in other areas,
including in transport.
Other local authorities have been able to work
with taxi companies to reduce costs in some instances.
Are there plans to explore doing that here,
or do you think those avenues have been exhausted?
So I think the main thing is whether there's competition
in the markets, so we have about 20 providers.
We have a dynamic purchasing system
that allows automatic competition to get the best price
at any time for every route.
So every single route goes out, there's a taxi requirement.
We used to have a more expensive, I would say, bus service,
we've actually made sense to have more taxis,
but post COVID inflation, petrol prices,
all the rest of the petrol is coming down.
So some of those prices, that pressures has ceased or eased.
We've been able to move more and more children onto buses
because it is more cost effective.
It does encourage independence.
Yeah, taxis is not the preferred choice,
but sometimes it is required
and it has become more and more expensive
with inflation at the moment.
Benchmarking says our taxis are not hugely more expensive than others.
Our bus service was more expensive than others, but though we've kept nearly constant prices,
actually we put two new buses on, numbers are up, and costs are actually flat under the new provider,
London Hire, who have done a super job quality -wise, and encouraging us to put more and more children onto buses.
Which is, yeah.
Thank you very much.
So all of these papers for information, agreed that we take it for information.
Agree. Thank you everybody.
And Councillor Batchwell, I know you always like to have the last word.
I do like to have the last word.
Just this once anyway.
I would just like to thank Ms Haroon for putting on or helping to organise the event
that we had at the Civic Suite for information for Send Children.
So thank you very much.
It's really interesting.
and well done for doing it.
End of it.
Hear, hear.
Thank you so much for that.
Right, thank you everybody for excellent scrutiny tonight.