Following on from the last successful talk on Children Services given in November 2014, and this committee’s desire to have an update, officers have arranged a follow up presentation.
To this end we have a representative from the County, Chris Martin, the Integrated Commissioning Director (West), at Essex County Council coming to speak to the Committee. He will be talking about:
· The background and an update on the Children’s Centres in Essex Consultation taking place now; and
· The Current position of Essex Children Services –
- How are they coping with staff shortages;
- Loss of budget
- Involvement of outside and voluntary services in the provision of children services.
Minutes:
The Overview and Scrutiny Committee welcomed Chris Martin, the Essex Commissioning Director - Children and Gill Holland the lead on Children Centre Performance in the west of the County. They were there to talk about Children Services in our area of the County and the ‘Children’s Centres in Essex’ Consultation taking place.
Mr Martin noted that the Children’s consultation was to consult on the Children’s and young persons plan. This plan was to run from 2016 to 2019 and would set the direction of children services across Essex. This would affect children and young people from pre-birth to 19 and would improve joint accountability and decision making and move on to family centred plans.
ECC was in the process of redesigning the current service offer for Children’s Centres and the Healthy Child Programme (including Health Visiting, Family Nurse Partnership, School Nursing Services and Healthy Schools Programme). This would also place parents, children and families at the heart of the service redesign. They were focusing on designing systems to ensure that information, advice and support made a real difference to families, children and young people. They undertook various engagement activities and following on form the findings of the Ethnographic Research they undertook a series of activities including local focus groups and workshops.
It was noted that Children’s Centres were used by many people, 144 out of 367 respondents have used the service (40%). This was valued work carried out by the centres. 90% of the parents said they were accessible, in good locations and felt they were listened to when using them. They helped reduce the isolation that some parents were feeling. Some people felt that services and activities had been reduced and many wanted more. Parents would like the centres open for longer periods and on different days. Some wanted to use them but they were closed when needed. And some families in greatest need were not accessing the services at all. There was an outreach service but about 30% of families were not being reached; there needed to be a different way to interact with them.
Many did not know what was available to them and half of the respondents said this when asked why they had not received formal advice, information or support. They did not know where to go to get help or who to contact and were not accessing services as a result.
As part of the consultation they had proposed to extend the current children’s centre service by increasing the age range to support families with children from pregnancy to age 19 (up to 25 with Special Educational Needs (SEND)) and by brining these five services together:
· 0-5 Healthy Child Programme;
· 5-19 Healthy Child Programme;
· Children’s Centres;
· Healthy Schools;
· Family Nurse Partnership.
They were also proposing to stop calling them Children’s Centres and call them Family Hubs. This was because they will be important places for young people and families as well as children and the name reflected the wider range of services that would be on offer.
It was proposed that one existing Children’s Centre in every district would become a Family Hub and the focal point for co-ordinating services and support families in that area. The Family Hub should be open for 50 hours per week and it would co-ordinate all the support and services for families with children. It would also act as a signpost to the other support services.
Along with the each central Family Hub there would also be local delivery sites using local buildings and offering services for 20 to 30 hours per week. These would also be places where different organisations who support children and families already work. As well as these delivery sites there would be various ‘outreach’ sites variously situated in libraries and community centres; these would offer the opportunity for face to face advice, information and guidance.
Hopefully this would all help in the delivery of more flexible services, tailored to meet individual needs and would lead to improved opportunities to improve outcomes for families. It should target services at those that most need support, providing “Service Without Walls” and increase the age range these services covered.
Throughout the consultation a series of events were run offering families and stakeholders the opportunity to talk openly about the proposals outlined in the on-line consultation. Nine Stakeholder events were held throughout Essex and sixteen family drop-in events were held across Essex. They would continue to engage with families and the stakeholders and were planning to hold parent reference groups, planned for mid-May; stakeholder specification workshops have been happening for several months and would continue to do so up to procurement.
The information collected from the consultation was currently being analysed and once completed would be added into their planning before making their recommendations to the ECC Cabinet. They would publicise the link for the recommendations once it was ready, and they expected that to be late this summer and the new service to go live in April 2017.
The meeting was then opened to questions from the members present.
Councillor Mohindra thought that this all meant responsibility without any funding; what could we do to help? Mr Martin replied that they could help by inviting them to sessions such as these so they could share their work, share their consultation findings and seek your support.
Councillor Mohindra then asked what were the monthly saving figures they were looking for. Mr Martin said that they had not attached any figures, but were looking for about £1million a month. This was the most important piece of work they could do. It was better to prepare pre-school children which would benefit them throughout their school lives.
Councillor Girling commented that the consultation did not give the feeling that it had any force to it. The consultation had gone out during school holidays, not great timing. The process seemed to be made up as it went along. There were two consultation events planned, one was by Stanstead and the other at Harlow. Other consultation dates were added but they were during school time. As for Library Service consultations, some officers did not know what was going on in Loughton. Also Essex libraries ran out of paper copies and customers were told that if they wanted one printed it would cost them £4.50. The consultation could have been done better. Mr Martin replied that people could access the consultation through Children Centres where paper copies were available. Here some of my officers also sat down with parents to help them fill it out. You appear to have a bad experience, but I don’t think it reflected the County’s experience as a whole.
Councillor Mohindra added that they should be applauded, as when we told you we could not take part in the consultation, you added more dates into the process.
Councillor Helen Kane asked where were these consultation dates advertised and what was the input from the Epping area. She was told that it had been advertised on line and in the free papers, all the usual channels were used and also the children centres as for consultation responses, overall 73% were from parents and 216 specific responses from Epping Forest.
Councillor Helen Kane then noted that two brand new Children Centres were purpose built in Epping Forest 7 years ago, Hazlewood on Ninefields Estate in Waltham Abbey and Sunrise in Loughton. Both of these Centres were now proposed for closure. I would like to know:
a) What consideration was given to the fact that these centres were built in Key super output areas of the Epping Forest district when proposing them for closure?
b) With no permanent staff team based there, how would the buildings be managed and programmes delivered? and
c) Who would be responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the buildings?
She was told that the Hazlewood centre was not closing and it was proposed to be a delivery site operating for 20-30 hours per week; families should not notice a great deal of difference. Many of the services would be delivered by third parties, often in the evenings and these would be in addition to the 20-30 hours on offer. They were proposing the closure of the Sunrise as a Children’s Centre site to enable staff to undertake more outreach and provide opportunity for childcare delivery to address local sufficiency issues. This consultation had raised the opportunity to consider whether Sunrise could maintain a delivery room for appropriate services.
Essex County Council would remain responsible for the buildings. As for permanent staff they would be there while services were being delivered, at other times there would be a telephone answering system people could use to get support.
Councillor Girling said that he thought that there was an Essex stipulation that one member of staff had to remain at any Children’s Centre during operational hours. Little Oaks was one that his children use a lot and was shared with an adult group that use one half of this site. So it had frequently got adults coming in for activities. His concern for the proposal for Little Oaks was that a breast feeding mother would not have a separate room for this. The Sunrise did have separate rooms and most people would say that the Sunrise would need to stay open and Little Oaks should shut. There was petition to this affect doing the rounds at present. His question was, has anyone actually gone to Little Oaks as it seems that you have no idea to what happens at the centres. Gill Holland replied that she had regularly been to Little Oaks. As for the question on breast feeding that was up to users on how they use the building. At present a Children Centre has to be open during their contracted hours; we do not want to be too specific on the hours it would depend on what ever time people wanted to use it. Mr Martin added that this was still just a consultation, so what you saw in the document would be subject to change. As for keeping a worker on base, one problem was that they have to staff the building when there was no one using the building, having to keep centres open when there were no children there. Councillor Girling commented that he understood that this had caused problems for staff, such as doing home visits or having the opportunity to hold full staff meeting as there always had to be one member of staff at the centre. As for the Sunrise centre, has there been any consultation with the school on site about the proposals as a number of the stake holders on reading your document on line think that this was a done deal. Mr Martin replied that this was a consultation, and the end product would not reflect what was currently in the consultation document.
Councillor Shiell, asked why the Brambles Children Centre in Epping was proposed above all others, to be the one “Family Hub” in this District? Did this mean that every one in the district, from Loughton and Waltham Abbey had to come into Epping? Because you can’t get from Loughton or Waltham Abbey to Epping easily. Gill Holland replied that the proposal was that the Brambles be the Family Hub. The main purpose was that the services would be co-located there and then go out to the delivery venues we had spoken about, such as the Hazelwood building and the Loughton libraries etc. The intention was not for all the families to come into Epping because we recognised that would make life more difficult; but to deliver services in community halls, schools and church halls, in venues where people were. Some of the services would be from the Brambles but not all of them. Councillor Shiell asked how they would let families know this was just a hub, there seemed to be a lot of information missing. Ms Holland said these were only proposals at present so were vague now. Families were to be involved in the design of the joined up services and there would be lots of publicity with this. Mr Martin added that information would be going out digitally, using social media; but they needed to have a conversation with parents for their ideas.
Councillor Sam Kane noted that the Hazelwood Centre would largely continue as it was, not closing down. He understood that this was a consultation period, but was this the thinking at present. Ms Holland said that it would be a delivery site operating at between 20-30 hours per week. Most families we found tended to use the centre from about 9.30 to 2.30. Also this centre delivers some services in the evening and we were not envisioning that this would change as long as it delivered what families needed.
Councillor Sam Kane then asked about the True Stars centre based in the centre of the Limes Farm Estate in Chigwell. On a daily basis, staff dealt with vulnerable families at this site. How will the needs of these families be met under the current proposals? He was told that True Stars would remain a delivery site with between 20-30 hours of service from there. Although this centre was located within the Limes Farm estate the reach area was wider than this and freeing staff from the building would enable flexibility of outreach and services to be delivered from different venues around the community.
Councillor Mohindra remarked that he was one of the ward councillors for Grange Hill and Limes farm was part of his patch. Some of the comments concerned him regarding Chigwell. Limes farm specifically needed the attention and he would hope the focus would remain on Limes Farm. There was an element of deprivation on the estate so any resources taken away from this area would cause him concern.
Councillor Mitchell said she had the same concerns as Councillor Shiell. What actual monitoring procedures would be in place to make sure that the service delivery was actually working the way you wanted it to? Mr Martin replied that that was a really good question. One of the things they were told off for during the consultation period was that they asked for a lot of data and did not appear to do a great deal with it. Providers were frustrated about chasing up the numbers when what they wanted to tell us was about the difference they made and the impact they had with the families; some of the providers would also like to tell us about the things that did not go so well and what they had learnt from that. They would use data for performance indicators, some evidence for best practice and things that have not gone quite so well. The final element was about County and our officers; we should get out into the field and meet families and ask them about the services we have commissioned and their experience of it.
The Chairman thanked Mr Martin and Ms Holland for their presentation and for answering member’s questions so well. He noted that officers would be responding to the consultation in due course.