12th December 2016 14: 00-16: 00 Room 4, mhs broadside, Chatham, me4 4ll minutes Attendees: Name Organisation Initial Chair

Heidi welcomed the group. Introductions were made.

Donna had discussed health indicators with Sharon and other health committees – the new outcomes plan has been distributed.

Andrew Willetts (AW) has looked at the Early Help diagram and flow chart and currently, there are no changes. This will be reviewed once a new CADs process has been embedded, and will be reflected on the diagram and distributed to the board.

AW presented at the Head Teachers conference on Early Help and how we can help make it work in schools. AW has created 4 new posts for social workers to place one in each area of Medway to help with the safeguarding of children in schools – Head Teachers from Infant/Primary and Secondary schools have helped create the Job Description and the Social Workers should be in post by early next year.

Michael Griffiths ‘behaviour’ paper will now be presented at the March board.

Carole looked into data around autism and will present this for 10 minutes at the next meeting in March

Sofie Wheeldon to share information around the group schools which have really made an impact in PSHE lessons, and to work with the team to develop a process of showing outstanding schools serious behaviour policies.

DCLG had delayed the local area dashboard – James Weekes will forward the summary report to EHSG in January and provide the registered breakdown of problem areas in data sharing.

Andrew Willetts had positive discussions with KFRS regarding area based representatives. These will be in place soon

All other actions were completed

The minutes from the last meeting were approved.

Numbers are increasing in all areas and we are on target to meet the yearly goal. We will need to allow for a 50% dip in Decembers figures for Christmas holiday period.

There has been a steady increase of step downs – a small dip in the numbers could be where CIN/CP Meetings do not take place monthly but 6-8 weekly

Education providers are still the main area for the most CAFs however Police are hoping with the new Medway SMART team trained in EHA that this should increase. Discussions are also taking place with DA Board.

Average Referrals are 232 a month.

Number of referrals are going down, however the rate of re-referrals are staying the same. For referrals which are not accessed in social care, these could be signposted or passed to Early Help.

The group would like this and other dashboard information at the next meeting to also be displayed on a graph – with 2-3 years of information to allow for a good comparison; also showing how many contacts lead to Early Help Referral and a reason as to why cases are re-referred.

The main practitioners training will now be rolled out in April due to the Early Help Assessment go live date being postponed.

Positive feedback was received from teams already trained – Youth Offending Team who will lead on out of court disposals and Specialist Multi-Agency Response Team (Medway SMART)

Admin staff have also been trained on Early Help Team to develop a help desk so Lead Professionals do not have to wait for an Early Help Coordinator to respond to calls.

Guy asked for more venues if possible for the training being rolled out from April. Maximum of 20 people with a screen and projector for one venue, and a room with ICT facilities for the half day training – (preferably Medway Council Thin Client)

Step down Training is required to ensure families receive appropriate support. The procedure has been agreed by Children’s Social Care Management Team but numbers SC staff attending training since August has dropped from 100% to 68%. In order to increase this number the EH Trainer has highlighted the issue  with appropriate managers. He has sent information sent includes hyper-links to allow their teams to sign up on iShare (on-line booking system). This has made the enrolment process as simple as possible. The EH Trainer is concerned that staff will not have the relevant skills to Step Down correctly. This results in the already very busy EHCs having to support on an individual basis.

If anyone is able to help Guy with training venues – please contact him

Submission to DCLG on Family Progress Data went in early and successfully. The next PBR claims window is January 2017

51 Payment By Results claims in September were made

2503 families have been identified – 500 off of the target needing to be met by April 2017 – this should be achievable. However, we are low on the number of cases being worked with.

We need to see how partners such as schools and other agencies are able to work with lower need families as they are quick to turn around

We are looking at other local authorities to learn from their best practise

Currently looking at the synergy system to help with PBR – it is not clear whether this will be used yet however looking positive.

In response to a question form the group Donna was unsure whether the government will continue to fund the programme beyond 2020 however they do have a commitment to the ethos

We are still struggling to receive Health data for data protection reasons James had recommended that partners sign up to working with 25 families each before the end of March – the group wondered if we could create a Task and Finish group to tackle the health data, however then agreed could still be an issue as it does not sit on one database or with one person. Instead a Task and Finish Group to ensure health workers were able to be Lead Professionals was agreed

ACTION: Heidi Shute to meet with Donna Mills around helping retrieve Health Data

Paula Fewtrell to discuss with James Weekes around helping raise Education Data Numbers

Partners sign up to working with 25 families each before the end of March

Synergy system is looking positive so far as the means for partners to record on framework-I and to manage data.

QA processes are being developed and once tested will be used to train managers ensuring robust assessments across Early Help. A Case File Audit Group within the Steering Group around QA was agreed to be developed.

An Early Help Part 1 document had been developed. This allows services who will not have time to conduct full assessments (for example GP’s) to fill in the form and bring cases to our attention that need wider support.

The team are currently waiting on the final maturity model from DCLG model – when this arrives it will be brought to the Steering Group for the next meeting

Councillor Mackness was keen to establish a Medway Task Force similar to that in Thanet and as a result Medway Smart Team has been developed and is now live in Gillingham and Twydall due to this being a significant area of deprivation. This currently includes Kent Police, CAMHS Tier 2, Family Support Service and Early Help Coordinators, however would also like to include KRFS as well as Health – Adults.

A workshop is being held at the end of January to bring all partners up to date on SMART and how they can be involved

ACTION: Steering Group to have a yearly agenda slot on SMART

Peter Gates and Andrew Willetts to have conversation about SMART and Substance Misuse before the January workshop.

Strategy has been refreshed after the previous one being written in 2014.

Medway have the most children in special schools than any other Local Authority

A SENCo group currently runs yearly to share experiences and has high attendance

We run a children’s group to get their honest feedback on any decisions

We would like to keep children in mainstream schools for lower needs, leaving SEN schools for children with more complex needs. Mainstream schools recieve a top up fund to help fund the students they have with SEN.

We would like to support children with SEN to get to school themselves if they are able – to teach independence, rather than using school taxi’s.

We have started Skill Net – working with local employers to get children with SEN into internships / apprenticeships which will hopefully lead to employment

We have to listen to parents wishes before LA can make any decisions.

Alison Murphy was at the last meeting and papers have been produced with some recommendations.

Improve the Governance of Early Help

Embed the EH model and bring staff and developments together

Engage partners in the co design of services

Strengthen relationships with schools.

Work with MSCB to refresh threshold documents – a partnership event has been organised in January to start this.

Alison noted the Steering Group was a strength of Early Help. Andy thanked everyone who was involved in the review.

Danielle to send out report with minutes

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