My Report to Council

Posted By: Irene Davidson
Date Posted: 10/02/2009

REPORT OF THE CABINET MEMBER FOR CHILDREN, SCHOOLS & FAMILIES TO THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL ON WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2009

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the Council the latest developments on various matters relating to the Children, Schools & Families Portfolio.

It’s been very busy since the last Council Meeting and I hope that this report covers everything. However, if Council feel that there is something that I have missed out or require any further information on any of the items please don’t hesitate to ask me.

SCHOOLS SERVICE

BSF Update
The Building Schools for the Future project is still on programme. Initial bids were received from three consortiums Aura, Galliford Try and Inspiredspaces on 12th January 2009.

This was followed by formal presentations of bid proposals to an audience of Senior Officers, Members of Council and Headteachers on 14th and 15th January.

The next stage on the process will be to evaluate the tenders and reduce the overall number of bidding consortiums from three to two by the end of March 2009.

Construction is expected to start at Hollingworth, Milnrow and at Siddal Moor, Heywood in January 2010 with schemes being completed at schools across the Borough over a four year period.

I am please to tell you that the £16.5 Million contract for the construction of the new St Anne’s Academy was signed on the 12th December 2008. Work started on site on the 5th January 2009 (to timetable). This is one of only 6 contracts let nationally through the framework route and one of the largest.


OFSTED Inspections
Since September there have been 6 schools deemed as Outstanding (Hollingworth High, Hopwood Primary, Whittaker Moss Primary, St. Patrick’s RC Primary, Marland Primary and Sunny Brow Nursery) following their OFSTED Inspections.

Balderstone Technology School – the only Secondary School in Special Measures, continues to make good progress.

Hollin Primary School recently entered this category. A robust LA support plan is in place and additional support has been targeted at the school including support from the Greater Manchester Challenge.

GCSE Results
Our young people left school at 16 last September with the best results ever. The results have just been published.

In 2008, for A*-C including English and maths, pupils in all Rochdale schools improved on their 2007 results by 1.5 percentage points compared to the National Increase which was only 0.8 percentage points. For GCSE grades A*-C results have improved 3.4 percentage points, compared to a National increase of 3.3 percentage points. Both these results have exceeded the LA target.

The DCSF has introduced a measure of progress, which looks at whether pupils have made progress in line with, or better than, their potential since entering secondary school. Over the last 3 years, progress by pupils in Rochdale has increased year on year and been greater than that achieved by pupils nationally.

A Level Results
A level results were disappointing this year after a good increase in 2007. The new 6th Form College, due to open in September 2010 should make a big difference to reducing the gap between Rochdale and National results.

Governors
Governors have a key role to play in School Leadership and Management, and we are pleased with the high level of community representation on our Governing Bodies.

From 2007/08 benchmarking in Schools:
Governor vacancy levels in schools continue to be lower than National, Metropolitan and North West Authorities. The percentage of governor positions held by governors from Black Minority Ethnic Communities is higher than National, Metropolitan and North West Authorities.

The percentage of Governor positions that have been vacant for more than 6 months is nil, compared to an average of 5% for National, Metropolitan and North West Authorities.

Music Service
Our high profile Music Service continues to provide a varied experience for children and young people. During the Autumn four musicians from the world famous Halle Orchestra worked with the young musicians of the Rochdale Schools’ Concert Orchestra, one of the 21 performance groups organised by the Rochdale Music Service on a regular weekly basis.

We also saw the award winning choral director Gillian Dibden working with young singers from the Rochdale Borough for a two day choral course last Autumn.

These projects concluded with a concert at the Rochdale Town Hall.

Change for Children Team
The Change for Children Team is part of school services, but works across the whole children’s workforce (across the voluntary, community, private and statutory sectors – that make up Rochdale Borough Children’s Trust) to take forward the every child matters agenda. We have particular responsibility for the introduction of tools and processes to enable integrated working between agencies and services, in order to promote better outcomes for children, young people, their families and communities.

Some of these tools and processes are being introduced include:
The Common Assessment Framework (CAF)
The Lead Professional (LP)
The Threshold Model.
Contact Point

Area Teams
Rochdale has been developing area teams based on the townships, to facilitate integrated working within these areas. The area teams are intended to promote better networking, relationships and understanding between services and practitioners that operate in the area, as well as more effective multi-agency working.

A member of the Change for Children Team has been identified to coordinate and facilitate this activity within each area, as outlined below:

Middleton Diane Cantello – Integrated Services Lead Officer (925113)
Heywood Marian Begolo- Children’s Champion (925075)
Pennine Dave Baker - Children’s Champion (recently appointed but not taken up post )
Rochdale North Brian Braithwaite - Integrated Services Lead Officer (925117)
Rochdale South Brian Braithwaite- Integrated Services Lead Officer (925117)

In order to support the work in the Area Teams we have published booklets for each area, identifying practitioners and services that are operating in or associated with the area (These are to be found on the Council website http://www.rochdale.gov.uk/health_and_social_care/children_and_family_care/childrens_workforcearea_teams.aspx ). We are also intending to organise various events and activities within each area. We believe that it is important to ensure that the area team activities link with those of the township teams and therefore wish to meet with Township leads and Managers in order to explore this further.

Update on the progress of ContactPoint
Access to the live system
As reported in our last update Rochdale ContactPoint Team will gain access to the ‘live’ system on 26th January 2009. This is a very exciting time and we are all very busy getting ready for this important step in the project.

Once access to the system has been achieved all Local Authorities (LAs) across England will need to participate in a process to ‘shield’ any records of previously identified children within our LA whose whereabouts (address) needs to be hidden. This covers a small percentage of child records from agencies such as witness protection, safeguarding, domestic violence, adoption, women’s refuge etc.

Once this task has been completed by all 150 LAs, Rochdale and the 16 other Early Adopter authorities will begin to train their own locally identified pilot group of practitioners during March/April 2009.

Pilot Group
The Pilot Group for Rochdale will consist of practitioners from Social Care, Children Missing Education, Early Break and hopefully some health practitioners. Both the Pennine Acute and the PCT have expressed an interest in being part of the group but still have work to undertake in order to become ContactPoint compliant and be accredited.

The Pilot group will enable us to evaluate the project to date – covering everything from training and use of the system to examples of good practice for other LAs. All this evaluation will then be collated with other Early Adopters to support the role out of ContactPoint to other authorities across England in the summer. From September 2009, Rochdale will begin the role out of training to approximately 1400 practitioners across the Borough over a 12/18 month period.

Work is ongoing with organisations and individual practitioners to support them in getting ready for ContactPoint. This includes accrediting organisations and ensuring that practitioners undertake the mandatory pre requisite training such as Information Sharing Training and ContactPoint Awareness.

The December Issue of Local Matters also included an advertorial and Fair Processing Notice for the attention of parents and children of the Borough

For more information please contact Bernadette Gee, ContactPoint Manager, on 01706 925693 or email on Bernadette.gee2@rochdale.gov.uk. More information can be found on Rochdale’s Website by the following link http://www.rochdale.gov.uk/health_and_social_care/children_and_family_care/contactpoint.aspx


LEARNERS & YOUNG PEOPLE SERVICE

I am pleased to say that the additional provision for young people on Friday and Saturday evenings has continued. Some of this is through the use of sports facilities, over 100 at the Sports Village in Heywood; over 40 at each of three venues in Middleton and over 40 at the Soccer Village in Milnrow. As well as this, opportunities are increasing through the use of the mobile provision. The first unit was launched late last year and two further vehicles are due in 2009. As well as this, the Youth Service is working closely with schools to establish Targeted Youth Support. Joint working means that needs can be identified early and a package of support put in place to prevent problems escalating.

My last report referred to the success of the September Guarantee, that is the offer of a place in education, employment or training for all school leavers at 16 and 17 with offers made to 95% of the cohort. We have continued to make progress and, based on the residency model, currently just 8.4% are not in employment, education and training. Given the current pressures on businesses, access to employment and work-based learning for young people is likely to become more difficult but we are working closely with the Connexions Service to maintain as high a level of engagement with young people as possible.

Transition for young people with special educational needs can be difficult and this year we have, in consultation with Redwood School, Hopwood Hall College and the Learning & Skills Council, established a bridging course to assist school leavers with special educational needs to move to college provision. It provides a gradual transition from school to college and looks set to provide a good basis for adult life.

Our Children’s Centres continue to do well, reaching out to families and supporting parents of very young children. Again, joint working is crucial and in particular our partners in the NHS play a key role, often basing services such as ante-natal clinics in the Centres. Dads are involved as well, with sessions such as a Saturday breakfast followed by a ‘stay and play’ session.

December saw the formal opening of the YARD which stands for Youth and Recreation on Darnhill. The improvements to the play areas and to the library mean that this is a much improved resource for the area. More widely, the Play Pathfinder is on target to complete the play areas set for 2008/09. Detailed discussions at Townships have helped to ensure that the investment is focused on areas across the Borough. This development work, across the Council’s services, is improving access to play for children. Rochdale’s work to support access for children with disabilities, highlighting the Doorstep vehicle is featured as an example of good practice in the recently published National Play Strategy.


CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CARE

The Fostering Service has been judged outstanding by Ofsted, following the recent inspection completed in December 2008. This is a brilliant achievement. The outstanding grade is very difficult to obtain. Ofsted has recently raised the bar in relation to its inspections of fostering provision which makes this result even more satisfying. We are expecting that our outstanding rating will help us further in recruiting foster carers to RMBC’s Fostering Service.

Numbers of children in care and other demands on the Service continue to increase. The number of children in care in 2008 on the same day was 341, today it is 381, an increase of 12%. Service budget planning for 09/10 includes consideration of how we respond to these increased demands effectively.

In the wake of the Baby P/Haringey case, Children’s Social Care will be conducting a practice review applying the findings of the Haringey Joint Area Review (JAR) to local practice. The outcome of this review will be reported to the Chair of the Local Children’s Safeguarding Board in the first instance.

A briefing about the Haringey case and the position/response to this by agencies in Rochdale will be reported to the next meeting of the Corporate Parents’ Forum in February 09.

Youth Offending Team
On the 20 January I, along with Councillor Terry Linden, went along to the open night with a group of JPs to Townhead, the home of the Youth Offending Team. We had a full and in-depth tour and came away with so much information and evidence of what can and is being done for the young people of our Borough when they need it. I am sure Councillor Linden would join with me in thanking the Youth Offending Team for a very enjoyable evening.

COUNCILLOR IRENE DAVIDSON