Transcript

Transcript

Okay, we're ready to go. Welcome, everyone. I don't know if it's too late into January to say it now, but Happy New Year. It's great to see you all. So, thank you for attending this evening. As you all know, all of our meetings tend to have a particular focus on them, and today we're going to look at the aspect of safeguarding children and young people. So, thank you to the Safeguarding Partnership colleagues who have joined the meeting either in person or online, which are probably we're trying to sort out. So, hopefully they'll be able to see and hear us. I would also like to say a special welcome to the new Interim Executive Director of Children's Services, Chris Spencer. Now, he's just told me that he's actually on day eight, so let's be very nice and kind with him. Chris brings a wealth of experience to Barnett, and I'm just going to give him a couple of minutes to introduce himself. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, so my name is Chris Spencer. Chris is easy, isn't it? So, it's not my real name. I just thought I'd make it easier for you. But, so, yeah, I'm genuinely pleased to be here. I was a Barnett resident some years ago for six years. I lived in, and I really enjoyed my time in Barnett as a resident. So, I've got some affinity with the area. But, I'm here for a relatively short period of time. I've been here for six months to fill the Interim Director of Children's Services role, until Barnett were able to appoint a permanent replacement for Christmas Monday. I have been around quite a long time. I was first Executive Director for Education and leisure in Buckingham, Berkshire. Berkshire existed as accounting. And then I did seven years as DCS in Hillingdon, followed by three years in the Hope of Directors of Children's Services. And then the last 18 months since I retired, I did an interim in Cornwall, Kate Kennelly, if some of you may remember. And then nine months in Waltham Forest as an interim. Those last two were as an interim. So, 20 years experience as Director of Children's Services. So, hopefully, I'll be able to add some value during the six months that I'm here. Thank you. I'm sure you will do. Thank you, Chris. Before we start, just a bit of housekeeping. To remind you all, meetings may be recorded and broadcast by people present. We should hope so, if it all works. As allowed for in law or by the Council, so by attending either online or in person, you may be picked up by the recording. And Council recordings are covered by the privacy notice, which can be available at www.barnet.gov.uk. Can I remind members when you're going to speak to please just press the speaker icon if it's red, time to speak. And then to turn it off, you just press the same icon and it should turn black. Okay. So, we'll go straight in for item number one, and that's minutes of the last meeting. So, do members have any comments to add with regard to the minutes of the last meeting? Agreed. Okay. We'll go to – we don't have any absence of members. Next to the declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations to make in relation to any of the agenda items? No? Okay. We will move straight to agenda item number seven, and that's focus on safeguarding children and young people in Barnet. So, we're now going to take the time to consider safeguarding. I'm sure all of us are aware of at least one high profile national news item report about a young person who has suffered at the hands of an abuser. It is sobering and utterly heartbreaking. However, we do not hear about the many incidents where officers and professionals have intervened to protect children from harm, often having to make crucial decisions. Your job is not easy, and we commend you for your work. As a committee, our role, as you all know, is to be that critical friend, to support you by reviewing the services in place to protect and keep young people safe to ensure they are as robust as possible. So, we've got a few different speak on this item. Chris, am I passing over to you? Just for a brief introduction, Chair, this is a statutory report of our statutory partners that consist of health and increasingly education are going to be playing a more part, as you'll see from the report. The report is supported by our independent scrutineer and the Chair of the Brent Children's Safeguarding Board. It's an unusual report. It covers a period of six months, and that's because we're trying to realign the report with the reporting requirement when this report comes to us at 12 months. Reflects the three safeguarding themes of children out of sight, which is the issue for us. Another theme of raising awareness of transgender issues, based by your majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and fire services, and our response to that. And we've got our colleagues from the police here this evening. And there were two existing themes that have rolled over as well, those being safer sleeping. Thank you, Chris. We've also been joined by DCI David LaRiviere, I hope I said that right, Detective Chief Inspector of the Met Police, and Andy O'Brien, Detective Superintendent. Did you want to speak to us a little bit at this point? Sorry, you'll have to bear with us. We're very lucky because we've got lots of speakers here today. So next, I'm passing over to Nikki Pace, Lead and Retire. Do you want to introduce yourself? Good evening, everybody. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me today. I am one of three scrutineers that have been commissioned to come to Barnet on a regular basis, and this is our fifth year. We literally were in Barnet doing this piece of work last week and the week before. But just to be really clear about our role, which is set out and Chris outlined the guidance which governs safeguarding partnerships is the working together guidance, which was revised in 2023. And the requirement there is for there to be independent scrutiny of the arrangements, very similar to the role that you undertake within the council. We are expected to be constructive, critical friends and to consider how effectively these arrangements are working for children and families within the area and how practitioners, you know, are involved in that and how effective the safeguarding partnership is operating. So we're expected to look at and to provide assurance or otherwise in judging the effectiveness of multi agency arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in the Barnet area, including the arrangements as already laid out to identify and review serious child safeguarding cases, which again you will see in the annual report. The scrutiny obviously is meant to be objective and promote reflection, which I hope we do when we come in as we've been required to do in Barnet. This is a particular arrangement that is slightly different from areas. Some areas appoint an individual scrutineer. What Barnet Safeguarding Partnership have agreed to do is to ask a commissioned group of us. I'm the lead scrutineer with a background in working, my background is in social work, but I've worked in in local authorities and in children services for many, many years and across the many safeguarding partnerships. I have a colleague who has a police background and again across a safeguarding partnerships as well as work with the national panel with a lot of the reviews that they undertake and I also have a colleague from Health. Again, his recent background is working with safeguarding partnerships, but also work for the NHS London as a safeguarding lead as well. So we come and reflect the three key lead organisations of police, health and the local authority in those safeguarding arrangements. And as I said, we have been this is our fifth year that we've been commissioned to do this piece of scrutiny work. And actually, I think it's very helpful to undertake this review over the years as we can capture and evidence progress from year to year and actually understand the dynamics and relationships that work in Barnet as well. And Chris talked about being a resident of Barnet. My claim to fame is that my first social work role was in Barnet and I wouldn't be the social worker that I was without that support and help that I received from colleagues during that very critical year. So we have, as I said, undertaken a scrutiny and obviously we look at the arrangements and we commented and obviously that's quoted in the annual report you've received. As I said, we have literally just finished last week our review of the arrangements for 24-25 and obviously looking at those sort of key areas that were highlighted at children out of sight. Looking at supporting police and their response to children missing and exploited, which was one of the key areas that was highlighted in the inspection report, safer sleeping, recruitment and retention and obviously some of the new areas regarding transitions and various other areas. So, you know, we have undertaken that visit and, you know, we, I think it's a little unfair to start giving you highlights of that because we haven't fed that back to the partnership yet. But we continue to see very strong partnership arrangements in Barnet and some really close working. I would want to commend and mention the business unit in the Safeguarding Partnership, who is very efficient and very effective. They are very efficient. They are very efficient. They are a very small number of people in within that unit, but the quantity of work and the quality of the work that they undertake is considerable and I just think it is worth a mention. I would want to highlight some of the issues regarding financing the partnership going forward, a challenge which I know the partnership are trying to address. And obviously some of the issues that you've addressed over the last year in terms of the MET's inspection report and obviously the partnership has been very clearly monitoring that and obviously the move of your 0-19 health services as well. And again, that move to Whittington has been very positive and I think making a real difference to children and families in Barnet as well. I'm happy to go into a little bit more detail, but that's contained in your annual report. But again, one of the areas that we're looking at was also about how you have implemented some of the arrangements that were set out in the Working Together requirements, especially regarding the lead safeguarding partner and the delegated safeguarding partner roles and engagement of schools with the partnership as well. And again, some very strong arrangements with your partners and particular work, you know, we would want to comment on around children who are educated at home, which, as you know, has been a big feature of public cases in terms of child safeguarding cases that have been in the media, but also passage of the new Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill that is going through Parliament at the moment. You know, I think Barnet is ahead of the curve in some of those arrangements and taking those forward. I'm just aware that there are a lot of speakers today and I'm very happy to take questions either about our role or anything further. As I said, I think it's I can't really comment, I don't think without having shared initially with the partnership, which we'll be doing next week, our sort of key highlight findings from our scrutiny. But really also just to say we have involved children, young people with that. I met with 20 young people last week as well as part of the scrutiny visit. And so that will be reflected in terms of their comments and wishes and feelings around safeguarding in Barnet as well. So very happy to take any questions or comments from members regarding that. Thank you very much for the introduction, Nikki. Thank you for joining us online. To Dr. Paul DeKeezer, really testing my ability to read names now and David Pennington. So Paul is here as a consultant pediatrician designated for Children's Safeguarding and David is a director of Safeguarding NCL-ICB. So if you want to just introduce yourself. Good. Good evening. Hi, I'm David, director of Safeguarding and looked after children across North Central London Integrated Care Board. And I wanted to first of all start off and say Nikki quite rightly called out the business unit particularly. And I just whilst he's here, I saw him in the room, just wanted to say particular. The support that we get from Tony Lewis has been absolutely exceptional. I have the advantage of working across a number of safeguarding partnerships. And I have to say, Tony is top tier and one of the best I think we've got in the whole patch is exemplary. But the next part I wanted to mention is Nikki talked about the multi agency safeguarding arrangements that we have that we've just recently agreed. And that's been directed by the Working Together 23. An important aspect, particularly for Barnett, is they've been running those arrangements for Working Together 23 for some time prior to actually coming out the guidance, such as the executives chaired by one of the three statutory partners. The police have been chairing it recently and they've just handed that over to health. So I chair it. And then later on next, we'll hand that back to the local authority, which is an arrangement that all of the other partnerships are just coming to terms with. I particularly wanted to mention in terms of the reports that you've seen some of the fantastic work that's gone on, notably the improvements that we've seen around dental checks that have gone on over the last four years, which have increased significantly. And also very notable is the work that's gone on around free prescriptions, care experienced young people that's across the whole of London and particularly at NCL. We've done the work so that anyone whose care experience is entitled to a free prescription. We have had lots of stories of young people who've been having to make very difficult decisions about whether to buy food or to get their prescriptions. And hopefully this goes some way to supporting them. And there's also some fantastic work that's gone on to support our care experienced people into apprenticeships. We're obviously particularly keen that those apprenticeships go into health. And there's been some work going on across the whole of North Central London, including Barnett, to support that. And I'll just take this moment to hand over to my colleague, Paul, just to talk to you a little bit about some of the work that's going on with the Royal Free. So I'm a consultant paediatrician at Barnett Hospital, part of part of the Royal Free London, where my role is as designated doctor for children safeguarding has been a significant part since 2012 when I was when I was appointed. I'm part of the designated team that's seen by David and Caroline Locke, our designated nurse and Prashant Desai are named GP. And within the scope of the Royal Free London, where I spent much of my time, I think, as David alluded to, we've been instrumental in the Safer Sleeping programme and involving the different agencies in providing consistent messaging in terms of accessing both local and national resources, whether that's the local and national resources, whether that's the Lullaby Trust or the NHS Start for Life programme. Within our hospitals, I think the out-of-hours CAM service for those in crisis running from really the afternoons through to midnight has been a terrific advantage. Certainly, I appreciate it when I'm doing my acute on-calls in paediatric A&E. And I think throughout all our health providers, the Child Protection Information System, which is where the NHS spine links to Children's Services spine and includes not just not just those subject to a child protection plan or who have been on a plan in the last 12 months, but also looked after children, has been an enormous resource with regard to information sharing and Barnett's going to be an early adopter in rolling out that to those scheduled provisions, scheduled clinics, as well as GP services, not just the unscheduled A&E urgent care centres where it's been previously. So that's a little bit about my role. Stella asked us for challenges. One of the things that I've noticed, I've lived in Barnett all my life, and I think the change in Barnett, the new residences that are coming up, Brent Cross West and the new homes there, I think provides a challenge. To safeguarding is probably many other fields, and yes, that's a bit about my role. Thanks. Thank you very much. Before I open it up to questions, recently members of the committee visited the MASH office and met with the head of services and managers to discuss key issues within the service. So I just wanted to take the time to invite members to give a bit of feedback on their experience, the visit. Did anyone want to feed into the committee? Councillor Longstaff? Yeah, absolutely. If you can – yeah, it was interesting. It was good. We had a lovely introduction from Sarah Marshall, not forgetting her. And it was good to be able to ask questions specifically and delve into what they got up to rather than just hear reports and just see reports and listen to what we're getting told, but to actually ask people who work there all the time. Don't look so worried, Rajit. Don't worry. She was good. She was very good. She was nice. And it was well worth the visit, worth the time that we spent. And there was – one of the co-opted members came as well. I can't remember that. That was good. Yep. Which was good. And I think that's important that the co-opted members – because we can see people every day, but it's nice that they get a chance to go and speak to members of staff. So, yeah, well worthwhile. And I think people did learn something. Fabulous. Thank you, Councillor Longstaff. Councillor Woodcock-Vellerman? Yeah, just to quickly echo Councillor Longstaff's comments. I think it was a really useful and fruitful visit. I think both learning what staff are doing there on a day-to-day basis, but also some of the interactions that they have with our schools and other partners in the borough. I think we tried, as councillors, to keep our scrutiny hats on, whilst I know we were also considering things as colleagues as well, thinking about the impact on some of the challenges that schools have. Schools are facing another route across the partnership board. But, no, definitely a fascinating visit. And definitely welcome further visits to see people in situ, as well as here tonight. Thank you. We'll definitely try and keep it up. So, ahead of every meeting, we're going to try and keep arranging a visit somewhere that feels relevant. So, thank you to those who attended. Thamsin, or was it Naomi who had your hand up? Thamsin? Sure. Yes, just to echo how useful it was and how to get a real feel of the issue. And the feedback was that they, ideally, a few more staff, really to allow. Wonderful feedback. We'll make a note of those. So, now I'm going to open up the floor to questions. Everyone make use of the fact that we've got such a wealth of experience here. So, in the report there, it says the HMICFRS inspection to the Met Police identified two causes of concern. So, the first one was that police struggle to detect risk and respond appropriately when children are reported missing. And the second, sir, found. Yes, sir, in relation to the reports, we've both accepted it, we've listened, and we've acted upon it. So, in relation to missing in particular, so, locally, staffing level for the missing persons units, as it was, one sergeant and six PC, 12 people currently. They had to deal with the demand. We've also aligned them, governance them, next to the child exploitation team. They sit back to back. They talk to you about sexual exploitation. So, they work together, which is really well. Further to that, we've just had a sign-off for a new design of the missing persons units. Councillor Hutton. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the report. I wanted to ask a question that's relevant, but a bit apart from here. I'm a governor at Frayn Barnett School, and on Monday, we had a governor's meeting. The designated safeguarding lead said that the police officers who are attached to the school are going to be the same officers that we meet with in our safer neighbourhood teams, you know, councillors we meet in our ward teams. And I thought that sounded a really good link-up, and I just wondered if you had any – if that's correct, what he was saying, and if you had any thoughts on that, because I thought it sounded a good initiative. There is a change in relation to schools' officers. Neighbourhood colleagues duplicate. So, it is a positive move, but I think it will work well. It will be in progress, and I'll be watching it with interest to see how we – to thank you. Sorry, Nigel, have you been waiting. Ah, sorry, it's always harder, because you're on this side. Nigel, and then Councillor Woodcock-Velliman. Thank you very much. Another question, please. I'm looking at your conclusions, and you conclude you're going to do three things, and one of them, I'm just going to read the bold. We wish to engage with partners from all corners of the partnership to seek to raise awareness of children who are basically a list of children who are going missing. As I was part of the time, I finished fourth, looked at that generally. Can I ask you, you say you wish to engage with, what are you actually doing? So, in relation to the children aspects, on there, as you say, it's the first, which is all part of the way we're taking on there, to change the pathway of criminalising these children and giving them opportunities, early intervention, because the earlier we do this, the better the outcome will always be. And to the data as well, and what I'd like to see is better linking with the schools in particular. So, those schools that have more prevalent offending race, pupils who do it, and many young people get stopped and searched on there. Part of the children's strategy is that we deliver stop and search in a fair and accountable way. Thank you. That helps. Thank you. We have noted that comment about engaging with the youth parliament, and we'll take that forward. That would be a great idea, and I'm sure you've given their concerns. Councillor Woodcock, by the way. Over to you. Thank you, Chair. A couple of questions, a general one and then a more specific one. I'm not sure who necessarily replies that either. In terms of the shared safeguarding themes, would someone be able to speak a bit more about how the partnership comes up with those themes? Obviously, there's regular reviews, but how those are decided. And then a particular question might be the same person answering, so I think it's worth asking the same question at the same time. On the safer sleeping theme, obviously, there's a lot of work in terms of providing the training and guidance in medical settings that are linked to the NHS and Barnett. But obviously, there's lots of private providers of antenatal classes in the borough and private child minders and nursery settings in the borough. So how are we there, midwives of NHS setting? Thanks, Councillor. I can take the first point on how the themes are come to. We couldn't hear everything you said, Tony, but the last bit. So, Councillor's question was around. Thank you. I think I've got most of that. I'll just ask if you could lean in a little bit more, Tony, on the mic might help. So, in terms of the work that's gone on in safer sleeping, you'll notice it's a theme that's carried over. It's not a new theme this year. It's continued from the work that's gone on previously to carry on embedding it. There's been a lot of work, and I'll ask Paul to just update on some of that in terms of what's gone on. But I just wanted to sort of the point that was made around the other providers of advice that are out there that we don't have direct contact with. In terms of the advice that we've got, all of the contact that we have from anyone coming from health and social care, we are actively supporting the safer sleeping arrangements so that the information they give and they communicate is consistent across the board. Recently, in terms of the information that's available on the websites, through the midwifery, all of those bits are consistent in terms of the messaging that we give. Unfortunately, there is always a challenge in terms of where people might go for their information, but we've been very clear about having a consistent message around safer sleeping and every contact that we have. People are emphasising the importance of it, and that's come up, as I think Tony was alluding to earlier, in terms of some of the most serious incidents that we've got. And in terms of some of the work that's gone on around safer sleeping, Paul trailed a little bit of that earlier in our introduction. And if it's okay, Paul, can I just bring you in in terms of some of the work that you've been aware of that's gone on through the Royal Free and colleagues? Yeah, and the Health Visiting Service are key to this. The 0-19 team now provided by Whittington Health, they do an awful lot of work with that. And we have the opportunities, whether in the Health Forum, which brings together every three months the different health providers, it's a constant theme to stress the importance. When we had many GPs at Alliance Park at Cocktail for a training session, again, it featured. And I think by disseminating it amongst such a broad range of different health professionals, they will go out to their wider circles. And I think that we keep the emphasis on it. And yeah, I hope that it will remain an important theme because, again, with my A&E experience, where an infant brought into A&E, there's a sudden infant death, and not unusually, there may be less than optimal sleeping arrangements. It's those tragedies we seek to avoid. Thank you, did you have any follow-up? All right, there are no further questions. Oh, very good. Yeah, just to ask, in terms of thinking of all the different pieces that are fed in and the increasing engagement with broader partners, has anyone looked at ethnic or religious breakdowns in terms of whether there are particular communities that you're targeting well or not managing to reach? Particularly, you know, if there is the safer sleeping piece, if there's a piece of education that actually needs to be done, and from a children missing in education piece, you're trying to access, you know, are there specific groups that you feel that you need to be reaching that perhaps some of us around the table might be able to connect you with community partners to facilitate that on both sides? Would you like to go first, and then we'll pass it over to officers as well? Have I put you on the spot? Okay, we'll pass it over to officers first, if that's okay. Just to give an example on the safer sleeping theme, our colleagues in the Whittington Health Trust, the North 19, some of the safer sleeping literature that they're developing, redesigning at the moment, midwives themselves are actually speaking in other languages to make sure there's messages. But still on safer sleeping, so credit given to the business partnership that come up with the initiatives we have. The police have one that's been a model of a Merseyside of brought in around safer sleeping for children. And it's based around when officers interact with families in all sorts of different situations, when they notice, say, there's a method of reporting that directly back to health physicians. Now, in the partnership, we're in the very last stages now of having that ready to roll out as a trial. It's a trial that's going to be for the whole of the MET subsequently, and we'll trial that on Barnett. And what it will entail is when officers do visit addresses, they will have already had a briefing from my health colleagues around the safer sleeping principles, so that when they go to addresses and they notice where there are too many blankets in the cots, by radiating, teddies and items around that create these dangers, and they spot that. All they'll then have to do is fill in 12 boxes on a Microsoft Word page that they can access from their phones, and that will automatically send the information to our health visitor partners who will receive that directly, and they can act on that. Now, from that, it will have mention of languages spoken, because it will be needed for them to engage, and something that we will retain from that, so the police won't retain the data around the individuals because there isn't a policing purpose for us past that, but what we will retain are the postcodes, and that will then assist the health colleagues understand where these notifications are coming up in certain areas that may need that sort of further education. Can you hear me? We have a really big and robust early health service, and we've had early health coordinators. Well, the simple answer is yes, of course, if that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, I should leave. The paper's a little bit further on. It gives us another note on the action plan following the inspection, so Bridget can update us on that this week, and then you can decide whether you want a separate paper next time. And I did have a second question. A bit further down the report, there's a short paragraph on clear-hole build, and it there refers to following the initiative. Yeah, I can – Council, I can speak to that. Just in terms of the sequencing of when the report was produced, there has been, I understand, since then, an update report under the arm of the Safer Communities Partnership around clear-hold build in terms of the impact that it's making on the Graham Park estate. To thank officers and all of those who have come here to talk to us today and share their experiences and listen to our questions, you are very welcome to stay. Equally, if you do need to go, then we completely understand. Can I ask the committee if they accept all the recommendations as laid out in the report? And we'll take forward the action about the Youth Parliament as well. Yeah? Thank you so much, and thank you to those who joined online. So, now we're moving on to Agenda Item 8, and that's the Complaints and Compliments Annual Form. And – oh, sorry. I will now hand over to colleagues who are going to give us an overview of the findings. Again, Chair, would you like me to give a brief introduction? Yes. I'm not sure – do we have an officer that's – We don't. We don't have an officer that wrote the report. So, I'll give you a brief overview. So, this is a report that we have to produce annually. And forgive me if I'm teaching you to suck eggs when I say that. But we have to produce this. And actually, it's a very important report because it's part of our quality assurance process to take complaints as well as compliments, actually, about the services that we provide for children and families. And other data sources around what we're doing as a service includes our performance management system, our data sets, direct observations that we make during visits and so forth. Things like your visit to the MASH, informal observations like that, all give us a sense informally of how well we're doing, what your residents tell you about our services. So, this is a really important report. And like the first one, really, as a newcomer to Barnett, I can say at first glance that just as the arrangements for the safeguarding board are pretty robust compared to other places where I've worked and experienced. And the other thing I didn't say by way of introduction is that at various points in my career, I have been asked to chair improvement boards in failing authorities, particularly in the West Midlands, I did Solihull, Sandwell rather, not Solihull. And so, I've got a kind of fairly good sense of where local authorities are. And that set of papers around the safeguarding board are quite robust. But I was also really pleased when I read this. It's quite rare that you get more compliments than complaints, believe you me, in reports such as this. It's normally the other way around. And the other real benefit, I think, of this is that we do resolve a lot of complaints very early before they become formal complaints at stage one, which is another great sign of a healthy service that deals with residents before they make a formal complaint, or even as they make a formal complaint, they will say, so what is the issue? And sometimes all they want is a piece of information that they've not been able to get. And that resolves it before it becomes a formal complaint. So, this whole report actually depresses in a good way that progression through stage one and stage two and ultimately to ombudsman's complaints. The other thing I would say, Chair, is that a lot of these complaints are resolved very early in the process as well, which is another good sign of a healthy service. So, I was really quite pleased when I read this and thought, well, that's good. And in terms of learning, as I say, this is part of our wider quality assurance process. It's one of the pipelines of intelligence that we use to target what we need to do better. Thank you. Thank you. That's a really great overview. I also wanted to echo those comments, just reading the report and seeing there were 103 compliments and seeing that these have come directly from families and the professional networks working closely with families is just exceptional. So, I think that should definitely be recognized from the committee. I will bring it up to questions. Again, I think it's really important for us to recognize the good practice as well as the areas that can be strengthened. So, let's try to have a real balanced kind of set of questions to officers. So, Councillor Sue Baker. Hi there. And congratulations. You know, complaints normally always outweigh, you know, positive comments. That is great. I just wondered, and this might be a bit nitpicky because it is really good data. Are there any patterns or trends in the types of complaints that you've received? We've got kind of like service quality, staff attitude, behaviour. But is there any kind of like comparative data over time? And secondly, is there any way that it could be slightly more qualitative? So, we do have a breakdown by service area. So, some of us here journey, shall we say, through the system from early health to permanence end of the business. So, I don't know if my colleagues want to say anything about their specific areas where themes emerge. But if you read the document in the round, it's mainly about communication and information. So, generally around communication and also when there's changes of social workers, of the problems they might be facing. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's pretty consistent. Thank you, Chair. The other thing is that there's, I think there's an emerging theme about an increase in complaints from dads. And it's something that I take very seriously because I think as a profession, there's far more women in social work than men. And so, you do get a female perspective on scenarios. And these guys are probably looking at me with daggers because we do lots of training around, you know, involving dads. But I think it's, given that we've got that trickle but steady increase, it's probably something we do need to look at. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I mentioned it this afternoon as well, we had a, we had a training session and occasionally you get a parent, they come to us if they're not happy with something. And in this case, it was a place, a local school, and they had been told that the year group was full. And then come to us thinking we can, you know, pull strings and know the class was full. And so then email the MP and, you know, just about everybody else. And I was wondering if there, this was a family who had recently moved into the country, so they weren't aware of our school system. And I was wondering if there's a booklet or something that you might be able to give to a parent just to set out the basic, I don't know, I thought it through really, but just something that they can explain. But this is how it works here, basically, and I just wondered how, it may be for education or it could be for other things as well, just to make it quite simple. And this is the process also for school applications and how it works. This was a dad as well. There was quite a bit of work and some literature put together when the Homes for Ukraine scheme was on. Oh, can you hear me? So there was something like that put together when the Homes for Ukraine project was on. So that might be something we can take and adapt or in different languages. Yeah. Yeah. We do reach all families in the hotels. But I don't have to think about it. So there is. Switch it off. Thanks. So there is a legal process for school admissions and we would, I'm sure, have a document which sets that out. We have responsibility for local authority schools, of which we've still got about, and I think East Barnet Secondary is still a local authority school. Is it, okay, so there's a separate arrangement for academies as well, but it is all set out legally in a framework which we would then service. But I'm completely, I'm seeking migrant families would also support families to gain access to a school place. Sorry, I don't, it's day eight. I haven't seen the document yet, but I'm sure we'd have it. Thank you. We had Councillor Longstaff and then Tamsin and then we'll, and Councillor Lemon and then we'll move on. Thank you, Cher. In the report, it says that 51% of Stage 1 complaints were responded to within timescale, which means that 49% weren't. And this was a decrease on the previous year, 66%. So what are you going to change in order to meet the corporate targets, 90%? Yeah, that's a good challenge and it's one we'll have to take back to senior leadership team. Clearly, it's not all great news. It's a roundly good report, but there are some aspects of timeliness. I think it's important to bring it back to this committee as well, Cher, because if it's gone down 15% in the last previous year, and we're 10 months into this year, it would be nice to know where it's going right and going wrong and know that we're doing a reasonable job. Thank you. I would agree. That's been noted as an action. Thank you. Who's next? Tamsin and then Councillor Lemon. Thank you. I noticed at the end of the report, a lot of information that Action for Children who are our advocacy systems, they provide all our children with information around, do you know how to make it, being accessed through our contract? Many thanks. Councillor Lemon. Yeah, similar to a question, it's already been, obviously, we're through 2425, so I was wondering if there's any more up-to-date data on complaints for 2425, if any of that's available, and what's the trend like compared to last year? I don't know the answer to that, Councillor, but I don't know if my colleagues do, whether we have interim reports. Yeah, I would be surprised if we don't get a quarterly report to NLT, but I'm shaking your head. It helps. I can certainly do a kind of behind-the-chair response to that. If we've got mid-year data, I don't know whether we have it. If we have, I can certainly provide it. Okay, we'll take that forward as an action for you to look into that, and if that data is available for it to be shared with committee members. Thank you. So, can I ask if all the recommendations are agreed and for us to move on to the next agenda item? Great. So, now we've got a bit of a new agenda item. This is the budget out-turn report for quarter two. This is going to give the committee the opportunity to undertake budget scrutiny at every coming meeting. So, we have Dean joining us online, who's going to give us an overview of the budget position in relation to children's services. So, welcome, Dean. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I mean, would it help if I give you, within the children's context, a bit of an overview of the council position, and I will relate that to where children's are in that position, if that would help? That would be helpful. We just ask if you can keep it to about two, three minutes, so members have enough time to ask you questions. Absolutely. Music to my ears. So, I will click on with that if I can. So, you were in the report, and this was a quarter two report. So, that is month six, which is at the halfway point of the year, the end of September. We are two weeks away from a Q3 report. So, some of the data has moved on a bit since then. But if we're looking at quarter two, you will see the overspend reported for the council against the general fund was $25.5 million. That was an increase from $5 million on quarter one. Children's family services was showing an overspend at that time of $346,000, so that's a slight overspend on the budget there. And that was an uplift of about $700,000 from Q1, mainly as a result of staffing challenges in the area. Within the $25 million overspend, there was drawdown on reserves of $20.6 million. The children's element of that was $6.4 million, and that was mainly drawing on one-off grants around asylum and also application from our financial resilience reserves. And it's important to note that they are one-off, so once they're used, they've gone. And you will see in the MTFS for next financial year the implication of this. Within the figure of $25.5 million, there were recovery plan items of about $11 million. So the figure of $25 would have been worse if it wasn't for in-year recovery actions that officers across the authority invoked. And children's had about $4 million of the recovery plan, $11 million that was in there. And that was mainly achieved or was due to be achieved through contract efficiencies, vacancy management, and reducing high-cost placements and the more use of in-house provision. So that's obviously recovery plans are being monitored every quarter. But I'll give you an early insight into quarter three in that the position hasn't moved massively. So recovery plans are coming to fruition. For this year, there were savings of $39 million built into the budget. Children's had savings of $3.4 million of that $39 million, and 95% of those are on track to be delivered. And you will see way further down in the report, there's an earmarked reserve balance of $42.8 million. However, only $26.4 million is what we call usable, so it's un-ring-fenced we can use for other means. And this is where we would draw on to support the overspend position. So of the $26 million we've got in usable reserves, $25 will be used to support the overspend at year-end if that's how it ends up. So it leaves our usable reserves of the council really low of around about a million pounds. So I'll let you read that section in your own time. But that is a key part to take away in that the council's reserves are being really reduced in order to support the difficult and challenging demand position that we're seeing across the council. We do, however, also have general fund reserves of $15 million, but that is really the final result. We don't really want to dip into general fund reserves at all. What are council doing to mitigate the difficult financial climate that we're finding at the moment? I mentioned recovery plans. There's spending panels that officers sit on, I think it's three or four times a week. That's already done stuff like reduced around about 33 agency members of staff through the review of the workload there, and that was at quarter two. So that's moved on since at quarter three. And decisions about entering into new contracts, extending contracts, are being challenged at quite senior officer level. There's been star chambers over the summer where officers have gone through the overspend position, and directors have with senior members of cabinet normally at this point. And the council have reviewed the capital programme. So $70 million has been removed from the capital programme this financial year, which has also helped our borrowing position. We don't have to borrow as much, which has saved on our servicing of that debt. Just to quickly peruse in where that $70 million came from, it didn't affect children's family services schemes much in the programme. So there wasn't much impact upon this committee. One other area to note, and I'll finish, is there is a large debt book at health that you can see reported. I think it's around about Section 6. That has improved at quarter three, and it now stands at about $17 million. Across the health authority, they owe the council around about $17 million. Just a point to say that children are in that debt book at the tune of around about $4 million with health. We have invoices raised in particular for high-cost placements, and that is proving really difficult to recover. So that's not built into any of the overspend figures that I'm presenting here. But this is an area which officers are struggling to recover. So just a point of caution there and a risk note that that may appear and present a bit later on in the financial system. But officers are still working with colleagues in health to try and get a resolution on that. So I'll pause there, Terry, if that's okay, at that point. Thank you, Dean. That was a really good overview. I will open it up. Councillor Longstaff? One little question. Not really in the report. I mean, the report's out of date anyway, just about. But the work that Chris Mundy was doing on the pan-London secure home, and now that he's gone, who's picked up on that? Because that seems to be a large part of trying to reduce the costs of using third-party children's homes for secure placements. So Chris was leading on behalf of the London Association of Children's Services. It's very late, of course, and the information I've got may not be entirely accurate. But I know Chris was very concerned about the liability that the DfE were expecting councils to pick up, something in the region of about 2 million. And he was quite strident in his defence of this and other 30-odd councils in London. That didn't go down to the DfE, and so the project was paused. The DfE reflected on that. I think since then, most London councils have agreed to cover that liability, and so they're looking at a way of resurrecting the project so that that build can come on Thames Water, the old Thames Water site. So that's where we are, as far as I understand. It's a temporary pause, but it's about to, I think, some life breathed into it again. Interesting, because obviously Chris was fully immersed in it all. They haven't even put in the planning permission yet, which is kind of, that will take enough time in itself. I just wondered if anybody, if you were going to be involved at all on it, or is it just, will be left to some other, another director of children's services to pick up the baton and run with it? Yes, chair for me. Yeah, Florence Crawling Greenwich is leading at the moment. She's holding it. She's chair of the London Association until somebody else, I suppose, takes out the seat. It's very unlikely to be me because I'm only here for months, and that is a long-term plan. As you said, they've not even got planning yet. There's lots of other groups about the buildings. So we're a long way off, and it's certainly not a solution to our budget situation. No, it's not a solution, but it might help. That's the theory, that it would help alleviate some of the position. Long-term, long-term it would, but I think there's probably another three years before that would be up and running. So it's not going to deal with some of the more immediate. Thank you. Councillor Woodcock-Vellamit. Thank you, chair. In section 2.11, around in-year recovery savings, helping mitigate unachievable savings that are detailed, for children and family services, it talks about the unachievability, if that's the term, for ceasing using any external providers for contact and only using the family services contact centre. My understanding, but I'm grateful for officers to correct me, that we were bringing a lot more of these services in-house, particularly the out-of-hours contact centre and others. So in terms of that being an unachievable aim during due to demand pressures, I was wondering if someone could explain that a little bit further. Thank you. Reisel? Can I ask a question about SCN? And note that there's this cost of SCN transport. And I know that in previous meetings, we've talked about the increase in demand for SCN services and the lack of provision. But for looking at maybe a more sustainable balancing budget, I appreciate it would entail a greater outlay at the outset. But should we be looking to increase then provision in Barnett and then offset some of these other residual costs while also then being able to potentially provide places for other local authorities too and children too? Dean, do you want to take that question on SCN transport or do you want me to do my best at it? Yeah, it could be useful if you could do your best for that one, Chris. I'm not as close to that if I'm totally honest with you. So, without having got into the weeds of this, if you'll appreciate, I mean, this is a really complex issue because on the one hand, we've got a savings target, but on the other hand, we've got, as you read the report, a growth bid in. So, there is a bit of giving with one hand and taking with the other with transport. The big idea here at the moment is around the 16 to 18-year-old transport arrangements where legally we have to make, we have to give transport assistance. We don't actually have to provide transport legally, particularly for the age group. So, the strategy to try and meet the target, as I understand it, is to provide travel assistance to that age group instead of transport per se. So, that would be transport trainers, personal budgets, et cetera, et cetera. So, that is going to consultation. It's likely to be a tricky consultation. It always is around SEMD transport. Some of you have experienced that. So, it's something I'm going to have to look at in trying to reduce the demand on the budgets. But it really is an end-to-end. You have to start at the policy end where you make it clear that it's travel assistance. You have to be able to procure providers as cheaply and as efficiently as you can. You have to try and enter the market and disrupt it with our own provision, and we have got some of our own provision as well. And then you have to kind of organize through algorithms almost the most effective way of providing a set of routes for a whole range of children. You have to modify practices like door-to-door. You know, if we're still doing door-to-door, then maybe door-to-multiple pickup points instead of door-to-door is a lot cheaper. But the way that you utilize vehicles, you know, if you reduce the number of transport three or four children, that can make savings as well. But it's a tough ask to make savings on SEMD transport at the moment. But if you can do it, those are the sort of strategies that we'll need to look at. I'll take one a little bit later because of tech issues. And in the interest of time, I'm going to move us on. Councillor Longstaff. It was just to say that today was the last of the three Bell's briefings on what they do, and that included a large amount about the SEMD transport issues. And it would be useful if that was made available either to be sent to or to give a briefing to the co-opted members as well, because that would be just as useful for them as it is for us, so that they could understand the full situation and what people are doing to ameliorate the problems. Thank you. I agree. I can't see why that wouldn't be shared. Are they recorded? Okay. So we'll take that as an action to share the recordings with co-opted members. Thank you, Councillor Longstaff. Okay. We're going to move on to the family services quarterly update, which most of you know what that is. This is the regular report on family services activity, including the performance data. So I've asked Stella to arrange a training session on the chat tool, which will really support a lot of us in our role. We know that it's a comprehensive data tool. We were not able to find a date last year, so I know Stella's going to follow up and help to find a date. So if you are interested, please, please get in touch with me. And when she starts to state the dates, please do respond to her for the date and time that would be suitable. So I will pass on, I think, to you, Chris, to introduce this report. Of course, you'll be far more familiar with this suite of papers than I am. I have read them and been through them. But I think I'm going to pass over to my colleague, Bridget, who's really into the weeds of the CESF and the update following the ILACS inspection and the Ofsted improvement plan that followed on from that. And, of course, feedback from Barnett families on our services as well. So I'll pass over to Bridget. Thank you. The DFE document, keeping children safe, helping families thrive, that sets up new reforms. That's going to underpin all the work that we do within the CESF, within our planning, within our priority setting. And it's part of what we do in our social work. In terms of the self-evaluation, since we had our Ofsted inspection last year in a timely way, we also have the allocation, they check, we're making sure that we check the, or wait to, the other action was around the LADO and management oversight of the local authority designated officer. The LADO contacts are being, so one of the things that the Ofsted inspectors felt that there needed to be more information on the children's, and I don't know whether you want to add anything. And then the last action, or the last recommendation from Ofsted was about communicating so they know what is happening when they turn 18. There are some young people who are going to university, and when they turn 18, they may not know. Then that's the same for every 18-year-old that's waiting for their A-level results, and they may not know where they're going to be. So it's really about making sure that we've done some work to make sure that that happens. So the other part of the report, I think, talks for itself in terms of our point, we can open up for questions. Before I do just go into questions, Councillor Myer has had to unexpectedly leave us. Just a quick reminder, so it is also noted, please say that probably such as yourselves and myself, we've all had a day at work or with our own caring arrangements, and we're here, and the meetings do tend to go on quite late, but please, please, if you do have to leave early, just let me know. Let Stella know so we have that there noted, okay? I know you're all very good at doing that, but just a quick reminder to all of those who don't. So, yes, I will open up the floor to questions. That's exactly what I was thinking when you were explaining. I was thinking we're not going to have any questions to ask because you've answered them all. Councillor Woodcock-Vellum. Thank you very much, Chair. I know that a decent chunk of what's in the Children and Wellbeing Bill are things that Barnet are somewhat ahead of the curve in doing, and so I hope everyone welcomes that bill moving forward in Parliament. Would you be able to speak on some of the areas, if there are areas of the bill, which would require more change for Barnet, because clearly some of the things we're already doing or we're already working towards, but things that are quite new and kind of how much work that would be in terms of, you know, business preparedness for the Department to change ways. Thank you for the question. So, again, it's a first glimpse, but of course, where we're headed, it seems, is families getting more support at the point of need and fewer children coming into care. So, when you say you think we're ahead of the curve, I think you're right, because we had a question. I think it should just stand that route to early intervention and better and more effective help at that point. And if you are effective at that point, then if you look at the child's journey through the care system, then what that should lead to, look at the chat, which is circulated, you'll see that if we're benchmarked against other authorities, we already have fewer per 10,000, which is the measure of children coming into care than most other authorities. So, there's two ways of looking at that. And it's like a season. You've always got to keep an eye on both ends of that seesaw because we tend to congratulate ourselves if we've got a low number of children in care. We think, great, we've done the job. But actually, our tolerance of risk might be too high. So, we always have to keep our eye on that. But, again, looking at where the government are in children in situ rather than moving them. And that's a good direction of travel, in my view, because the outcomes for children in care are generally not very good. So, if we can keep them in the home and support the home more effectively, then I think that's the right thing to do. But in order to do that, you've got to develop the services to allow you to do it. And we're not quite fit for purpose, I think, at the moment to deliver on that agenda. But neither to or other local authorities. You know, I think we're better prepared than most. Across the world. I think the other service we need to develop is that those services on care, because that's critical. Most, not most, maybe, but a lot of children come into care because of a crisis. So, if you can provide support at that point of crisis, then you can usually manage to divert the child coming into care in the first place. So, I think an Educare service that is able to intervene effectively at that point of crisis and at the other end, we don't leave children languishing in placements when there is a realistic chance of them being reunified with the family. And that's actually one of the reasons that we've had quite a large growth in the numbers of children in care in recent years, is because we've got more children coming in, but fewer children being returned home. And that, again, is a balance we need to do. I don't know where we're going with that one. Well, you'll set me off talking about children's centres because, you know, we had a great system called Sure Start around early years' help. And, unfortunately, that fell out of favour for some reason or another. And it's currently being reintroduced and has been reintroduced for the last couple of years under new arrangements, but it's not been done with the same intensity that it was initially. And that program did deliver huge advantages. Three family hubs that are overseen by the local authority. We have 11 children's centres that are run by the local authority and through the early help systems. And then lots of the schools have attached children's centres to them. So, I think all up, there's about 19. There's quite a large number of them. So, we have processes where we help and support and do some QA of the non-local authority children's centres so that it's quite joined up. I think some reports come here about that and what that looks like with the child care sufficiency report so that we're best placed, you know, best placed to be able to offer the wraparound that the government's proposed. We're in stage four of that and that's all going really well, that rollout. Thank you. I'll take two more questions and then I'm going to move us on. So, we had Councillor Longstaff and then Councillor Woodcock Belliman. I'm sorry to those who had questions, but otherwise we're going to overrun massively. Thank you, Chair. Chat is always hard to work out when they've got a year and a half, two years' worth of data missing. But it says the assessment's completed in 45 days and I was wondering why we only got to 66%, which is you can't compare it with statistical neighbours because the information's not there properly, but they used to be higher. And I thought we were getting better and better at this, but we seem to have been about 34% not completed in 45 days. Is there any particular reason why that's? Yeah, there's a variety of reasons for that and I think one of it has been staffing challenges in the DATS teams as well. That has been one of the challenges, staffing, some of the staffing challenges, completing those assessments, change of social, we've thrilled down to it. Ones that have been a delay have had a change of social worker and also there, that number is never going to be 100%, it's never going to be 90%. It kind of probably sits comfortably around sort of 80% because there are assessments that will take longer and that will be purposeful. And it is an assessment you do need to get right and correct. So it's not where it needs to be, but we understand why it's not where it is. And we're working on that and we've really managed to achieve some good, that number increase. That's really positive. Just to add to that. Very quickly, please. Whilst I fully understand staff changes and other issues with disabilities and children, that must also apply to every other authority in the country. So therefore, statistically, occasionally we must go above our neighbours, but we never seem to. So it's, you know, just something to be looked at and considered because they'll be doing something, either lying on their forms and filling them in quickly, or we're not, or maybe we're just being too vastly, too thorough. Yeah. You know, doing a really good job, but it takes a bit longer. Yeah. But there must be a reason somewhere down the line why we're doing with slightly less. Yeah, there is a fine balance there in terms of how thorough you are at assessments, but I will say, how thorough you are at the beginning, you get the right support for that child and doing the right assessment and being thorough would be better than doing a quick knock on the door. We would all agree. Like going back a few years, quick knock on the door, one visit. Like we say to our social workers, two, three visits for an assessment at least, because I don't think that would be my view. So that sounds really positive. I think we'd agree. Councillor Woodcock-Vellerman, I'll... No, we need her where she is. Councillor Woodcock. Thank you, Chair. I note that the Interim Executive Director of Children's and Families didn't note some of the reasons for the closure at a short start. I think these ventures might have some views on that, but we'll move on. One of the particular questions I wanted to ask about the Children's and Wellbeing Bill was around the improving data sharing and the single unique identifier. Do you feel that the count... Obviously, the bill hasn't passed yet, but in the presumption that it will, do you feel that the council is technologically set up to kind of integrate those data sharing systems? Obviously, we're good on some of the registers that we already keep, but in terms of every child having a single unique identifier, do you think we'll be technologically in the right place for that? Well, we could ask Elon Musk or somebody like that whether we're well enough placed since he's high profile at the moment. But I think any big government IT initiative over the past few years has been really challenging, hasn't it? Whether you look at the CSA or health services or any other post office. So I think there are two challenges. One is the technological challenge of how do you create an IT system, which will allow us to talk with the police and health. And we've never really cracked that. It's been talked about for a long time. There's been various pilots launched and not really delayed on that. So I think there's a massive technological challenge, which personally I have no real insight into how that could be done. And the other is just a basic legal challenge around what the police and health are willing to share with us or able to within the kind of legality of how they operate. So, yeah, I'd love to think of a single system, but I think it's some way off. That's just my personal view. I'd love to be proved wrong. Okay. Can I ask if the committee agrees the recommendations as laid out in the report? Perfect. So we'll move on to agenda item 11, which is the task and finish group updates. Now, I assume the committee members have had a chance to read through the recommendations. Does anyone have any particular questions? Yeah, I just had a question about the upcoming task and finish groups, particularly the one about food security, conscious that it doesn't necessarily fit exactly in here, but conversations that have been had, particularly within Jewish schools about the cost of kosher meals. And then with the Children and Wellbeing Bill, with the upcoming breakfast clubs due to come in as well with that food component and the extra cost of kosher food, just wanted to make sure that within that task and finish group, there would be religious interests represented to be able to add that layer, that voice in that discussion. So I saw this was on the task and finish group and actually on the action log chair. So I asked Neil about that, Neil Marlowe, because I think this was a question that you, councillor, might have been you that posed it last time around. But he's done quite a lot of work in the interim. The chief exec of Bells has written to the Department for Education to provide the Brown context and ask for an exemption on the VAT issue. I know that's not what you talked about specifically, but we're also meeting other directors of children's services in north central London and pulling together a kind of a menu of issues around Jewish schools. At the moment and the difficulties that the changes that the changes have made and presented, so there'll be a delegation. I don't know whether I'll be part of that or not, but I have presented a report on Jewish schools to Hackney, who are a leader on a number of issues. Yes, Chair, just to clarify, I think, Chris, you were talking about an issue that raised at the last meeting about the impact of the VAT on Jewish schools. In fact, I wanted to do that at the beginning, but I wasn't caught up with the technical things. But in regards to the task and finish group, I'm supporting that, so I can feed that back to the chair. That's where we're at in that one. Yes, Chair, so we're still, we've got something which we're about to start, but we are about to begin a topic selection process. So you'll get, all councils will get an email, and corpus will get an email about that, asking for new topics for the new work programme. Start putting your thinking caps and putting some ideas together. So Tamsin and then Naomi. Are you looking for volunteers for Naomi? Any other comments? Otherwise, we'll move us. Oh, Rizal? Should we be waiting to make suggestions until the point that we receive the email, or can I float something now? I would say in the interest of Stella's inbox, probably to wait. No problem. Is that all right? Yeah. Okay, thank you. So now I'll move us on to the Cabinet Forward Plan. As many of you know, the subcommittee are requested to consider any items they may wish to request for pre-decision scrutiny during 2025. So I'm passing over to you, Stella. Otherwise, I will move on to the next agenda item. So the next one is the Scrutiny Work Programme. So the report sets out the work programme for the Children Education Overview and Scrutiny Subcommittee. Does anyone have any questions or comments on the work programme? Yep, Neil. I'm sorry. If you want to just grab the right up. Sorry. Sorry. I was pressing the wrong place. I raised this issue on Monday at the call over, and Stella kindly suggested that I should raise this now. It concerns a report issued by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons dated the 9th of January, which some members, I think, have heard of. The report lays bare the problems faced by parents and local authorities in dealing with a large rise in the number of children seeking EHCPs. There are three statistics shown for all local authorities. As at January 24, firstly, a percentage of children with EHC plans, and Barnett has 4.5%. Secondly, a percentage of new EHC plans issued within 20 weeks. Barnett has done that 100% of the time. And I just want to emphasise, Barnett is the only local authority that hit 100% out of 150-odd authorities. And the third statistic is about decisions on EHC applications taken to send tribunals, in other words, appeals by parents. And in our statistics, for Barnett, it's 3.6%, which is certainly not amongst the high ones, amongst other authorities. I wanted to raise this because, first of all, I think Barnett needs to be congratulated for hitting this 20-week target as being the only local authority that hits it. And we need to note that, I think. But secondly, because we are all concerned about the lack of send facilities, and indeed what Neil Marlow on Monday called the broken system for send, which, of course, is a much bigger issue than for Barnett. I appreciate it. Sadly, Barnett can't solve that problem on its own. But just looking at these applications or appeals, in effect, which are taken to tribunals, they cost Barnett a lot of money. And the statistics that the government produced, that the authority, sorry, the Public Accounts Committee produced on these is that out of all the applications, 98% of the applications by parents are successful. 2% of the local authorities are successful. That's a pretty horrific statistic. Now, it's not a statistic for Barnett, but I would be interested to know what Barnett's statistic is. And I suspect the Public Accounts Committee knows that, and it just put them all together. The point about this is that a successful appeal by parents, in this respect, is a very costly exercise for local authority. It would be far cheaper to grant the EHCP in the first place. And what I fear is that under the iceberg are a lot of parents who are rejected, but they don't bother to appeal, because they kind of give up at that point. So it may be that Barnett can't do anything about all these appeals, because it hasn't got the money to provide EHCP plans. But I think we really do need the statistics, so that we know what we're going to do and what our problem is. Because I fear at the moment the Council doesn't know what the problem is. And it may be that the relevant staff do, but I suspect perhaps they don't either. So I'm asking for some investigation into this. Now, on Monday, Neil Marlowe suggested that it should be included in a SEND report at the next meeting. But I think it's potentially a bigger issue like that than that. And just having listened to that very last item, Chair, I think it might be worthy of a task and finish group. Stella's made a note of that. I did speak to Neil about this, and to Karen Flannan. We think a task and finish group is a good idea to say. But whenever I say that, you know there's a but coming, don't you? And the but is, Karen is leaving, unfortunately. And we are due an inspection probably within 12 months, which does take quite a lot of preparation. So Neil and Karen's advice to me as the new DCS was that they would rather focus on getting the service fit and ready for that inspection than invest huge amounts of time into a task and finish group. But, of course, if this committee wants that, then, of course, we'll do that. And it is a big issue. You've nailed the issues pretty succinctly. It is quite a broken system. It's like the benefit system and pensions. You know, when that was designed, people lived 18 months beyond pensionable age. Now it's 20 years. So, you know, the system is a really difficult one to sustain. And it's the same with SEND, where Mary Warner wrote that. She had in mind what was adequate for children, not what was best. And for 2% of the population nationally, it's now over 5%. And the whole notion of what is adequate, quite rightly, if it's your child, you wouldn't want to accept, would you? You don't want what's adequate. You want what's best. And so there's an inherent tension in the system, which means – and also a whole series of perverse incentives as well, which means that that system is very difficult to make work at a local level. But you're right, 100% is remarkable. Most other authorities I've been to – the timeliness of the HCPs has been somewhere between about 30% and 60%. So I'm interested in learning how they've done it because it's not because they've got fewer caseloads. Their caseloads here in Barnet are higher than most other authorities. So they are doing something. Of course, Councillor Woodcock-Pennamon. Sorry, Chair, for a prolonged meeting. The subcommittee forward plan notes that the next meeting, as has been in our diary, is the 4th of March. However, full council, according to the papers that have been released, full council. So could I ask that we urgently move the next subcommittee meeting to a night that we aren't already in the council chamber? That sounds like a very fair request. Chair, I should have noted that, but I didn't. Thank you for raising that. Really important. Are there any other comments? Okay. I will bring the meeting to a close. A massive thank you to everyone. I also know safeguarding is a really – it's a really sensitive and big topic. So thank you for all your questions and your time this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.