The Children and Young People Select Committee met on 17 September to discuss early intervention and family support, data monitoring, and the committee's work programme. Councillors noted reports on the early intervention and family support services, and on data sharing developments. They also discussed priorities for the committee's upcoming work.

Early intervention and family support

The committee discussed a report providing an overview of recent developments and ongoing initiatives within the service in relation to early intervention and family support. The report highlighted progress in areas such as the Families First for Children Pathfinder (FFCP) programme, the Families First Contact Point (FFCP), Family Help, and the evolving Family Hub and Family Advice model.

Key areas discussed:

• Families First Contact Point (FFCP): Formerly known as the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH), the FFCP has been established as part of Lewisham's participation in the Department for Education's FFCP. The FFCP brings together MASH and assessment functions, streamlining processes and enhancing decision-making through a co-located, multi-disciplinary team.
• Family Help: The reforms realigned casework, bringing together targeted early help work with child in need services to create the Family Help service. Fundamental to this is the implementation of the principles of the Pathfinder programme, such as reducing the transfer points for families, enabling families to work with the same practitioner (who does not have to be a social worker), and working with a family-led approach.
• Family Group Decision Making (FGDM): FGDM is a cornerstone of Lewisham's approach to reforming children's social care under the FFCP. It embodies the principle that families together with their wider networks, when supported appropriately, are best placed to make decisions about their children's welfare and future.
• Pathfinder School Cluster: Through the Pathfinder programme, the council has been able to test out an approach to support families when they need it the most. The Pathfinder was tested in a cluster of five schools: Rushey Green Primary, Haberdasher's Knights Academy, New Woodlands School, Elfrida Primary and Abbey Manor College.
• Family Hubs and Family Advice: Following the insourcing of Children & Family Centres and the realignment of targeted early help, which was integrated with child in need services into one seamless Family Help offer as part of Families First for Children, the Family Hubs model has continued to expand and deliver the new integrated early childhood offer using a hub and spoke model with a central Hub providing the main activities, supported by spokes across all four areas, including, Health Centres, Libraries and Youth Centres, with a total of nine Family Hubs now in operation across Lewisham.

Councillor Luke Sorba asked for clarification around the definitions of the family hub, and asked about the barriers to Kaleidoscope being fully developed as a family hub.

Councillor Laura Cunningham asked about scaling up the school clusters, and whether academies would be included in those collaborations. Angela Scattergood, Director of Education Services, Education Standards and Inclusion, responded that one academy was in the original school cluster.

Bonnie, the young advisor to the young mayor's team, asked how young people who may not be in school or who go to schools outside of Lewisham are being supported. Sara Rahman, Director of Families, Quality and Commissioning, responded that the family hubs and youth centres in Lewisham are open to all children, even if they're going to a school outside of Lewisham.

Councillor Rudi Schmidt asked about family group decision-making, and what choices and agency families have. She also asked about the complaints process and governance.

Councillor Ayesha Lahai-Taylor asked about the plans and the family navigator, and what a plan entails and what the outcomes of these plans were. She also asked how many family navigators are in Lewisham. Angelique Lewis, Head of Prevention and Family Advice, responded that there are eight family navigators in Lewisham.

Sabrina Dixon asked how the team is getting ready for the change to educational healthcare plans, and how the service offer is culturally appropriate and competent.

Councillor Hilary Moore, Chair Standards Committee, suggested revisiting the developments that have taken place in the spring.

Councillor Edison Huynh, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said that the definition of a family is what it is for the family, and that the council takes a very broad view about what a family is.

The committee agreed to note the report, with a visual map to be shared, as well as details of advocates or facilitators. A future visit to family hub locations around the borough will be discussed at a later date.

Data monitoring

The committee discussed a report outlining the council's performance framework approach and detailing data sharing developments.

Pinaki Ghoshal, Executive Director Children and Young People's Directorate, said that when he joined Lewisham five and a half years ago, one of the criticisms in the Ofsted report was the lack of performance culture and lack of performance information. He said that Ofsted has been very complimentary about the work the council does in terms of performance management arrangements, and the performance management culture.

Key points from the report:

• The council has improved service delivery in the Children and Young People's Directorate with a strong evidence base.
• The service has transformed how information is collected, how data is utilised, and how data is reported.
• The Performance Improvement Board meets quarterly to review the impact of service delivery and performance.
• The service launched the Interactive Performance Information dashboard, which provides up-to-date performance and statistical information to managers overseeing social care, SEND, and Early Help services.
• The service has developed and implemented Single View across the CYP directorate to support service planning and nurture a holistic view of the child.
• The Department for Education announced that they planned to implement a Single Unique Identifier (SUI) Pilot Programme. Lewisham applied to be part of the pilot programme and was successful.

Donna Simeon, Head of Strategy & Improvement, explained that Single View is an application that sits above all the current applications and pulls information from those systems into one place. Access to the system is within children, young people and services only, and it is at practitioner levels.

Monsignor Nicholas Rothon asked about children who are not in any system at all. Pinaki Ghoshal responded that it is incredibly rare for that to happen, and that because the council now has a way of linking different data sets, they will know who 99.9999999% of children are.

Councillor Rudi Schmidt asked how widely Single View is being used by practitioners, and what the impact is on the type of decisions that they're making. She also asked how the effectiveness of the data that is being used and is being made available is being assessed going forwards.

Councillor Luke Sorba spoke about the importance of sharing information, and asked about the efforts being made to make people feel that recording and sharing of information is a priority. He also asked if there is buy-in from other major institutions.

Sylvia Green asked about pupil progress, and how it will be measured given the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Councillor Laura Cunningham said that the real power of the Single View is that it is a preventative measure, and that systems have to work so that red flags are pulled together.

Councillor Hilary Moore asked if there is a system in place so that anybody who is putting information in is alerted so that they know that there's more information in from whether it be within their own team or whether ultimately from different departments.

Councillor Ayesha Lahai-Taylor said that she loves how all of the different teams have come together with their systems and people are no longer working in silos.

The committee agreed to note the report.

Select Committee work programme

The committee discussed the select committee work programme.

Councillor Luke Sorba said that he found this month's reports a little thin and could have done with some extra detail and maybe some visuals in the future.

Councillor Rudi Schmidt said that it is always useful to see data and performance monitoring, and that it is nice to have those kind of things in charts. She also said that it would be useful to have a briefing on the youth offer.

Councillor Ayesha Lahai-Taylor asked how the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) strategy fits in with the youth offer.

Councillor Hilary Moore said that she would be interested in terms of the numbers of home educated children, where the increases are, why the increases are, what are the reasons behind it, what is the process that people have to go through, and what are the checkups that are made.

Councillor Laura Cunningham said that it would be helpful if people could look at the paper on elective education and actually put some questions in about it before the meeting.

Councillor Edison Huynh said that he would read those papers as well and be fully prepared to answer any questions.

The committee agreed to discuss the youth offer and budget savings implementation at the next meeting.