Agenda and minutes

To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Councillors Marge Harvey and Robert Taylor. Councillor Pal Hayre was in attendance as the Conservative Deputy Member. Apologies were also received from Councillor Gavin James and parent governor co-opted member Caroline Edmondson.

The Chairman informed the meeting that Cllr Roz Chadd, the Vice Chairman, would be late to the meeting.

All Members who believe they have a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in any matter to be considered at the meeting must declare that interest and, having regard to the circumstances described in Part 3 Paragraph 1.5 of the County Council's Members' Code of Conduct, leave the meeting while the matter is discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with Paragraph 1.6 of the Code. Furthermore all Members with a Non-Pecuniary interest in a matter being considered at the meeting should consider whether such interest should be declared, and having regard to Part 5, Paragraph 2 of the Code, consider whether it is appropriate to leave the meeting while the matter is discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with the Code.

Members were mindful that where they believed they had a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in any matter considered at the meeting they must declare that interest at the time of the relevant debate and, having regard to the circumstances described in Part 3, Paragraph 1.5 of the County Council's Members' Code of Conduct, leave the meeting while the matter was discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with Paragraph 1.6 of the Code. Furthermore Members were mindful that where they believed they had a Non-Pecuniary interest in a matter being considered at the meeting they considered whether such interest should be declared, and having regard to Part 5, Paragraph 2 of the Code, considered whether it was appropriate to leave the meeting whilst the matter was discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with the Code.

Councillor Jackie Porter made a non-pecuniary interest, as she is a Chair of an organisation that has previously received a grant from Children’s Services, and a Chairman of a Pre-School that receives early years funding.

Councillor Malcolm Wade made a non-pecuniary interest, as he sits on an organisation that has previously received a grant from Children’s Services.

Councillor Peter Edgar, the Executive Member for Education, who has a standing invitation to attend and speak to the Committee, noted a non-pecuniary interest, which is that he is a lifelong member of the National Association of Head Teachers.

To confirm the minutes of the previous meeting

The Minutes of the meeting held on 10 July 2017 were confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

To receive any deputations notified under Standing Order 12.

The Committee did not receive any deputations.

To receive any announcements the Chairman may wish to make.

The Chairman gave one announcement to the meeting:

Parent Governor Elections

The Chairman highlighted that the Committee were currently seeking nominations for the two vacant parent governor co-opted member positions it has, which covered secondary and special schools. Members were asked to make parent governors in their areas who would be interested in this opportunity aware of the vacancies and to encourage them to fill out the nomination form and return it by the deadline.

To consider and make recommendation to the Executive Lead Member for Children’s Services on the departmental transformation to 2019 savings proposals and public consultation feedback.

The Committee received a report and presentation from the Director of Children’s Services and his representatives, which provided an overview of the revenue savings proposals for Transformation to 2019 (see Item 6 in the Minute Book).

Members heard an overview of the key findings of the balancing the budget consultation held by the County Council the previous summer, and noted that all of departments in the Council had been asked to proportionately contribute a further 19% saving of their budget by April 2019. For children's services, this resulted in an overall requirement of £30.1m. An overview was provided of the Department’s success in the Transformation to 2017 savings, which had seen a total of £21.5m achieved, including restructuring the family support service, which the Committee had considered in detail.

As the vast majority of the Children's Services spend is external, such as on the cost of placements in foster and residential care, and the entire staffing budget is less that £40m from a £148.9m budget, it would not be possible to find savings only from staffing costs. Therefore a significant proportion of the proposed savings centred around changes in delivering children's social care, and providing only the statutory entitlement under home to school transport, as well as other changes to provision.

The Transformation to 2019 (T19) programme would be a much tougher savings round, as there were no longer minor savings to be found, and cost reduction now required much wider transformational thinking. It was particularly difficult for Children’s Services, as the authority was already lowly-funded, compared to its peers, spends most of its budget externally, and has statutory duties which must be protected. The principles underpinning this programme remained the same, and centred around six core statements:

·         Ensuring a safe and effective social care system;

·         Ensuring sufficient capacity to lead, challenge and improve the schools system to help ensure improved outcomes for all, but particularly more vulnerable groups;

·         Tightly target limited resources according to the needs of children;

·         Secure, targeted, and co-ordinated early help provision;

·         Sustaining and developing high quality and financially competitive sold services;

·         Maximising the opportunities to create efficiencies and maintaining and enhancing services through partnership arrangements.

There were four strands to the T19 programme for social care transformation, which made up the majority of the Children’s Services savings, which included:

·         Reducing the number and cost of children looked after (£17.9m);

·         Infrastructure and organisation redesign (£3m);

·         Review of Swanwick Lodge (£470k); and

·         Reduction in the 0-19 grants (£500k)

There were currently approximately 1,500 children were in care, around 46 per 10,000 children. The Department believed this could be safely reduced by 410 by 2021/22, noting that these figures have to date been rising, but that transformation work had begun to decrease this locally. Hampshire was one of only seven local authorities nationally, picked from the best performing, to take part in a Department for Education pilot aimed at transforming care, noting that with the number of children in care going up year on year, and the average  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21.

To receive an overview of this subject, and to understand changes to entitlements for Hampshire children

The Committee received a report and presentation from the Director of Children’s Services and his representatives providing an overview of the changes to early years free hours entitlements in the County (Item 7 in the Minute Book).

The Committee heard that the report provided further information to Members on top of the overview of free hours entitlements, as it also provided an outline of the wider service.

Members heard that the main change to free early years education was an extension to the entitlement, from the previously offered universal 15 free hours for all three and four year olds, to now include an additional 15 hours of free early years education for those parents which met a set of criteria. This brought the total offer to 30 free hours. There were currently over 1,500 registered providers of early years education, with Hampshire making up approximately 3% of the national provision of these services. Approximately 77% of these would be offering the new extended entitlement.

There had been a marked shift in the early years market place, with most providers no longer only offering places matching the academic year; most now offer over 39 weeks, with 32% offering 48 – 52 weeks per year coverage.

The allocation of funding for services has been based on the early years census, and of the funding received at least 95% of it must be allocated to providers. There was now a funding formula that was nationally-set (Early Years National Funding Formula) which the local authority uses to set provider hourly rates, with additional funding for deprivation, early years pupil premiums, SEN inclusion, and the disability access fund. There remained concerns in the sector about the affordability of the additional free hours, especially if all eligible parents applied for places. 

There were a number of challenges for providers which needed careful monitoring to ensure that provision remained sufficient across the County. These included areas such as increases in expenses (including the national living wage introduction and the impact of business rate changes) and issues with premises. There were also a number of challenges for parents, such as ensuring that they re-confirmed their eligibility when prompted, and were aware of how to apply, what providers offered and what additional charges could be levied. Hampshire County Council also faced challenges in ensuring that the budget pressure through the Department for Education not meeting the expected allocation amount was managed, and that sufficiency was monitored.

The Department had undertaken a significant amount of work as an ‘early innovator’ with providers and parents to ensure that the new entitlements could be implemented smoothly. To date, the Council had managed to convey the message about early years to over 7,000 parents who had positively registered and confirmed their eligibility for the scheme, making Hampshire the local authority with the most positive checks in England. Much of the work undertaken had been through soft social media stories, partnership working, and making the best use of communications, and positive feedback had been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22.

To consider and approve the Children and Young People Select Committee Work Programme.

The Director of Transformation and Governance presented the Committee’s work programme (see Item 8 in the Minute Book).

The following timings for items were agreed on the work programme:

• That the topics of SEN and Disability reforms and services for children with disabilities be heard in November.
• That an additional item providing an overview of the school funding formula is also heard in November
• That a monitoring item on the Family Support Service be heard in January.

In addition, the topic of the Hampshire Music Service was requested to be included in any future update on Transformation to 2019.

RESOLVED:

That the work programme, subject to any amendments made during the meeting, is agreed.