Agenda item

16.1     The Chair introduced the report on the Committee’s latest work programme, outlining that the draft work programme appended to the report reflected changes agreed at the Committee’s recent work planning awayday. The Chair asked the Committee for any further comments or changes regarding the work programme and the following was discussed:

Report on Armed Forces Covenant

16.2     The Chair asked if the Committee could receive an update report on ESCC’s work on the Armed Forces Covenant and the work needed for ESCC to achieve a gold accreditation. The Director of Children’s Services explained that the Lead Member for Children and Families had recently become the Armed Forces Champion. The Covenant had been placed on a statutory footing and a number of steps had been taken to look at enhancing ESCC’s work in this area. This included arranging training for councillors and members of staff on the new Armed Forces Covenant duty, looking at what would be required to move ESCC from silver to gold in the employer accreditation programme and undertaking a staff survey to determine how many members of staff had a connection to the armed forces community. While the survey had only just started and only 50 returns had been received to-date, 20% of respondents had said they had a link. The Director explained that in terms of the staff accreditation, ESCC was very close to meeting the requirements to be gold standard and the ambition was to achieve this by the time of ESCC renewing the signing of the Covenant in 2023. An event was planned to be held after the local elections in 2023, inviting district and borough partners to sign the covenant and put a spotlight on actions taken by each council to discharge their obligations under the covenant.

16.3     The Director and Lead Member for Children and Families added that it had been challenging to secure full engagement from borough and district partners on this work but engagement continued. ESCC hoped that in playing a leadership role it would be able to demonstrate to other public sector organisations what was possible, and the contextual pressures facing all councils, which made it challenging to engage in work such as this, were also noted. The Chair of the Committee asked if the work on the Covenant needed to be better highlighted to borough and district councils and the Director responded that as the legal basis for the Covenant was a new development, there was a need for general awareness raising and this was the reason for provision of the staff and councillor training.

Loneliness and Resilience Reference Group

16.4     Councillor Clark commented that it was important the reference group held its final meeting to consider the final recommendations of the work that had taken place and how that would be progressed. Councillor Clark remarked on the ongoing importance of tackling loneliness, including thinking about how to connect with, and share information on services, with elderly people who do not have access to computers.

16.5     Councillor Hollidge noted that the Place Scrutiny Committee had requested a report on the work of the libraries service and suggested there was a need to promote that service, both physical libraries and work with volunteers to take books out into the community, as a way to connect with people who were not able to get online. The Chair of the Committee agreed that the service provided an important opportunity to connect with people and asked that it was explored whether the Committee could also have an update on the work of the libraries service.

16.6     The Committee RESOLVED to agree the updated work programme, with the addition of an update report on work to deliver the Armed Forces Covenant.