Agenda item

17.1     The Independent Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership introduced himself and the report, which the Independent Chair reminded the Committee was a report covering the work of the multi-agency Partnership, rather than solely the safeguarding work of ESCC. The Independent Chair noted that the Committee had requested that this report cover learning for East Sussex from the national reviews into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson and the Independent Chair assured the Committee that the Partnership had carefully considered the messages from the National Panel’s report. The Independent Chair had written to all the strategic leads for safeguarding in the Partnership to ask what steps they were taking to respond to the recommendations in the national reviews and he had been re-assured by the responses received, with a number of actions taking place, including a mock-Joint Targeted Area Inspection.

17.2     The Independent Chair highlighted that the Partnership had conducted eight multi-agency rapid reviews of cases of child serious injuries or deaths and four of those had resulted in a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review in 2021/22. The Independent Chair added that the East Sussex system and all strategic leads were very open to learning from those reviews. The Independent Chair also highlighted a range of key developments and achievements within the report and concluded by commenting that the ESSCP was one of the best safeguarding partnership he had seen in his time working in safeguarding, with really strong leaders in all agencies who all agreed that safeguarding was key.

17.3     The Committee asked questions and made comments on the following areas:

·                     Sufficiency of resourcing for safeguarding – a question was asked on whether there was sufficient resource to carry out the work that safeguarding partners felt was needed to address issues identified by the ESSCP. The Independent Chair responded that while they felt there was not enough resource to do all that the ESSCP would want to, and they would always be supportive of more investment in safeguarding, the resources the partnership and its members did have were extremely well managed and effective. The Director of Children’s Services added that while they would also always support opportunities to invest in children’s services and safeguarding work, even if more funding was to become available it would be challenging to recruit more children’s social workers at this time. The Director felt that the service had just about enough resource for what it needed to deliver but noted that caseloads of social workers were the highest they had been, with some social workers responsible for 23-25 cases as opposed to the 16-18 cases that were aimed for. All cases were managed very carefully. The Director added that the proposals to implement a Family Safeguarding Model through RPPR involved recruiting 36 additional workers to deliver adult support which was a significant investment but was expected to deliver savings in the longer-term by keeping children out of care wherever safe and possible.

·                     Child exploitation in work – a question was asked on whether there had been any cases of child exploitation where a child was working in a business, such as a newsagents or takeaway, without a license for that work. The Independent Chair responded that the partnership did investigate exploitation of children in work through reports of modern slavery but they were not aware of any examples of children being exploited at work in the way described in the question. The Director added that Children’s Services was responsible for approving licenses for children to work in the way described and committed to find out the latest position on this and provide an update. The Independent Chair and Director also noted that criminal and sexual exploitation was more a focus of the ESSCP and the report.

·                     Supervision caseloads – a Member of the Committee commented that they understood there had been an improvement in numbers of cases supervisors were responsible for, and welcomed this improvement, as the Department had previously been found by the regulator to need to address this. The Director said she believed that the approach to supervision of cases in East Sussex was strong.

·                     Safeguarding in Elective Home Education (EHE) – the strengthened legal basis local authorities had for requesting evidence from parents of suitable home education was welcomed and a question asked on whether there was an overlap between hidden children and those in EHE, and if so, how those children would be identified and assessed. In response the Director agreed that it was positive that the recent outcome of the Judicial Review of Portsmouth City Council’s approach to securing assurance on home education standards would support other local authorities to take a similarly rigorous approach.

In terms of safeguarding, it was the Director’s view that it was a limitation of the service’s safeguarding powers that it did not have a right of entry into people’s homes to confirm EHE children were safe, unless evidence was already available of safeguarding concerns. The Government had proposed to establish a register of children not in school within the new Schools Bill, however the Director understood that the new Ministerial Team were now looking to remove this from the planned legislation. The Director recognised that some parents felt strongly about their right to home educate and that many were doing a great job, but felt that given the number of serious case reviews there had been in East Sussex that had involved children who were EHE, it was right to be concerned about limitations in safeguarding in this area. There had been a significant increase in EHE during the pandemic, with 1800 children now home educated in East Sussex, and the Director was really concerned about the potential risks this presented. Committee Members also had concerns about this rising number, and noted that school provided important social and cultural experiences for children. The Chair of the Committee asked if there was anything the Committee could do to make clear to Government their support for strengthening the safeguarding powers councils had, and the Director responded that the Council could write to Government about this. The Association of the Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) had already written to Government to emphasise how strongly they felt about the safeguarding risks from EHE.  

·                     Engagement with home educating parents – a question was asked on what engagement the County Council had had with the Home Schooling Network which supported parents with home education. The Director responded that the Council had good relationships with many parents who home educated, including the networks and organisations that support them. The Director felt it was important that parents recognised that the Council’s education service could not provide professional support to parents who were home educating and that they also recognised home educating would be challenging and require significant commitment. Children’s Services had explored implementing an approach where for every case where a parent wanted to move their child into home education, there was a three-way meeting with the school, the parents and the EHE Team to look at why the parents felt their child should be off rolled. Taking this approach at Portsmouth Council had halved the number of new starting EHE children. While it was not possible to resource this approach for all children moving to EHE at ESCC, the service would be piloting the approach for cases where a family were looking at home educating due to concerns about the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) provision at school to see if alternative steps could be taken to keep the child in school.

·                     Motivations and reasons for EHE - a follow-up question was asked on whether the increases in the numbers of children home educated was due to concerns about SEND provision or whether there were other causes. The Director responded that there were varied reasons that a parent may decide to EHE their child. Some parents had different visions for education to mainstream schooling. There were also parents who may feel their child’s needs were not being met and it was those cases the Department was looking to understand with the above pilot to see if there was a way they could be supported to stay in school. There were also instances where EHE was considered by parents because otherwise they would be pursued for their child’s non-attendance. These cases were of particular concern.

·                     Cost of EHE - a question was asked on whether there was a cost to the Council from increasing numbers of EHE. The Director responded that there had been an increase in costs from the need to expand the EHE team to administer processes but there were no costs to ESCC associated with supervising the education of home educated children, as the Council could not supervise this. In terms of funding for education more broadly, funding was provided for schools on the basis of the numbers of children on the school roll in January each year, so there would be less money for schools overall due to the reduction in children accessing education.

·                     Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) pressures – the increase in CAHMS referrals and in children attending A&E due to self-harm mentioned in the report was noted and a question asked on the work the ESSCP had done to secure assurance around the safeguarding of children with mental health issues given the pressures on CAHMS. The Independent Chair responded that there was a need to recognise that mental health issues facing children needed to be responded to by everyone, not just CAMHS services. The ESSCP was looking at the work needed to support children before they reached the stage of requiring support from CAMHS, which involved upskilling teachers, upskilling parents to deal with challenges facing children before they progressed (while also recognising what was usual adolescent behaviour) and improving mental health provision in schools. The Independent Chair noted that this was challenging to do as the demand on CAMHS was great and working to try to reduce this would be one of the major challenges facing agencies in the partnership in the next two to three years.

·                     Identification of risk presented by County Lines – a question was asked on how children were identified as being at high risk, as it was noted that only five children had been identified as high risk, which appeared low given the breadth of safeguarding concerns covered in the report and the threats presented from increasing County Lines activity. The Director responded that there were high, medium and low risk levels and children at ‘high’ risk were in what could be described as very high risk (e.g. at real, immediate risk of exploitation). Those five children would have been a snapshot at the time the report was written, with all agencies working very hard to try to keep them safe. There were likely to be other children facing a high risk of exploitation, including from activity such as County Lines, but these would have been the children the service knew about at that time. The Independent Chair added that East Sussex was not an outlier in its number of children at high risk and was also not alone in the threat of exploitation arising from County Lines.

17.4     The Chair thanked the Independent Chair for the report and the assurance it had provided the Committee that the Partnership worked effectively and positive steps were being taken to improve safeguarding of children and young people in the county. The Committee RESOLVED to ask the Director of Children’s Service to:

·         write to Government to reflect the Committee’s concerns around the expected withdrawal of plans to legislate for Councils to have new powers to improve safeguarding in EHE; and

·         provide information on employment licences for children issued by ESCC.