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Children’s & Education Select Committee
Thursday, 18th June 2026 at 2:00pm

 
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  1. Cllr Wendy Matthews
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  1. Cllr Phil Gomm
  2. Cllr Wendy Matthews
  3. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  4. Cllr Carl Jackson
  5. Dan Barton
  6. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  7. Mark Green
  8. Cllr Caroline Cornell
  9. Cllr Alan Sherwell
  10. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  11. Cllr Frank Mahon
  12. Cllr Kathy Gibbon
  13. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  14. Mr Chris Ward
  15. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Maru Mormina
  2. Cllr Phil Gomm
  3. Cllr Robin Stuchbury
  4. Cllr Phil Gomm
  5. Cllr Carl Jackson
  6. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Carl Jackson
  2. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  3. Cllr Phil Gomm
  4. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  5. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  6. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  7. Dan Barton
  8. Mark Green
  9. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  10. Cllr Carl Jackson
  11. Mark Green
  12. Cllr Phil Gomm
  13. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  14. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  15. Cllr Phil Gomm
  16. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  17. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  18. Cllr Carl Jackson
  19. Cllr Phil Gomm
  20. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  21. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  22. Dan Barton
  23. Cllr Phil Gomm
  24. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  25. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  26. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  27. Dan Barton
  28. Cllr Phil Gomm
  29. Cllr Alan Sherwell
  30. Cllr Carl Jackson
  31. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  32. Dan Barton
  33. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  34. Dan Barton
  35. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  36. Cllr Phil Gomm
  37. Cllr Kathy Gibbon
  38. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  39. Mark Green
  40. Cllr Phil Gomm
  41. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  42. Cllr Phil Gomm
  43. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  44. Dan Barton
  45. Cllr Carl Jackson
  46. Dan Barton
  47. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  48. Dan Barton
  49. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Carl Jackson
  2. Cllr Phil Gomm
  3. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  4. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  5. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  6. Dan Barton
  7. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  8. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  9. Cllr Phil Gomm
  10. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  11. Dan Barton
  12. Cllr Phil Gomm
  13. Cllr Kathy Gibbon
  14. Dan Barton
  15. Cllr Carl Jackson
  16. Cllr Phil Gomm
  17. Cllr Carl Jackson
  18. Cllr Phil Gomm
  19. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  20. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  21. Dan Barton
  22. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  23. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  24. Cllr Phil Gomm
  25. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  26. Cllr Carl Jackson
  27. Dan Barton
  28. Cllr Phil Gomm
  29. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  30. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  31. Dan Barton
  32. Cllr Carl Jackson
  33. Cllr Phil Gomm
  34. Cllr Alan Sherwell
  35. Dan Barton
  36. Cllr Phil Gomm
  37. Cllr Wendy Matthews
  38. Dan Barton
  39. Cllr Phil Gomm
  40. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  41. Cllr Carl Jackson
  42. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  43. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  44. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Carl Jackson
  2. Cllr Phil Gomm
  3. Dan Barton
  4. Cllr Phil Gomm
  5. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  6. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  7. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  8. Cllr Carl Jackson
  9. Dan Barton
  10. Cllr Phil Gomm
  11. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  12. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  13. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  14. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  15. Dan Barton
  16. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  17. Dan Barton
  18. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  19. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  20. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  21. Cllr Phil Gomm
  22. Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE
  23. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  24. Cllr Phil Gomm
  25. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  26. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  27. Cllr Phil Gomm
  28. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  29. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  30. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  31. Cllr Phil Gomm
  32. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  33. Cllr Phil Gomm
  34. Cllr Maz Hussain
  35. Cllr Frank Mahon
  36. Cllr Maz Hussain
  37. Cllr Frank Mahon
  38. Cllr Maz Hussain
  39. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  40. Cllr Maz Hussain
  41. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  42. Cllr Maz Hussain
  43. Cllr Frank Mahon
  44. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  45. Cllr Maz Hussain
  46. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Carl Jackson
  2. Cllr Phil Gomm
  3. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  4. Cllr Carl Jackson
  5. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  6. Cllr Carl Jackson
  7. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  8. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  9. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  10. Dan Barton
  11. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  12. Cllr Carl Jackson
  13. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  14. Cllr Phil Gomm
  15. Cllr Niknam Hussain
  16. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  17. Dan Barton
  18. Cllr Phil Gomm
  19. Cllr Alan Sherwell
  20. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  21. Cllr Alan Sherwell
  22. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  23. Cllr Phil Gomm
  24. Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care
  25. Cllr Phil Gomm
  26. Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services
  27. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Cllr Larisa Townsend
  2. Mr Chris Ward
  3. Cllr Phil Gomm
  4. Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt
  5. Cllr Phil Gomm
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  1. Webcast Finished

Cllr Wendy Matthews - 0:00:00
Good afternoon and welcome to the Children's Services and Education Select Committee.
And we're just going to go for a few housekeeping rules.
As you know, the public and press are able to attend the meeting in person or watch for
a course, the webcast that is running now.
In the unlikely event of any technical issues with the webcast, the meeting will be paused
until this is also resolved.
As the agenda item papers have been published
on the council's website in accordance
with the usual practise.
Few little things as well,
as everybody got their mobile phones,
I would turn off for silent please, be appreciated.
And then the other rule is in case there is a fire,
we will exit through that door, that door or that door
and meet in the car park.
But I've never known that to happen,
but then anything can happen during during the meeting.
Right.
So as we go through the agenda, we have got firstly we got item
one is to appoint the vice chairman for the next year.
And I would like to say that the person I'm offering it to
is council Wendy Matthews who's got quite a lot of experience
and she's there to help me as well.
So Wendy if you'd like to join us up the top, please that
would be appreciated.
Thank you.
And then on to item two, apologies of absence.
And then we've got some changes in membership as well.
Thank you, Chairman.

2 Apologies for Absence & Changes to Membership

We have received apologies from Tony Wilson and Councillor Jordan.
For changes of membership, Councillors Sherwell and Arthur Hewitt were newly appointed to
committee at the AGM.
And I would like to welcome both of you to the committee.
I know that both of you as well have got quite a lot of
experience within this sector.
And I look forward to the following this coming year
with all your experience to help us as well through the
select committee.
What we do is before we go on to item three, actually,
because we've got people watching on the webcast, we're
going to introduce ourselves.
I think that would be quite appropriate to do so.
As most of you know, I'm the Chairman, Philip Gomme.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:02:28
I look after the Quaington Ward and chair this meeting.
I'll move around the table this way.
Councillor Wendy Matthews, I'm the Vice Chair of this committee
and I'm Ward Councillor for the Ivers.
Cllr Wendy Matthews - 0:02:37
Then we move to officers.
Over to my right.
Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:02:43
Aaron Arbitt, Interim Corporate Director for Children's Services.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:02:46
Thank you, Chairman.
Carl Jackson, Bucks Council cabinet member for education and children's services.
Dan Barton - 0:02:53
Good afternoon, Dan Barton, service director for education. Thank you chair,
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:02:58
Alison Munt, service director for children's social care. Good afternoon
Mark Green - 0:03:02
everyone, Mark Green, service director for transformation and improvement.
Caroline Cornell, unitary council for Newton Longville Ward and town council for
Cllr Caroline Cornell - 0:03:13
and Sherwell member for Aylesbury West
Cllr Alan Sherwell - 0:03:18
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 0:03:21
I'm saying representing Aylesbury Southwest
Pavis Aslam attrition South Larissa Townsend would member for flat
with Ethan the women's cancer a frank man rendering on the wood and the
Aidan's Ward.
Cllr Frank Mahon - 0:03:37
Cluthy Gibbon, Bearden, Kingsbrook and Wing.
Cllr Kathy Gibbon - 0:03:41
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 0:03:44
Councillor Hazel Arthur Hewitt, Member for Downley.
Thank you.
Chris Ward, Senior Democratic Services and Governance Officer.
Mr Chris Ward - 0:03:51
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:03:53
Very good and we've got two speakers coming in but they'll be able to introduce themselves very shortly.

3 Declarations of Interest

So as we then go on to item three, the declarations of interest. Anybody, declarations of interest as we move through the agenda?
What's going to be there?
Nope, no share hands.
We take that no declarations of interest.

4 Minutes of the Previous Meetings

Then we move on to our minutes from our last meeting that was held in March and May.
Does everybody agree those meetings?
Have you read those gone through them again?
Very good minutes that were there.
Everybody agrees concurs.
Thank you.
Just before we go on to the next item item 5 as you know,
I'm quite new in the role.
This is my second meeting.
And I would like to say that I've had
quite a few meetings already with officers.
I've engaged with them and they know
that I'm extremely keen to have a relationship with them
to understand their role and our role as it moves forward.
And we got quite a lot in the pipeline.
And I'd like to thank all of you so far for being open.
You've been very open and helpful to me,
which I really appreciate,
because that helps me take this role on even further.
I do intend to go doing visits to different places,
different departments, going to the MASH and anyone.
But, you know, so I get to, I know about the MASH and stuff,
but I just want to get myself back up to speed
with all what's going on in the area, including the schools.
We talked about schools last time.
We're going to arrange some stuff there
to go visit a few schools upon us too.
So, but I'll let you know,
I won't do nothing without all of you knowing so because some of you might want to join me on those journeys
Now we go back to item five public questions

5 Public Questions

There was no public questions have been received consideration, but we do have two questions
Coming from council Stutchbury. I'm Romina
We're going to take those questions that we've got here if you'd both like to come up to the front table, please with your questions
So it's both of you know, you get three minutes each.
That's correct.
Is it three minutes?
But what I'm going to do if you don't mind the questions are quite similar in subject matter and stuff.
So if you don't mind is our lap counts as touch.
We go first and then followed by Council Romina with your question.
and then we get the cabinet member to answer those questions for you.
And I'm also going to put my answer to it too.
So I think it's best that way because they are quite a similar question.
Are you both happy with that?
Very good.
Okay, Councillor Stutchbury.
Actually, would you mind, Councillor Stutchbury, if obliged to be by ladies first?
Absolutely.
Very good. I knew you were, but you're a gentleman too.
Councillor Romina, would you like to go first?
Good afternoon.
Cllr Maru Mormina - 0:07:00
Thank you.
Given the scale of housing growth across Buckinghamshire, current and expected,
can this select committee ascertain whether the council's endeavours to meet its statutory
obligation to ensure sufficient and suitable school places for all children is informed by
and up -to -date and publicly available
five to 10 year school place planning strategy.
As you know, a long -term rolling plan
is key to align housing trajectories,
demographic fluctuations and school capacity,
the timing and funding of expansions or new schools,
the use of section 106 and still contributions
and the risk assessments for areas already under pressure
and publishing it with the underpinning methodology
and broken down to the level of pupil planning areas,
as comparator authorities already do,
allows members, residents and parents
to scrutinise and monitor performance.
Not having, or having but not publishing,
an up -to -date rolling school place planning strategy
appears to keep Buckinghamshire out of step
with national best practise
and increases the perception among residents
that important decisions regarding school places
are made without transparency, oversight or foresight,
particularly since the process does not appear
to entail consultation involving local councillors,
parents, carers, residents, community representatives
and other relevant publics.
As the education strategy, 2022 -2027,
will soon require refreshing,
perhaps this is a good opportunity
to include a clear outline of how the council
is ensuring school -place efficiency
and offer residents, parents and schools the reassurance that there is a long -term vision,
especially for areas like mine, where demand is outstripping supply.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well presented there.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:09:05
And now over to Councillor Stutchbury, please.
Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to raise this question today, gratefully received.
Cllr Robin Stuchbury - 0:09:13
Just in background, this is an issue that I'm experiencing in my own area, which is Buckingham.
I also know that the school which we're discussing here in our area, Buckingham covers steep
clade and a wide area.
So it's not site -specific, which is why the question has been drafted and the way it has been.
Although the issues we've got is theoretically around about 15 to 22 children.
But that may be answered in correspondence.
Thank you.
Well, we'll move swiftly into the question.
Buckingham Council is responsible
for ensuring sufficient secondary school places
across the county.
However, due to population growth
and the limit of capacity in some areas,
schools can be oversubscribed
and significant numbers of children are unable
to secure a place in their own preferred
local secondary school.
Given the size and the geographical of the county,
This can result in pupils being offered places at schools at considerable distance and from their home,
often requiring long journeys, reliance on public transport at a young age, around 11.
This raises concerns about pupils' wellbeing and access and overall stability of these placements.
In some cases, where families are feeling unable to accept distance placements,
There are suggestions that homeschooling becomes a fallback option, which may not always be
appropriate or feasible and could impact children's education and social development.
Can the Select Committee ascertain what the Council is undertaking to assess the plan
for future demand for secondary school places at a local level, particularly in the area
sustainable growth, which there are lots of growth, and how to ensure that places provision
support and children's wellbeing and access to education within their communities. Just
a background, there are two public questions on this in the previous cycle of Council,
where I questioned the predecessor to the cabinet role on this. So I've not come to this fresh,
and I'm not coming to this new,
it's a thing that I've been discussing
in various roles for some considerable time.
So I've not just come up here today with a new problem,
it's an ongoing question.
Thank you, thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Councillor Stocksbury and Romaine
had a very good questions.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:11:50
I'm gonna allow the cabinet member,
Carl Jackson, Councillor Carl Jackson, to respond first.
And I've also got something to add to it at the same time.
So cabinet member, if you'd like to address, thank you.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:12:04
Thank you Chairman, thank you Councillors Mormino and Stutchby for your questions.
Obviously we've been in touch either in conversation or by email about this issue in your local wards.
You'll know the Council has a statutory duty to secure sufficient school places.
It devotes a lot of resources to trying to do that and also to trying to plan for the future.
Not only looking at things like obviously trying to get children,
young people in schools close to home, but also looking at parental preference.
Sometimes parental preference isn't the school closest to home.
I know my daughter in September will be going to our first choice school,
which is not the closest one to her home.
So that needs to be factored in as well.
It's a bit of a tricky balance obviously across the county.
We have areas like Haddonham where you're seeing an increase in housing and more demand
school places and in areas like Marlowe where two schools are very very small
schools are closing and it creates no capacity issues. So it's about getting
that balance across the county. The focus though is getting on getting children in
local schools as far as possible. We don't want to have children travelling
all over the county to and from school. We can't always obviously guarantee that
everyone's going to get their first preference. I've seen some cases from
Buckingham where sometimes it's been late applications because the family's
only moved into the area after the first allocation and the school has already
been filled up. Now obviously what we can't do is say knock back some children
who are living in the local area at the time of the first allocation to hold
spaces that might be needed by people who might move in later so there is
always that sort of issue with people moving in but obviously we still have a
duty to find a place people even if they're fairly recent arrivals. And in
In terms of planning, so the Council developing an education places sufficiency strategy,
that's for the period 27 to 2032.
In terms of transparency, which Councillor Mormino mentioned, that will go to consultation
in, I'm told, September or October this year.
It will come to cabinet, I'm told, in April next year.
So there should be plenty of opportunity to see the details of that.
We've few to ask questions in this forum or others.
That will set out the council's approach to sort of forecasting, commissioning, delivering
school places.
Obviously, Haddanham will be an area of interest given what's been going on.
The forecasting is, as a general rule, it's done annually.
It looks over a sort of five -year period for early years and primary and a seven -year period
for secondary and specialist places.
That's the kind of approach that's taken.
That work does take account of a range of factors.
Housing was mentioned.
housing is one of those factors along with birth rates, demographic trends,
migration, people movement, changes in parental preferences, schools fall in and
out of favour a little bit and that's obviously reflected. In terms of sort of
external scrutiny as well the council has a duty to submit that plan to the DFE
so they will see it as well and that's actually you it's quite important as
used to allocate capital funding. It's important to get that right and
accurate. Where you get sustained growth in a particular area, again, having been a fine
example, Aylesbury being another one, the Council has various options. So it can look
at expanding existing schools, it can look at new schools, think Kingsbrook in Aylesbury,
and it can, sometimes it can, sometimes it's an option to work with schools or trust to
see if we can make better use of the capacity they have. So those are all on the table.
I think probably the next step on this, Chairman, is the consultation in September, October,
at which point I'm sure the committee will take an interest.
Thank you very much, cabinet member.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:15:45
Well, good debrief there.
And like you say, we got the consultation coming in in September.
And the piece I wanted to add to the questions
was this has been a bit of a concern with certain members on this committee.
And it is going into our work programme,
but we've got to work behind as it works out.
And also to let you know, we're not just keeping it to this committee either.
We will be working cross border with the growth infrastructure select committee.
And also has because there's the health side of it, but
it's more, there's quite a lot of collaborative work to be done.
So I'm just letting you know that we are working there as well,
which will be quite intense.
So to address those sort of problems, okay?
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for attending and showing interest into our committee today.
Thank you.
As you know, the agenda is a very heavy agenda today with a lot of work.
I must admit this portfolio is bigger than I anticipated really and says a lot and I
know we've got members really interested so I'm not going to waffle on too much.
So I know we want to get onto the next agenda item which is the national reforms across

6 National Reforms across the Children’s Services Landscape

children's services landscape over the period.
I hope a lot of people have read the papers out in the public
as my members have read the papers too.
But now I'd like to hand over to the cabinet member,
Carl Jackson, Councillor Jackson, and also our officer,
Errol Albert, who's the interim corporate director as well.
Over to you gentlemen.
Thank you, Chairman.
I note your comment that you found the portfolio rather
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:17:33
bigger than you realise that that makes two of us. In terms of the national reforms, I
think the committee's right to take an interest in this, albeit a lot of these reforms are
at a very, very early stage. So you might have more questions than answers. I think
so do we on some of these issues at this point. But we will do our best to try and set the
scene. You can see from the paper, I'm sorry, I'm not going to reread, there's sort of 17
major reform programmes at various stages of development at the moment. Some are
sort of already up and running in the sense in that you know we've got it
would include the best start in life plan so you've got the best start family
hub already designated in Elmhurst and Aylesbury and a cabinet's already passed
a decision obviously made its decision that there'll be the next two will be
Wickham and Burnham. There are other reforms that are a much much earlier
stage. For example, the SEND reform which is so far we've had is a white paper and
in the consultation which closed on the 18th of May and ministers and their
officials will now need to do a lot of work to analyse the comments that have
come in. I think the key themes are generally earlier intervention to try
and avoid worse issues down the line, better multi -agency working, better
outcomes for children and young people with SEND and obviously just an overall
improvement in the well -being health development of children and young people.
These reforms are coming our way,
and we'll sit alongside and complement existing work
that we're doing in some cases.
For example, on SEND reform,
where we've already got the SEND improvement programme,
obviously we will take into account the new reforms
and their requirements as they come in.
The delivery of some of these reforms is staggered,
so some of the things we're talking about in this paper,
we're looking at 2028, 2029,
in terms of the actual delivery.
and some of them, this will be my final point,
are subject to approval by Parliament.
Obviously, that is a big question mark
over everything at the moment.
Even assuming we don't have a new Prime Minister
in relatively near future who might have
a different approach to these things,
I think, I look to the Welfare Reform Bill
and how that ran into trouble with government backbenchers
where it was perceived as a cut
rather than a reform in that area.
And then I look at things like the Send Reform Programme
and wonder if it might meet similar difficulties.
So I think parliament's an unpredictable thing
at the moment and it adds another level of uncertainty.
But to the extent that we're able to provide
any concrete answers to questions, we'll do so, Chairman.
Yeah, thank you, Chair.
Just to add briefly, I think it's important to note
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:20:14
and it's important for all Councils and members
to note the national policy landscape
in terms of the complexity of this,
as you've already mentioned, Chair,
in terms of the scale and scope.
There is an awful lot of change here
that goes alongside business as usual.
And the business as usual of our staff and members
that sit here in terms of officers
is keeping children safe,
ensuring they're receiving the right education,
and providing the right support at the right time.
All of that goes alongside this.
And our staff, while working incredibly hard
to ensure that children remain safe
as part of our safeguarding work,
also implements a lot of this.
And a lot of this does signal some significant change,
probably the most significant change
that we've seen in over 20 years
in children's social care and education reform.
So we are doing our absolute best to grapple with this
with an eye on the future,
but at the same time keeping a tight grip
and oversight of what's going on on the day to day.
I must add as well that these are very much
multi -agency endeavours.
They are not simply for the council to drive forward.
So our health partners, police colleagues, everybody, they are all critical in this.
In some senses, particularly with the Sen reform, council is seen as the convener, but
ultimately it's not purely down to the council to drive these reforms forward.
There is a long list as an appendices on this report as well as you've seen in terms of
those reforms.
As we move forward week by week, there's another.
This doesn't include the Milburn review, for instance,
in terms of children not in education, employment or training.
So there's more to come.
And I think the key message is, whilst we'll endeavour to do
our absolute best with these reforms, and in many ways we're doing very well
in comparison to other authorities, there are still many unanswered questions,
awaited guidance, and obviously more to be established in terms of funding
and how we take these forward with our partners
and indeed other local authorities.
So thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to the both of you.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:22:21
And now we get some hands up before I can even get started today.
But as you know, this is some serious amount of work that's in there and forever changing.
So those that would like to speak, put your hands up.
Give me a minute while I just put your names in, please.
We've got a full house that's going to come across forward there.
So we've been for what we do is members will be given two questions to ask
and then if we have time we will go for a second round, but we go that way.
So Councillor Hazel Arthur -Hewitt if you'd like to go first.
Thank you.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 0:23:13
So now I take on board the fact that you're still building this.
So these are sort of have you thought about sort of questions, not in judgement.
So referring to the family hubs as having specialist send support to highlight potential support required for preschool children as it says in the report.
Is this going to extend to nurseries and other preschool providers as well?
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 0:23:37
Because considering primaries often find out, and I've learned this through my own case work,
primaries often find out who have send issues amongst their pupils on day one,
and that leaves them on the back foot with bringing in the right staff.
Other council are going to seek guidance from our primaries and earlier years providers
to see how better they're liaising with them and the family hubs can be
regarding preparing for primary school support from day one,
because I think this is something really important that can be utilised to bridge the two.
And my second question is, because this seems really important to me,
could there be consideration to invite all early years parents to their family hubs
for sessions where these assessments might happen and encourage this prior
to primary school start so that no family or parent misses out through unawareness
of the offering because to me, one of the biggest challenges
that schools face is the fact that there isn't currently
a link between sort of, you know, send awareness
from some parents coming into school
and at least schools aren't able to offer the right support
from day one.
Thank you.
Thank you.
If I just take the first more generic point,
then I'll pass to colleagues down the line in relation
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:24:57
to the programme of rolling out the best start
hunt and also the early years in education piece.
This is really an opportunity to do the join up that I think you're referring to, in particular
around the offer of our Best Start in Life hubs.
We already have a working programme where effectively we're moving to an opportunity of one -stop
shops ultimately so that parents who need support and advice very early on can not just
go into a family hub or a Best Start hub looking for parent advice, but if there are SEND needs
or identified needs around speech and language, for instance,
they can actually access some support and guidance
within those family hubs.
So we are very much working with our health partners
and our education partners in relation to the join -up
and the link -up with the various boards
and the various conversations that we have with our partners
around how best we can deliver that within the community
so that we've got, as I say, that vision of a one -stop shop
and doing the best we can in that one place
within those local communities.
I'll pass to Dan first in relation to the early years, please.
Do you want to pick that up?
And then perhaps Mark can provide a bit more in terms
of the programme around best start.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Dan Barton - 0:26:10
So I thought something about where our capacity is
and how it's used.
And Errol pointed out the need to make sure we're joining up.
So we have existing a very significant and positive offer
already in early years, including a portage service,
which is a service which works very closely with health
visiting and the wider health services,
to support with identification of additional needs
like various different kind of early milestones
not being met very, very, very early.
There's something about then the purpose of the Family Hub
helping to join up parents and families
where there might be a challenge with existing services.
And the Portage Service then already has a relationship
through our early years team with all of those providers.
I probably would say that to invite all families
to the Family Hub would potentially present
some logistical challenges and also might not necessarily
be a best use of resources.
we would want to make sure that the structure and the join -up focused on where the need
was rather than creating it as a universal offer.
I'll just pause there.
And to add further, I think that there's a couple of things that I would say.
The best start designation of the hubs is very, very critical.
But at the same time, I think it's about how we ensure that support is delivered to families
Mark Green - 0:27:22
and community places that they trust already.
So it isn't just about going to the best start centre and it is seen as a destination.
And actually that should be an anchor for the delivery of services across multiple providers.
In your relation to your specific point for SEND, we're currently in the process of recruiting
some Best Start inclusion practitioners.
So each of our Best Start sites will have this dedicated role and part of their remit
will be to be supporting families and parents to navigate what is quite a complex system,
but also working with providers to ensure that they've got the support to support that
early identification and that transition from early years to school to ensure that information
is passed from one to the other so that transition can be as smooth as possible.
Yeah, thank you.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 0:28:09
Because that's the key for me is the schools being helped as well as those, you know, family
hubs so that it's not just we deal with one lot of people at this place and one lot of
people at another.
I can't stress enough how that would make a big difference.
Thank you.
One word I would add that the officers haven't mentioned, I think, is outreach.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:28:31
So the Best Start family hubs are supposed to operate on an outreach model as well.
So it shouldn't be, it shouldn't and won't be the case that you've got to come physically
through the door in order to get support.
It is a model which is going to see us all looking for those who need support and going
out to people working with other services as well, I think.
If I may just add, so absolutely right, so we will have our designated Best Start hubs.
Mark Green - 0:28:57
We'll also have a cluster of family hubs, but we'll also have Best Start network sites.
So these are places in the communities that families can access, and that's where that
outreach sessions will be delivered.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:29:09
Just to let you know, by the way, I have asked that when the centres are really flowing and
and working hard that we could visit one or two of them.
That's, you know, and we're gonna try and do that as well.
So that was something we were working on in the background.
Okay, Council Townsend.
Thank you.
First of all, thank you very much for this paper.
I find it really useful actually to see that summary
of the policy landscape.
And I wondered if we could perhaps revisit this
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 0:29:38
in six to nine months and see how that's changed
or whether that's appropriate.
But there's obviously a huge amount of reform and change on the horizon.
What governance procedures do we have in place to make sure that we're keeping on top of
this and how all the different reforms are interplaying?
I'd be interested to sort of learn a little bit more about that.
Thank you, Councillor.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:30:08
I don't think it's any more exciting than the usual boards
and various governance arrangements that we have
within the council, but as I stressed earlier on,
given this is a multi -agency endeavour,
lots of our partnership boards in particular
are the ones where we keep oversight
in relation to progress,
because it's not just about the progress
and the action plans, it's about the giving up of resources.
We know, for instance, that one of the critical areas
in this partnership within Buckinghamshire,
and most local authorities, is some of the challenges
that the NHS is going through.
And those boards and governance arrangements are very much
around keeping track, ensuring that we've got the relevant
professionals and colleagues that are engaged.
So for instance, the SEND reform plan that we've just had
to submit, regular communication with our DFE advisors,
but also raising any risks and issues with them directly
to suggest if there are any particular risks on the horizon
that might interrupt or disrupt our planning towards that.
So, we have our internal governance, which is involved in our partners and our Safe
Learning Children's Partnership boards, and we have the Families First board as well
that we chair.
And again, that brings together our education health colleagues, in particular schools,
in relation to all of this.
And I won't bore you with all the details, but ultimately it's just ensuring that we've
got those regular touch points in terms of our programme plans and how we're doing, raising
any risk and issues.
and where necessary we speak directly to our counterparts in various other departments
and obviously central government departments as well.
I don't know if anybody wants to add in relation to anything that they attend.
Obviously Ofsted we keep in touch with as well around social care
because many of the reforms you have seen there as well involves a lot of change
in terms of how we do things and deliver service locally.
So there's the internal touchpoints and governance with our chief exec, our partners and senior leaders
and there's also the touch points with our partners within other agencies,
including the senior police officers, health, voluntary agencies, schools, etc.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:32:11
Okay? Okay, Councillor Aslow, if you'd like to go next please, sir.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 0:32:17
Thank you very much, and thank you, Officer Albert and also Councillor Jackson.
It is daunting, this.
So when you look at a paper like this, if it's daunting for us,
then you imagine what it's like for schools.
And it's a bit of a tongue -in -cheek question,
because I don't think perhaps we're here
at this present moment.
Nevertheless, we need to think about this.
And my question to you is, what are the biggest risks?
And obviously, just outline those.
What are the biggest risks and opportunities arising
from this?
And how will we, we together, will
measure whether these changes improve outcomes for the
vulnerable children over the next 12 months.
Thank you, Cas.
Is that a really good question there?
I'll tackle the first one in terms of risks.
So, if we take, and there's a broad range of risks,
as you can imagine, because these reforms touch on every
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:33:13
aspect of children and education services.
One of the key risks that I've been speaking to colleagues
in the DCS network recently is very much around the SEND reforms.
Critical to that is a term called co -production with parent carer forums.
And I've heard sadly from a couple of local authorities where the speed and the pace that
these reforms are said to be achieved within has jeopardised some of the relationship with
those parent carer forums whereby those particular local authorities are unable to consult and
have enough engagement and dialogue in order to develop plans around SEND improvement.
That's not where we are because a lot of this is around relationships and managing those
relationships and engaging most critically parent carer forums in the conversation around
how we're going to deliver services.
So I'd say one of the key risks is the time scales that are set against many of these
reforms.
I think broadly many of them are welcomed in terms of some of the change that's going
happen which is much needed particularly in the area of SEND. The issues they're
all at the same time with really ambitious time frames which puts
enormous strain in relation to the services capacity not least in schools
but also with our own officers and staff within the council that are in the
middle of driving these these areas forward. So key to that is around those
relationships.
And in terms of the outcomes, obviously we have systems around
us in terms of measuring those outcomes.
Data is critical and it will often tell us along with our
business intelligence colleagues, and we have regular
meetings and each of the service directors here meet with their
business intelligence colleagues to see what impact
is we're all having.
The impact measures are obviously dictated by DFE,
by officers and others, so we regularly review those on a
weekly, monthly basis as to how we do critically is are these reforms making a difference?
Will they impact and will they make the lives better for children and young people in Buckinghamshire?
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:35:24
I would add on the risks, Councillor Azzam, I think the financial uncertainty there is
at the moment.
So there's at the moment some big numbers floating around, you'll see such and such
a reform, 1 .8 billion over three years.
How's that phased over three years?
how's that split between each of the local authorities?
How is Buckinghamshire going to get a little bit, a lot?
How's that going to be divvied up?
And so I think that is something that we're not going to
fully control, but we hopefully can try and influence
in our favour.
I'm not sure to what extent, in fact, in some of these
reforms, to the extent to which the way the funding
will be calculated has even been decided or communicated
to us, I don't think it has in most cases.
So that sort of jumping out at me is the other big risk
that we as a council on this committee would probably
like to keep an eye on.
OK, thank you very much.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:36:15
What I would suggest, actually, well, I just
spoke to Chris about it.
As you know, you were saying about maybe having
a review in six months.
I think we all know what's coming ahead is daunting.
As you just said, the schools are looking at it.
We're looking at it.
Officers are looking at it.
It's quite daunting.
One I'd like to, I just want to chat with Chris.
Chris and I will monitor it as best we can on the journey
so we don't put any additional pressure on the officers.
But if any of you would like to link with us during that period up to the next meeting, say,
then please do. That just alleviates a little bit of the pressure going around.
I think that's quite easy.
Okay, over to Councillor Hussain.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 0:37:03
I don't envy the tsunami of change coming with no kind of real money attached or timelines
attached it seems. The timelines of implementation of policy but no timelines of milestones of
what, as my colleague has said, what does success look like apart from kind of on page
18, reducing inequalities and improved life chances. Well tell me a government in the
and improve life chances.
There hasn't been a government who has done that.
My two questions are, one is,
building on my colleague's question,
this council has a particular system of education.
Does that pose any risk or any
adaption that we need to do with regards to
these reforms coming through?
Secondly, the direction of travel seems to have changed
completely according to the paper.
Whereas before, the previous government
seemed to be saying authorities, you put money through,
you keep a finger on it, but you keep away from the schools.
You know, the academies run themselves,
they report directly to central government,
the trusts run themselves and they report to you,
but you have responsibility, accountability,
but you don't have responsibility.
Whereas this paper, it says now,
there'll be, for local authorities,
is this means a stronger strategic and convening role,
and more closely working with schools, schools, trusts,
et cetera, et cetera.
So that seems to be a change in the direction of travel
for the local authority.
How are we as a local authority looking at that
and changing how direction of travel?
Bearing in mind that the independence of these trusts
and academies has been built over nearly 15 years, 20 years,
and they're used to doing their own things
within speech rights.
How does that plan?
I've been a school governor for 30, 40 years,
and our central touching point used
to be the school improvement officer.
That went away about eight, nine years ago,
because that was our central touching point, who
told us what to do, how to do things,
and gave us advice at every governor's meeting.
But that disappeared.
So where are the processes that you
think you're going to need to rebuild to get
in touch with these schools?
And my first question, Buckinghamshire being pretty unique, there's only four other education
authorities in the country, in England and Wales, that are like us.
Does it have any effect of the school improvements, policies coming through?
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:39:39
So I think the first point you mentioned, and this sort of alluded to the fact that
we have a selective secondary system in Bucks, and there are 13 grammar schools in Buckinghamshire.
Dan Barton - 0:39:50
We operate within what is a fragmented education system
from a governance perspective and it's very diverse
and that diversity is going to continue
and it's fair to say that the additional fragmentation
of a selective system makes that more of an interesting
management challenge for us.
I think that's important to note.
But we are all members of a system who are all here
because we care about doing things right for children.
And there's something about reminding our colleagues
in the system who are very receptive to this narrative
that there is far more that unites us than divides us.
We have started a few months ago,
I think it was the beginning of the end of last year,
in Errol and Karl's role as conveners.
You mentioned convening is really important within what
we call a system.
And we have a strategic education partnership board
where we are working closely together now in co -production
to develop a series of overarching strategic priorities
which are signed up to by all of the primary, secondary,
and special providers in the county.
We will be then setting up work streams that report
into that board which are populated
with members of that system.
And our view is that each school has something
to offer and contribute.
We want to move to a place where not just the delivery
of reforms by school improvement more broadly is delivered by matching up the best of the
resource and targeting it where the need is greatest.
And that will be different depending on many, many different factors which we need to consider
alongside other resources from the DFE, for example, the RISE partnership, which you probably
are aware of.
So we will be working really closely with them as part of our partnership to be strategic
about how we deploy our resource.
So it's a kind of overarching thing.
You mentioned school improvement support.
The reason that will have gone is probably,
I'm going to make an inference that the school
that you are a governor of has moved
from being a local authority school
to an academy it might not have done.
But as that happens, the funding
that funds the school improvement resource
that you're talking about ceases
because it's only funded through de -delegation.
So that's why that will have happened.
I could talk about this for the rest of the hour, so I'll stop now.
Thank you.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:42:19
If that was the case, I'll have to go order to bring that.
Very good.
Yeah, you'd like to come back?
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 0:42:26
The only question I have in my mind, having been doing this a long time,
is how confident are you, we as a council, that schools will now listen to us?
Because like I said, I think there's
having been to visit some of these schools
and having an issue that you're aware of in the last couple
of weeks, schools kind of do feel that they're on their own
and they can do within legal reasons.
I'm not saying anything untoward.
But they can do as they wish.
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 0:42:53
But that can sometimes contravene the strategic aim
of, for example, a school in a certain area
taking certain pupils as developments happen.
But they say not.
and we can't be bothered.
I'm just saying, I won't say in those words,
but is the government giving you tools
to be able to be a convener and an agent of change?
That's what I'm trying to say.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:43:20
I think the answer to the question is how confident.
I'm very confident that we can make that happen.
I think actually that the school system is crying out
for us to step into the space where we provide
that strategic leadership.
Dan Barton - 0:43:31
I think that the white paper and the eventual legislation that results from it will give us additional I
Don't want to say the words power and control
But the sense that we have a role
Which is more clear and set out in terms of how we lead that system and convene it
My reflection in the last two months I've been here is that schools are really up for us
Stepping into that space and helping them to co -create a shared agenda where we're all working together
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:44:01
Right, as we come to our last questions coming in from Councillor Sherwell.
Thank you.
Cllr Alan Sherwell - 0:44:09
When you look at this, I don't think anybody could sensibly disagree with what's been
set down as the government objectives.
And as somebody's already said, governments have been saying it for years.
It's not quite at the Michael Gove,
I want 80 % of children to be above average stage.
But it's pretty much wishful thinking in a sense.
And I am concerned that what we're being asked to do
is to achieve things that everybody wants us to do
without being given the resources to actually achieve
those things.
And that's a lose -lose situation for the Council,
because we're being set an objective that everybody
wants to achieve and not given the resource and ability
to achieve it.
So firstly, I would like to know how
you think we might be able to deal
with the financial pressures that will inevitably come,
whatever the government says.
Secondly, I think Councillor Jackson quite rightly
said effectively that we can sit here
for the whole of the rest of this meeting and ask questions.
And he and the team could sit there
for the rest of the meeting and say, well, we don't have
the answer to that question yet.
So there's a time scale here which is very fluid and not
very obvious.
And so it's just a plea, really, to make sure
that when the various bits of this come forward,
we get the opportunity to do input on that bit
as it's going live.
And the final question is a sort of different slant
on the question that Councillor Townsend asked,
which is, it's very easy when a project like this
comes along to say, oh, we need the brains of all our senior
managers working on this.
And business as usual goes down the tubes.
Now, I know none of you would want that to happen,
but it's very easy for it to happen in those situations.
So what sort of governance process
are we going to have to make sure that business as usual,
because we're very vulnerable in some of these areas,
as we know from the stats.
and we're doing good work to try and get out of that vulnerability.
The last thing we want to do is to take our eye off the ball and put that vulnerability to return.
So how are we going to prevent that?
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:46:56
Thank you, Councillor Sherwood. I think on the financial pressures point,
I would anticipate financial pressures, but it's hard to know how much pressure there's going to be
until we know what we're getting.
I mean this is in some ways I suppose a follow -up to what Councillor
Azzam was referring to you know in terms of risk. We've got some overall
figures for national funding over a period you know a year or three years.
We're not close to knowing how that breaks down within individual years or
how it breaks down between local authorities. Would I be stunned if we
didn't get some financial pressures? I would expect some financial pressures to
out of it, the extent of them is hard to say at this point.
Obviously, as we find out more information,
the committee will be updated.
In terms of continuing to monitor this, I think the,
I mean, obviously it's the committee's decision to make.
It's not my decision to make, but I think revisiting this
in six, nine months or whatever as we go along is an idea,
I think, would probably be quite sensible.
I suspect certainly in nine months we are likely
to have more information to share with you
on where this is going.
On some of this, I would perhaps expect a little more money on funding and more information on funding as well because
there is going to be movement if you look as you'll have seen the timelines in the paper within the next six nine months on
some of these issues and
So we'll keep monitoring obviously will welcome the committee's interest in it
the point about business as usual I
Guarantee obviously you as you'd expect I think the officer team
frequently in our private meetings for all the work
they're doing on top of business as usual.
I will put that on the record publicly as well.
They're doing a fantastic job with a combination of reforms,
demands for information from government, inspections which
seem to come along in various forms every couple of weeks
at the moment.
You do wonder where the time is left to just get on
with the normal work sometimes.
The answer is it's just a lot of extra work,
and the team's working very hard.
I think in terms of how that's been managed internally,
Errol, you've probably got more of a on the ground side
of that than I have.
Yeah, thanks, Councillor.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:49:06
I'll probably turn to colleagues as well
in relation to some of the operational oversight,
but certainly just picking up on the last point.
So just in terms of the financial piece as well,
regular budget monitoring, regular forecasting
in relation to demand, but therein lies
some of the difficulty because demand will not stop and complexity will just not go away.
We are seeing increased complexity in much of the work that comes in. We will do our
best for children, young people and families of Buckinghamshire as best as we can. So we
will continue to keep our eyes on Alison for instance who oversees all of the social work,
social care teams. We'll probably talk more around some of those cheques and balances that
do, Alison do you want to just probably give a flavour of the sorts of things that you do
in terms of oversight, thank you.
Dan Barton - 0:49:59
Yeah, I mean I think it's a really good question because the reforms are huge and it's all
the different aspects but we are, it's fair to say that we're taking a cautious approach,
we're looking at the reforms, we're looking at what we have to implement and things, you
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:50:13
know, trying to do it in a way that's paced because, you know, as we know from some other
parts of the agenda, we're on an improvement journey ourselves so the last thing that we
want to do is to try and implement some huge structural
changes and find that, you know, we take ourselves back a step.
We're making sure that whatever we're looking at,
we are concentrating on how does it add value to children
and families.
And I think by taking that approach,
then we're sort of making sure that we're keeping that focus on
the operational side, making sure that we don't lose focus
because that's the part we need to make a difference for
children and families.
So we need to continue doing the work we're doing and look at how
are these reforms going to influence and support some of that work that we're doing?
Dan Barton - 0:50:58
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:51:00
I'm sorry, just to continue on because there's a really important point. This is about one
size doesn't fit all in relation to implementation of these reforms. So as Alison has rightly
said, we've got to do what's right for the children of Buckinghamshire as opposed to
the blanket approach. So we'll handle that and looking at those reforms, as Alison has
said very carefully.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:51:19
Thank you. Just conscious of time, Councillor Gibbon, you put your hand up asking for a question.
Cllr Kathy Gibbon - 0:51:28
Yes, I just, it's really sort of similar to Councillor Arthur -Hoot's question, but very slightly different, but we're progressing on from that.
I just wondered what support you're going to be able to give to families for children who are older, not just when they first start school,
because reading the white paper they talk a lot about safe family homes.
And it's vital that children do have that supported home
and also staff at schools have the support from parents as well
in order for the children to feel safe and to progress.
And both parents and children need support all through their school career
from tiny right up to A level.
And I just wondered how much support you are able to give all through that process because
I've noticed now it's a very complex world and the mental health of the young, they are
struggling in a lot of cases to cope with all the digital age and all the problems they
now face that we didn't years ago.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 0:52:34
So I'll pass on in a second.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, we've got to ensure in order for parents to do the best
and carers the best they can do for their children.
And their care is that they need to be supported in terms
of their own well -being and support around them too.
And you're talking from the very early stages, from early help
all the way through to where children, families may
be open to social care or those ideas.
So you're absolutely right.
We have to, every opportunity, look at that whole family
approach.
Many of our services, and particularly those that have
been referenced around our family hubs, are very much
around things like parenting programmes and developing
resilience and providing support to parents to be in
the best place possible to provide care for those children.
I'm going to pass down the line either to Alison or Mark,
who wants to pick this up, just in relation to that
family support piece.
I'll go first on the family hub.
Mark Green - 0:53:31
So, yes, we've talked about the best starting line from
the naught to five agenda.
But our family hubs will support families from 0 to 18 and up to 25 for special educational needs and disabilities
So yes that universal support more targeted in particular communities where there's levels of deprivation
Or other indices that we know that we need to target support, but for families
Yes, not 20 not 25 up to send in all of our family hubs
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:53:57
Yeah, I would count sir Arthur Hewitt
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 0:54:04
Thank you. If I can just say from my own experience, I think if anything can enthuse us as a council
to look forward to, I know we're all going to end up with grey hairs, but the biggest
thing for me is that we're hopefully at the end of this big long trial going to end up
treating children less of statistics at the moment where how many people have we got diagnosed
with send needs, how many people have we got who need X amount of this.
There's so many people out there who don't get diagnosed in time, who suffer in schools,
having to get a therapist sign them off in order to get special provision, et cetera.
And I'm wondering whether alongside this there might be some look
at how this will save council time in the long run in terms of, you know,
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:54:52
collating statistics to match and moving to a system where there is actually none
of that necessary so much because it's a flexible model
within schools because I think you could see amongst all the
extra work, some work come off and actually then move
to a better system.
I just thought I'd, you know.
Our questions are drifting slightly off the, yeah,
it's all interlinked.
I get it.
The question was purely whether we could say it.
I'd like to answer that.
It starts with something I would have said in relation
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:55:22
to what Councillor Gibbon started with anyway in terms
of the question in relation to support for schools.
And as part of the reform agenda around SEND,
there is the expert at hand model, which is looking
at trying to spend less money and resource
on centralised more bureaucratic processes and trying to target
and support the resource that exists both outside of
and in schools in a more targeted way so that children,
yes, but also adults and professionals in schools get
that support early to help them.
Dan Barton - 0:55:53
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:55:56
Dan Barton - 0:55:57
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 0:55:58
To Councillor Arthur Hewitt's point, there's something about how we meet needs and whether
we need to have a piece of paper that tells us what those needs are or whether we can
meet those needs quickly and early without the necessity of going through a diagnostic
process for everybody.
Dan Barton - 0:56:16
I think there is a need, a genuine need for some children in the system to have a diagnosis
which supports with access to medication
or particularly sort of complicated set of ways
of meeting those needs.
But there's a real opportunity for us in terms of results
at supporting our schools to meet need
at the earliest possible point without having
to have a diagnostic process that doesn't always turn
out as parents of care as wanted to, which we know how to deliver
that provision anyway without the piece of paper.
So I think there's a real opportunity which we're exploring through some of the SEND planning around that.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 0:56:53
Very good. So there we go. That brings us to the end of that part of the agenda item.
Thank you very much. And again, as we mentioned earlier on, rather than in six months time,
we pressurise you to bring this back to committee.
We're working in the background, you know, softly as well, engaging with you.
And again, members, if you'd like to link up with us, we deal with it that way.
and if we feel that it needs to come back to committee we can do it.
Happy with that?
Okay.
Now we move on to Agenda Item 7, which is the Schools White Paper.
Again, another big piece of work.

7 Schools White Paper

I might as well say that for every single agenda item that we have today.
So please welcome back again the Cabinet Member,
Councillor Carl Jackson and also Errol Elba,
the interim corporate director,
for you to present to us please.
Thank you, Chairman.
I'll be brief because obviously this was partly referred to
Cllr Carl Jackson - 0:57:48
and covered in the previous item,
and this paper comes with many of the same caveats
in terms of some uncertainty.
We're at the white paper stage here.
The consultation closed a month ago today,
so obviously there's lots of work for ministers
and officials to do on analysing it,
and we'll see what changes, if any,
are made to the initial proposals
as a result of the consultation, we'll be watching closely.
It's clear, as Councillor Hussain touched on, that there is clearly a role for the Council
in education, a stronger role, I think, envisaged.
Councillor Hussain referred in his previous question to a change of direction.
I think that's true.
I think there is, I don't think it's controversial or party political to say there is perhaps
a difference in ideology between this government and the previous government in terms of the
of councils in education and how involved they ought to be.
These reforms will involve substantial legislation
going through parliament.
There is a lot of debating, talking to be done.
I'd be pretty surprised if there weren't some amendments
made at that stage or in consultation
informally beforehand.
There's been a huge piece of work attached to this.
I mean, SEND isn't the only topic of the year.
of the school's white paper,
but it's probably the most noticeable bit
and the bit that gets the most attention.
The council has had to submit its own send delivery plan
to the Department for Education.
That was by the 19th of June was a formal deadline
that we had to put it in about a month earlier
in order to get some quality control.
There's quite a lot of hinges on that
because initially committee members might know
that the councils were told that the government
that will take on 90 % of the high needs block deficit.
That was originally presented,
I understood it's kind of unconditional.
It then became conditional on presenting
a satisfactory send delivery plan.
So it's an important piece of work to get right
because we're talking millions of pounds at stake here
and assumptions in the medium term financial plan.
The team, and again I want to thank them publicly,
including Anna and the girl who's not here
for leading on it.
The team's put a huge amount of work
on top of business as usual and getting that plan right.
They have, which I think is important from a risk point
of view, stayed very close to the DFE in the development
of that plan, so there shouldn't be anything in the final plan
where DFE officials look at it and go, what on earth is that?
Or that's not acceptable.
The feedback, I think,
informally on the quality assurance was positive.
So hopefully that will not present any problems
and the 90 % deficit will be covered.
The first opportunity to get that money will be in the autumn if the FE is not entirely satisfied.
It will be early in the following year, but hopefully we'll get it first time.
And then the final point I'd make is very quickly, because we sort of covered this already,
members will have seen at the back some of the funding attached to these reforms
and the fact that it is big national figures over multiple years.
What it means for Buckinghamshire is not entirely clear.
that's there as a risk along with,
as it is with most of the other reforms
we just talked about.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you very much, cabinet member.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:01:06
Anyone, any other officers want to add
or should I go straight to, I go, okay.
Right, so I know they wanted to drill down
a bit more on this one.
Like you say, they were very similar
to the last agenda item.
So hands up those that would like to speak, please.
And I'll just quickly get names down.
Okay, Councillor Haynes, I'll follow up.
Cue it first, please.
Sorry, me again.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:01:40
Thank you.
So the government advises that local areas will be rolling out some elements of their
expert hands offer as early as September 2026.
Which elements will Bucks have, if any, to be ready to roll out?
And what are the plans to allocate the funding and resource the roles?
Because schools have an imminent deadline to finalise timetabling and staffing
for the next academic year, and right now there's an ability for the year ahead to make use
of willing specialist providers' existing resources with experience and capacity
if the council were to get involved in that now.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 1:02:27
Thank you. If I could just take the first part, Councillor, thank you for that. So
just to be clear the guidance around experts at hand has just been issued to
local authorities, I think it was last week, so it's extensive and obviously the
plan that was drafted for submission was drawn up before the expert hand guidance
was received so there's further to go through, we are going through that
diligently now to see what impact or difference
that might make in practise as we move forward.
Because obviously there's a whole raft of recruitment
activity that needs to take place in terms of EPs
and specialists in that regard.
So just to put that out first, but if I could turn to Dan
for the rest of the question.
Thank you.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:03:10
I think the main point Erol's answered in terms of what
the plan is and the resourcing that's necessary.
But I would add that in many cases,
the experts are already at hand.
Dan Barton - 1:03:22
So we already have a significant team that's already funded through the dedicated schools
grant that is managed within our services, that is already working with schools.
We also have a great deal of expertise within schools, particularly our special schools,
our existing resource provisions who are already operating at a very high level in terms of
the quality of their practise.
There's something about what we're doing then with our resource and with this plan is changing
the way that we work so that we're being much more focused on sharing and disseminating
best practise as well as creating a system whereby we're upskilling schools or staff
within schools where there is a need to upskill and to be trained.
So the experts at Hand Model isn't going to be about parachuting in experts to do work
directly with children in most cases.
It's more about almost a graduated response where we are working to make schools better
at meeting those needs through the deployment of experts and which then gets withdrawn afterwards.
But we have a huge amount of expertise already within our school system that we want to unlock
through this work.
Thank you.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:04:30
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:04:31
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:04:31
I just say, is the expertise coming through the school systems, is that something that's
being sorted out prior to some of those schools having to timetable those staff
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:04:49
now accordingly to be able to give their time. So the way that we deploy school to
Dan Barton - 1:04:51
school support has been going on for many years and what we would do is we
would work with different schools to see what we wouldn't do is build in
redundancy where you could just go you'd go out every school will have everybody
employed to deliver lessons or whatever else are doing in school but where
there is a need to release someone to go and support another school, some of the
experts of hand funding will probably be around providing backfill so you can
recruit people in on a day basis to cover to allow that person to go out and
support. That's one of the, that's how we would facilitate school to school
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:05:28
Cllr Kathy Gibbon - 1:05:33
support if the resource we were talking about was based in a school. Thank you
the white paper says that they're going to do.
The concepts sound brilliant.
Most of them, I'm all for it.
But it does seem a bit wishy -washy
in how these are actually going to happen in real life.
I just wondered, for things like they want engagement,
a feeling of belonging, wanting to discipline, which I'm all
for, especially the belonging, I think that's very important.
And they said that there will be advice, but is this advice
I mean, what is this advice?
Where is it coming from?
Will it be from the council?
Will it be from the government?
Are schools left to do their own thing?
Yeah, I just wondered, really, because a lot of the things
that they want to do are absolutely brilliant,
but in reality, is this doable?
And what are the resources to enable these,
what the white people do to happen?
So I think I'm not sure if it's for me
to say whether it's wishy -washy or not,
But I would certainly say that I would echo, and so
would all of the leaders within the school system,
that these are welcome proposals and changes.
We are waiting for further information from government
around what belonging means and what the national framework is
around engagement and inclusion.
Those will be centrally determined,
Dan Barton - 1:06:55
and we will seek to apply them locally.
But it has been picked up in an earlier question around,
where's the resource coming from?
Because that's echoed nationally.
but leaders are very welcoming of the proposals,
but massively concerned about where the resource comes from.
Our work around partnerships is something about
almost adopting the principle that the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.
So if we work better together,
there's the principle that there is an inherent latent
efficiency that will come out of that.
So if working in partnership,
which we would be doing anyway, by the way,
is effective at making us 1 % more efficient in the way that we,
which seems reasonable.
That equates to somewhere in the region of five to seven million pounds worth
of resource that's being used better.
And I think that's an important way to think, we should be thinking about
how our work makes us more efficient and
therefore creates capacity from within inherently.
I'm not done.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:07:56
I am able to say whether it's wishy -wash or not, I think.
I'm going to be slightly kinder than that.
I mean, I think it is worth remembering these reforms are at the white paper stage.
It's initial proposals plus a consultation.
So I wouldn't necessarily expect all the details to be hammered down at that point.
We probably shouldn't be surprised by that.
I think that's been part of the complication with the SEND delivery plan, knowing that
The Council has been expected to provide a fairly detailed delivery plan on what are
still some fairly high -level ideas for reform.
And I think that has been a challenge.
We've been asked to put on our own detail of our local implementation when the national
details haven't been fleshed out.
And I think it comes back to the Chairman's point earlier, though, that this is something
we need to keep monitoring because I think in six months' time, nine months' time,
a year's time, we'll be having a different conversation and probably have more details
to hand.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:08:49
Okay. So just sort of rounding that up, you know, for those
that are watching in as well, is they're really asking
for these reforms and changes, et cetera,
but without the help of funding.
Or is it a matter of waiting for any funding to sort
of come down the line?
I don't think it's the case without any funding.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:09:12
I don't think that's the case.
I think there's a lack of certainty at the moment
about how funding will be distributed
between local authorities
and what process will be used to decide that.
I will happily be corrected by any officers
who want to jump in.
There's been overall sums assigned
to certain types of reforms,
but what fucking should we get?
What oxygen we'll get, et cetera.
I think we're some way off that yet.
And that's why I would like the public to understand
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:09:37
because they don't see the complications
of how this works.
Okay, over to Councillor Townsend.
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 1:09:47
Thank you. As you say it's a white paper we don't have a lot of the detail but
we've we can see the key themes and one of those key themes is inclusivity
particularly of inclusivity of send within mainstream settings. You Councillor
Jackson and Mr. Albert you visited a school in my ward with me last year or
earlier this year whenever it was that demonstrates that they're demonstrating
Inclusivity have sent really, really well.
And we talked about what can we learn from that school
in particular.
Not just what they're doing well,
but also the pressures that they're
facing as a school that is modelling inclusivity really,
really well.
What support do they need?
What pressures are they facing?
What are they doing well?
Where could they improve?
We already have that knowledge within our system.
What are we doing now to prepare for the reforms
that the white paper is bringing based on that knowledge base that we already have.
Are we reaching out to schools on these topics?
Thank you, Councillor Townsend.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 1:10:52
And you're absolutely right.
Visiting that school was a real eye -opener in terms of how over and above school staff
are going in terms of ensuring that children who have a right to be educated in those schools
get the education that they need and the support that they need.
and what it really did demonstrate as well was the enormous pressure and the financial strain that it puts on schools
and again it was only by probably the goodwill of many of the staff in that school that keeps it going ultimately
and the headteacher Kate is doing an incredible job along with her staff so thank you for that opportunity.
Subsequent to that, Dan and I even as recently as this week have visited two other schools as well
that can showcase some similar work.
And they were talking very much around the willingness
to share good practise amongst schools
in preparation for these reforms.
And we've got a bit of a plan together
and we haven't lost sight of Kate being awarded
that particular school as well.
Because the more we learn, the more we can see,
that we can share, the more we now understand
around the reforms and what's being asked
around the hold inclusive piece,
I think we can now, we're at a position
where we can stand something up to say,
in preparation for these reforms,
let's look at showcase what we're already
doing within our schools.
And I think it was with great pride and delight
that the heads in each occasion were saying, look,
we do some great stuff here.
And we're already being approached by many other schools
in the county saying, how are you doing this,
even to the point of some innovative ways of writing
the HCP plans and so on.
Really, really important stuff.
And these are the real experts, other than the parents
and the carers, but they are true experts in their field.
So we want to scale that up now.
Timing's probably about right in advance of these reforms,
because we can only start planning and preparation
and doing the implementation with them, not without them,
because they are the expert.
Dan, is there anything you want to add on the co -production
school piece?
I feel like I should.
Dan Barton - 1:13:01
Just to echo Errol's point about the amazing practise
and outcomes that we've seen over the last couple of weeks
just in visiting schools, and the willingness
that we've got in our school system gives me great hope
and confidence that actually a lot of the answers
that were to the questions that we're answering sit here,
sit within our school system.
And so the reforms and the subsequent legislation
helps us because it gives us levers statutorily
to influence the work in that direction.
But we would be seeking to do this anyway, I think,
because it's the right thing to do.
The resourcing question is a challenge.
I think we have just recently received notification of money that's coming in to support the first
phase of implementation of inclusion in the mainstream, which is helpful.
But this is about facilitating the disseminating of best practise.
And also schools saying, I'm struggling with this.
Does anyone have any ways of doing it?
So it works in both ways.
So you mentioned about where the gaps are.
We hope that the new system will enable us to support schools to come forward to ask
for help as well as to offer it.
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 1:14:06
I do have concerns looking at the structure of how support will be given, particularly
it seems that schools will be the ones who are responsible for that first wave of the
individual support plans.
And so I'm concerned that we're going to be putting a huge amount of pressure on those
schools who are demonstrating brilliant inclusivity.
And I just really want to make sure that we're on top of a process by which we support them
because the way in which we support them at the moment with our huge EHCP backlog, I know
we have our exceptional support funding, but it's quite convoluted.
We've got a huge backlog.
It's all in a bit of a mess.
I really want to drill down on that and make sure that we are learning from them, but also
we're prepped to support them when they have this huge amount of responsibility where they
have to do that first wave of individual support plans. And I think it's important
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 1:15:03
to understand a bit more around what that support looks like Councillor on the
basis of and speaking to schools one area that was raised on a few occasions
was described as a battle with parents around that the need for a plan when
might not necessarily be the case are the provision that needs to look at and
we consider the ISP model in relation to that challenge of what the parent may want as opposed
to what the child needs, it is going to be something that I think schools are asking
for additional support. We've raised that certainly with the DFE as well in terms of
how do we mitigate some of the additional challenges that schools will experience. But
I think the starting point is hearing more in terms of what that support looks like and
that's what we hope to do. I very much intend to return to Kate and hear a bit more about
how things are going, probably a year on now.
But it's gonna be important
that we continue over that conversation.
Dan referenced the Strategic Education
Partnership Board earlier on.
That's something where I think we can develop
more of those links and hear a bit more
in relation to some of those pressures
and how we can develop a support plan for them
as these reforms progress forward.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:16:15
Very good, thank you very much.
As we move on to Councillor Slatman.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:16:21
I'm encouraged to hear the responses actually with the,
because what my colleagues asked with regards to one
of my questions was is how will the council support providing
schools and how would you implement those?
And it's, I'm not going to ask you to repeat
that because I've understood that.
The other two part questions I had was, and very quickly,
probably this is the timeline phase one, phase two,
and phase three, and obviously phase one, 25, 26, 26, 27,
and Phase 28 -29.
My quick question to that is, is how confident are you
in actual fact being on track with that?
And the second part to the question basically was
that which proposals within the White Paper will have the
greatest impact in your opinion?
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:17:17
On the timeline, I think we have to be, it is our responsibility to be prepared to work
to the timeline that is set down by the government in terms of when it intends these reforms
to come in place.
We need to be ready to go by those dates.
There is obviously a lot of uncertainty about whether those timelines are hit.
So I think it's a case of keeping a watching brief.
If there's a lot of political uncertainty behind this,
these kind of things can slip.
Like I said, there could be some significant
political changes which end up shifting
the government's agenda and priorities.
There's so many moving parts here.
But I think the key thing from our point of view
is obviously to keep engaging with the Department
for Education, providing information they want
in the form they want it at the time they want it,
be ready to go when they require us
to be ready on these reforms.
In terms of the biggest impact, I mean, it depends what reforms emerge and what funding
comes with them in terms of the local impact.
For me, I find it hard to look much past the SEND aspect in terms of the biggest impact.
It's an area where, as Councillor Townsend said, like a lot of local authorities, we've
backlog with a lot of work to clear it.
And I'm in a situation where some children and young people
who have been waiting far longer than the statutory deadline
to get the HCPs.
I think that restructuring into ISPs and the HCPs,
if it's got right, could potentially have a huge impact.
I noticed as well plans to look again
at how the complaints and tribunal system works.
I mean, the tribunal system is a sort of small industry
at the moment, and any change to make that
better targeted, better used, I think could also
have a huge impact for the council,
but also more importantly for individual families
who are affected by these issues.
So that's where my focus is in the report
in terms of the key bit to get right.
Officers might have their own views
or want to add something.
Oh, sorry, sir.
Dan Barton - 1:19:30
I would agree entirely that probably SEND is the biggest area of focus and risk and
opportunity.
But I think it's really important just to flag that, and it's buried in the report and
the reforms, frankly, but the proposals around curriculum change and freedoms in relation
to curriculum and freedoms in relation to the consequent accountability system around
curriculum progress eight, EBAC, that will have probably an impact over a long period
of time that actually supports a lot of the other part of the agenda around inclusion
and attendance because over the last 10 years or so where we've seen very significant drop
off in attendance, marginalisation of more vulnerable children, having a paired back
assessment system, having a more open and wide curriculum offer is bound to have an
impact to make schools more attractive again to some of those children who have opted out
because they don't see themselves having an offer.
So I think there's something just about flagging.
It's not just about SEND.
I think the curriculum is going to be a really interesting development
that I'm really welcoming of.
Thank you very much.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:20:42
You know, SEND is on all of the tip of our tongue everywhere,
and it is something that, you know, as we move forward into the year,
we'll have a little look into maybe we'll have a meeting between all of us
Without officers to scare ones feeling about that. So I've got some of my own
Force when it comes to that and we'll speak quite openly, but maybe we could we could do that between ourselves
If you don't mind council you say I think I'll send
The plan isn't there yet. It's kind of been there. I mean, I agree with councillor Jackson the
legislative
framework there and the amount that's going to go through.
I think we only had two in my lifetime,
two visionary education secretaries,
one conservative secretary baker and one labourer in Anthony
Crossland and all the others being place makers,
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:21:35
place people basically.
And I think the worst ever was Gove who I think
went back to the future.
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 1:21:41
And we seem to be going away from that now with what
Mr. Barton said with enlarging the curriculum again,
enlarging the freedom of curriculum offer,
which then engages everybody, rather than saying,
right, the only test we allow is a three hour memory test
of two years of study.
And I don't know any company, any system of work,
where that is taken as a way of testing people's knowledge
or expertise, where you study for two years,
and you're given one or two three hour exams,
written memory tests, that's it.
And that's not how the modern world works anyway.
So I'm glad to see that.
My question is twofold.
SEND I think has been explored
and I think it's still a moving feast.
I'm still sceptical whether the ISP is just a way
of reducing the EHCP numbers or where it's a real innovation
to show that some pupils, as Errol said,
Officer Albert said, that some pupils don't need
that full -on approach.
And having been involved with this for the last 10 years,
the complexity still makes my head spin.
And you talk to someone without being boastful about it,
he's got three degrees, he's got masters,
and I look at those and I think,
how does a normal parent circumvent their way
through this map?
Because the complexity of the EHCPs,
the thing they have to tell you so you can plan it,
it's just incredible.
So one question is how does the officers feel,
is the ICP a way forward to simplify the matter
as Officer Albert said, maybe some children
don't need that all encompassing help.
Or is it a way of just massaging the field
because if you look at the chart, the field is downwards.
My other question is, there's one, on page 28,
there's one metric that's actually put down,
which is halving the disadvantage gap.
Now, Buckinghamshire at key stage four had one of the largest attainment gaps in the
country.
I don't think it was still the largest.
I think it was maybe still amongst the largest.
How do, and also on that same page, supporting disadvantaged pupils, how do the officers
feel and the cabinet member feel about tackling that?
Because that is a proper metric, having the disadvantaged gap.
And then my last question is enrichment is kind of all through like a seaside rock, all
through the paper enrichment is kind of copied all the way through.
Now being through 20 years of austerity where a lot of schools have sold off excess buildings,
sold off excess playing fields, sold off their kitchens, or turned their kitchens into classrooms,
How do the officers feel that that is now going to be reintroduced into mainstream schools?
So there's three questions there, sorry.
Dan Barton - 1:24:44
So, yes is the answer on the first one in terms of the ISP being a sensible solution.
I think it's absolutely the right thing to do.
The impact of the 2014 legislation wasn't fully understood when it was given royal assent
and it has resulted in the unintended consequence of creating a top -heavy system,
which is resource hungry and over complicates things.
So over time, what I think the spirit of these reforms is about
is trying to decrease the sense of top heaviness
and put the resource back in as part of the universal offer within schools.
The challenge to that will be how that lands with parents and carers,
who was, Errol said earlier, had to spend quite a long time
battling for that resource.
What we should be, we should be in a system where we should see
it as a success criterion that a child no longer needs support.
That isn't where we are at the moment.
And the threat of removal of an EHCP is seen
as being existential.
And so it is not going to happen, you know,
from one day to the next.
It will be a very gradual phase tapering way of working.
But it is absolutely the right thing to do to effectively go back to a system where provision
and needs are provided and met in school as the first point of contact.
So that's the first part of the question, I think.
This is about rebalancing the system, and that's been used a bit.
We talked about halving the disadvantage gap.
So there has been a slight reduction of 0 .1 percent since last year in terms of the gap.
We might be hoist on our own petard in Buckinghamshire because actually as a relatively affluent
borough when you zoom out, we have a very high level of achievement in terms of the
overall, which means that the disadvantage gap, even if we're doing well in terms of
the performance of the less able children, the gap is bigger because we have a much higher
level of achievement, which we do, across the peaks.
For us then, if we were having the disadvantage gap,
we would be going down from 15 .9 to 7 .85,
which is a really small gap nationally.
I mean, it doesn't exist.
That is, and there is a structural challenge to how we
do that against the backdrop of, as I mentioned right
at the beginning of the meeting, a system
which is doubly fragmented with a selective system.
I think there's a way around that to support all schools to reach out and support each other.
But I think it's a challenging target, if I'm honest.
You mentioned enrichment as the last point.
It's a really great and lofty ambition.
I think, again, all of the system is really excited about that being the direction of travel.
At the same time, it's expressing really significant legitimate concern about resourcing.
because there isn't any.
And having a series of accountability measures
that are linked to the provision of, you know,
this is going to be inspectable.
The quality of inspection of enrichment as part
of school inspections.
And that could be, you know, again, existential in terms
of how a school comes out in its ofsted outcomes.
So I'm really excited about enrichment.
I think that's a massive way
to bridge the disadvantage gap
and support disadvantaged children.
But how we do that within the confines
of the existing resource envelope will be a challenge.
And I don't think we've been given yet the guidance.
I mean, there was a report recently about this coming out,
but where's the detail and where's the resource?
I'll just add quickly,
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:28:29
I think Dan's covered the disadvantage enrichment points
very clearly, although I would also add, of course,
there's a role for the best start in life programming,
and the disadvantaged point before the school even starts.
I think Councillor Hussain has probably hit on
what I would consider the single biggest political risk
in terms of these reforms proceeding
in the form we currently expect them to,
which is if ISPs are seen as a cut of support,
not as a reform, I think that's when we could see
quite some campaigns, quite some pressure for changes.
We know all of us do from our own experience that families
who have children with SEND, they speak to each other,
they advise each other, they're in touch with each other online
in communities, you know, there will be well organised campaigns
if there are concerns that this means withdrawing support.
And I could see that there is definitely an element
of political risk there.
And we've seen, we've not really experienced it.
And it's good because it's not justified at this point
because the reforms are not due to be implemented
for some years anyway, but in some authorities,
there has been an increase in demand for EHCPs,
which has been, I wouldn't say it's hard evidence,
but it's been, given that it started
after the white paper came out, it's been attributed
to a sort of sense of panic that get your EHCP now
before the government says you can't have them anymore.
Yeah, and so I think, you know, that's something we need
to be aware of, and it's something we'll need
to moderate as reforms go through, because if these are seen
as a cut rather than an improvement. I could see some changes coming down the road.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:30:09
Thank you. Councillor Hussain, you already extended your question by one. Did anyone
else notice that? Very good. Councillor Sherwell.
Cllr Alan Sherwell - 1:30:25
Thank you. On an earlier comment, I just mentioned that after 30 plus years of experience as
a school governor, I think schools
are more prepared to share expertise amongst themselves
voluntarily than they ever were before.
There are still ones that aren't on board.
I absolutely agree.
But I think there is a more collegiate approach.
When you look at the structure of state education,
we basically have four types of school.
We have those that are still local authority schools.
We have those that are standalone academies.
We have those that are members of a local academy trust.
And we have those that are members of a national academy
trust.
I don't think we've got many of the latter in Bucks.
Certainly, Bucks UTC is a member of a trust that
is headquartered outside Buckinghamshire.
I think most of our other schools are on board.
If we are to have this increased strategic role,
if I can put it that way, which I would welcome in theory,
we absolutely have to have those trust schools on board.
I recently, along with other chairs of governors,
is the Aylesbury has a group of heads that meet together,
primary and secondary.
And chairs of governors were invited
along to their last meeting.
Two had to tell me afterwards they were on their best
behaviour because we were there.
But almost none of the Academy heads were at that meeting.
Some were, but very, very few.
There's a trust building exercise that is required to get academies into the sort of
framework that we would need to deliver the sort of things that are in this paper.
It's not the local authority trying to take back control that they stepped away from 20
years ago.
It's actually working together for the good of education.
Is there a plan and project for actually achieving that?
Because that's something you can start doing now without knowing
the details of this work.
The other thing that's concerning,
well, not concerning, interesting,
is the concept of the local authority academy trust.
Now, I don't think we know what that means yet.
And that's no surprise.
No doubt it will know what it means for a while.
But 52%, I think, is the right figure of our primary schools
are currently not academies.
And in most cases, it's because they have no desire whatsoever
to be in an academy trust.
And the local authority trust, if it
of a certain type and format is something
that they would much prefer to be driven into than being
driven into a standard trust if they're
going to have to be driven into a standard multi -academy
trust.
And the other thought is what happens to the grammar schools,
most of whom are single academy trusts,
if they're driven into a multi -academy trust.
So there's an opportunity there, I think,
for us to do good for the Buckinghamshire education
system by taking this forward in the right way.
I have no idea what the right way is,
because I don't know what the rules are yet.
But can I be assured that that's something
that we'll be looking at in great detail?
Because I think it would be enormously welcomed
by a sector of our schools.
It might not eventually take the idea up,
but at least would be interested in its development.
So the first question in relation to how we are proactively reaching out to MATTS is that we, yes we do have a plan,
Dan Barton - 1:34:59
Era and I have reached out to CEOs of MATTS which have a footprint in Buckinghamshire
And we are going to be meeting them in the next couple of months to commence that kind
of the building of a strategic relationship with them.
In terms of decision making, those eight or nine colleagues have coverage of about 70
schools in Buckinghamshire.
So there's a real impact to securing a good collegiate collaborative relationship with
them for that reason.
So we are and we have a plan and that will evolve as we go along and we will hopefully
through the strategic education partnership board
engage them strategically in development of the plans
that that board will develop.
In terms of the local authority maps,
there is no such thing as a local authority map.
A map is a map.
So the day that a map is created,
it becomes a company limited by guarantee.
It has a board of directors.
It has members.
And it has absolutely no governance relationship
with the local authority whatsoever.
I think it's really important to dispel the myth
that such a thing as an N .A. MAT exists.
We can initiate or establish a MAT or seek to do so.
But on day one of its existence, it's over there and it's
identical in its makeup in terms of company law
and structure to any other MAT.
The only difference, and this is not law but very soft
consultation with the DFB is that there might be some assumptions about what the membership
in terms of company law would be in terms of the percentage of local authority positions
and essentially 60 percent, therefore a controlling stake in the membership, is what's being
mooted as a potential way of creating some local authority oversight.
But as you know, at the member level rather than the board of director level,
that doesn't create a great amount of genuine operational control over a series
of schools.
So I should just flag that that's really important.
The schools that I talk to, I would broadly echo your view that there's not
a particular appetite for those that haven't yet academized to do so,
although that's not 100%, that's not a totally universally held view.
I think it behoves us to explore what potential skeleton structure
of additional maps might look like in the county,
including involvement of any schools that aren't currently
in the maps to say, what would this look like?
But I think there's more work that needs to be done in terms
of providing clarity around what the proposal would be
from central government before we would do anything more
than that.
And then you mentioned grammars, which in the majority of cases are standalone academies,
single academies.
The same thing would happen.
The choice to academize is the governing body of the school.
But then where you end up being academized is a regional director of the DFE decision.
So you can express that you've made a decision to academize as a school, but the decision
about where you academize is with the DFE.
Thank you.
Very good.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:38:18
Okay, last question is to the vice chair.
Wendy Raffees.
Thank you, yes.
Following on from Councillor Sherwell's comments
about the academization and moving all schools into a trust.
What is the council's position on that?
Because we have been around this loop before,
the last time this was required,
and we did start work on setting up a mat from the council.
Cllr Wendy Matthews - 1:38:42
to operate exactly along the lines you've just described.
So is that work still available?
Can we access that and consider where we're going to with it?
Dan Barton - 1:38:56
I think the short answer is that what the council's position is,
isn't known.
I think that the council doesn't have a position on this.
And what I would be saying is before we did any work on that, why?
What, is there a benefit to the children that attend the schools
in the county to going forward with a piece of work.
And if we felt that there was,
perhaps with Councillor Jackson's approval we might look
at that, but otherwise this has got to be centred around.
It's not about, you know, if this has a benefit
for children, let's talk about it,
but if this is just structural, there's got to be a reason why.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:39:34
Yeah, because we did that work last time and we did come
to the conclusion that there was a benefit for children
for us to be involved.
So it might be interesting to look back at that.
Okay. Just don't at the time.
We've got a few minutes.
I'm going to allow Councillor Hewitt to slip in with a short question.
Yeah, it's a quick one.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:40:02
So one of the things I want to ask, because I didn't see it in there, is that whether there should be a cross portfolio review with transport,
because the current system is set up for EHCP plus transport provision to
entitle people for free transport to get to school.
And I'm worried how this is going to affect how free transport is allocated
if they change what getting an EHCP means.
So I'm just wondering if there's any, you know, cross department work going
on to work out as that information comes through, how we'll be making sure
that nobody loses out in provision
and that this flexibility that's going to be delivered
in schools could be considered
within the transport provision.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks.
I mean, I think probably the key word
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:40:47
in that question was the word if.
And I think obviously we need to see sort
of more concrete details on these reforms.
In terms of eligibility, I mean, to a certain extent,
we don't fully control eligibility for school transport.
I mean, there's cooperation between the teams.
If the government comes out with new rules that determine it,
then obviously we'll be bound by those rules
in terms of meeting requirements.
I don't know if officers have more to add,
but for me, this is another question
which is a really important question
and a perfectly legitimate question,
and one that falls in a grey area
where we're sort of having to say,
we're having to wait and see.
We don't want to, obviously,
we don't want to see people who need that support
having it taken away from them,
but I think more details required.
It's on the long list of to -dos,
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 1:41:36
but just to reassure council that we are speaking closely
with our home school transport team,
we meet regularly on relation to the impact
of the EACP's progress and what that means
for home school transport,
but there's more to come in terms of the future forecasting
and what that means in real terms.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:41:53
Yeah, I think this also ties in very well
with the public question about school places,
because what I'm finding with case work I'm getting is that the travel is getting further away to schools
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:42:03
and if the amount of free public transport gets left we could actually be exacerbating send issues.
But that's it, thank you.
Okay and like I've mentioned earlier on we are looking into that so
you dug into it again so we do a bit of cross -border work.
Thank you very much.
Got my microphone off.
Thank you very much for those questions.
keep moving on to our agenda item,
which is the ofs, ofsted IELTS recommendations,
improvement plan update,

8 Ofsted ILACS Recommendations - Improvement Plan Update

consider an update on the improvement plan
following the ofsted inspection of Buckinghamshire Council
between the 27th of January
and the 7th of February of 2025.
And again, a campaign member, Councillor Carl Jackson,
and oh, this time, Alison Munt,
the Service Director for Children's Social Care.
I wonder where we're going to get to hear from you today.
So over to you, please.
Thank you, Chairman.
Yeah, I'll be brief.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:43:03
I think the report's pretty clear.
The only thing I'd add, because it's not in the report
and is something you might not know,
is that we had a focus visit from OSTED last week
with a particular focus on children in need of help
and protection.
To be clear, that's not an inspection.
It was a sort of two -day visit, and it will be followed up not with a graded report or
a rating, but a sort of letter identifying areas of strength and areas for improvement.
And obviously, when we have that, you'll see that, and we'll make sure we share it with
you.
It's confidential for the moment, obviously.
I won't add anything more beyond that.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:43:44
It was confidential, Cabinet member, until it was...
The fact that the focus visit took place is not confidential,
but the report...
Correct, yeah.
Otherwise I wouldn't have left it.
No, I don't.
Okay, Alison, over to you.
Thank you.
Dan Barton - 1:44:03
I think the report highlights the progress that's been made
since that inspection.
And of course, as Councillor Jackson just referred to there,
we did just have a focus visit,
which focused on one part of the whole service,
which is those children in need of help and protection.
So we are waiting on that letter or that report that will come out around that.
But you can see from that report it goes into different aspects
and some of the areas that we've been focusing on.
And so I'm happy to take any questions in relation to that.
Very good.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:44:34
And I've got to say, you know, it shocks me actually how many inspections you have
that just go, there we are.
And you know, which is quite something and how well you're doing, which we will challenge if we need to.
But just to note, we have HMI inspectors in from Monday for a week's inspection of our youth justice and support team.
So that coincided with this recent visit.
Yeah. And that's why I feel, you know, us under scrutiny, you know, they're under scrutiny as well.
Then we come along yet again to scrutinise the scrutinization of another group.
Is there anyone else that would like a quick break?
Are we happy to just crack on?
Yeah? Okay.
Okay. Right.
Questions?
Anybody for the officers?
Okay.
I'm going to change the routine.
Councillor Hussain first.
On page 57 of the PAC,
Okay, your report, there's a new tool,
the neglect assessment tool for practitioners.
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 1:45:46
And it was approved in February 26th
and has been trialled and has been embedded.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:45:51
And it's been seen to be helping.
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 1:45:55
Can you expand on that a bit, number one?
And number two, tools have sometimes become
a function unto themselves,
as we just said about EHCPs.
They become ever more complex.
Are we guarding against this becoming more complex?
Although it has to be flexible,
but it doesn't become a blunt instrument, so to speak.
But it does what it's supposed to do,
which is help our practitioners in their daily jobs,
which I would never, I mean all of them,
the work they have to do, the people they have to see,
and the neglect that they try and help and alleviate
is just amazing.
You know, our social workers are amazing,
and I stand in awe of them.
I can explain what the tool is, I think, at the start.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 1:46:38
I might now hand it over to Anderson for the second part
in terms of it not being part of the instrument.
I asked this question when I saw it.
I thought a tool, is this some kind of clever app
you've got where you can take a photo of someone
and see if they're at risk of neglect or not?
It's actually basically a list of signs of neglect.
So, you know, sort of, does the child sort of appear
underweight, turning up at school in ill -fitting clothes?
You know, sort of shabby, sort of unkempt, you know,
sort of their appearance has not been looked after,
that kind of thing.
Basically, it's a comprehensive list, which I understand
that two practitioners are finding very useful in terms
of guiding them to an assessment, but it is not
as fancy, I'm reassured, to say as it sounds.
Thank you.
Dan Barton - 1:47:20
Yeah, so it is a tool to support workers in the work
that they do with children and families.
And so that list, if you like, are just sort of symptoms
or signs of neglect.
And the idea is that the social worker
or family support worker will use that alongside the family
so that you're not doing to them, you're doing it with them.
And then from that, you would be looking at what areas do we need
to work on and how do we help improve that for you.
So as much as it's a tool to support them,
it's also something that we can then monitor progress by as well.
So we can say, well, this is what the situation was three months ago.
We've worked on these areas.
This is where we're at now.
So it's that way of trying to reduce the risk of neglect for children and families.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:48:06
I understand this has been implemented.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:48:08
I fully understand it because my colleagues and cousins who are doctors,
they're very, very heavily qualified consultants,
but before they start an operation, they go through a very, very simple checklist.
Is it the same patient that we think it is?
Are we operating on the area we're supposed to be operating on?
You know what I mean?
But this has cut down on incidents of accidents,
like 80, 90 % apparently.
So I fully understand that, that simplicity.
Can I understand that it's standardising
to a certain extent, so you know within the whole spectrum
of families what has been done and what is being done?
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 1:48:47
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:48:49
Would that be a fair reflection?
Yes, that's correct.
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 1:48:51
Dan Barton - 1:48:53
And one of our areas for improvement was around consistency.
Buckinghamshire is a huge local authority.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:48:59
So it's making sure that you provide that tool for everybody wherever they are.
So that will standardise how we are assessing neglect within families.
But also just to add as well, it's work that we've done alongside the partnership.
So the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Partnership have been instrumental in not developing a neglect strategy,
but also in identifying and designing this tool as well.
So it's not just something that social workers or within social care can use.
It could be something that a doctor might use or it could be, you know,
another health practitioner or somebody in education.
So it means that we're getting that more standard ideas of what actually neglect means.
Dan Barton - 1:49:42
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 1:49:43
And just to help as a further example, so dentistry for instance.
I mean key sign of neglect is tooth decay if a child's been drinking too much sugary drinks
or whatever else in diet.
So things like that, just increasing that knowledge and having a consistent approach in terms of identification.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:50:06
Not so much novel because we know what the signs of neglect are.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:50:09
I think what it's done is it's given practitioners more confidence in how they're assessing it.
So and I think that's what will come out.
It is worth just adding as well that we piloted it to make sure it was right, you know, and
that we got the, you know, we got the signs right and the identified work that goes alongside
it.
And so it's only gone live on our system about three weeks ago, so we're at the very early
stages of it.
And I think as we sort of develop that over the next six months or so, then we'll start
to see more standardised use of it.
And because it's a form on our system, we can also pull reports on it as well to see
how frequently is it being used and look at the quality of it as well.
Okay.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:50:53
Councillor Aslam.
Cllr Parveiz Aslam MBE - 1:50:59
Can I just say, usually well done for all of this, what you do.
I've said this to you before and I know exactly the amount of effort that goes into this.
My question to you is that the, in the identified in the improvement plans following the obviously
the inspection, which areas remain the most challenging?
And as long as I say congratulations, well done on the completed elements parts of it.
And what evidence can the officers provide that children and families already experienced
these better outcomes, if there are obviously as a result of the changes that you've made?
Thank you.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:51:36
So I'll take the second question first.
We've got a really comprehensive quality assurance programme,
and within that, so we have a number of audits
that get taken every single month by managers and above.
And then also we have what's called a moderation panel.
So we make sure that that moderation panel
has five offices on there of diverse areas
so that you get a good holistic view
of what's going on for the child.
Those audits give us an element of confidence in, you know,
how we are progressing with children.
And we don't just assess what the, what it's like on the
system, so what the process is telling us.
We also look at impacts and outcomes for children as well.
So that gives us a really good sense of how we are managing,
how we are managing that and how we are changing outcomes
for children and families.
The other area will be our inspection because obviously,
you know, for every time that we're inspected,
they are looking at, you know, what does that mean
for children and families and how can we evidence
the work that's being done in that.
So certainly those risk areas are very strong for us.
So we're very good at identifying risk
and, you know, responding well to children
that are at risk of significant harm.
And also PLO process, which is the public law outline,
that's our pre -proceedings process
before we look at stepping into the court arena.
We're very strong on that as well and making sure that we respond very quickly to children when they're at risk of harm.
The challenges.
Well, I think the challenges we've kind of referred to in terms of the reforms as well.
It's the number of different reforms and looking at all of these different areas and
also trying to make sure that we continue with the improvement. The biggest challenge
I think really is the size of the county and that consistency and trying to make sure.
We've got 21 different locality teams and that's not including our children with disability teams,
our court teams and our corporate parenting teams.
So when you look at that as the whole, that's a huge number of staff that we're trying to make sure,
you know, that we have the same consistency.
So going back to the question around tools, that's making it slightly easier
because we're able to guide staff into what that expectation is.
Thank you.
Very good.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:53:55
And I got, oh, okay.
I've got two more questions now.
Just talking about corporate parenting, you and I was having a deep chat about it the
other day, and it's something that I'm going to bring to this table at some point.
Again, it could be a working group, but it is a discussion that I'd like us to have as
a team to help support the corporate parenting strategy that you have.
Okay, so Councillor Hazel Arthur -Cewitt and then it'll be Councillor Muhim.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:54:27
Thank you very much and thanks for all the work you're doing.
It's much appreciated.
2 .2, the quality and robustness of management oversight to promote consistently effective social work.
So I just wanted to ask, on 2 .8 of that, how much time is needed to fully embed practise standards
and how is evidence being acquired?
And has any additional training and development
in systemic supervision been scheduled?
What's the plan to carry this out?
When will we know if the changes have resulted
in the level of improvement required?
So it's great that you're listing things in terms
of we still need tos, but there's no kind of endgame
on that of when we'll, you know, list it in the reports.
It'd be really good to know when that will be in place.
And just one small thing is I'd be interested to know in the recommendations what partners
or people have used in garnering info on how to improve the service from where it was to
where it is now because I'd really like to know what partners were involved in deciding
what was best practise going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:55:41
Let me take the third question first because I think that will kind of give you a bit of an idea of how that where we've gone with some of this.
So the Ofsted inspection previously provides recommendations.
So that's one element of guidance around what's best practise, what do we need to do differently and how do we approach that.
But alongside that, we also did some work with North Yorkshire and they were partnered with us to do some work around improvements.
So they were our practise guides, if you like, in that respect.
And we were able to consider which local authority might best fit to Buckinghamshire
and North Yorkshire kind of were our best fit in terms of their values,
the work that they were doing, and also the fact that they've been
a number of times outstanding local authority.
So it was really good to work with them.
And we did some of that work with them around those practise standards.
So going back to your first part around what are the practise standards,
you know, how do you make sure that everybody is aware of what those are?
And so we did that work with them and also with the Safeguarding Partnership as well,
because they're key partners for us in terms of the work that we do
and making sure that anything that we do is kind of disseminated
not just within children's social care but with our partners as well.
So in terms of how do we embed it and how do we make sure that
everything is in there?
We, first of all, it's all about communication, isn't it?
How do we communicate?
We are constantly communicating all of these aspects to the
practitioners and the social, the workforce.
We also have regular meetings, so myself and the heads of
service have regular meetings, we call them cheque and challenge,
with managers and teams so that we make sure that we're constantly on the forefront of what's going on.
And that's a two -way process. It's for staff to tell us what's going on, but for us to embed some of these activities as well.
And we've also got a principal social worker who started in October of last year.
So we'd had a gap previously of having a principal social worker in post.
And they are very instrumental as well in going out to the workforce, into our different area offices.
and making sure that they do some workshops on any targeted areas,
whether that's practise standards or anything else.
In terms of the supervision, the work that we did with the supervision is that
at the last inspection, not the one that we've just had but the one back in 2024,
we had supervision that was taking place once every three months
And we identify from that, that's not frequent enough to make a difference for children and
families and to drive those plans forward.
So one of the first things that we did was implement a monthly supervision.
And then through that auditing process and through the cheque and challenge process, we've
worked on the quality of those supervisions so that they're not just all about task -driven
implementing tasks or the process.
It's about the quality and improvement.
Are you providing an opportunity for social workers
and practitioners to reflect?
Are we thinking analytically about what we're doing?
And what are the actions that we identified
that will improve outcomes for children?
And we've seen significant progress in that area
around the work that we've done on that reflection.
So the quality of that supervision has improved.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 1:59:21
Okay, do you want to?
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:59:27
Thank you. Just briefly, it's just that because the report says that we commit to do this without the timelines,
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 1:59:33
it would be really helpful for me to see sort of like a timeline when those changes would be finished,
which is what I asked originally, but thank you for your...
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 1:59:40
Yeah. I think in terms of when will it be finished, the answer is it will never be finished.
This is a constant cycle of the work that we need to do.
In terms of implementing those practise standards
and the supervision policy, that's already done,
that's already completed.
But in terms of ensuring the quality
and making sure that we are constantly on top of the work
that we do, that will continue.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:00:04
So the action plan below does provide some deadlines
as to when we're looking at implementing some of those actions.
But the monitoring of it will continue.
Yeah, it's just that when you say we will need time to embed practise standards,
I'm presuming there's a length of time you need.
So I guess I'm just asking like, you know, there's things in that 2 .8 which say we need a bit more time for this,
a bit more time for that.
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 2:00:28
I'm just wondering about timelines.
Okay, do you want to take that offline, Director?
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:00:31
It would be a bit easier to get into a bit of a debate there.
Okay, Councillor Haynes.
Thank you, Mr Chairman.
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:00:41
I just want to go back to what Councillor Hussain brought up about this NEDNECT assessment
tool.
Cllr Frank Mahon - 2:00:50
First of all, it's only you said it's just come in literally a couple of weeks ago, yes?
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:00:59
Yes so we piloted it a few months ago and we've just implemented it on the system.
It takes some time to get everything put on the system.
So what do we have in place before that?
And I'm just concerned here.
I know Councillor Jackson spoke about,
it gives you a list, you know,
but it could not be a barrier.
I mean, if this is not implemented properly
and somebody is not diplomatic,
I mean, you're not just going to go into a house
and go, Mrs. Jones, by the way,
I don't think Tommy has changed his trousers for the last three weeks.
I mean, you wouldn't go in with that approach.
Cllr Frank Mahon - 2:01:43
So, I suppose what I'm asking is, what are the challenges
in achieving consistent application
of this tool, and have any teams
or trends emerged from the audits?
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:01:58
There were no significant trends that came from the pilot.
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:02:01
In fact, practitioners and families were positive about it
because it is something that we're doing alongside families.
So no, we're not going to walk in and say,
you know, little Johnny hasn't changed his trousers for three weeks.
But it is a tool that you can use so that parents need to know
what we're concerned about.
And I think it's about being open and honest as practitioners.
You know, if we were walking in and doing a visit
and having concerns about little Johnny not having changed his trousers
and then going out and writing about it,
but not doing anything about it,
and not discussing that with the family,
then that's not being open,
and that's not going to initiate change.
So I think that being able to have this tool
which will provide some consistency
across the whole of the county,
but being able to use that as a tool
to work with families and alongside families
in order to initiate change
is where you then get more sustainable change
rather than a dictation of this is what you need to do
happen and an expectation that that happens.
May I come back, Mr Chairman?
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:03:04
So when you talk about we, who actually has access and uses
this tool?
I mean, we as elected members wouldn't be using it,
would we?
Well, the tool itself is on our partnership website.
So I guess it's open for anybody to use
if they wanted to use it.
However, it would be normally for professionals
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:03:27
that are going in and doing that assessment themselves.
So, like I said, you know, the...
A partner agency could also use that tool.
So, for example, if you had a school
that was concerned about neglect but was thinking,
how am I assessing this, and is that assessment
in line with what social work would assess it,
it would then be really good evidence
to put in with their referral to then say,
these are our concerns, and this is what we've identified
from these concerns, and it's a starting point then
for the social work teams to pick up and do some work.
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:04:00
Okay, sorry Mr Chairman, just one more point.
Cllr Frank Mahon - 2:04:06
I think the big point here is are schoolteachers aware
that this tool is available?
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:04:13
Yes, so through the Safeguarding Partnership,
there are representatives within the Partnership Board
from each of those organisations,
so they will have disseminated that information through,
and some of those staff were part of developing that tool as well.
So again, they would have taken that back to things like the head teachers boards and things like that.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chairman.
Cllr Maz Hussain - 2:04:36
I can see where you're going on that one.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:04:37
And maybe a suggestion would be that we all go on that site and have a little look ourselves and experience it.
And see, you brought up some really good valid points there.
So educate ourselves. Very good.
Thank you very much on that subject and it was good where that's gone.
So we're coming up to our last points because some of you have got to go shortly as well, I know.
So agenda item nine is performance monitoring.

9 Performance Monitoring Q4

So over to the cabinet member yet again.
Over to you for a short debrief and then we go to members.
Thank you, Chairman.
Cllr Carl Jackson - 2:05:26
Well, this is the regular quarterly updates.
I'm very happy to take questions.
I don't feel the need to speak to them a huge amount.
So, but I've got some information I'm sure I can
provide in response to any questions.
Very good, cabinet member.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:05:39
Aha. Okay.
So, hands up for questions.
Councillor Townsend.
Thank you.
My usual, Councillor Jackson.
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 2:05:50
In relation to the percentage of EHCPs issued within 20 weeks, as we know, it's a fairly
dire statistic, one that we're watching going down quarter on quarter, but we also know
that that is not necessarily reflective of the investment that this Council has put in
to rectifying that situation.
So I would really like to know what the numbers are for the
previous months in terms of EHCPs that the team has been
able to clear.
I also note that the final bullet point on that slide says
that the project's due to continue for the coming
three months.
Is that the coming three months only or are we at the end of
that two million pound investment at that point or perhaps that's misleading I
don't know I'd like to know where we are in terms of the spend against that
investment how much longer we have in terms of funding to be able to clear
this backlog and also this slide is only representative of one route that our
children have to access support I know that we obviously utilise the
exceptional funding
Except exceptional support funding route and there are also children as you know, we've been corresponding about this who are
Relying on section 19 of the Education Act being engaged where they're not able to attend school and the local authorities
provide an alternative
again, that process isn't reflected in here and I know that this
Certainly families that I've been talking to you're experiencing delays by that route. Is there
a way that we can look at those alternative routes for support
and how, what our backlog looks like against those,
if there is one.
Thank you, Councillor Townsend.
I might leave it to Errol to answer the second part
Cllr Carl Jackson - 2:07:52
of the question, but on the first part, yes,
so the number of EHCPs being issued is increasing.
So these are kind of the behind the scenes figures, I guess,
that you're talking about, the things we need
to see moving before this statutory target,
which continues to make uncomfortable reading,
will start to move.
In January, I think we had 80, 70 HCPs issued.
Last month, it was about 190.
So we're seeing that more than double.
We're seeing the number of APDs, the sort of education,
the education psychology is part of things,
more than double in that period, January, April as well.
So we're seeing these figures improve.
The waiting times, the average waiting time has dropped.
It's still too high.
It's come down from just over 61 weeks to about,
so just under 59 weeks, but it's heading in the right direction.
In terms of the number of children
and young people awaiting assessment,
I think it was topping 1700, I think, at some point last year.
At its worst, that's now sort of heading down towards 1500.
Obviously, this has the effect then that the number
of plans we're maintaining is ticking up and up.
So it was, when I took over the portfolio, I think it was sort
of tipped over 8 ,000, which is the inevitable consequence,
obviously, of issuing more ECP more quickly.
And there's been a couple of extra EHC coordinators
that recruit to try and help with that.
Because obviously, as you all know, but others might not,
the ECP is a living document.
It doesn't go in a cupboard once it's been done.
It's annually reviewed.
It's updated, so that increasing number of EHCPs being maintained
has, I think, been sensibly responded to with some extra staff.
Demand remains high is the final point I would think I would make.
I mean, you don't need to be a mathematical genius to realise
that the number of EHCPs we're issuing is not bringing,
the number of EHCPs we issue per month is not being matched
by the rate at which the backlog is falling.
And, of course, that is because demand remains high,
sometimes still more than 15 year requests a week.
I think about, yeah, so demand's still there.
We haven't seen that surge,
as I referred to in earlier question,
that some other local authorities have seen
in response to the government's white paper, which is good.
I think figures are broadly consistent
with the previous year, aren't they?
But sort of demand is, there's no dramatic difference,
but demand is still high.
So I hope that provides you some of the information
you want, and I'm obviously happy
to answer any further questions.
There was the point about how long our additional funding will last.
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 2:10:33
Cllr Carl Jackson - 2:10:39
Sorry, yes of course the funding, yes it's a two -year, it's the funding,
it was set out originally as 1 .5 million in the year 1 .5 million year two, sorry.
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 2:10:50
Just to provide some further issuance Councillor, so we are headed in the right direction so it's
8 ,290 maintained EACPs currently, the target that you would have heard about previously
of those 170 per month we are continually meeting that target we are
on track to meet that target again in June as you'll appreciate the more that
we're the throughput continues to obviously impact and I'm conscious as
well school holidays are coming up so we've just brief at schools very recently
in relation to where we are currently but there's developing plans over the
summer will be based on school closures so we're obviously having conversations
down keeping everybody up to date in relation to where we are but we are
continuing to deliver on the target that we set out.
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 2:11:39
Sorry there was just the point as well about funding applications via other
routes exceptional support funding section 19 is there any way that you can
report back perhaps next time on what sort of backlog we have in terms of
those as well. And also perhaps I know that there is some uncertainty within
schools about how to go about applying on the exceptional support funding and
also the section 19 applications as well. Yeah thanks council I recall obviously
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 2:12:11
previous conversations on this particularly in light of some schools
with with the higher levels of need within their particular schools. The
exceptional support funding piece is something that Dan and I have agreed now
to revisit which we are going to do because that criteria I think what we
are finding was a bit confusing for schools not really fully understanding
that the criteria or the benchmarks in order to qualify. I've agreed with Dan
that we'll take a further look at that because it's becoming more more of an
issue for some schools so we just need to look at that. No guarantees at this
stage that will change anything dramatically straight away but I think
it's worth revisiting given some of the concerns that have been raised. Dan do you
I don't want to add anything on the exceptional funding section 19.
Dan Barton - 2:12:56
Just on the section 19 piece, you wouldn't normally pursue access to school through section
19 for a child with an EHCP.
It would be because you've already got a strong legislative kind of legal background to go
down the other route.
In terms of section 19, every local authority has their own policy.
My understanding is that we're reviewing our policy at the moment, partly really against
the backdrop of the reforms relation to attendance, new duties, how does that work?
Nobody applies section 19 to the letter of the legislation because it would
immediately bankrupt to local authority because you can't for a 15 days absence
suddenly put in education so it's about establishing what the duties are of the
school to take reasonable steps to encourage attendance. There's so much of
reform agenda means that the whole relationship with what Section 19 can and does provide
is going to change based on what schools are now going to be able to or expected to do.
So we're reviewing that policy.
Do we have a policy currently?
My understanding is that we do have one and I'm saying my understanding repeatedly because
it's not directly within my managerial oversight but I have some understanding about where.
Okay, because I understand the point you make about if you had an EHCP in place you wouldn't
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 2:14:14
be applying via section 19.
But we have this enormous backlog
where children are waiting for an EHCP,
yet they've been out of school for months
and so are seeking funding or provision via another route.
And I think there are a lot of families
who are in the dark in that process
and feeling quite lost.
If I could just jump in.
If you don't mind, Cameron, I've just
Cllr Carl Jackson - 2:14:42
seen some even more updated figures
which Council Townsend might appreciate.
So, this is only a one -month figure.
It's only for May.
It's not a quarter.
So, the percentage EHCP's issued within 20 weeks was
up at 7 .5 % for May.
And we have a figure so far for June, which is a little north
of 10%, but obviously June is not finished.
So, I think we did, we have said before,
quarter two is where we might start
to see things coming through.
Yeah, I mean, sort of a hop.
I think the June figure comes with the obvious asterisk.
at the moment but hopefully we're starting to see things improve along the timeline.
I just thought you might appreciate the latest figures which I've just seen on the screen
next to me.
Thank you.
Just a word of caution again just coming back to those school holidays when it comes to
those consultations that figure likely to dip because schools are off so when it goes
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 2:15:30
back for part of those consultations and obviously the APDs we might find a little dip there
but that figure is far better than where it was.
we're moving in the right direction. So it's a healthy picture to date, but
obviously we don't turn the tap off, they will still continue with that level of need.
Keen as well, just in terms of schools on the ground, Dan and I are visiting,
hearing that there is some traction as well in relation to the movement, which
is the most important thing. So when we are visiting schools, we are asking if
they are seeing slight differences, and two this week have reported that they are,
So that's positive.
Very good.
I'm pretty confident that a few members have got to go.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:16:12
So Councillor Hussain.
Just following on from my colleague.
I mean, these figures are not good,
Cllr Niknam Hussain - 2:16:18
even though the direction of travel
seems to be that we are improving.
But I had a strange call the other day
from a community member.
I wanted to borrow some money.
And I said, what for?
And they said, oh, I need to do a private EHCP
or a consultation with a psychiatrist consultation,
because the waiting period was so long for the council.
And I said, how much?
And they wanted, they needed about 3 ,000 pounds.
But the issue then I heard from a different parent
with different sources, the council is not really
accepting all private consultations.
So this is a way of parents trying to help their children.
and suffering financial hardship to do it.
I'm not arguing whether it's good or bad,
but they're doing it.
The question then is, are we giving a proper steer
to those parents as to what is acceptable to the council
or not to ensure that they don't waste their money, so to speak?
And I fully have sympathy for the officers and the amount.
And we had a discussion earlier about, you know,
is the bucket filling up quicker than we're emptying it?
And you know, is that happening?
Or all we're doing is getting backlog
but it's still filling up from the top.
But I think Councillor Jackson,
you seem to say that there hasn't been a surge.
It's just the numbers are staying around the same
coming in each month.
Am I correct?
I think I'm saying that.
So hopefully you know what the kind of numbers are coming
in the next six months or so,
and what your coverage is going to be.
But so two questions, one is -
Time, come on please.
That's it.
So Councillor, just on the first piece around the private,
obviously parents have a right to go where they want to
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 2:18:12
in terms of some of those private consultations
and they do, and we won't stop them.
We do accept those in terms of what they may recommend.
If they've been done some time ago, however,
that might mean we need to reassess,
and that's one of the key points
that I just wanted to stress.
But at some times, needless to say,
the quality is not what we would expect in some of those,
hence why obviously we look at our own provision
or the provision that we've sourced
to ensure that the quality standards
around that piece of work is where it should be
in relation to what the recommendations are,
because sometimes you can see those recommendations
being quite some way off what is actually
the need. So, and it's not to discredit any of those private providers because some of them are of good quality.
But in order for us to have good oversight of that, obviously we would, we would much rather see the ones that we've, we've
initiated and done internally. But it's not to say we won't look at those private ones, but it very much depends on quality
and the need to potentially reassess. I don't know, Danny, do you have anything further? Maybe not.
There is just one point which is about the priority of the education system that is determined
Dan Barton - 2:19:26
it wants to close the disadvantage gap and there's an inherent point within what you're
saying in terms of advantage, making, providing preferential access to specialist provision
for families that can afford to spend 3 ,000 pound on a EHCP assessment.
Thank you.
Last question from, that was an interesting question that was.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:19:47
Councillor Sherwell.
Cllr Alan Sherwell - 2:19:52
Thank you. Slightly different subject, children's homes.
I absolutely understand the drive to get them within County.
It probably saves us money. It certainly keeps the children within the community that they were always part of.
I had a planning application in my ward recently, which I can talk about because it was withdrawn,
for a children's home, a private children's home.
And part of the argument that they
were using as to why we should grant that planning application
was Bucks' shortage of children's homes
for providing within Bucks, which
is a perfectly fair argument.
And I just want them to maybe wonder,
what's the process that we use for assessing
whether a children's home locally of that sort, not one as extant but one
that's being proposed, actually meets our standards.
Thank you. That's a really interesting question because it's kind of
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:21:04
multifaceted in a way because one of the first elements is about planning
permission, you know, and somebody putting in planning permission to use a home for that purpose.
But external children's homes are Ofsted regulated, so they're under the same regulations that our own children's homes are.
But we have no responsibility for those homes, if that makes sense.
You know, they're not, it's not the council's responsibility as to how they run those homes.
that's for Ofsted to regulate them and monitor that progress through their own inspections.
How do the children get allocated to those homes or arrive at them?
Cllr Alan Sherwell - 2:21:49
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:21:51
I'm just trying to understand how this comes under performance monitoring.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:21:53
Alison Munt - Service Director for Children's Social Care - 2:21:57
So in terms of how children arrive at them,
The work that we're doing is if there is a children's home that is setting up within Buckinghamshire,
we want to know about it because we want as many of our own children placed locally as they can be.
But we also have expectations and standards as to, you know, making sure that those homes are of a standard that we would want to place our children in.
So making sure that those regulations that they've already been through are of an acceptable standard.
So for example, if a home was assessed as inadequate by Ofsted,
we wouldn't want to place our children there until the work had been done
that no longer made that inadequate.
But in terms of the work that we're doing, it's about making sure that we are fully aware
of the number of homes, whether that's homes or independent foster placements that are in county.
We want to know where they are so that we can place our children there if possible.
I'm glad Councillor Sherwell brought that up in a sense. I was just trying to work out
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:23:00
where it was to do with performance and that, but again talking to officers I learnt and
then talking to the cabinet member, you know, we're trying to deliver these children's centres
but your hands are quite tied aren't they before you can get them opened, before you
could do this. So I found that quite interesting to be honest because you know we're ready
to go across the mark and there they are having to wait for above.
And also to let everybody know, I've asked that when some of these children's centres
open up, if we could visit them, I've asked that question too.
So as they arise, I'll let you know and then we'll see.
Because all the children's centres are quite diverse to be here.
They're quite different, aren't they?
Some, you know, all different needs and stuff.
You can answer that if you want to.
Sorry, Chair, it was just to clarify between children's centres and children's homes,
Errol Albert - Corporate Director for Children's Services - 2:23:59
you were referring to children's centres, which relates to children's homes, I think you were referring to.
Getting excited to see. It's been a very good meeting.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:24:10
OK, so that concludes on that section there, performance monitoring.
Is there any more questions that you'd like to ask as it comes on it?
So thank you very much for all the contributions there.
We're now down to our last piece, the work programme.
You're allowed to go if you'd like to,
or you can wait to see how we might overload
the work programme ready for you.
So, again, everybody seems to be seeing the work programme,
you can sit down and go through that,
and we will agree that, thank you very much for that.
Remember, it's flexible.
If there's something you'd like to see go on there,
please let us know.
Okay, drop an email to Chris here

10 Work Programme

and then we'll go from there.
And also, if you have any suggestions of any work groups,
again, please let Chris know
and we'd love to take that forward
because I can see we've got quite an active meeting here.
Can I just ask a quick question on it?
When we had our pre -meeting,
Cllr Larisa Townsend - 2:25:12
we talked about whether these reports were coming to us
for scrutiny post decision or not.
And I noticed there's quite a variety of verbs that we use.
So consider, receive, review, discuss.
Is that indicative of where that report is
in the decision -making process
or is it nothing to do with that at all?
These would be post decision.
Or post decision.
Mr Chris Ward - 2:25:36
Yeah, it's just a variety of the verbs.
Making it more interesting for us.
Indeed.
Yeah, very good.
But again, that was,
it's quite a heavy workload we got there,
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:25:44
but like I say, the flexibility is all good. Yes.
Thanks. Um, I know when we had that, um, pre -meet online,
we talked, um,
Cllr Hazel Arthur-Hewitt - 2:25:55
I asked if there was any possibility at all of that school places being moved up
because it's like well into 2027.
I don't know if that was considered possible or not.
I just thought I'd mention it.
Yeah, we haven't got that far yet, but I'll let you know.
Cllr Phil Gomm - 2:26:10
I know that you were keen, um, like a few of us are actually. So, um, yeah,
we crack on and let everybody know.
But, you know, everyone, my phone's open at any time.
I like to talk to you because, you know,
we are the best select committee council.
That's what I see, anyway.
Okay, so that concludes our meeting.
Are you happy with that?
We've got everything we need.
Next meeting day is the 10th of September.

11 Date of Next Meeting

Started at two o 'clock and that will all,
the agenda will come out as soon as possible.
Thank you very much to the cabinet member
for attending.
Everybody, safe journey home,
and we'll see you next time.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.