Quality Assurance - Children’s Social Care and Early Help Overview

Context

Bradford is a large authority with nearly 150,000 young people under the age of 19. Our rate for children in care is lower than many of our neighbouring authorities, at 64 per 10,000 (the national average is 61; Leeds has 78 and Manchester 108), but the size of our population means that we usually have between 850 and 950 Looked After Children, with around 500children on Child Protection Plans and 1200 Children in Need.

Bradford is a vibrant and diverse city, but we also have significant challenges. A quarter of Bradford’s children live in homes classified as being in poverty, we have large numbers of families coming into our city including many from eastern Europe, and our rate of adult unemployment is high. We also have high numbers of disabled children and adults on incapacity benefits.

Our vision

Our vision for Bradford is to keep children and young people safe and get the best possible services and outcomes with them and for them. Our quality assurance framework provides the basis for monitoring and evaluating our services to make sure that this happens.

Our aim is to work with families to support them to care for and protect their children through early help. When they do need more formal help, we want them to be supported by a system that has their needs at the heart of it and provides the right amount of intervention that is needed to keep them safe. We will ensure that we listen to their wishes and feelings and take into account their preferred choices about what needs to happen. When children do need to become Looked After we want to make sure that, wherever possible, children are in families and remain close to us in Bradford. Where this isn’t possible we want to make sure that we have the best possible packages of support and that the providers we work with share our vision and standards for Bradford’s children. We are implementing a Signs of Safety approach to how we work at every level, always looking for strength based approaches and ensuring clarity in how we communicate with each other, with partners and most importantly with children and families. This approach means that this framework must also focus on the quality of relationships – between workers, parents/carers and children, workers across agencies and workers and their managers.

It also means seeking out and appreciating good practice and taking concrete and specific action on areas of concern. We will hold our first annual Local Signs of Safety Gathering in May 2017.

Our Quality Assurance arrangements set out how we make sure that we are delivering our vision.

Quality Assurance Principles

Quality Assurance in Bradford, like safeguarding, is everyone’s responsibility. All practitioners, managers and staff who support delivery are tasked with ensuring that they deliver high quality services every time; that they reflect on their work in supervision and that they use team meetings and other forums to analyse and develop practice. We also have a number of strands in place to ensure that as a department we check, reflect on, assure and develop our services.

Quality Assurance Approach

Quality assurance arrangements within Bradford are a dynamic set of activities and actions, with a governance structure that includes scrutiny and interest at both office and political levels. We have a continuous focus on improving services for the children who we support,

and our five key questions give us the framework for challenge, action, assurance and improvement.

  1. What are our priorities?
  2. How much do we do and in what context?
  3. How well do we do things?
  4. What have we learned?
  5. Is anyone better off as a result?

These fit together into our Quality Assurance Framework.

Quality Assurance Activity & meaningful measure focused on quality of assessments, plans & relationships

  1. Data: A range of numerical indicators of performance and activity is gathered and relevant officers provide analysis and interpretation of the figures. In addition to other operational management purposes, a dataset is reported routinely to the Children’s Social carePerformance Group (CSCPG) where it is considered and conclusions are drawn and actions agreed and monitored.
  1. Regular monthly case file audit is undertaken by all managers, coordinated by a quality assurance social worker with the findings summarised into a key messages and issues statement which is discussed at the CSCPGand circulated to all teams.Frontline workers are expected to be directly involved in audits of their work. These actions are picked up by the CSCPG and form part of the action and monitoring framework. The audit process involves a combination of sample and themed audits looking at specific areas that emerge that we need to be assured about. This includes themes from JTAI, and from learning from SCRs, LLRs and Challenge panels. These highlight good practice and will also be used to demonstrate Signs of safety, for example, use of case mapping, clear Danger Statements & safety plans.
  1. Supervision, training & appraisal of Staff: Supervision plays a key role in reviewing and assuring quality. Supervision enables review and reflection on cases by the worker and their manager, a chance to identify challenges, patterns and concerns and to work at an individual client and worker level to address these. It also offers the opportunity to recognise good and excellent practice and to celebrate success. Observation of practice enables managers to assure the quality of the interactions and relationships between social workers, children and families. Under Signs of safety this will also involve Groups Supervisions and appreciative questioning.
  1. Multi Agency Appreciation & Challenge Panels are run by the Bradford Safeguarding Children’s Board (BSCB): The Safeguarding Board runs an annual programme ofpanel activity, which takes a thematic approach to looking in depth at individual cases from a multi-agency (social care, police, health) perspective and using peer challenge to identify areas for improvement. These findings are reported to the Board and in social care are discussed and actioned by the CSCPG
  1. Local Learning Reviews and SCRs: BSCB leads local learning reviews and commission Serious Case Reviews. The action plans for these are monitored through the SCR sub group of the BSCB. The actions relating to social care are actioned through the Social Care SLT and monitored through the CCSPG.
  1. IRO Challenge: Our IRO team is part of the Performance, Commissioning and PartnershipsService, and are encouraged to make challenge within the review process, but also as a team to discuss common areas of concern.Areas of good practice are also shared. This is fed back to the CSCPG on a quarterly basis through a formal report.
  1. User feedback: The IROs also receive feedback from Looked After Children through the Viewpoint system which provides a rich picture of their wishes and feelings. Aggregated reports from this system are reported to the CSCPG, which is planning to develop or institute methods of receiving comments and opinions from service users (especially children and families not currently covered by LAC or CP processes). We will also complete a baseline Signs of safety Parent’s Survey which we will track over time. Views of young people and parents have strongly shaped our early help offer.
  1. Children in Care Council: the Children in Care Council have a role in ensuring that the voices of children in care are heard by council officers and elected members and that this is used to inform the development of services.
  1. Feedback from CP Chairs: Our CP Coordinators are part of the Performance, Commissioning and Partnerships Service and as a team discuss common areas of good practice, concern and challenge. This is fed back to the CSCPGon a quarterly basis.
  1. Learning from Complaints and Compliments: Bradford Social Care welcomes comments, complaints and compliments from Service users and is committed to using feedback received to improve the quality of our services. A summary of complaints made and our responses to them will be considered quarterly by the CCSPG.
  1. External inspections of children’s services provision – including residential units – by Ofsted: These provide an analysis of strengths and weakness in relation to early help and children’s social care services and will include specific recommendations for improvement. These are reviewed within the work plan of the CSCPG which ensures that learning is understood across the service.
  1. Political challenge and scrutiny: safeguarding and social care report regularly to both Children’s and Corporate Scrutiny Committees providing the opportunity for political challenge and public scrutiny of the work and outcomes. Key issues of interest, for example CSE are allocated significant time within the scrutiny programme, as are routine issues of workforce and outcomes for vulnerable children within the District.
  1. Corporate Parenting Panel: One of the roles of the Corporate Parenting Panel is to assure the work done across the Authority with Looked After Children, to challenge and develop practice and to scrutinise outcomes.
  1. Fostering and adoption panels: these have an formal and legal role within fostering and adoption, but their role is also important to the quality assurance of placements for children. These panels report annually to the CSCPG on successes, concerns and challenges linked to finding and approving carers.

Quality assurance governance

Quality Assurance in Bradford’s Children’s Social Care Service is monitored through the CSCPG. This group is chaired by the Deputy Director for Social Care and is attended by senior managers from Social Care and performance staff. Its terms of reference include theresponsibility for overseeing the QA framework and for reviewing against the five key questions above. This is linked to a monthly assurance meeting with the Leader, CEO, Strategic Director for Children’s Services, and the Deputy Director for Social Care; Monthly meetings between the Police and the SD for Children ; a quarterly performance clinic at Children’s DMT; the BSCB, Corporate parenting Panel and the Corporate Safeguarding Group.

These also feed into workforce planning, team plans, training programmes and supervisions/appraisals. For example, we have Practice Leads and champions for P.A.C.E and Signs of Safety.

The Children’s Social Care Performance Group (CSCPG)

The CSCPG is responsible for ensuring that the Quality Assurance framework activities are in place and are driving improvement within the service. The meeting is chaired by the Deputy Director for Social Care and is attended by all Service Managers and Team Managers by invitation. It also includes the BSCB Manager, the AD for Performance, Commissioning and Partnerships and the OCX Children’s performance lead.

CSCPGensures quality through a process of:

Information storage

All documentation and data relating to Quality Assurance within Bradford’s Children’s Social Care Services and the activities which comprise that approach are stored at:

K:\Children's Department Shared Area\Childrens Quality Assurance

  1. What are our priorities?

The priorities for our work with children in Bradford are set out in the partnerships “Children and Young People’s Plan” and informed by our active participation in the regional ADCS self-evaluation process. Bradford has always seen the value of this exercise, undertaken it locally and supported it regionally. This is an annual process undertaken by staff from across the Department, led by the AD for Performance, Partnership and Commissioning. It uses the data we have about Bradford alongside regional comparator statistics, reviews our progress against the previous year’s priorities and identifies areas for improvement as well as strengths. This is then reviewed by the Social CareManagement Team and Department of Children’s Services DMT before beingsigned off by the Strategic Director for Children’s Services.

The CSCPGis then responsible for ensuring that the elements related to social care are prioritised, actioned and monitored throughout the year.

This sets the headline priorities for the year, but priorities need to be under constant review, so there are a number of other activities that happen throughout the year, all reporting into the CSCPG, that help us to review and if necessary add to our priorities for action. This includes self-evaluation activity done as part of our multi-agency inspection preparation (focused around the JTAI Deep Dive themes), outcomes of audits, challenge panels and service reviews.

Our services also set out the standards and qualities that users can expect of them. Quality assurance activities will check compliance and adherence to these standards. For example, each service is expected to adopt and aim to meet the Working Together 2015definition of a high quality assessment, which are that they:

  • are child centred. Where there is a conflict of interest, decisions should be made in the child’s best interests;
  • are rooted in child development and informed by evidence;
  • are focused on action and outcomes for children;
  • are holistic in approach, addressing the child’s needs within their family and wider community;
  • ensure equality of opportunity;
  • involve children and families;
  • build on strengths as well as identifying difficulties;
  • are integrated in approach;
  • are a continuing process not an event;
  • lead to action, including the provision and review of services; and
  • are transparent and open to challenge.

Our practice standards are set out in full in the guidance document that is attached as an appendix to this framework.

  1. How much do we do and in what context?

We have a schedule of data reporting that tells us what work is being done, and where the pressures are. This schedule includes weekly reporting of headlines around the number of children in the system; monthly reports to the CSCPG and a significant quarterly dataset that is reviewed by the CSCPG and by DMT. This data is held on a Share Point Site that all social care managers have access to.

The list of reports is in the Quality Assurance data framework document.

Key messages are agreed by the CSCPG at the quarterly review and are given to teams as a discussion brief.

  1. How well do we do things?

This element of the framework is underpinned by a number of activities and the results of various processes, which will provide us with measures of – and commentaries on – the following:

  • quality of assessment (as outlined above)
  • identification of risk expressed through clear Danger Statements and Safety Plans
  • quality of planning and review
  • quality of intervention which show children and family’s progress, for example, through Outcome Star/scale questions
  • evidence of child or young person’s views being heard and acted upon
  • evidence of diversity needs being considered and addressed
  • effectiveness of coordination and clarity on Safety Plans between agencies and quality of joint working
  • evidence of management oversight & good quality supervision
  • evidence of impact/improved outcomes, for example, children’s use of Three Houses
  • adherence to practice standards
  1. What have we learned?

Reflective learning and improvement is built into our quality assurance cycle. The annual training plans for social care and for the Safeguarding Board provide a range of learning opportunities based on the needs of the partnership. In addition, the learning and development sub group of the BSCB picks up learning from SCRs, case file audit and challenge panels and ensures that the learning offer reflects the areas identified. Examples of this include Resistant Families training after the Hamza Khan SCR and enhanced CSE training.

  1. Is anyone better off as a result?

Quality must relate to service-user experience and outcomes. Therefore, this area of the framework ensures that we monitor the impact of our services and also get feedback from our service users, partners and staff. Within this area of the framework we look at:

  1. Outcome data such as school attendance and achievement, numbers of care leavers in university, LAC GCSE outcomes and children safely returned home
  2. Feedback from young people around services and reviews using Viewpoint and through working closely with the Children in Care Council. Parent/carer surveys and consultations.
  3. Feedback from our partners through challenge panels
  4. Staff feedback through surveys, appraisal and team meetings

These are monitored through the performance group. All reports must ultimately set out explicitly what the impact is, especially for children and their families.

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170104 : QA Summary; Jenny Cryer; Assistant Director; Performance, Commissioning and Partnerships, Children's Services