Swansea Scrutiny

The Corporate Parenting Task & Finish Group (set up by the Child & Family Servicse Overview & Scrutiny Board) met yesterday . 

The group discussed the results of the corporate parenting surevy that was sent to all councillors, it looked at how other local authority scrutiny boards have delved into the subject of corporate parenting & it looked at practical examples gleaned from elsewhere of how councillors can be better corporate parents.

Overall it seems that councillors know what corporate parenting is but are not quite sure what this means in practice.

The group agreed that it had been hard to find practical examples of what councillors can do as corporate parents in the evidence it had gathered.

The group came to the conclusion that different types of councillors (Cabinet , Scrutiny, councillors who are governors etc) will have different roles in relation to corporate parenting.

The group still has evidence to collect from the Corporate Parenting Forum, social workers, foster parents, care leavers and looked after children before it can start to think about drawing together its conclusions and recommendations.  The group meets weekly and hopes to conclude this piece of work in the early Autumn.

The Environment & Communities Task & Finish group met with officers from waste management last week to discuss the scope of the review on recycling, waste minimisation and composting.  This is such an important area of work for the Council as landfill taxes are increasing and the Welsh Assembly Government has increased the target for Councils to recycle 70% of their waste by 2025.  This is a challenging target and one which the Board felt too important not to be involved in.

The Environment & Communities Overview & Scrutiny Board is due to meet on Tuesday 17th August to finalise and agree the scope of the review.

You might have noticed that Overview & Scrutiny in Swansea has changed a bit over the last few months.

We have new meetings, new tools and new ways of doing things – these changes were fueled by the work of the Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board and by our Improvement Programme. 

Now that all of the new boards and committees have met I though it would be a good moment just to summarise all these changes.  Anyway, here is a presentation I made to most of the boards and committees outlining the new changes and reasons for them (apologies for those councillors who saw it several times – they could probably recite it now!):

Councillors in the different meetings all have their own distinctive takes on the changes – some are majoring on some aspects and some on others.  It will be really interesting to see what works well and to see what can be learnt across the the different overview & scrutiny themes.  In January the Overview & Scrutiny Business Committee will be reviewing how the changes have worked so we will get a good idea then – ultimately they will want to know if there has been improved decision making and improved performance.

Finally, you will see the presentation ends with a Scrutiny Haiku – I’m hoping this particular branch of this noble Japaanese art form will catch on although I appreciate it may be a little, er, specialised.  Here it is again anyway:

Ask the right questions

Investigate and propose

Ways we can improve

Not the worst summary of what overview and scrutiny is in my opinion (although possibly the worst Haiku).

Yesterday the Children, Young People and Learning Overview & Scrutiny Board met and looked at the Team Around the Child Project.  Hilary Davies project manager, Eirion Davies the TAC co-ordinator and Rachael Webb, Headteacher at Hafod Primary School came along to explain progress made.

TAC is an approach to meeting the needs of vulnerable children by getting all the relevant people working together to find the best solutions.  The Children’s Development Workforce Council define TAC (everyone refers to ‘Team Around the Child’ as ‘TAC’) in this way:

The TAC is a model of multi-agency service provision. The TAC brings together a range of different practitioners from across the children and young people’s workforce to support an individual child or young person and their family. The members of the TAC develop and deliver a package of solution-focused support to meet the needs identified through the common assessment.

The model does not imply a multidisciplinary team that is located together or who work together all the time; rather, it suggests a group of practitioners working together as needed to help a particular child or young person.

The presentation (below) gave information on how the project is progressing and some examples of the different types of team being used.

The Board were supportive of the project and were keen to see it rolled out more widely across Swansea.  In fact they have already highlighted the importance and value of the TAC approach in their Review of Integrated Service Provison for Children & Young People.

One issue they raised was that of training as not all schools that have been offered the TAC training have taken it up.

The Board will continue to monitor progress with this very important initiative are are keen to see that it continues to make a difference to the lives of children in Swansea.

It is that time of year again; Our Ambition 7 – Swansea’s Annual Community Strategy Event will be taking place on the 30^th September at 9 – 12:30 at the Liberty Stadium.

The event will be an informal and interactive opportunity for policy makers and practitioners from the public, business, voluntary and community sectors to:

•  Contribute to the annual monitoring process of the Community Strategy
• Learn about the progress of key plans and partnerships
• Network and share ideas

Attendees are welcome to bring along displays and share information about their work.

If you would like to attend this event and be notified when registration opens then please let us know at overviewandscrutiny@swansea.gov.uk . If you know of anyone else who would like to attend please forward the details on to them. Registration details will be sent out at the beginning of September.

Remember – whilst the event is open to all, places will be limited and offered on a first come first served basis.

In the mean time details of Swansea’s Community Strategy 2010-2014 can be found at www.swansea.gov.uk/ambition along with information about previous Our Ambition events.

We look forward to seeing you in September.