Every year we conduct a survey to find out what people think about scrutiny in Swansea and this year is no exception.

We would be really grateful if you could spend a few short minutes of your time answering a couple of questions – we promise it won’t keep you long!

We are interested in the views of anyone who lives or works in Swansea

Amongst other things we use the survey to generate ideas for things that scrutiny might look at next year.

The survey will run until the 27th April 2012. 

To complete the survey please follow this link

A major study helping to improve the lives of care leavers has been published.

The Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board has now completed its in-depth review of support to care leavers in Swansea and produced a report.

Councillors spent the last 12 months talking to various people to gain a range of views in order to understand the experience and needs of care leavers and consider the effectiveness of support from the local authority and its partners.

The Board’s report captures the main headlines from this work. Importantly, a number of recommendations are also made which the Board feel will assist in the delivery of improvements to services to care leavers.

Overall, the Board found that this was complex area of work and one that the Council has struggled with over the last few years. Personal support to care leavers is currently provided through a partnership with Barnardo’s. Whilst recognising the commitment and dedication to help care leavers the Board found some issues with the way that was working. It was clear that more effective partnership working was vital to delivering positive results for care leavers. The Board also highlighted more that could be done by the Council to help young people prepare and plan for leaving care, and the way performance and outcomes for care leavers are measured.

The report will be formally submitted to Cabinet on 5^th April. Cabinet will then have to consider the report and respond to the recommendations. This work will be followed up by the Board later this year.

The full report is available here.

 The councillors have written their draft final report for the scrutiny review of support for carers in Swansea and an extra board meeting will be held next week to agree the report and its recommendations

Overall the Board found that identifying carers was a challenge for all organisations that provided support services for carers; schools needed to be better at identifying young carers in school; health partners could do more to work in partnership to help develop and improve support services for carers; the use of carers assessments could be improved.

Once the Board agrees the draft report next week the Chair will present the report to Cabinet on 5th April and then the Cabinet Member will need to provide a response to the report and each recommendation.

The Children, Young People and Learning Overview and Scrutiny Boards review of the role of teaching assistants across primary schools in Swansea is to be discussed by the Councils Cabinet on the 8th March.  The Board found that the numbers of teaching assistants employed across schools in Swansea had increased substantially over recent years, along with our expectations of them.  Members therefore felt that it was time to take stock of this important resource and look at how the Authority and schools can plan and develop their teaching assistants into the future.  The Board spoke to teaching assistants and headteachers at three Primary schools in Swansea, Townhill, Terrace Road and Crwys.  They also completed an online survey of all Councillors, Chairs of Governors and Headteachers across Swansea.

Councillors were very impressed with the dedication, quality and knowledge of those teaching assistants that they met and felt that if this is an indication of the support staff we have in our schools it is extremely encouraging.

They did find some areas for improvement particularly in relation to the need for regular appraisals and in consistency of training. We would also like to see teaching assistants used more in the drive to improve oracy, numeracy and literacy.

Click here for a copy of that final report and the Cabinet agenda for the 8th March.

The Children, Young People and Learning Overview and Scrutiny Board has over the last year spoken to a number of school headteachers and Chairs of Governors about the educational outcomes and their schools capacity to improve.

Councillors will be meeting with two more schools on the 19th March and will look to discuss some of the following issues:

1. What the school is doing in order to continually improve learner outcomes?
2. What the school is doing in its capacity to improve in the longer term?
3. How is the school doing in the drive to improve numeracy and literacy? 

Councillors will also ask the chair of governors about the governing bodies priorities and how they are addressing them.

The Board will pen their comments and recommendations arising from this discussion to the Cabinet Member for education in the form of a chairmans letter.