Agenda item - Chair's Communications

50.1    The chair stated:

Since this committee first met in June 2015, after the May local elections, there has been a lot of activity and a number of achievements to report on. These are too numerous to provide in detail here, so I have tasked officers with a report to be brought to the June 2016 meeting of this committee to set out our progress and achievements for the year.

Companies often report bi-annually to their customers and stakeholders on progress, and I believe it is important that we also report via this committee on what progress we are making against the four strategic priorities agreed by the Administration in the area of children, young people and skills.

Our priorities, and what we would invite you to hold us to account on, is to target increasingly stretched council budgets and public resources on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community; second, we want to take this council on an improvement journey so that Ofsted grades our children’s services as at least good or outstanding by 2019; third, it is important that we continue to work collaboratively with our schools to raise attainment standards, closing the gap; and fourth, we want to end the scourge of long-term youth unemployment in the city by 2020, by boosting apprenticeships and reforming the youth offer.

•         Over the last 6 months we've seen some great individual school and residential home Ofsted inspection reports. The percentage of children attending good and outstanding schools in Brighton and Hove is higher than the national average with primary schools doing particularly well.

There are no inadequate schools in the city

• We had very good 2015 exam results with GCSE results being the most

improved in the country – now both Key Stage2 & Key Stage 4 results

are well above national average.

• The percentage of young people entering the criminal justice system is

now the second lowest in the country.

• Our Early Years offer continues to be very strong with one of the highest

percentage take up of free nursery provision in the country at 90%

• We have seen further reductions in the number of permanent and

temporary school exclusions together with improving school attendance.

• The Pride Buddies pilot project was a great success in August. Police

and other agencies praised the work of children's services staff in providing support to young people. On the same day the prize for the best float was awarded to our young people's float

• We have started a pilot in several schools across the city to better support those children & young people with emotional wellbeing and mental health issues. We hope to roll this out across all schools in time
• In October the new model of practice in social work was launched - this new way of working ensures consistent unbroken support for vulnerable children and young people
• A Children & Young People's Health and Wellbeing strategy has been developed between the local authority and the clinical commissioning group which sets out expectations on how partners will work together to achieve joint priorities
• Last term ended with a great Christmas concert involving hundreds of young people facilitated by our excellent Music Service

I would like to put on record our thanks to all those involved in delivering these achievements, including our officers, teachers and staff.

There have been some major challenges too. We inherited a budget from the previous council that quickly began to overspend, including in children’s services, until we took aggressive action to get things back on track. Similarly, our children’s services are not immune from the decimation of local government finances undertaken by this Government since 2010.

It is interesting to note that the independent Children’s Commissioner has recently warned central government to think again about cuts to children’s centres, like the kind, sadly, we are discussing here in committee today.

Despite these difficulties, we are acting with our social democratic values and fairness agenda in mind:

·         Setting a four-year budget strategy to bring more certainty to council finances

·         We are planning to protect the part of the youth service budget that commissions support from the community and voluntary sectors

·         We are in discussions to leverage the resources of other players in the city to better support young people

·         We will protect front-line services for those with special educational needs

·         Subject to the committee’s decision today, we plan to freeze council nursery fees in real terms, increasing them in line with inflation

·         And while we recognise the difficult decision to propose reducing statutory children’s centres from 12 to 7; we are planning to protect 7 centres for the lifetime of this Administration, providing parents and staff with greater stability

·         We agreed to take 10 un-accompanied migrant children from Kent; nearly a quarter of the total for relocation across the country;

·         We are putting local business in the driving seat when it comes to boosting apprenticeships and developing the new city plan

·         And there are other progressive things we are looking to introduce, like the changes to school terms dates; which potentially could save local families thousands of pounds a year;

·         Finally, I am in discussion with officers and others about how we take our corporate parenting role to the next level by introducing Individual Trust Fund accounts for our foster children when they leave care.

Of course, all these plans will be discussed and agreed by council and committee in due course.