Agenda and draft minutes

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting.

The Chair will draw attention to the emergency evacuation procedure as set out under Note 5.

The Chair drew attention to the emergency evacuation procedure.

The Panel received apologies from Councillor Pankhania.

At this point in the meeting declarations of interest are received from Members in any of the agenda items under consideration at the meeting. Members are asked to indicate:

(a) The agenda item number in which they have an interest to declare.

(b) The nature of their interest.

(c) Whether their interest is a disclosable pecuniary interest or an other interest, (as defined in Part 4.4 Appendix B of the Code of Conduct and Rules for Registration of Interests)

Any Member who needs to clarify any matters relating to the declaration of interests is recommended to seek advice from the Council’s Monitoring Officeror a member of his staff before the meeting to expedite dealing with the item during the meeting.

Kevin Burnett declared an other interest with regard to Agenda item 9 (B&NES, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board Update) as a family member works for Off The Record.

The Chair announced that having consulted with the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, the Panel would begin to think about their “policy development role” in the New Year. She said that the initial suggestion is to try exploring the national, regional and local issues regarding “Early Help”, with the aim of presenting a policy research paper with recommendations related to a future policy.

She added that, if agreed, a Working Group from the Panel would be formed, a terms of reference written and resources established to assist with this role.

Richard Franklin addressed the Panel and made a statement regarding Newton House.

He said that without the short breaks / respite care at Newton House his son and other service users would have to go into full time residential care which would result in much higher costs.

He stated that trust is a huge factor when handing over a family member into the care of somebody else and that this had initially taken a number months to establish. He said that now, when his son attends Newton House, the team very rarely need to contact us as they know his needs, medical and personal, so well. He added that this therefore allows him and his wife to relax.

He explained that his son enjoys the time away from home and that the staff take great care of him.

He said that the service provided is a total lifeline for us as a family and the thought of it being removed has already caused stress, anxiety and worry.

He informed the Panel that no other providers have been put in place.

He thanked everyone that had offered their support to him and his family since the announcement had been made.

Councillor Liz Hardman asked how much notice he had been given that the service was to cease.

Richard Franklin replied that he had received the letter around two weeks ago which stated that no further placements would be allowed from February 1^st 2025.

The Chair asked if he was aware that the decision had been paused.

Richard Franklin replied that he was aware, but said that the concern remains as to what will happen in February.

The Chair said that Councillor Alison Born, Cabinet Member for Adult Services has been invited to address the Panel on this issue at their January meeting. She thanked Richard Franklin for attending on behalf of the Panel.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson addressed the Panel on the subject of the Select Advisory Council for Religious Education - Agreed Syllabus Revision. A summary of her statement is set out below.

‘In 2021 at the same stage in negotiations for funding for revision of the syllabus I said, ‘The values, beliefs and visions which should undergird our conduct as Councillors, and in our personal lives, have to be learnt and communicated, and the new RE syllabus is crucial for doing this.’

It may surprise you to learn that the present syllabus, Awareness, Mystery, Value is highly rated and adopted by other authorities, and that a number of our schools have won WIRE awards.

But excellence does not happen by accident. Not only is a good, up to date syllabus needed, with plenty of scope for adventure and creativity, but teachers need support and training, as SACRE hopes to provide.

B&NES SACRE needs to have a new Agreed Syllabus ready to be used by schools in September 2027.

Given the current national RE landscape we will need to rethink and update our current Agreed Syllabus. This will be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63.

Councillor Lesley Mansell referred to the matter of Social Prescribing and asked if the Panel could also be shown the framework, mentioned by Kate Morton, when it is presented to the Health & Wellbeing Board, possibly in February 2025.

She also asked how the Council is enabling those that are eligible to access the Household Support Grant.

Councillor Mansell asked whether HCRG Care Group has produced an equality impact assessment (EQIA) regarding the Integrated Community-based Care contract that had been recently awarded to HCRG Care Group. She added that if one has, can it be shared with the Panel.

The Panel confirmed the minutes of the previous meeting, with these comments in mind, as a true record and they were duly signed by the Chair.

The Cabinet Member(s) will update the Panel on any relevant issues. Panel members may ask questions on the update provided.

Councillor Paul May, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services addressed the Panel, a copy of the update will be attached as an online appendix to these minutes, a summary is set out below.

Policy Development

He said that he supported the idea of forming a Working Group from the Panel to explore the national, regional and local issues regarding “Early Help” with the aim of presenting a policy research paper with recommendations to a future meeting.

He added that any work relating to this project will require a terms of reference and resources, from within existing budgets, to assist the Panel in this role.

Ofsted

The Local Authority received notification on November 27^th 2024 that they would have an ILACS Focused Visit on Care Leavers on 4/5^th December. Officers met all the submission requirements ahead of Inspectors being on site in the Civic Centre December 4^th and 5^th 2024. I am pleased to say that I had an hour interview with the Lead Inspector as Lead Member on 2/12/2024. I attended the welcome and presentation on 4/12/2024 and the feedback session on December 5th 2024.The report will be available in January 2025 and I will share once received.

HMIP

I updated at the last CAHW that the Youth Justice Service were notified of their inspection. Council officers and partners contributed to the on-site visit of the inspection team. I attended the feedback session and heard some positive feedback. A full report will be available in February 2025 and I will share with the Panel.

With regards to both inspections, I would ask the Panel to register their formal thanks and well done for staff, managers and administrators for their dedicated commitment for these inspections. Both sets of inspectors fed back that we were so well organised and so open and helpful to their teams.

I expect in due course to provide the feedback reports and any action plans back to the Panel.

The Chair said that she echoed his comments on behalf of the Panel.

Councillor Liz Hardman referred to the subject of Free School Meals Auto Enrolment and asked who would be informing the schools of this change.

Councillor May replied that the SEND / AP Advice Service would be used to inform schools about this proposal.

The Director of Education & Safeguarding added that he had already taken steps to inform the Chief Executive Officers and Academy Heads that this work is underway. He said that this was a positive step to take and that further communications regarding it were due to take place later in the week.

Councillor Paul Crossley commented that he was pleased with the success shown by the West of England Music and Arts (WEMA). He asked if within a future update the areas of Keynsham and the Chew Valley could be addressed. He also asked if the project had any future goals / aspirations.

The Director of Education & Safeguarding replied that they are looking to build on the success that has  ...  view the full minutes text for item 65.

The Panel will receive an update from the B&NES, Swindon & Wiltshire Integrated Care Board (BSW ICB) on current issues.

Laura Ambler, Director of Place for Bath and North East Somerset, BSW ICB addressed the Panel and highlighted the following areas from within the update.

Sulis Elective Orthopaedic Centre

Sulis Hospital is a partner of the Royal United Hospital Bath. The hospital is currently building the Sulis Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SEOC) on its site just outside of Bath, and it is now entering the final build stages with the team now readying the new wing for a December launch.

The new SEOC wing will create capacity for 3,750 non-emergency, orthopaedic operations for NHS patients across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, as well as the wider South West region each year, allowing people to have the surgery they need. NHS patients will see reduced waiting times and waiting lists with increased capacity to offset delays.

A new travel initiative will encourage healthy and sustainable travel habits that benefit everyone. The initiative includes making e-bikes available to all staff for long-term hire, with charging available at Sulis Hospital. There will also be charging points for electric vehicles, a comprehensive overview of bus travel, including WESTlink bus routes, and an extension of the Sulis Hospital car sharing scheme.

The SEOC is also bringing around 100 new jobs to the area, both clinical and non-clinical. This recruitment is in progress and going well. Following a successful open day in July, which attracted more than 110 visitors, Sulis received approximately 700 expressions of interest for all role types. Throughout November and December, Sulis will be inducting more 30 new starters.

Vaccinations

Since the launch of this winter’s campaign to protect people against flu, Covid-19 and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), more than 450,000 vaccinations have been delivered to eligible people living locally.

Covid-19 jabs were rolled out to those eligible on 3 October, while flu jabs have been available for pregnant women and children aged between two and three- years-old since 1 September.

In BSW, vaccinations have been delivered in walk-in clinics, GP surgeries, pharmacies and community settings, with the initial phase focussing on reaching those unable to leave their home without assistance, such as housebound patients and care home staff and residents.

Pharmacy provision in Bath and North East Somerset

Data from the most recent Community Pharmacy Workforce Survey is now available and provides a snapshot of staffing inside community pharmacies as of autumn 2023.

As it stands, this data is currently the only source of metrics on the community pharmacy workforce. The ICB is in the process of analysing the data, while simultaneously reviewing the impacts of local initiatives to tackle the workforce challenges that have been seen in the region.

Some of the initial results are:

• The number of full-time equivalent pharmacists in BSW has increased from 212 in 2022 to 222 in 2023

• The ICB has increased the number of trainee pharmacists from six in 2022 to 20 in 2023

• The pharmacist vacancy rate in BSW has fallen from 28 per cent in 2022 to 22  ...  view the full minutes text for item 66.

The Children’s Health and Wellbeing Panel review the annual report so as to ensure members are appraised on the care provided to children for whom the Local Authority are responsible.

The Head of Service for Children's Quality Assurance and Safeguarding began by acknowledging that there had been some real challenges within the service between 2023 and 2024.

She said that she was really passionate about our children in care and making sure that they have a really good quality IRO service and that they are able to build really safe and secure relationships with their IRO. 

She wished to acknowledge that during this period there was the sudden death of one of our children in care who was 17, approaching 18 years old. She added that there was a Child Safeguarding Practice Review report done as a result of the child's death.

She stated that there were two key, core areas for the IRO service to think about and that was about how we escalate and challenge some of our colleagues across Health, Education and Children's Social Care when an Independent Reviewing Officer isn't satisfied that the areas of a child's care planning is progressing adequately that they are following a robust escalation process.

She explained that within the report there is reference to a Dispute Resolution Protocol which was a recommendation of the IRO handbook which has not been updated since 2010 and that she thought many IRO managers and the IRO themselves would advocate that that does need to be looked at in more detail and revised.

She said that there was a real challenge in the IRO service because your remit is to ensure that care planning for children in care is progressing, but equally you have to take on board some of the challenges that we may face within services. She added that nationally they were seeing significant changes in terms of being able to access services from the Social Work practice.

She said that one of the areas that they have reflected upon as a service is what are the barriers to IROs in making formal escalations and challenges and then trying to find that balance around working with colleagues in a respectful and courteous way whilst also championing for our children in care and what they need.

She stated that they had relaunched the Dispute Resolution Protocol in September to be able to generate a greater sense of what the themes and challenges were for our children in care that IROs were identifying. She added that they were then looking with colleagues within Children's Social Care about how we can take some of those themes forward, learn from them and have strengthened our reporting and how we collect that data.

She informed the Panel that there were 359 Children in the service at the end of 2023 / 2024 which was quite a significant number of children for a service that has only 6.4 full-time equivalent members of staff. She said that children can be placed locally within B&NES, but could also live in other areas of the country, such as London and Birmingham for example.

She explained that this presents a significant  ...  view the full minutes text for item 67.

This report provides the Panel with an overview of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) in B&NES.

The Head of SEND introduced the report to the Panel. She explained that the numbers of Education Health and Care Plans continue to rise both nationally and in B&NES and that we have 4.9% against a national average of 4.8%.

She stated that B&NES receives around 500 applications for plans every year and that the number of plans issued was quite stable, at around 360 this year which was the same as in 2023 and 2022.

She said that the major challenge for the service is to keep up with the increasing number, those extra every year, on top of the ones we had before and the challenges around sufficiency, in particular around our special schools, our resource bases and our resources within our mainstream schools.

She addressed the issue of timeliness, the time it takes to get a plan to go through the process and said that she had been working with the local Parent & Carer Forum quite closely and listening to their views on this.

She explained that the data for September 2023 showed that we were at around  35% on time and that if we look at the requests that have come in for this calendar year we are at 39% on time which is an average of around about 24 weeks to issue instead of the 20 weeks.

She added that the parents and carers tell us that it is really the quality of the plan that is important and the quality of communication. She said that there were things that we could do within the service to improve that number, such as issuing plans before we have had all the reports back and then add them into the plan afterwards, then it looks like you have done it on time. She said but actually our parents and carers are telling us they don't really want us to do that they want a final high-quality plan rather than multiple different issuances of the same plan just for the sake of a 20 week timescale.

She said that if they could get all plans complete in 22 weeks then she would be happy with that.

She informed the Panel that she would like to address the matter of SEND Appeals, when a family appeal to a tribunal. She said that tribunal is the only recourse for the Local Authority and families when there is a disagreement between professionals around what is best to go into the plan, which school is correct for the child or young person or what provision is listed for them.

She explained that this is provided to us in the code of practice and that we would never choose to go to tribunal lightly, it would be because we have been unable to resolve the matter at the mediation stage.

She said that in 2024 we have had 81 mediation requests come through so far and 49% of those have been resolved prior to needing to go to a tribunal. She  ...  view the full minutes text for item 68.

This report presents the latest workplan for the Panel. Any suggestions for further items or amendments to the current programme will be logged and scheduled in consultation with the Panel’s Chair and supporting officers.

The Chair introduced this item to the Panel and the following topics were raised as potential future agenda items.

·  Vaccination Programme

·  School Streets Update (Councillor Wait)

·  Music Service

·  Elective Home Education

·  Budget Proposals 2025/26

·  RUH Building Plan