Agenda item

The Senior Commissioning Manager for Preventative Services and the Early Years & Extended Services Manager will give a verbal update to the Panel regarding this item.

The Director for Children & Young People, Strategy & Commissioning gave the Panel an update on this item, a summary is set out below.

Local Authority Children’s Centres

• The formal staff consultation has now taken place and interviews held for permanent staff affected.  There are a number of fixed term staff in Children’s Centres (as part of the prudent planning ahead for service redesign) who will now have the opportunity to be considered for permanent appointments.  These interviews will take place over February to ensure service delivery is as unaffected as possible. A further small number of fixed term posts in Children’s Centres are being created to manage the demand for the traded services.  Existing staff at risk will have the first opportunity to go for these jobs.
• The full implementation of the new structure takes place on 1^st June.
• There have been a minimal number of redundancies and there will be a further small number of fixed term staff who will not have their contracts extended in Children’s Centres.
• The 2 Children’s Centre Service Managers are pursuing the development of the business plan for the staff mutual and are being supported in this by an initiative in the Cabinet Office. 

First Steps

• First Steps have been reshaping the service over the last 18 months in preparation for the budget reduction and new model of service delivery. This includes moving towards running the nurseries as social enterprises.
• First Steps and the B&NES service are working closely to develop a joint vision and shared values for the Children Centre Service.

Early Years Foundation Stage Team

·  This team has not replaced staff who have left over the last 18 months and therefore only have some minor adjustments to be made to current staff’s working hours to fully implement their new model.  They have begun trading ‘at the margins’ with the Early Years Sector and Schools.

Parent Support Advisers

·  Staff are on fixed term contracts.  Although Council funding ends at the end of May 2015, the service manager has made successful bids to schools and Behaviour & Attendance Panels which is looking promising for us being able to keep the small team working across the authority. This is subject to confirmation from schools who are just receiving their budgets for the year ahead.

Community Play and Specialist Family Support Services

·  A review of the commissioned Specialist Family Support Service and two Community Play Services is underway with the engagement of stakeholders including the current service providers. A new integrated model of service delivery is being developed which aligns closely with Connecting Families and is based on a Think Family approach.

·  A further update will be brought to panel when the proposed model is firmed up.

Commissioned Health-Related Services

• B&NES Early Years and Children’s Centre funding has previously been used to support some health and public health-related services for young children such as breast feeding and infant mental health. This is no longer sustainable and discussions have been taking place with health/public health commissioners and service providers to plan how the services will be remodelled to continue to meet the needs of young children and their families within the available health/public health funding. For instance it is a requirement of the national Health Visitor service to deliver targeted breast feeding support and meet UNICEF standards.

Councillor Liz Hardman said that she was pleased to see that the redundancy figures were low. She asked if it was true that the staff mutual would be ready to commence in April 2015 and whether the Children’s Centres could apply for charitable status.

The Director for Children & Young People, Strategy & Commissioning replied that he would look into the current process as regard to gaining a charitable status. He added that the staff mutual was still some way off and that a further Cabinet decision was required.

The Strategic Director for People and Communities added that a further Cabinet decision would likely be required in September 2015 and that a start date of April 2017 was probable. He added that test cases were currently taking place to enable the opportunity for services such as a crèche and baby massage to be provided in the future.

On behalf of the Panel the Chair thanked them for the update.