Agenda item

(a)          That the Committee endorsed the work to safely reduce the numbers of children in need of care through the provision of intensive targeted MST support for families.

(b)          That the Committee supported the establishment of a local authority Children’s Residential Care as part of an approach to rebalance care provision for children, with a focus on ensuring an affordable and sufficient range of local high quality placements.

The report was presented by the Chief Officer (Social Services) and Deputy Leader of the Council (Partnerships) and Cabinet Member for Social Services and Senior Manager (Children and Workforce). The report included an update on the multi-agency service to provide intensive therapeutic support to young people.  He congratulated the North East Wales Multisystemic Therapy Team (MST)  who had received an award for “Whatever it takes” which went above and beyond what was recognised throughout the MST Programme and was given to individuals within the MST community who had demonstrated outstanding and meritorious service.   He explained that this team was planned, initiated, delivered and succeeded throughout the pandemic from scratch.

            The Senior Manager introduced the report which provided an overview of the team’s partnership approach and that North Wales had secured WG funding to look at creating partnership projects to transform the way Children’s Services worked.   The money was regional but came in via a local Health Board footprint for Wrexham, Flintshire and BCUHB.   The project had just received an interim evaluation from Oxford Brooks University in terms of an evidence base about this service. What had shone through was the positive partnership working with Education, Social Services and Schools to provide intensive support for children and families who were on the edge of care.  This enabled intensive, preventative support to avoid the need for children to become looked after and ensured that they could safely remain with their families. 

 The presentation included detailed information on:-

• Baseline Assessment - What works? - Common features - Objectives
• Why MST?  - About MST - MST Therapist aim to:
• Implementation
• Support to date
• Evaluation  - Evaluation Findings
• Key Findings
• Phase 2

            The Chair found this so refreshing in particular the staff who were working 24/7 and asked the Senior Manager to take back the committee’s praise to them for their work stepping in to support the parents.

            Councillor Mackie commented that if these families were supported to achieve real change as regards parenting this would hopefully filter through into the next generation and so on which was so important.   He was very pleased to note 1.08 regarding the team “Whatever it takes” which was very positive.

            He referred to page 34 the Analysis the last paragraph on Family History and asked if the authority had got it right in the past when working with these families as regards interventions and would moving to this new system break the cycle. 

             In response the Senior Manager explained that the behaviour of some of the families they were working was entrenched and generational and that with the child protection work it focused the mind of families to bring around change.  Once the children came off the Child Protection Register working with Social Services became voluntary and could not be enforced.  This service would provide a more therapeutic model from CAMHS colleagues to address the underlying issues for the parents and children and show how they could achieve change themselves.  He said issues such as substance misuse and low mental health required time to work through and previously social workers were not able to devote that amount of time because of workload.  This service brought all of the expertise together looking at the whole family to ensure sustainable change.  He referred to the strong Early Years, Flying Start services supporting parents from 0 – 7 years but when the teenage years were reached the offer was not as good as it should be and that this project highlighted where the authority wanted to go with our services and offer for families.

            The Chair referred to Where We Go Next in the report and suggested that a service similar to Mockingbird providing an all family environment where they could go when they needed help be considered.

            Councillor Cunningham referred to page 40 in the report “Out of Hours Support 24/7” which proved that the excellent service was working and said he did not think the authority got it wrong in the past it just maybe did not work for them.

            The Chair felt the authority was learning all the time and that this could work but was worried about the number of people that were turned away because the staff or capacity was not available for everyone. 

            The Senior Manager referred to the Council’s ambition on delivery of in house residential care which was discussed at the council seminar.  As we moved forward with residential care it was realised that it was not about the building it was the care, support, assessment and therapy that happened in that building that was important. 

The MST Fit model was being used so when residential care was expanded there would be an MST Fit team in place to work with those children.  He added that the aim was where it was safe and appropriate to do so, children would return home or move onto foster care and that Flintshire’s approach to Out of County was building on the learning through MST and how we brought those initiatives together.  

            The Chief Officer commented that the national media was full of stores on Children’s Services and challenges about the high numbers of looked after children in Wales compared to other parts of the UK.  He added that the service was continually learning and MST had shown how to refresh and improve further the spectrum of services.  There were so many positive initiatives in Flintshire around Children’s Service which were encouraging including Mockingbird, MST, Residential Care wing, workforce approaches and Early Help Hub.  He paid tribute to Craig, Jenny Frost and Peter Robson for taking forward the service in a very challenging period for all public services over the last 18 months.

            Councillor Mackie said he was very impressed with the number of initiatives which were brought to the Social & Heath Care Committee which made his job of scrutiny very difficult because he was seeing good projects coming forward which were intended to have positive affect on everything that was going on. 

The recommendations, outlined within the report, were moved and seconded by Paul Cunningham and Jean Davies.

RESOLVED:

(a)          That the Committee endorsed the work to safely reduce the numbers of children in need of care through the provision of intensive targeted MST support for families.

(b)          That the Committee supported the establishment of a local authority Children’s Residential Care as part of an approach to rebalance care provision for children, with a focus on ensuring an affordable and sufficient range of local high quality placements.