Issue - meetings

That the report be noted

            The Chief Officer (Education & Youth) presented the report andreferred to the recent Estyn Inspection of the Local Government Services.  As part of this process Flintshire presented a self-evaluation of our education services and a separate self-evaluation on how we undertake our responsibilities for safeguarding.  That report was attached and Estyn would be publishing their report on the 9^th August.  The Chief Officer wanted to re-assure Members that there were robust procedures in place for delivering safeguarding. She provided information on the reports received by Committee and the training programme and policies for schools.  Social Services in Conwy had reviewed our Self Evaluation Policy as an extra pair of eyes and we were pleased with the feedback received that it met all the statutory requirements.

The Chair referred to non-attenders saying it was the responsibility of Flintshire to monitor this and asked if someone had concerns could you confirm the pathway to enable this to be flagged up with schools and social services.  In response the Chief Officer (Education & Youth) confirmed that attendance was an integral part of the school and if a child failed to attend then the school should take responsibility to find out why.  The Education Welfare Service provided support to schools and each school had an Education Welfare Officer who worked with them checking the registers and may already be aware of that child.  Schools should contact the parents and have a first day notification policy in place where the parents should let the school know if that child would not be in school.  Through the schools and officers supporting them if they had concerns they would automatically be raised with Children’s Services.

Councillors Gladys Healey asked what had been put in place for mental health in schools and how many child psychologists there were in Flintshire.  In response the Senior Manager (Inclusion and Progression) reported on the steering group which overseas mental health and had a wide range of partners and representations from CAMHS.  Every secondary school had a designated CAMHS officer to meet and provide advice on individual pupils.  A Self Harm Prevention package was put in place to help teaching Staff to support pupils at crisis point and direct them to a contact at CAMHS.  She provided information on the 5 ways to well-being programme and explained how this was being rolled out across Flintshire.   She said with regard to Educational Psychologist we have 5.5 full time equivalent child psychologist.  These were not clinical psychologists as that support would be provided by the Health Board.

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.