Agenda item

This paper sets out how Children’s services engages, consults and coproduces with children, young people and families to ensure the services we deliver are responsive to need.

Jacqui McShannon (Executive Director of People) highlighted that H&F children, young people and families were seen, heard and valued, their participation in everyday, honest and interactive conversation with staff had influenced frontline practices and led to the development of strategic policies.  For example, the Summer in the City programme was extensively co-produced with lots of different stakeholders, and the partnership approach had enabled the Council to make continuous improvement.  

Sarah Sanderson (Operational Director, Children and Young People Services) remarked that staff across Children’s Services were passionate about engaging with the H&F children, young people and families. For example, the series of workshops delivered by the Corporate Parenting Board for children looked after and care experienced young people had offered them the opportunity to meet directly with Board members and influence the Council’s broader offers.  The improved joint housing protocol resulted from their feedback on independent living arrangements and the quality assurance provided by the young inspectors was a case in point. The engagement of foster carers/parents for senior leaders and members to hear the support they needed had influenced the foster recruitment approach and the development of services for foster carers/parents.

Peter Haylock (Operational Director for Education and SEND, Children's Services) referred to the meetings in the past few working days when different versions of co-production had happened. At the meeting with key stakeholders and groups reviewing mental health services within education and SEND, a lot of really good questions and information were shared resulting in a clear set of actions to be taken forward.   He had also met with the Youth Council reviewing their priorities to be presented at a meeting of Full Council later.  For example, how the priorities were delivered while holding the officers to account, how the Youth Hub would sit alongside the local and SEND offers under the Family Hubs.

Jacqui McShannon highlighted that some co-production had led to concrete and tangible outcomes, such as the Care Leavers’ Hub which was designed by young people, the evolving Transitions Team, the developments in foster care using different models, the involvement of young people at interview panels for key posts, the early intervention strategy, the shaping of Family Hubs by Family Voices in designing the delivery of services, the wonderful sets of podcast recently launched by the Youth Council and so on.  She emphasised that co-production per se was very dynamic and had changed hugely in the past five years that it was now embedded in everything done by the Children’s Services at all levels through the daily conversations held individually or in groups with children, young people and their families. Looking ahead, co-production would play an important role in speech and language review, Children Social Care Reforms, development of Family Voices and delivery of the HAF programme.

Nandini Ganesh (Co-optee) said that she and members of Parentsactive did enjoy co-production in partnership with the Council and were very keen to be more informed about the outcome of their co-production efforts.

Jacqui McShannon remarked that there were various ways of observing the outcomes of the co-production journey. Sometimes, it was a report like the outcome framework of education and SEND presented to this Committee, the development of Youth Council and Family Hubs with evolving range of activities, or one-to-one feedback.  Notwithstanding, co-production had insinuated its journey into a way of thinking which kept evolving in itself.   Partners’ participation at strategic meetings would also allow them opportunities to evaluate the outcomes.

Sarah Sanderson added that co-production was an on-going process, for example, the young inspectors might give further comments on the furniture setting of the Care Leavers’ Hub originally designed by the care experienced young people.

Peter Haylock said that the outcome could be evaluated by the success or otherwise of young people in H&F, the areas of concern pointed out by key stakeholders in annual reviews, and the actions to be taken forward to achieve the desired results. He noted that H&F’s outcomes had been positive.

Councillor Aliya Afzal-Khan agreed that co-production was embedded in everything ran by the Children’s Services which had very extensive and comprehensive feedback loop. She called on more transparency in reporting the co-production process.

Councillor Alex Sanderson (Deputy Leader) said the Council was very focused in reporting the positive outcomes but sometimes, it was harder to put into a report the wider breath of the reach of co-production that transformed lives in fabulous ways. She referred to the housing offer for care experienced leavers.  On these young people’s feedback, the setting up home fund was increased by £1000 in addition to the provision of flooring and white goods.  One of the young people providing the feedback said it was so good to know that what he said mattered.

Appreciating the responses of officers and members to her question and the young people’s feedback, Nandini Ganesh suggested including in the next report one to two outcomes of things co-produced by Parentsactive and other partners. 

Question from the floor

Marie Thomas (Resident) and Sarah Sanderson discussed about the recruitment approach of foster carers across West London.

On Marie Thomas’ question whether young carers were part of the co-production, Jacqui McShannon said that the co-production process with young carers was very dynamic. To improve the uptake of more young carers, senior officers were involved in discussions with current young carers on their needs, which included a range of bespoke programmes and access to universal services.  Sarah Sanderson noted the over-subscription of children looked after to the Summer in the City activities, including a camping trip with the young carers. She believed that the participation of senior officers at the activities and talked to the stakeholders alongside them would bring significant impacts.

RESOLVED

That the Committee noted the report.