In an effort to get a handle on the over spend in Child & Family Services, the Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board and the Child & Family Overview & Scrutiny Board have been working together since July 2011 to monitor the financial recovery plan. The latest meeting was held on 13th February and you can find the papers for the meeting here.
Councillors had an opportunity to discuss the current issues that were highlighted in the updated financial recovery plan and noted that progress was not being made as quickly as expected and that there was now a realisation that the time frame would need to be extended.
The Corporate Director (Social Services), Phil Hodgson laid out his plans that would enable more social worker time to be freed up, allowing them an opportunity to concentrate more on high spend areas.
The ongoing issues with the cost of legal operations was also discussed.
The Board then moved on to discuss the information provided in the report on comparisons on the level of deprivation. It was felt that while the data provided was interesting, it did not seem to correlate with the current cost of services and it was queried whether there were any links with the local University in this area and whether there was any information available from the WLGA on comparisons with other local authorities.
Issues highlighted at the meeting will be captured in a letter from the joint Chairs to the Cabinet Member for Social Services.
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