On the 4th April the Board will meet for the final time in this council year. It will take the opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved over the past year, and any lessons learnt that will help improve the effectiveness of the Board. It will also consider areas for future scrutiny. 
The Board has continued to provide ‘critical friend’ challenge and support to the improvement programme for Child & Family Services. During 2011/12 the Board has held 12 formal board meetings, 17 task and finish meetings and had an average attendance of 61%.
Some of the headlines from the year include:
- winning ‘Team of the Year’ in the Centre for Public Scrutiny’s Annual Good Scrutiny Awards
- praise from the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales’ (CSSIW) within its Annual Review and Evaluation of Performance of Swansea Social Services for 2010/11 for its effective challenge of service performance.
- carrying out an in-depth review and publishing a report with recommendations to improve the support to care leavers
- establishing a joint meeting with the Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board to focus on the Child & Family Services budget and financial monitoring.
- recommendations from previous scrutiny reviews (Corporate Parenting; Eligibility Criteria for Services to Disabled Children) being implemented
- picking up on community concerns about proposed changes to ChildLine Services in Swansea
- sending views to the Deputy Minister Gwenda Thomas AM about Welsh Government plans to reorganise Local Safeguarding Children Boards in Wales
A detailed annual work plan review report is being put together and this will appear in the agenda for the final Board meeting – available online from 29th March 2012.
What do you think the Board should be looking at?
During May and June the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Board will seek the advice of officers and partners in developing a new scrutiny work programme for the coming year.
If you have any comments or suggestions that you think would be relevant, please let us know. These will be fed into work planning discussions. With your help by the time the Board meets again in July we should have a good idea about future work.
Photo credit: www.westminster.gov.uk/
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