The Child and Family Services Scrutiny Performance Panel meets on Tuesday next week. This important panel has spent the last 12 months examining performance in areas such as numbers of looked after children and the looked after children strategy. As a result of previous question and answer sessions with officers the panel identified some additional performance work to be carried out.
Next week the scrutiny councillors on the panel will hold a question and answer session with the Cabinet Member for Target Areas, Councillor Ryland Doyle, to find out how his work in target areas is going to help contribute to a reduction in the numbers of children who are at risk of becoming looked after. This is a crucial area of Council policy as numbers of children in the care of the local authority have increased in recent years, a situation that isn’t unique to Swansea. Nevertheless, the current upward trend needs to be reversed; the Medium Term Financial Plan predicts a downward trend in looked after children numbers over the next few years from the current 588 looked after children (March 2013) to a projected 419 looked after children in March 2017 . The Target Area work will improve amongst other things, family support to families at risk of breakdown which will help prevent children from becoming looked after.
Scrutiny councillors felt it was crucial to invite Councillor Ryland Doyle to the performance panel to gain a better understanding of the work in this area and to find out in more detail how it will help families at risk of breakdown.
The panel has also invited representatives from the Education department to understand how they work with Child and Family Services to identify the children in schools in Swansea who are potentially children in need.
All the meeting details are in the agenda just below.
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