Stockport Borough Council
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
North West council has a new director of children's services whose emphasis is on integrating provision to help support families.
Stockport Council is one of the 10 authorities in Greater Manchester and has pockets of severe deprivation sitting alongside affluent areas. The council is made up of Stockport town and seven outlying suburbs including Hulme, Cheadle and Reddish.
Employment rates are above the regional average, and children and young people under the age of 18 account for 21 per cent of the area's total population.
The council's children's services was rated "good" by Ofsted in July 2017, shortly after which director of people Andrew Webb announced his plan to retire in March 2018.
His successor, director of children's services Chris McLoughlin, is a qualified nurse and social worker. She faces significant challenges with rising levels of looked-after children and low attainment of vulnerable young people.
DCS View
More regional working and greater integration on the cards
By Chris McLoughlin, DCS, Stockport Borough Council
My priority since starting in March has been on how we improve outcomes for the most vulnerable children in the community, such as children eligible for free school meals.
Stockport is a good place to live, but is one of the most economically polarised boroughs in the country. That means we have to be proactive to get to the children and families most in need. One way we are doing that is to think more creatively about how we integrate services to draw in new partners to the early help offer. For example, the music service is accessed by hundreds of children across the borough, but as of yet it is not consistently reaching the most vulnerable children. We want to think about an enhanced offer that, for example, provides music opportunities to all of our looked-after children. Another area we are looking at is how we can better integrate the support offered to families by housing officers.
This fits into the integrated services approach which has been under development in Stockport since 2012. The service is delivered through integrated, multi-agency and co-located teams comprised of social workers, midwives, health visitors, school nurses, Start Well hubs and Stockport Family workers, drugs and alcohol workers, with support from specialist services where necessary.
The number of looked-after children rose last year, but has since stabilised. Another issue is the high level of looked-after children placed in Stockport by other authorities. There are more children placed by other councils living in Stockport than our own entire looked-after children population, and there are more than 45 private care homes operating.
This has significant implications on a children's education and health services - through the number placed in Stockport pupil referral units and the undertaking of health assessments - not to mention additional work for police as a result of missing from home incidents.
We're looking to explore this in more depth by working with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and North West sector-led improvement initiatives.
There's been real progress in collaborative working across the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester. I meet regularly with the other nine DCSs in Greater Manchester and we have secured innovation funding, which we agree collectively on how to use it for the benefit of all the 10 local authorities. A Greater Manchester Children's Board has also been established to share best practice - the architecture is now in place and we're starting to see the benefits. A Greater Manchester safeguarding standards board will meet for the first time in August.
In March, Stockport was awarded Partner in Practice status by the Department for Education, and we are currently supporting Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council on its improvement journey. It's a great development opportunity for our service managers and we will learn from Tameside, too.