The performance report was presented to the committee by John Coleman -Assistant Director - Children & Families and Chris Baird - Interim Assistant Director for Education Services.

Members were reminded that the new Power BI system that they have access to, shows a live and up to date performance dashboard that is relevant to this committee.

The following highlights were presented to the committee –

·         The overall number of children that officers are working with has fallen.

·         Officers are successfully working towards more early help support for children.

·         The number of Children in Care has reduced.  It was noted that this is a big change in the region and is bucking the national trend

·         Uptake of placements for 2-year-olds is running at 91% which is an increase and a positive step.

·         Placements for 3- & 4-year-olds has also increased

The committee noted that the following performance indicators are not on track –

·         In relation to children receiving their 6–8-week health check, it was noted by the committee that there is still work to do in this area and more support is need for health visitors.  It was confirmed that there is also a national issue of recruitment in this area.

·         In relation to Early Years – the target is 97% and in Warwickshire it is consistently just under 96% but there has been some steady improvement of late.  The Committee noted that reported figure is a yearly figure and not a monthly one.

·         In relation to suicide rates it was confirmed that the figure is an annual one.  There was an increase in young people taking their own life during the pandemic.  There has been some improvement but it is representative of the mental health issues in young people. Warwickshire County Council officers continue to work closely with Coventry in relation to suicide prevention.

Following a question from Councillor Jill Simpson-Vince it was confirmed that while in some suicide cases the young person was not previously known to the service, there are always cases where they were known to officers.  It was confirmed that there is always a child death investigation for each case which involves reviewing what happened and what can be learnt from it.  The safeguarding partnership also review each case.  Members of the committee noted that there is very rarely any pattern to the cases.  Councillor Jerry Roodhouse raised concerns that the age of those who take their own life seems to be dropping and it was noted that as of the 14^th February 2023, there were 323 children to child protection plans.

Councillor Justin Kerridge asked for clarification in relation to the performance data in relation to SEND; some of the performance data in this report doesn’t tally with the information provided with Item 8 of the agenda (Local Area SEND inspection Update).  Chris Baird stated that the report in item 8 recognises that there have been improvements in the SEND services but the performance report highlights that there is still a range of issues that are  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5