Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee - Monday 16 March 2026, 5:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee
Monday, 16th March 2026 at 5:30pm 

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  1. Webcast Finished

Good evening everybody. Welcome.
This is the last meeting of the
before we break for next whatever call for us.
My name is Councillor Abdomenang. I'll be chairing this meeting.
This meeting will be broadcast on the council website for recording.

1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

Anybody who wants to speak, please speak in my direction.
Anybody who wants to speak, please raise the hand button
and I'll see what you're giving.
Permission to speak.
I'm going to introduce myself as a consultant, and I'm going to get on my right hand side
to introduce everybody so we know who you are. Thank you.
Philip Rice, Co -opT Church of England Representative Education.
Hi everyone, good evening, it's Hassan Child, the European Governor.
Thank you.
Hello everyone.
Dan Murray, Group Manager in Young Tower Hamlets.
Online, will he introduce himself?
Is there someone online?
Yeah, hi, sorry, it's Ashraf, Ashraf Daman, President and Governor.
And he is now able to signal to the 125th Mama
Shugo just sent a text to me saying he will be joining online later.
Thank you.
I have not received any apologies.
I would like to declare, anyone got to declare any interest?
No?
I'm sorry.

2 DECLARATIONS OF INTERESTS

3 MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING

4 ACTION LOG

5 REPORTS FOR CONSIDERATION

5 a) Youth Service

5 b) Question Time with Corporate Director for Children Services

Just for record purposes, to introduce myself, I'm Absal Ali, Group Manager, Universal Safe
Spaces.
The minutes of the previous meeting.
Anybody seconded it, please, or anything need to be corrected?
I think the minute was accurate.

3 MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING

Thank you, Chair.
If I may, I would like to recommend some amendments, if possible.
I couldn't see the meeting timing on the headlines, if that can be added at 6 .30, I believe we
had the meeting. Also the names are specifically there on the apologies section. Councillor
I think Shubho has been listed here and previously has been noted as Khandel Shavir Hoshane,
So that possibly could dictate that it's two persons, it's actually one person, I believe.
And also the young mayor's team, there are some names, obviously they are short, so if
we can double cheque, they are correct.
Everything else is all good, I can second it.
Thank you, Jack.
Thank you for correcting this.
So we need to get those young mayor's teams, their names correct, and this should probably
double within the only.
Thank you.
The main agenda on the item is youth services.

4 ACTION LOG

5 a) Youth Service

Deputy Mayor, may you introduce the item, please?
Thank you, Chair.
Good evening, everyone.
I am so pleased to introduce this item, which is 5 .1.
It is an update on Yonge -Tullar Ambles.
As you know, we've promised to have a safe space in every ward and I think we're nearly there.
Apart from just one, which is Canadian Wolf, which is my ward.
We've got, so far, 31 universal specialists and commission youth centres combined.
and 16 Universal and 5 Commission and the rest are specialists and other provision.
And also if you look at the presentation which Abzal will go through soon,
it's quite robust, quite detailed and I think we're really pleased with the outcome and the attendance
and so far how the service is running and I think we've got a very diverse workforce as well
in terms of youth workers, youth support workers.
And I think, and also we're really proud
that with our young people, they wanted a
dedicated space for our girls.
So we've opened that someplace away, so
we're really proud of that and I think we're probably the only borough that's doing it.
So yeah, I'm extremely, extremely proud moment for us. I think
Young Townhamblers is really doing really well and our attendance levels is really increasing day by day.
And yes, I'll pass on to Steve if he wants to add anything and then we'll go through the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Chair. I guess all I would say is really how incredibly proud we are of our staff
who've worked really hard and we think about over the last year or so the amount of services that they've been able to step up
and also the way that they've listened to young people in doing that.
I think we've had a lot of support from across the whole council, from estates, from HR colleagues, from communications,
so it really is a team effort and I think that the difference we're making to some of our young people's lives is pretty incredible.
And every time I've been to any any conferences or meetings outside of our borough and talk about what we're doing
And hear what comparing it to other boroughs
I think it's pretty groundbreaking and as you know, we've been selected to be part of the national pilot for young futures hubs
Which is the only London borough. There's seven other places across the country
so I think that's really a testament to the
the investment and the vision into our hamlets to invest in youth services.
So yeah, I think nothing but I'm proud of the way our staff have worked so hard to get the services set up.
So I know there's a couple of slides the team wanted to go through as well.
The team will be able to bring in the information from the team.
If I could just bring the team in just so colleagues might not have seen,
there is a set of documents that we have provided.
One is the document which is sort of the progress update.
One is the actual strategy that you may be familiar with,
the launch event to launch the strategy.
And then I just asked the team for a very short set of slides just with some images
Sort of catching some of the key moments because of another set of another set of slides there
But we also launched their participation guide. We brought this to the council
CMT the mayor's advisory board and also cabinet and what this participation guide is about how we
As a council engage with young people and it doesn't it's not just about children's services
This is about the whole council, so if you're planning, if you're in community services, or any other services,
that's what, there's a commitment now to adopt this approach to talking to young people.
So just so you know what the sort of document is, we've attached to the agenda.
But if the team just want to quickly go through the slides, thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
Sorry, that would help.
Just to run through very quickly and briefly some of the key points within the participation
guide.
And as Steve has said, there's a real opportunity here that is ahead of us and the Council.
And I'll just give one quick example of the kind of opportunity that we're kind of trying
to meet with this.
within the Youth Council is making sure that each deputy mayor is linked with a lead member within the council.
And then that means that we have a young person that is shadowing directly the cabinet and the process that the council go through.
And making sure then that the voices of young people are embedded into the work that is happening across the council.
At the top end, and not at the bottom end, but the youth clubs are obviously an incredible audience.
We've got 21 centres that are open now.
16 of them are open directly delivered by Young Tower Hamlets, by the Council.
And that's only with 67 % of recruitment completed to date.
It's been an incredible job that the team have made happen.
But I think the participation guide is a kind of a real opportunity for us to make sure
that we're actively listening to young people and there are opportunities for young people's
voices to be heard.
Examples which are within the guide as well, action cards, as an opportunity for young
people to then be raising issues, talking about some of the things that are going on
locally for them, some of the things that they feel is relevant.
Those action cards can then be shared if they're happy to and could lead to some action actually being taken
maybe even at this level or even at cabinet level as well.
But the participation guide really kind of talks us through and takes us through
and it's been quite a process to get to this point within the Young Tower Hamlets
and I know it's gone to cabinet as well in January.
So it was a big moment I think for the service but also the council
to make sure that they're embedding young people's views and voices
in everything that they do.
Just a little bit on the participation guide there.
Just wanted to add on to that.
So in addition to that, we do have...
Just move the mic.
Press that.
Sorry, just to add to that.
Sorry, we're not used to this.
Yeah, so within our youth centres, we have set up youth forums.
I'm not sure if everyone knows what a youth forum is.
So it's basically current users of that youth centre.
They will come and become the voice for that centre
and they will represent young people from that locality
or any young person who uses that youth centre.
Essentially they're the voice of the young people.
And they've been given scope to make decisions
as to what kind of delivery takes place within the youth centres.
There's a budget for the youth centre in terms of the activity budget,
which they will also be able to look at and make decisions
on how that budget is spent within the youth centre.
The other thing to add there is through the youth forum,
we kind of feed from the youth centres,
taking the voice of the young people from the locality
to the Youth Council, which is held here.
And any pressing issues that we can take nationally
is then taken to the national youth forums
where these are discussed.
But ultimately, the voice of the young person
is crucial in shaping those services.
Another point that we were talking about
was about access for young people to youth centres.
For us, it's important that all young people have access to youth centres.
We are guided by the industry standards, which is a national youth agency.
We're guided by legislation around providing access as well.
There's also something called the National Youth Strategy,
which also emphasises equitable access for all young people.
Some of the ways we have kind of reached out to young people,
we do outreach, we do detached work on estates,
in parks, wherever it's needed.
We can potentially spend anything up to a minimum of a week
or anything up to six weeks within a locality,
just engaging with young people, building those relationships,
but also diverting those young people into youth centres
so that they can take up some positive activities.
Other ways we do it, well, one of the other ways
we're having one youth centre in every ward,
so that it's accessible.
One of the things young people have told us
when we did the hackathon a few years ago
was that they didn't want to travel across the borough.
They didn't want to travel too far.
And they wanted something a lot more closer to them
so that they can get there easily.
but also we took into account what parents and carers said to us as well
in terms of they're not going to encourage their kids to go to the youth centre very far,
especially during the winter seasons as well,
for when it gets dark, how they're going to come back,
and that's became one of the barriers.
So we are having one youth centre in every ward,
which roughly will allow a young person to get to any youth centre
within sort of 10, 15 minutes really.
In terms of the cohort that we work with, we are working with young carers,
we're working with young people in care, young people with SCN,
young people with SCND, able -bodied young people, obviously.
And ultimately our service is tailored to support their needs,
although we have a core offer, some centres have to tailor their service
according to the user group that utilises that centre.
So some centres will tailor our programmes,
the youth forum will help make those decisions
in terms of what kind of activities we put on,
what kind of programmes we are able to put on,
and are those activities and programmes suitable for the users,
especially those that may have SEND or may be restricted in one way or another.
A new buzz that's come out really is neurodiversity.
Mental health and wellbeing we're aware of.
And one of the things we're doing as a service,
because this is new and not all staff are aware of it,
a lot of training for staff to understand that,
but also to engage with young people who may experience neurodiversity.
And that's one way for us to firstly understand what their needs are,
but secondly to also provide that support,
so that yes, we can engage them in positive activities,
but also at the same time they don't get affected too much in schools,
where their attendance gets affected,
but also working with teachers and school staff
to complement the work they do through our informal learning in the youth centres.
I think that's it.
I'm happy to take any questions.
Thank you for your presentation.
Thank you for your lovely presentation.
Anybody want to questions?
Put them to the right side.
Okay, Hasanbeng.
Excellent photos, excellent pictures.
So I picked up on two things.
Have you managed to, this is the St Andrews Wharf site, where I said you had to spend
the money by end of March.
Have you managed to achieve that?
The second thing was, I was on page 34, where I was looking at the terms of employment for the permanent staff in post.
I was looking at the rapid response team. That sounds interesting. Could you say any more about that?
And again, you gave the number of people in post, you sort of imply that four are working
thirty hours and twelve are working part -time, fifteen hours.
This is page thirty -four, and I just wonder what, well, I mean that sounds a reasonable
way to run things.
Is there any comment you could make about that?
Does that sort of fit the hours?
How does that work?
So two very general questions.
Yeah, that's fine.
So, St. Andrews Wharf, I'll have to come back to you
regarding the confirmation of the budget spend.
I don't have that at hand.
But as far as I understand, it is on course.
Progress for the new build there is going okay.
There have been some challenges, but we've overcome those.
But in terms of to confirm the budget, your specific question, we'll come back to you
regarding that.
I don't have that information.
And secondly, the rapid response team.
Sorry, can you just clarify that query again?
I'm on page 34, and first of all, the rapid response team does sound something that you
could amplify tell us exactly what you're seeking to do and how that's working.
And then I noticed that looking at the number of posts in structures, it's the only one
where you make a breakdown between, I presume, full -time and part -time, and I wonder what
the thinking is about the hours.
So again, it's not a particularly challenging question, it's just a chance for you to amplify
what your thinking is and how the part -time, full -time will work.
Absolutely. So Rapid Response Team for us is crucial.
It's a crucial aspect of the service.
Their role in a nutshell really is to go out, work on the streets,
in the estates.
Predominantly the majority of the work is done outside, it's not indoors.
They will go around to wherever issues are.
We work very closely with community safety as well as the police.
We have weekly meetings in terms of sharing intelligence.
And with the police we will coordinate any response.
Our response isn't to go in and intervene in terms of break up any sort of fights and things like that.
It's more to go and engage, divert young people, but also do a bit of work with them there
and then also divert them into some positive activities.
whether that's in the youth centre or taking them to the local college
or to the careers guidance,
it's moving them away from negative activities where they are.
In terms of the full -time and part -time,
I think our full -time staffs are more of those that are in line management.
We have got full -time, front -line staff as well,
but we also needed those part -time ones to work specific hours
so that we can be as flexible as we can in order to respond and in order to work.
So to give you an example, currently Ramadan is going.
We've got some concerns around young people just literally hanging around
and using prayers as an excuse to get out the house.
So we have teams on patrol around the estates, around mosques,
engaging with young people if they're not in prayers,
just having a conversation with them,
encourage them to go inside the buildings,
or having separate conversations that could benefit them
outside of that particular arena.
But ultimately, it is about making sure they're kept safe,
they're not getting into trouble,
and they're not engaging in any activities that they shouldn't be.
OK, I hope that answers.
Thank you, Chair.
Looking at the report, it refers to, it says that expansion and performance of yachts at
yacht services, but I couldn't see any measurable performance indicators that are included in
the report.
So my question is to you, the key performance indicator, the KPI is missing from the report.
Is there something in future you can include, for an example, how many of the yachts are
taking part on numbers, retention rate and outcomes of the yachts and the word -by -word
data so that we have a clear picture on that?
And the second question is to you, is that you mentioned that all words are affected,
but it does not say how many or it doesn't clarify whether the services are equally whether
they are distributed or not. So the suggestion I have is that are you able to map out so
your hubs, how many of them in which words and outreach services and participation level
as well and are you able to confirm that all words currently have equal youth services
or does it differ from one word to another word, if that makes sense. Thanks.
Thank you, Councillor. Really important questions.
I think it's fair to say when we started the Youth Service, the new Youth Service,
we were measuring engagement a lot and how many young people would attend services
and also things like social media and things like that trying to get more engagement and tracking those numbers.
I think over time we are now more sophisticated in terms of contact engagement, how many attend and what the outcome is.
I mentioned the national pilot work around Young Futures Hubs, there's a big evaluation framework around that
So and as part of our operational meetings, there's a set of data that we look at which is beyond
number of number of attendances and outcomes so certainly for future meetings and in
In the new municipal year, we'd like to bring back more detail and show you that so you can see how that works
It's a really important question. You asked about the spread of youth service across
different wards and across our whole borough.
Our ambition is to make sure we provide,
or through a third party commission or voluntary sector,
some youth service in all parts of the borough.
And part of that is about the relationship is absolutely key
with young people and making sure they have somewhere local to go
where they can get to know people.
But I think it's also fair to say that the spread of young people
across the border does fluctuate and there are some you know when we've
monitored the number of attendances and number of children and we've identified
that for one or two of the youth provisions the numbers aren't as
significant and that sort of reflects somewhat the local population. The
Deputy Mayor mentioned the the all girls provision so part of what we're doing is
trying to reach out and listen to young people and cheque out whether if we offered something different would we increase the attendance.
But I don't know, colleagues, is there anything more you want to say about the spread of which provisions get the most attendance and anything we can look at?
And would you say we've now got some provision in every ward? Thanks.
In terms of provision, we have pretty much got a youth centre and the majority of the wards.
We're still waiting to open I think one more in the Canary Wharf ward.
But in terms of, just to give you an idea, Steve's right, in terms of population firstly just to understand that
Each ward, the population of young people varies quite significantly.
Just to give you an example, St Catharine's and Wapping probably has the lowest youth population,
whereas Mile End goes into the thousands, and in St Catharine's and Wapping it's roughly three, four hundred, if I recall.
So it does vary from world to world.
It's a challenge for us in terms of allocating resources
and ensuring that we've got the right site as well
to accommodate the local population.
In terms of how resources are allocated,
again, we do take into account the local population,
the engagement levels and the need.
What other groups are operating in the locality as well?
There's a lot of partnership that goes on with the third sector,
where we try and support young people.
And in terms of most of these centres, we will have a core programme,
we'll have some accreditations on offer where young people can gain additional qualifications,
whether it's industry recognised or something, just to support them
in their sort of further education or moving on to higher education.
We will have activities, a range of activities again to cater for all cohorts of young people
as well as doing trips and residential, some of the fun stuff really that young people have asked us to do.
The other way we kind of keep a tab on how we're delivering in terms of young people
said to us they want to do this and we will tell them this is what we've done to respond to you
or this is the reason why we couldn't do it and we'll think of an alternative.
Albert, have I answered it? Is there a second part of the question? Sorry.
If I may just, Chair, if I may ask, you mentioned the populations and yokes and my land and what being a little bit different.
Thinking of that, even thinking of that, I believe every word there is a need of your service.
My question is direct to you is that do we have every word there's something?
Definitely there is something. We see that every word there will be some more.
So we're not missing out on what might be given.
We're also looking at certain parts more.
I think through our current services, direct delivery as well as with our commission providers,
we do have something for young people in every ward.
Can I just give an example as well?
We're talking about Canary Wharf in terms of there not being a youth centre,
but we do have provisions, so for example sport provision at the minute,
we're utilising pitches, working with B -Well, working with Leisure
to make sure that we've got an offer of open access sport as well around the borough.
So we're obviously thinking outside the box a little bit.
Safe spaces, we've got the rapid response team that are in their mobile workforce as
well so they can be in places and they're working very closely with Canary Wharf around
young people that are congregating, not for any wrong reasons but just young people and
raising certain people, asking questions and advocating for young people and then being
able to direct them to safe spaces or a sport provision or something that's going to be
able to get them or give them the option of something else as well.
But yeah, we do have, I think, at the moment a very good spread of services and provisions
and it's not just about bricks and buildings, it's actually much broader than that as well,
which is a very lucky place for us to be and for young people.
And I think just one final thing to add to that.
What's really important for us is working with our third sector.
local community groups, local groups who work with young people.
It's really, really important that we work with them closely,
share resources, share intel, but also at the same time
we're working with pretty much the same young people.
So understanding their needs, understanding their wants,
what helps us is, or what helps our money go further
is really that partnership work. So throughout the week, if it's not Young
Tell Hamlets delivering, then we've got a third sector partner delivering in some capacity.
And like Dan says, you know, in terms of the sports as well, we've got so much happening
and so much partnership work going with the leisure centres as well.
So something new, just to give you guys an idea, something new we've just introduced
is giving gym passes so that young people can access the leisure centres
and do some gym work, whether it's to tackle obesity
or just to generally keep healthy, they've got that.
So those partnership works really allows us to just take that money a lot further.
Thank you. I have two questions quickly.
One was regarding your staffing level.
Obviously, how do you perform with only 67 % staff in post?
And that must cause a lot of budget strain
because you have, I'm assuming you're hiring
agency workers and whatnot, right?
My second part is regarding the,
obviously you talked about,
you briefly mentioned about incidents during therapy,
and obviously, unfortunately, there was a 14 -year -old boy
who was like beaten, jumped and beaten up in the park,
and he's in critical condition,
NFR young lad was robbed and those many incidents, these are the two that I know of that's been circulating in the news.
So how are you protecting those or preventing them, or how do you react to even those situations?
Thank you Councillor. Yeah, I mean obviously we've stepped up the service really, really quickly
and for some of that period we were using agency staff.
But again with support of the managers like our colleagues here and also HR,
we have done a lot of recruitment, which is really great,
and we've obviously made sure that we've got representative people from our community
as part of that workforce.
So that's really important that we've done that.
But because of the speed of that, because of the service provision,
we've still maintained some agency until we can complete fully that recruitment as well.
And potentially with most services there's always going to require a bit of flexibility
so we might use some agency in the future.
The commitment, the financial commitment to the youth service was very significant from the start
and any colleagues who have seen the budget reports have seen that actually some
of the pressures against the wider children's services budget have been helped because of
the underspend we've actually had in youth services and that's because of the amount
of time it takes to get all the services up and running, get the staff recruited, get
all the centres open. So the service itself hasn't been impacted in terms of the financial
impact of having agency staff at all really. I think your other question about individual
incidents. I think colleagues mentioned earlier the rapid response team and
other teams do work really closely with community safety and we're doing
everything we can preventatively and working with schools and others you
probably saw some of the awful stuff on social media trying to get different
groups of schools to be against each other in our borough and other boroughs.
So the youth service is really key in reaching out to schools as well as
Directly working with the young people to try and prevent that stuff as well
But I don't know if colleagues you want to comment just a bit more on how we work community safety
As I mentioned earlier on
One of the important things really is about sharing intelligence
You know
That's probably that what guides us into how we allocate those resources where they go and who they engage with
Schools, obviously is really important as well
So our rapid response team, we will have close links with the schools,
we'll have daily conversations with schools as well,
because we know some of the teachers, some of the behaviour staff as well,
and they know us.
So it's got to that point, it's really nice actually,
where because the relationship is so good,
they can literally just call each other and speak,
rather than going through, always through long channels.
And again, with scenarios like that, it is about deploying staff,
to the locality. It is about having a presence there for several reasons.
One, to reassure other young people and parents, carers who are in the area that we are here to support and work with young people.
And secondly, to offer sort of diverted or some activities that young people can engage in.
It's also an opportunity really for us to just consult with those kids really.
If you're not coming to a youth centre, why not?
What can we do for you?
So there's several sort of angles
we'll take to try and engage.
If we do know whether it's the victim, perpetrator,
we will try to engage in some capacity where appropriate.
But also at the same time, work with them
if we need to bring in some type of support in there,
just to give them some one -to -one
and some personal sort of attention
in addressing any challenges they may have or any additional needs they may have,
then we will do that as well.
So we've got a good network of services within Young Tower Hammers
and the wider council as well, including our third section,
that we could always tap in.
But again, going back to that, the most important thing for me really
is the relationship we have, or our Rapid Response Team has,
with community groups, faith groups, parents, carers in the community as well,
because that's the source of internal problems.
It must be difficult when the police doesn't see that as a problem.
When we had the police officers here, when I asked the question that
there's of course, there was wars going on, there's no gang violence between the area called.
And the police officer said that doesn't happen.
So it must be difficult for you guys to...
You're saying it does happen when the police officers are saying it doesn't happen.
I guess it depends on definition, you know, how you're describing it.
I don't know how they've described it, but
In terms of gang violence, again I probably err a little bit,
it depends how you want to define gangs,
if it's a collection or a group of young people just hanging around,
it's one of those things really.
So I think perhaps that's to do with definition,
I'm not sure what's behind it.
But we're living in one of the densest boroughs in the country,
we've got a very high youth population,
we're always going to have some challenges.
Some will be a little bit more serious than others.
But I think from the youth service point of view,
prevention is our number one priority.
And if we can divert young people away from negative activities
and get them into positive activities, then that's what we intend to do.
Sorry, we're going to have to turn the mic.
Sorry, mate.
One more question for Steve, which probably a lot of people want to know as well.
Thanks for the Human Youth Centre. Well done.
How is this working and is there any plan in the future to have a more Human Youth Centre?
One of them is open and everybody is saying it's good, good, good.
Just want to hear how they're doing at the moment.
Which one, sorry?
The news of the other ladies.
Oh yeah, we had the launch event a few weeks back that was really successful.
We got some coverage in the National Guardian newspaper about that provision
and also some really positive feedback on our strategy as well.
and I think we all said that's the last day any of us are allowed in there because it's a girls provision.
So what's the feedback, when do we know?
Yeah, ultimately I mean it's been very, very good so far.
We started a good few weeks ago, we're getting new sign -ups on a weekly basis.
We've now started going into the schools, in the assemblies, so we're just promoting it,
highlighting some of the offers that are available from that centre.
Like I said, it's going well in terms of young people are starting to come,
they're engaging, we're also in the process of identifying young people
to form the youth forum at St Paul's Way,
so that they can start making those decisions for the centre as well.
Can I just give one example from that youth centre? We have a girls under 11 district
football team and one of the parents, so the child goes to our football, which is a young
to our Hamlets, it's the first time or it's been a very long time since the boroughs had
a girls district football team and there's now, but that's one positive bit of work and
One of the parents there talking to them,
they have five children, overcrowded situation at home.
The eldest is studying for a GCSEs at the moment
and doesn't have the space to revise to work.
So I directed them to the Girls Only,
St. Paul's Way Youth Centre,
where now she attends and she's been getting some support
and made that link with the senior youth worker
there as well.
So I think it's a really nice example
of the breadth of the work but also what's possible with this as well.
The families are obviously, it's a very young borough, the more connected, the more relationships
we have as a service, the bigger and greater the impact we can have for families and for
residents.
We're going to break for now.
Thanks for the presentation.
Thanks for coming over.
There's some food.
We're going to break for the Ramadan.
So everybody welcome this foot and the chambers.
We'll resume at just after half six.
Six forty.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

5 a) Youth Service

Welcome back everyone.
Thank you. Dr. Phillips. I hope the food was okay.
Just thank you, thank you for the little break.
Just before we move on to the next topic, anybody got any questions on that at all?
Anybody online? Do you want to ask some questions? Are you there?
On the youth services.
On the youth services? No?
No, no wonder.
So we're going to move on to our next topic, which is going to be...
That's it.
Sorry. I'm not sure if you can hear me.
Sorry. Sorry, I did have a couple of questions.
One question. Absolutely. Are you okay? Can you hear me?
Yeah. Yeah. I can hear you now. Sorry, I've got to go back to what I was looking at.
I don't know if you'll be able to be answered now because obviously it was about the previous presentation.
So thank you chair and thank you obviously for those that presented.
But I did have two questions, one was about schools and the uptake from schools because
obviously we have 29 schools that are participating and I wondered if they're working in conjunction
with the school game officers. We have two in the borough that are privately funded from other
grants and I want to make sure that they're all tied up because if we've got all these different
streams are funding, it's worthwhile that they will actually achieve in something and
not stand in alone. And the other thing I wanted to talk about as well was the commissioning,
because they are due to be, I'm sure they're in the middle of being tendered, because the
new contracts are meant to start on the first of September. And I just wondered if we were
target to meet that so that we weren't out of any particular or losing
particular spaces because services haven't been contracted.
Thank you chair and thank you for all the questions and I will ask the
team just to confirm about the schools gang officers just to make sure they're
LinkedIn they do do a lot of work with the schools and our community safety
colleagues so I'll make sure I'll just double cheque that that is definitely
happening and and yeah the the Commission in we've had quite a long
lead in time to the Commission in process so we we knew that was coming
through and the that's been programmed in so we should where are we now we're
in March, the middle of March we should be fine for that the services to
be recommissioned and up and running by September. I think it's probably fair to
say a couple of years ago it was there was a debate around whether the council
needed to provide everything or whether we'd commission services and I think
there's been a real recognition of the quality of the the voluntary sector and
quality of Commission services which is why we've got that mixture now of a sort
of council service and Commission services particularly for specialist
groups as well so those should be continuing from September thank you
So you go five minutes to let us know. Thank you Steve.
Thank you chair. No I just want to thank you and the members of the committee.
I think you've asked really helpful questions and provided real scrutiny.
We've talked about a huge range of issues from mental health to safeguarding to corporate parenting to SEND.
Over the last couple of years we've had the social care inspection, we've had the SEND inspection
and we've been updating yourself and you've asked us lots of questions and the right questions.
Plus I think it's been really helpful that you've let young people come to the committee to talk to you about education
and we have the young mayors in as well. I think it makes us better having the sort of thoughtful questions that you provide.
It makes us think as officers and makes sure that we're driving performance as well.
So I just want to say thank you for that.
Before I just, Chair, if you were going to see if there were any questions, I guess there were two things I wanted to say.
One is, we've covered a range of topics this year, but if there was anything you felt as a Chair or members of the committee,
there's something that you are aware of or something that we've not really talked about, then we'd be really, really interested in hearing your views on that.
Apologies I forgot to mention
the quality of school meals as well which she did a huge piece of work on
as well which is really good. The other thing I just wanted to mention was
we've had another inspection would you believe so this one
took place from the 9th to the 13th of March.
It was something called a JTIE, a Joint Targeted Area Inspection
which is an inspection of the partnership.
Over the last few years from 2016 to now there have been 70 JTIE inspections.
They range across a huge area in terms of the themes that they cover.

5 b) Question Time with Corporate Director for Children Services

So in that time you've had JTIEs about child mental health, about child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation.
We've had children living with domestic abuse, child exploitation, gangs are missing.
So a whole range, there's about 11 different themes.
So we had an inspection which was specifically looking at child sexual abuse in the family environment.
I think we are the seventh council area to have one of these.
The others were in places like York, Cornwall, Shropshire, Islington, Bracknell Forest and Brighton.
It's a very discreet cohort, a very discreet part of our business.
So if I was to say over, say April to date, of all the contacts we had,
we had 697 contacts at the front door where sexual abuse against a child was the presenting reason.
So that's around about 2 % of our contacts.
So this inspection regime involves four inspection agencies.
So we had 15 inspectors and two shadowing inspectors.
So that's the Care Quality Commission, Ofsted, the Inspector of Probation and the Inspector of Police, Fire and Rescue.
So we had a lot of inspectors to manage over that last three weeks.
The report will be with us in draught 7th of April.
It's published on the 14th of May because of PIRDA.
We're not allowed to talk about the outcome,
but all I will say to you at this point is that
the outcome is you get a report that says you have strengths and areas to develop and improve.
In areas where council and partners, because it's the partnership,
have got some significant problems, you have something called priority actions,
which they're bad, they're bad things to have.
So we are unlikely to have any of those. I can't be explicit because we have to wait for the report, but it's very, very unlikely we've got any of those.
So, again, I just put on record our staff in the council and our staff across all the partnerships worked incredibly, incredibly hard over those three weeks to make sure we explained what we were doing.
As you'll appreciate, it's a really challenging subject, child sex abuse within the family.
So talking to our staff, our children, our families, our residents about it,
we took a great deal of care to make sure people were supported during the inspection process.
And certainly obviously in the new municipal year we'll bring back to this committee obviously the report
and then our response as a partnership to the inspection report.
But I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that.
We have been quite busy on inspection so I've only been here two years.
We've had the big social care inspection that as we know was great, it was outstanding.
We've had the send inspection that was an improvement.
We are due a Youth Justice inspection.
In fact when the inspector phoned me three weeks ago I did say if you got this right
would you use justice inspection.
She said no this is a JTAI inspection you're going to have now.
So I just want to make sure you are aware of it and I'll share the report when we're
allowed to.
Thank you Steve.
Thanks for your feedback.
It's valuable information.
Panel do you have a question anybody?
It is very easy.
Yeah, you know.
I don't have any specific question, but what I want to say is thank you very much for you and your team that you represented well most of the time.
And how the majority of the time, most of the time, I will cover.
And taking time out of this and coming in here with a lot of preparation, it takes a bit of time as well.
So thanks for the insights, that was really helpful for us to actually make a question
and ask the charge of how Council was doing and the really good effort you're putting
in.
Obviously sometimes you do ask questions that probably not that you're expecting.
The reason why is because sometimes there's a little bit less data that's not, you know,
we are not aware of the background what's going on.
So that sort of question possibly irritated you,
probably sometimes.
It was great.
It was great and thank you for your team and everyone.
Pass our greetings to them.
We're really grateful for them.
And I would like to thank the Councillor Mannane as well,
the piece of work they've done for free school meals.
That has been very much appreciated by the locals
and schools and everyone else.
And that's been very helpful for the team and mayor
and, you know, for the borough.
Thank you very much
Thank you. Thank you
See other question regarding some of the government has announced is from support young people of descent in England
And can you say a bit about what what does it mean for Thai Hamlet of the same kids?
Thank You chair yeah, it's a it's a significant change I
I think for the... I've seen the schools white paper and the changes to send.
In some ways the principles are really positive.
We want to invest in early intervention and prevention.
We want to make sure our children get the right support and get that to children as early as possible.
But I think there's an acceptance that the system isn't really working.
and I know there's a lot of anxiety from parents and young people about what do the changes really mean.
So I think that we're going to have to, the changes that are brought in,
we have to do them carefully and in consultation with our children and families.
One of the big recognitions around SEND is that financially a lot of councils are in significant difficulty
because of the level of spend around send and without going into all the
detail but in terms of education funding there's a block of funding
called the dedicated schools grant and within that there's something called the
high needs block and when you read in the press it says you know such and such
a council is overspent on its high needs block by you know a hundred million or
It's that bit of funding that is significant overspends.
For Tower Hamlets we're in a relatively, I know it sounds really odd to say this,
but we've got a pressure, an overspend on the high needs block of 30 million
and that's actually low in comparison to some areas.
And you could say well where's this 30 million bin all this time?
Will the government effectively allow councils to set that money separate to the accounts
and the use of this terminology called the statutory override so effectively when you
declare your accounts and your budget as a council this is set to the side so you've
heard in the media that central government has said by 26, 27 they are potentially going
to pay off 90 % of that significant overspend.
But it is subject to each area having
a quality send reform plan.
So that's what we're currently working on now
to make sure, I mean we're working on
send improvement anyway because we launched
our strategy last year, we had the send inspection
so we were working on that anyway.
But now with the send reform plan
we'll be stepping up that work.
I think there will be more of a push for inclusive education in mainstream
and I think you all know this that sometimes we will be supporting a child and their family
and the family feel passionately that their child needs specialist provision
and one should be in a special school but maybe not all the professionals agree
and that's sometimes where you get real tension between professionals
and then families and parents because professionals will say,
well actually your child's needs could be met in a mainstream school
with the right support and then that can lead to real difficulties.
I expect the SEND reforms will push more towards more support
for children in mainstream schools and more investment in mainstream
to allow that to happen.
We also have the other side of that coin where parents have a child who really does have significant needs
but where parents are saying at all costs I want you to maintain my child in mainstream,
I don't want them going to specialist provision.
So again we're managing that with parents and then obviously the whole spectrum of needs in between that.
But I think that for Tower Hamlets we've got quite an inclusive education system already.
We have lots of schools that work really hard to support children as early as possible
and support them in mainstream.
So you know the education, health and care plans that we've talked about previously,
a high percentage of children with an education, health and care plan are in mainstream education.
So I think that will be one of the areas that you'll see.
And some parents will be happy about that, others will be anxious because they would like their child to have specialist provision.
What isn't clear yet is in terms of the statutory obligations on councils,
and you'll probably be aware there's quite a lot of parents who will go to tribunal and challenge councils and health providers
and schools and others, what we're not sure yet is how that will change because at the
moment there's quite a high proportion of parents when they go to tribunal either to
get an assessment for a plan or to get what was stated in the plan for their child. Quite
a lot of those tribunals like a very, very high percentage result in the parents' favour.
So again, I mean one of the other things I'm really interested in is there is some profiteering in this sector
So some some are not saying all of them, but some of the specialist provision
charge very very high rates, so
if I give you a comparison
comparison if a child was at our Phoenix special school and that was costing us
£30 ,000 to £40 ,000 a year, you could treble that going to another school, an independent school,
and I guess the headteacher of our special school would question, are they getting three times more
the quality of service going to an independent school than going to our own special school?
So, you know, that is one of the issues, but it's a difficult area that you've probably read that the government
are interested in taking profiteering out of children's social care, well that's quite
difficult as well.
Sorry, is, you know the mayors have spent a lot of money over the years, education,
bursaries, preschool meal, etc, etc.
What, under the performance of the primary to secondary school, so the student performance,
are they going better? Could you highlight on that a little bit please?
Thank you chair, no really important question. I think we characterise the education system
in terms of the outcomes like this. We're not as strong in early years when children
first start school, but when they reach the end of primary phase they're doing incredibly
well so what that means is our primary schools are working really hard and
children are working hard and doing really well. By the end of primary we
compare really well to other boroughs and that is something to be proud of.
When children transition to secondary school traditionally they're doing
really well and again when you look at GCSE results we really compare really
really well compared to say for instance the rest of London.
So really strong at the end of primary,
really strong on GCSE results.
Our schools are really good and outstanding obviously.
Ofsted have changed their framework now
so you don't get like a one word judgement about school.
You get like a scorecard or even the latest scorecards
I've seen about some of our schools are really positive.
So that's really great.
We, when we compare our children with SEND
to the wider population and to other boroughs, we're doing really well.
Our children's stand are doing really well.
And when we look at the disadvantaged gap,
so children on free school meals and those not on free school meals,
we're one of the only London boroughs where you're seeing performance
in primary and secondary school, we're actually narrowing the gap.
So it's not getting the inequality because of disadvantage, it's not widening.
So those elements are really strong, we're really proud of that.
and obviously our schools work really hard and our kids and our families work really hard
and our team in the council around education do.
One of our challenging areas though is post -16 and A levels and that is quite complex.
If you look at just our A level results we don't compare very strong to the rest of London.
So if you just said what percentage of our children doing A levels are getting A, Bs and Cs
but particularly the higher grades we're not, we don't compare as well.
There's a couple of dynamics though. What percentage of children in your borough get to do an A level?
In our borough we're in some like the top 10, in the top 10 boroughs nationally of children getting to do an A level.
So what you could say is even though we're not performing really well in the percentage of children getting a really high graded A level,
more children are doing an A -level which is inclusive and is a positive thing.
And again children with SEND or disadvantaged children do better at A -levels.
So what our challenge really now is, there are some six forms in our borough
where the children do incredibly well, so how can we make that happen more?
There are some more selective six forms outside of our borough,
So how can we make it more attractive for our most able children to still study in our borough?
But I think also how we do school improvements and provide support and challenge is something that we need to look at as well.
Because I think your question about the trend, I would say our A levels, while still not as comparable as other boroughs in London,
it did improve this year, the percentage of our children who go on to the sort of what you describe as the better universities,
the red brick and more exclusive universities, the percentage of our children doing that has gone up.
But you still come back to why aren't our kids getting the better A levels proportionally, so that's still a challenge.
I think I will probably...
Hi Steve, I have sent you a copy of this.
Just because we don't have much time, I just want to go straight to questions.
You have said a little bit about post 19 stuff.
So far in Tahel Hamless the only placements are New City College, Phoenix College and in Camden the Alexander Centre.
This only accounts for a very small amount of our SCN learners. The rest of them are I think it's called NEET or just attending day centres.
So what are the plans for dealing with the SCN cohort that are going to come out?
Okay, thank you for that. So yeah, we did the Send and Inclusion Strategy last year and linked to that is a plan
and as well as in our own strategy, but then we had the send inspection and that did, as did our own reflection,
the inspection did say, sort of 19 plus cohort, the offer needs improving definitely.
So, what we are doing at the minute, we are carrying out a needs analysis to identify the detail of the gaps,
particularly while looking right from sort of 14 to 25 and that will be coming
to our learning and achievement forum in May this year. We have got a
multi -agency working group that's been established to map current assessment and
pathways to make sure that again the plans for post 19 are
informed properly. We are increasing provision around sort of peer mentoring
obviously that's relatively small at this point we have had some additional
investment from the Mayor this year nearly a million pounds of a transition
fund so to work with education providers and adults services to try and move that
on as well and we're also we've improved our work around our education health and
care plans to make sure we're not having more tracking meetings, because as you quite rightly
say, if we're not offering opportunities for post 19 provision or supporting internships
or mentoring, then our post 19 cohort are either going into adult services, into day
or potentially could be neat. There is also in addition to those elements we are in discussion with Phoenix
because colleagues who are close to Phoenix will know this, they're exploring whether the sixth form could move out to a new building
to be able to expand and provide more that would help the sixth form in terms
of CIH and other things and send provision and the offer there but also
would allow the Phoenix secondary phase school to expand as well because demand
is huge there. I think it won't surprise you to hear that one of our
challenges is space because we've got housing challenges and overcrowding,
finding alternative sites, but we've got one of our team who works in education
who's in regular contact with premises management and assets and estates
colleagues just to see what spaces are up and coming and see if there's an
opportunity to utilise a space. If we jump maybe ahead into next year
you'll be aware that some schools in other boroughs, because of the fall in birth rate,
that there's been some schools that have closed and then other schools that have merged,
that creates empty buildings in capacity.
And I'm not saying that's definitely where we'll end up,
but there might potentially be some options there,
if some primaries, to make sure they're financially sustainable, merge on maybe one site,
that could release a site to us.
So that is, but it's something that certainly in the scrutiny committee in the new municipal year
will need to bring you an update on the send inspection action plan
and all those areas as well that I've just described.
The second question I've got is about the SCN travel situation.
I have been contacted by whoever is in charge of that on Friday.
My question is, I have a son who is 15 who has used the transport, but two years ago
he had a seizure on the bus and they just shooed him off the bus like nothing had happened.
So I stopped using that service and have since then done a lot of digging into what exactly
do the staff on the transport actually have any training?
And I'm just baffled that there's no information on this.
Given the number of children with complex medical needs
travelling to these specialist schools using these council -run vehicles,
is there any sort of oversight on what is the minimal training
given by the passenger assist?
What training do they have?
And if so, are children who are at risk of seizures or anaphylaxis or that need suction to help breathe,
these passenger assistance are not trained to deal with this, so how is it allowed
that our children can safely use these vehicles without, like you said, my son having a seizure on it
and not being dealt with? Is there any training or any thoughts on how to make that better?
OK, thank you for your question, I am really sorry to hear what happened to your son as well,
and I'm hopeful that practises have improved.
The feedback from the service, the transport service,
is that obviously they take any reports of unsafe practise extremely seriously,
and certainly I visited obviously our special schools and talked to head teachers
and others about some of the feedback and their view of the transport as well.
This is just based on their feedback in terms of more recently,
there haven't been any alerts more recently relating to unsafe practise or failures.
I will provide this in writing but just in terms of the current training requirements and medical support arrangements.
All passenger assistance complete training under the nationally recognised PATS scheme,
Passenger Assistant Train Scheme, covering core knowledge and practical skills required
to safety transport passengers with a range of needs.
So the modules are the foundation, roles and responsibilities, that's module A. Module
B is passenger awareness, supporting passengers with a variety of needs.
There's another module round specifically on wheelchair assistance, safe handling.
There's a module on supervising children and young people with additional special educational needs
and also adult support in vulnerable adults.
I think that some of the feedback I've had from head teachers that I believe has been addressed
is whether they always got the right people with the right training on each of the transport provided.
So I know that any incidents like that would be reported back.
What I would also say is we had an independent review of passenger transport, both looking at adults and children's
and it was more from a sort of efficiency point of view.
But one of the things that did find is that in terms of compared to other areas the percentage of journeys that have passenger transport assistance is quite high here.
Now that doesn't deal with your issue which is are they all suitably trained.
But certainly I will speak to the service again about specific needs and whether there's any additional training they could be having around very specific needs to make sure that it's safe.
And I'll get you a written response as well.
Thank you for all you have done in the whole year.
I will be quite brief.
Just about sixth form.
When we had some of the young people from the borough come in a couple of months ago,
they said that the difficulty was getting good education to be selected for the top universities in the borough.
they benefit from the EMA money they get, allowance money, but then they don't have the right education.
So given that feedback that you've got from the students, what is the Council planning,
what are you guys planning to do in terms of making it much more better so that they can access a higher education?
It's a shame that they have to go out of borough for that, for system education, not even university.
Yeah, no, it's a good question and I was really struck by the young people saying to us that, I think one of them said they went out of Borat to a more selective sixth form
and actually it wasn't the culture of that school didn't suit them so they came back into to Hamlet and also struck by the fact that attending school in to Hamlet meant they could access the EMA
which they found really valuable.
I think really it's about us learning from the high performing sixth forms within the borough
and looking at how we can replicate what they're doing.
And again you heard from one of the young people that was here who said
in terms of preparing them for selection processes to get into the best universities,
That sort of support is offered to every single young person at some of those out of the Bora selected six forms.
We have a programme in our Bora, it's run by an organisation called the Elephant Group,
but I guess the difference being because of capacity at the minute that isn't offered to all students.
So one of the things we are going to talk to our Headteacher colleagues about is
whether we're seeing the benefit of that programme
and is it something with additional investment
we could support more of our children's young people to access.
I guess the other observation for me is that,
and some of our young people have also said this to me,
is that for some of them university is not for them as well
and I think sometimes they feel that
if we put too much emphasis on,
Right, you must go into a levels because you don't get great a levels
You can't get into the best university or do that do the university degree of your choice
That we're not valuing the other the other routes the more vocational routes
You know the arts and other things that the young people are passionate about
so I think that's
I think that's important that we recognise that not everyone's the same and you know people want to do it all the other things
I guess the other thing which is topical is young people are concerned about debt as well.
You've seen a lot of news reports recently about people getting a reasonably good job after university
but actually their student loan debt actually increasing.
So I guess that sort of coverage might make young people think about whether they want to go to university.
Why can't we offer EMA to young people that still wants to get a goes out of borough to study for a sixth form
But they live in the borough
That's that's one of them said he had to come back because of the financial difficulties
I think when the scheme was first designed that was one of the criteria
But it doesn't mean it's not something we can't we can't go back and reflect on I shall be aware the mayor
Was quite keen to see if we could open something
as a more high performing selective sixth form but the DFE did not support that idea
largely on the fact that there was already enough provision in the borough and that would
have created additional spaces which would have put pressure on schools that might not
have as many students attending them so, but yeah that's something we might reflect on.
Thank you for your question, Dr. Phillips.
I need to wrap you up quickly.
Okay, Chair, thank you.
You mentioned the tribunal, the scenario of parents taking the council to a tribunal
to presumably enforce some further level of SEND provision.
I just wonder, have we got any idea of what is the materiality of that?
And who bears, where do the costs of that fall?
Do they fall to the legal department or do they fall to your budget?
Thank you, it's a really good question.
It falls to us and we do commission some legal support to help us through that.
It was one of the first things I asked about when I got here in terms of how many tribunals are we going to and what's our success rate.
And whether we should reflect on whether there's an opportunity earlier on to resolve some of that.
But I guess the issue is some of the assessment.
So first of all there's the argument, the debate about whether an assessment should be carried out.
And there's obviously sometimes we're challenged on that.
And then when an assessment is carried out,
the parents might have a particular view about what type of provision
that they want their child to go to.
And then, I mean, I can't speak for here,
but I know that reading in previous places I've worked,
a lot of the tribunal stuff falls down on very tightly controlled processes.
So rather than the tribunal saying we just don't agree with the council what tribunals often say is
You haven't really followed your own process. And so just
The council doesn't win but I guess from your perspective as a scrutiny committee. It's one of those things
I should bring back as I can a general update on send and also brief you on how many
Tribunals we go to and what what's our success rate? I'll include that next year
I mean I fear this is part of London, I think we will have litigious parents here in the
area where we've probably got more, I see a strong stereotype and what we can do to
reduce the cost of tribunals would be beneficial but I do feel there is something about the
growth in litigiousness.
It's a really important point and I do think part of what's behind the government reforms is they're seeing that and looking through the reforms trying to find an alternative for parents having to reach for a judicial process to get what they need.
Because it's a lot of, you know, it's obviously really challenging for the child and the family,
but also in terms of resources, you're then directing resources to that process that you
could be investing in supporting children.
Thank you, John.
Please, thanks everybody for coming today.
We had a very successful year.
Thank you, Steve, and your team and all the staff who is in here for supporting and gaining
all the questions and presentations done over the last couple of years.
And that's our last meeting and hopefully we will...
What now happened...
And thank you, Chair, for your chairing as well for this period.
So it does make a difference.
Thank you, Dr. Phillips. Thank you, everyone, as well.
We'll close the meeting.
Thank you, Chair. Thank you.
And Committee Clerks as well.