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Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee
Monday, 13th July 2026 at 6:30pm

 

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Good evening and welcome to this Children's and Education Scootaloo subcommittee meeting.
My name is Councillor Gulam Kibriya Choudhury and I will be chairing today's evening's meeting.
Before we begin going through the agenda, there are a few housekeeping announcements
to make this as usual. This meeting is being filmed for the Council website for public viewing.
Those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage.
Should a technical error occur that prevents remote attendees from participating,
I will decide if and how meetings should proceed after taking advice from officers.
I would remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction and to engage and speak
clearly into their microphones to ensure their contribution can be properly recorded.
A reminder is those in physical attendance must use their microphones and must turn them off
when not speaking.
There are no scheduled fires test.
If the alarm is sounded, please proceed calmly
out of the chamber onto the street
and assemble away from the building.
Attendees who are joining the meeting online
should use the raised hand function
should this wish to speak.
Any apologies for this meeting?
I can propose Councillor Shafiq Islam for the permanent of past year.
Please Garrett
.
Please confirm your name, role and
and whether you have any declaration.
De period, please.
I have nothing to declare.
Sanderson Ward.
Sadikur Rahman, Island Garden Ward, Councillor.
I have nothing to declare.
Councillor Mormont Marmot from Ireland Ward, nothing to declare.
Councillor Mads Churchhouse from Boat East, I have nothing to declare.
I'm Sheila Moon, I'm the co -opted member from representing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster.
Now the minutes of the previous meeting, the minutes from the last meeting, which held
on 16th of March, 2026, have been circulated as there have been changes in membership.
I will confirm that the former chair has agreed the minutes of the last meeting as a true
So this can just be noted because I think no members were there in this meeting, including me as well.
Is it okay here? Thank you.
Now, tonight is our main agenda.
Success and priorities and challenges for 2026 -2027.
Cabinet Member, Councillor Faisal Ahmad and our Corporate Director Steve Brady, here we
are welcome to both of you.
Councillor Faisal Ahmad, you will introduce this report and rest of the report I think
But you consider this report as red. Just highlight the main point.
After this we will open for members any question, any comment.
Good evening, everyone.
Councillor Faisal Ahmad, lead member of the Toronto services, happy to be here, privileged
to be here.
I'm looking forward to this role, which is very challenging, but nonetheless, looking
how we can improve and work together.
Our director, Steve Reddy, is going to be presenting the report.
So I'll hand everything over to him.
Thank you, Councillor, Chair and members of the committee.
I'll put a short slide set together.
This is based on some slides we pulled together
to introduce members to Children's Services,
plus with Councillor Faisal Ahmed we had a session with Cabinet and CMT recently to talk about progress and also priorities.
In the slides, in terms of the committees thinking about the year ahead and things that you would like to scrutinise,
I'll draw your attention to it, but particularly slides 14 and 15 have got some of the issues that we're dealing with,
which you might want to focus on and maybe ask some questions on.
But I would also stress these are just the issues that we are presenting.
There might be other issues you as members of this committee might particularly be interested in.
But I'll progress the slides and I'll be relatively quick.
So the first one is just some of the key stats in terms of the context for children's services.
We know about issues, some of the challenges around deprivation and housing and overcrowding,
but also we know that the children in our borough have such amazing potential, doing incredibly well at school,
and dealing really well with some of the challenges.
So I know that there are challenges in our borough, but there's also a great deal to be proud of,
including our children and their progress.
This is the Children's Directorate, so it's myself and then we have four key areas of the Directorate.
Supporting families, I'll try another.
Supporting families, there's sort of social care, we've got education, we've got the youth service and then policy and commissioning.
There's some headline stats on our staffing and our budget over the last year or so.
Some of our stakeholders are on the slide there in terms of our schools and then partners
across the public sector and the voluntary sector. Our governance arrangements, so this
When you see the sort of areas of priority you will see that this links to the sort of meetings and area of focus we have.
So those are the examples of the groups and boards and the sorts of priorities we are currently focused on.
In terms of members, obviously we have got the elected Mayor, our lead member and we now have a deputy lead member.
And obviously yourselves, the scrutiny committee and the chair of the scrutiny committee as well who we meet with regularly.
In terms of member responsibilities, so obviously members of Children's Scrutiny have a key role in terms of holding us to account.
We also have the members on our corporate parenting board.
And then also just to flag that we, all of us as part of the council, officers and elected members, have a role as corporate parents.
And that's something, again, you might want to think about as a scrutiny committee you'd like to look at.
we do have the annual corporate parenting report and that's our role in terms of our
children in our care and our care leavers and how we support them as we order our own
children. In terms of some of the issues that elected members and members of this committee
might get involved in, we do like to celebrate the achievements at council, ward, service
level and obviously residents and children celebrate their achievements, staff recognition,
special events and marking national days, weeks and months. So for instance we'll
have a sort of fostering fortnight where we're promoting fostering and
celebrating our foster carers as an example that we like to get our members
involved in and obviously any policy and service consultations. Some of
the more positive things and then some of the more challenging issues. We have
safeguarding issues, we have school places, you'll know when parents are
applying for school places, sometimes they don't always get the place that they are trying to access.
We do have relatively high percentage of children get their preference but it can be a challenge.
Provision for children and young people with SEND, SEND is an increasing issue and we accept the services,
we don't always get that right and sometimes we discuss that with parents and children to make sure we can improve that.
and then the service complaint and that might be about the council, it might be about schools,
it might be partner agencies and others, anything to do with children.
Our members and indeed colleagues on this committee can support us.
We have our local APHA website and promoting that as a place families and children can find out information
about all sorts of children and family services and we've just launched a new family information hub as well.
We've got our fostering in Tower Hamlets that we're really promoting.
We want to champion care experience to children as corporate parents.
Getting our young people to get involved and have a voice through being on Youth Council and young mayors.
And also encouraging all residents to be part of any consultations like Let's Talk Tower Hamlets.
We've had a really positive year over the last year or so with the launch of our youth service.
Really a good take up of University, Bursary and Education Maintenance Allowance.
All our family hubs have rolled out now, it's really positive.
Our free school meals, great work by our staff there in schools.
The Community Language Service launched, I think there's about 450 learners now.
Our Education Awards, and we're looking forward to another amazing event in September in Mile End Stadium.
so just some of the positive achievements.
As you know in Children's Service we get a lot of inspections,
so in the last couple of years really positive outcomes.
We had the ILAX inspection that was outstanding in November,
we had the local area SEND inspection,
and very recently we had something called a JTIE,
a Joint Targeted Area Inspection with a specific theme,
and we got some really positive feedback from that.
Just a couple of things, additional performance measures we've got,
do really well on performance, so we have 13 of our key performance indicators,
our green, we had one KPI that was amber about care leavers,
inter -employment and training, and we're well above London and national averages,
but we're trying to go further.
On that slide we've also got some of our staff survey figures,
really positive feedback from staff, and also really pleased to see,
in terms of sickness, absence is reduced as well, so just a couple of staff measures.
So this really, I guess, for the committees and you're thinking about where you want to focus
and areas of scrutiny, this slide and the next really are the key prompts.
So obviously our priorities as a directorate in children's services, delivering the MERS Manifesto
and those priorities, making sure we deliver best value is really important,
and prevention and demand management. There's a lot of reform on at the moment, the Social Care Family First reform,
SEND reform, the Families Hubs and the Best Start in Life, Youth Justice reform nationally, all these are driven nationally.
Then as well as other reform agendas, we've got developments around young tower hamlets and focus around particular themes
are Young Futures, HUG Pilot, Youth Participation and Community Languages.
Education is really strong in the borough but there's a couple of areas you want to focus,
early years and post -16. School place planning is really important, you'll have seen in other places.
The fall in birth rate has led to some school closures so we're trying to manage that in the borough.
Foster care recruitment is key to us. This committee did some work on free school meals last year
so we've got a bit of an action plan that we're following up on.
Working with our colleagues in health and the IECB and managing their changes,
supporting the wider council best value intervention improvement
and real focusing our director on equity and challenging anti -racism.
So that's our directorate area of focus.
Some of the areas that the scrutiny committee would typically look at,
so in the year ahead we'll be doing annual reports as we always do,
so the court of transparency on your report,
the children's safeguarding, the SEND report,
there's also the Youth Justice Board plant update
and some of these will be going to cabinet,
one of them at least will be going to council
and we'd like to share them with yourselves on the way there.
As I mentioned our inspection, so the SEND inspection,
there's an action plan from that,
the JTIE inspection that was very recent,
the report was out in May, there's an action plan from that.
You know, even where you've got a good outcome from the inspection,
there's always some actions to pick up.
And then our reform agenda, so Families First, Social Care, Send Reform, Best Start in Life and other areas of reform.
We'll be doing cabinet reports this year, so things like procurement of services,
we've got a report coming to cabinet soon on regional fostering.
And then the specific service reports, so you might say, well, we're quite interested in a committee on youth services or something like that,
so we could bring a report on that.
And critically what's worked really well in the past is young people coming to your committee
and I think members of your committee in the past have really enjoyed when we actually
bring young people in, be that the Youth Council or a youth participation group and they can
present to you directly and you can ask them questions.
There's also thematic issues, so in the past the committee has looked at something like
Children's mental health might be a theme you'd want to look at.
And then also mindful of cross -cutting things that hit children's services
but then cut across all the directions like transition to adulthood.
Maternity services obviously affects children and adult services.
Housing and child wellbeing.
The other thing I should say that's not on that slide is
there might be things that are happening to children and families
that one of our partners leads on
and that might be a health service or it might be something else.
and you might want to scrutinise that as well as an area.
And then finally, oops, just move the slides up.
Next slide, there we go.
Just in the slides for your information, just some key contacts
and also just in case you might get approached as a member of this committee,
you know, what do you do if somebody comes to you with a serious safeguarding issue?
So we've just included in the information there some contact details in case you needed to access that.
But I guess obviously Chair, you and the committee will determine your own themes for scrutiny,
but I just wanted to share particularly the sort of directorate priorities there,
and then also the things that we've reported on them in the past,
and things that thinking ahead in the year ahead that you might specifically like to look at.
Happy to take any questions.
Thank you Steve for your presentation.
First of all do you want to add anything or is it okay for you?
No, nothing to add, I think Steve has covered that pretty well.
Thank you. Before we open up, members, questions and comments.
Children and Education Scootoony Subcommittee Terms of Reference, membership, quorum and dates of 2026 and 2027 meetings, which is page 9 to 18 in this report.
Just a minute, just you can introduce in brief this report here, please.
Thank you, Chair. This is a straightforward report and reflects the information set out
in the agenda. As is standard practise at the first meeting of the municipal year, it's
important for members to revisit the subcommittee's terms of reference, committee composition,
quorum arrangements and scheduled meeting dates. As such, that is what I'm asking for
the committee to do today, tonight, sorry. Thank you.
Are there any comments from the subcommittee members about the terms of condition?
The reference, yeah?
It's okay, yeah?
Thank you.
If there are no comments from the subcommittee, then you can please note the terms of reference
that I said out in the report.
Now, members, it's your turn about the report.
You can ask any question, any comment, please.
I have one question. What do you think are the most significant risks for children and education services over this municipal year and what plan do you have in place to mitigate this?
In terms of the biggest risks for that year ahead, that's a really good question.
I think there's a lot of change, a lot of change going on for children's services that affects the council, schools and all the people we work with.
So I think making sure that as all those changes go through that we make sure it works for Tower Hamlets, children and families.
There's a lot of change.
One of the things we're going to share with the committee is the annual safe -guarding board report.
And that will also list some of the key risks.
I think the fact that we're inspected quite regularly will give the committee some assurance that the council and partners are working really hard to manage those risks.
but I think we're always mindful of some of the challenges in our community
and some of the challenges our children are dealing with
and some of that changes over time when we think about head teachers,
when we talk to them now, we'll talk about child mental health,
they'll talk about things like children's access to things like vapes,
they'll talk about youth violence and the online harm and things like that.
So it's really important that we keep talking to our children and families and keep learning about the risks they're dealing with.
But I think that our approach to the work, how our staff work really hard and the evidence through all the inspections we've dealt with shows that we're working really positively.
but we're always ready to learn as well and improve and that's why it's important we keep testing ourselves
and you as scrutiny committee that you ask us hard questions as well is really helpful, thanks.
Thank you.
Hello, thank you for presenting the report.
I actually have been wondering because the outstanding children's services inspection is obviously fantastic, as I know you're aware.
it's really striking that in a borough with such a high child poverty rate,
far higher than the national average, which I think is about one in three,
so 48%, that's quite astonishing.
What would you say are the primary reasons that Tower Hamlets is actually
achieving really good social care outcomes, at least, you know, I'm sure the ambitions are very high,
but in terms of what the national legislation is, and also having come from local authorities
where unfortunately it is not the case that children's social care is in any way managing
to meet targets. What are the primary reasons that Tell Hamlets is actually doing very well
in those areas? What would you say are the key strengths that you have to maintain that
positive success rate?
Thank you, Councillor and Chair, if I can. It's a really, really important question and
and when you mentioned at the start in terms of levels of deprivation and the challenge that we know
some of our children and families are dealing with, in other parts of the country you would expect a lot more
children to be in care potentially so that's really important, the question you've asked to understand
what are the reasons. I think that the council and partners really invest in early help and prevention
and I think when you look at the support around dealing with poverty,
when we look at the early help and prevention that's done in our family hubs, which is really positive,
I think that we work really hard to make sure our staff feel supported and have a job that they can do.
So I keep a very close eye on our staff workload and caseload
and make sure they feel supported and regularly scrutinise the information on management oversight.
But I think as a borough, both a council and with partners and with families,
we work really, really hard to keep children with their family.
And if they can't stay with their immediate family, then we're working to make sure they're supported in the wider family.
and we'll even do things like fostering with family in other countries
and supporting them through that way as well.
But I think investment in early health and prevention,
supporting families with poverty,
supporting them with issues like substance abuse,
mental health, domestic violence,
the support of our family hopes is key.
And then working as hard as we can,
we do a lot of family group conferencing
to keep children with their families the way to keep our numbers of children in our care low
and support our workforce to support families. Thanks.
Good evening Steve. I have a question about this regarding baby.
It's really concerned a lot of the parents like you know the young children
they are having a baby constantly in school outside.
So the majority of parents are very concerned about that.
Are you taking any measures reducing the...
It's the baby I'm talking about.
Yeah, no, it's a really important issue
and I know that our schools are really trying to ensure
they can crack down on that
and make sure that children are not using vapes in or around or outside of school.
I think our public health team and the council are working hard on that.
It's challenging isn't it, because on one level the public health message is if you are smoking cigarettes
then it's safer to use a vape in terms of your health benefits, but actually if you're not,
if you're not smoking anything at all then starting smoking vapes can be very negative.
I think there's been a lot of investment, sadly, by companies who want to sell vapes
and making them very attractive to younger people.
I know that there potentially might be some moves to try and reduce that
and stop all that promotion that you see from a lot of vape shops as well.
But I think educating our children about the damage that can cause,
as well as, obviously, schools working with the children and the parents to prevent that,
is really important. I think our trading standards in the council as well
and our police colleagues can help us by challenging people selling vapes
illegally to underage children as well. They can be part of the solution.
Thank you. Basically right now I have a few reports like the corner shops
they're selling to underage children.
That's very concerning.
They shouldn't be selling to the children underage.
On top of that, there is a thing called CBD.
It's some sort of addiction, drug or something.
So they also sell to the children underage.
I think we need to have very serious concerns.
Thank you council, it's a really important issue and I think you're right, the risks for children who might vape than accessing other substances is a real risk so it's an important issue.
I mean I can certainly, if the chair and other colleagues on the committee support that,
one of the issues we could bring back to a future meeting is a briefing report on what the extent of the problem is,
and what the response is from school, council, the police, training standards and everyone to try and address that issue.
And also hopefully, sort of nationally, there should be some changes to help us address that issue as well. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you Steve.
Last, is that okay?
Sorry, I just have a question.
Sorry, I didn't get your name, Councillor Sadiko's question to you,
he asked you about children's services.
My question was in your response, you mentioned quite a few times about there's a lot of change
and I was just wondering what's the change and will whatever the change is impact negatively on what you're hoping to do?
Thank you for the question. There's a document I've circulated to the committee which is from the Children's Directors' Organisation called ADCS
and there's a president elected each year and the current president does my role but in Haringey
and she and Graham gave a speech at the national conference which I've circulated to the committee
and you'll see in the back of that just the huge amount of policy and other changes that happen
I guess one of the biggest is send reform and all local authorities with their partners
had to produce a send reform plan in June and then implement, start to implement that plan
and what that is really about is all about prevention again and working really early with children, families,
early years providers, primary schools to try and support children with additional needs as much as possible
in mainstream education. We know that can't be achieved 100 % of the time for all children but that whole strategy
is all about how can we invest more in staffing, even in the buildings themselves,
within mainstream education so more children with additional needs can be supported in mainstream.
So that is one of the big changes that we've seen.
The other one is the social care changes, it's called Families First.
And for some elements of that change we're already doing that work,
So one of the reforms really promotes something called Family Group Conferencing
and Tower Hamlets has got a reputation for doing a lot of that work already.
So in some senses that's not a big change, but there are some other changes linked to that reform
which sort of joins up the social work function with the early help function,
create some specific roles like child protection specialist roles as well.
So there is some significant change, there's more of a push under those reforms for regional working as well
so councils not doing fostering recruitment on their own, you do that with other councils and have a regional approach to that
as well as how we might commission children's homes places and a real push to try and do that much bigger as a sub -regional approach
So some of those changes and it is quite tricky because obviously we need to make sure we're doing the right things for our
Tower Hamlets children and families but those are government mandated national reforms and we are held to account.
So I have a monthly meeting with the DfE where they ask us about our SEND reform improvements.
Another separate meeting with the DfE that asks us about our families first social care changes as well.
So there's quite a lot of work to do, but there's also a lot of external scrutiny that that work is being progressed.
I will always say that we need to do it at a pace that suits our children and families into our hamlets,
and also at a pace that our own staff and partner agency staff are comfortable with.
Thank you.
Do you have any complementary question or anything?
Thank you.
Thank you, Steve.
Just in relation to her question, and you have also some touchdown, my question is,
in last year we have invested for San Pupil nearly two million.
My specific question to you, do you think any improvement for EACP education healthcare
plan?
Because I know this multi organisation involved in this process.
But just I want to know where we are now.
Thank you, chair.
It is an important question again and is one of the key measures around special educational
and disabilities. Tower Hamlets has got, I think there's only one other London borough
with more education, health and care plans, so we're now maintaining around about 5 ,000
children with an education, health and care plan and one of the key metrics we were always
scrutinised on was obviously children and families go through a process to request an
for a plan and that's either supported or not and then if it's supported and a plan needs to be pulled together
as you said it's a multi -agency plan with lots of input from different professionals in the school
there's a target that needs to be done in 20 weeks and 20 weeks sounds like a long time but I guess there's a lot
it's a complex plan, you need to consult with the parents as you pull those feedback from the professionals into a plan
But there was a time when we were performing really poorly, like below 30 % were being done within 20 weeks.
We put some additional investment in, had additional staff involved in that and the latest performance is over 60%.
When you look at the sort of comparative performance that probably puts us around about the middle of our councils that we're compared to.
So we know there's still room for improvement there, but the SEND reforms will impact on that as well.
And it would be interesting to see, I think we've had quite a bit of a spike in activity leading up to these reforms
because parents might be concerned that after the SEND reforms that it might not be accessible in terms of some of the education,
and care plans and all that's associated with that.
I mean what we hope is that where a child has lower level needs
that something called SEN support can be provided by schools and other providers
and then you don't need an Education, Health and Care Plan.
But I think what we've seen is a trend in recent years that parents have felt
well because I've not got the support for my child I thought they were going to receive
then I will apply for an Education and Health Care Plan.
And that's what impacted on our numbers increasing.
But it is positive that that timeliness measure has improved.
And I think the local area SEND inspection that I referred to earlier
does show some real positives in terms of when we were last inspected a few years ago.
What's critical as well,
I wanted to make sure that members of this committee were aware that there's lots of support and advice and guidance for families whilst that Education and Care Plan process takes place.
So just to reassure you that that is happening whilst the plan is created. There's lots of support for the family and the children. Thanks.
Let me know.
And finally, is there any other business to discuss?
Members?
No, that's fine.
With no other business to discuss, I call this meeting to a close here.
The next Children and Education Scrutiny Subcommittee meeting will be held on 14th of September
2026.
Thank you, scrutiny members, for your attendance and participation tonight.
Good evening all.
Please, good members stay behind for the final agenda item and our meeting closed to the press and public now.
Thank you.