Along with praise for staff working to deliver improvements to vulnerable children in Swansea inspectors commended scrutiny councillors for the way they have made a difference.

The Care and Social Services Inspectorate (CSSIW) has published its findings following a review of Child and Family Services access arrangements. The report was discussed by Cabinet last week.

The report says progress made since serious concerns were raised about services in 2007 has continued since the withdrawal of a ministerial Intervention Board two years ago.

Reflecting on the work of the Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board, the report said: “The overview and scrutiny board are able to evidence constructive challenge to performance and carry out an ambitious programme of enquiry into service provision.”

The new People Scrutiny Board, chaired by Cllr. Mike Day, will ensure that there are robust arrangements in place for the continued scrutiny of Child & Family Services.

Photo credit: http://www.leicestershirescouts.org.uk/2011/08/congratulations-award-of-merit/

The new Scrutiny Boards have all now had their first meetings.

It was good to get off the ground and meet the many new faces on the Council.  The councillors on each Board were meeting as a team for the first time and the agenda was focussed on making sure that there was a good understanding of the new structure, the role of the Board, the scrutiny process, and support provided.

The first task of each of the Boards is to develop a work plan for the year. Before getting into the discussion each of the Boards had the opportunity to hear from key members of the Corporate Management Team. Presentations were made by Directors on service priorities and key challenges, highlighting issues of concern or interest. This advice was important in helping the Boards to identify the issues that they may want to concentrate on.

Board members were provided with guidance about the types of activity that could make up a work plan and advice about how they might prioritise their work. In order to identify priorities the Boards had access to ideas coming from the previous scrutiny boards, views from the public (from the Swansea Voices citizens’ panel survey), as well as the views of directors and councillors around the table.

One of the things highlighted was the distinction between Board meetings and Panels:

• Board meetings will typically enable opportunities for questions on a board range of policy and service issues based on written reports, include a range of monitoring activities, and for providing challenge and holding to account of Cabinet Members.
• On the other hand, Board can set up informal Panels for in-depth examination of specific areas of concern, where a small task and finish group will be formed to undertake a discrete time-limited review, with a programme of evidence gathering, leading to production of a scrutiny report with recommendations for improvement. 

Another issue of importance was planning and preparation for meetings (e.g. developing questioning strategies). This is something that the team will be working with Board members in the coming weeks to develop, building on the positive experiences had over the last few years. 

Following the work planning discussions each of the Boards was clear about the sort of things they would look at and were able to identify a number of proposals for Panel work.

The Scrutiny Boards will be meeting every 4 weeks. The second round of meetings will take place soon. At these meetings the programme of work for the year ahead will be agreed, including what Panels will be set up to undertake in-depth work.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsi-r/4767700249/

Cabinet has accepted all of the recommendations made by the Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board in relation to its review of support to care leavers in Swansea. 

Cabinet formally considered the scrutiny report last Thursday. The Cabinet Member for Wellbeing, Cllr Mark Child, presented a paper proposing a response to the recommendations.

The Cabinet Member presented a detailed action plan to show how each of the scrutiny recommendations would be implemented. It was clear that progress has already been made against a number of the recommendations.

The new People Scrutiny Board will be responsible for following up on the recommendations / action plan agreed by Cabinet, later in the year.

Photo credit: www.cardiff.gov.uk

Yesterday nearly 40 councillors took part in our first ever Scrutiny Work Planning Conference.  This is something that councillors suggested last year as a way to help with the difficult business of prioritising the work of scrutiny.  Ultimately the purpose was to ensure that the biggest difference can be made with the limited resources available 

This year more of the work of scrutiny will be done through informal task and finish groups called Panels and the point of the conference was to look at what these Panels should focus on.

The event started with a presentation which included:

• How the new Panels were going to work
• The work planning process
• Criteria for prioritising topics
• Possible Panel topics as identified by the scrutiny Boards at their first meetings – these were introduced by the relevant chairs
• Information on what topics the public consider to be important drawn from Swansea Voices – the Council’s citizen’s panel

Here is the full presentation:

After the presentation councillors worked in groups, armed with information about why topics had been chosen and possible lines of inquiry, to try and narrow down the 18 potential topics into three.  This was challenging of course – but from the feedback it was clear that some common themes were emerging.

The final stage was an opportunity for councillors to ‘dot vote’ for their favourite topics.

 As well as helping with the business of prioritising I think the conference had three other important benefits:

• Areas of overlap and duplication between ideas suggested by the different boards could be discussed
• Potential topics could be narrowed down and given sharper focus
• A much greater awareness across all scrutiny councillors about what topics have been chosen and why

Overall, for a first work planning conference, the event seemed to go really well.  All of the work done will now be considered by the Scrutiny programme Board who will have the final decision on which Panels should be set up.

The “support for carers” scrutiny review was completed by the Health Social Care & Well Being Overview & Scrutiny Board in March.  The Board made a total of 12 recommendations and last week the Cabinet Member for Well Being, Councillor Mark Child,  submitted his response to the Board’s recommendations.  Nine of the 12 recommendations were agreed with 3 being partially agreed.

The action plan to implement the Board’s recommendations will be monitored regularly by the new People Scrutiny Board until the Board is satisfied that the recommendations have been implemented.  The People Scrutiny Board will receive the first monitoring report early on in 2013.

I have just come straight from the Council’s Annual Meeting where the new overview and scrutiny chairs have been elected for the next 12 months.   You can find the terms of reference of the new boards in the agenda pack.

The chairs and vice chairs for 2012/13 are:

 People Overview & Scrutiny Board 

Chair:  Councillor Mike Day

Vice Chair: Councillor Jennifer Raynor

Places Overview & Scrutiny Board

Chair: Councillor John Newbury

Vice Chair: Councillor Ann Cook

 Stronger and Safer Communities Overview & Scrutiny Board

Chair: Councillor Uta Clay

Vice Chair: Councillor Clive Lloyd

The Overview and Scrutiny Programme Board will be chaired by the Chair of Council who is Councillor Des Thomas.

When I blogged the new chairs and vice chairs for the first time two years ago I said a little bit about what their roles were.  Here is what I said:

…. both the chairs and vice chairs have role descriptions which are part of the council’s rule book (a.k.a. the constitution). Here is the short version:

Chairs

• Provide leadership and direction - They promote a team approach, promote O&S more generally, develop the work programme and ensure that their board base their conclusions and recommendations on sound evidence
• Manage the work programme - They ensure that the work programme is delivered and report to Council and other meetings as required
• Effectively manage meetings- Set agendas, prepare for meetings and manage business during meetings
• Provide community leadership – Liaise with community groups and other agencies, identify community based issues and involve as wide a range of people as possible in the overview and scrutiny process
• Involve and develop board / committee members – To encourage high performance and lead training and development where needed

Vice Chairs

• Support the leadership role of the chair – They work in partnership with the chair and provide ongoing support and advice on all aspects of the work of the board
• Cover the role of the chair in the chair’s absence - If the chair is away or unavailable the vice chair has to be able to do all of the things that the chair does
• Lead specific activities - This can include leading a specific review or chairing task and finish groups and reporting back to the board

If you have anything you want to feed into the work of a particular board or if you have any ideas about issues they should be looking at, you can contact the chairs and let them know.

If you want to contact a chair or vice chair we will be updating the details on our web pages shortly.  In the meantime you can email scrutiny@swansea.gov.uk.

Phot credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/waleedalzuhair/4164311620/

Yesterday we held a councillor induction session for Overview and Scrutiny.

Of the 72 councillors elected on May 3rd, 33 are new councillors.  The induction session was a brilliant opportunity for the Overview and Scrutiny team to meet many of those new councillors and we were delighted that a few of the more experienced hands were also able to come along and share their thoughts and experience.

The overall aim of the session was to give a general idea of the types of things that Overview and Scrutiny can do and to get people thinking about how they might be able to make a difference as overview and scrutiny councillors. 

We were bowled over by the knowledge and understanding that the new councillors had and excited by the many great ideas for scrutiny work coming out of the discussion groups.  It is clear that we will have to be on our A-game as a team to keep up!

Here is the presentation to give a sense of what was covered.