Issue - meetings

The Board received a report from the Director of Children’s Services updating them on the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) activity by schools in Halton.

It was noted that Halton’s approach to early intervention depended on all partners ensuring that the delivery of universal services played a key role in identifying and supporting children, young people and families when issues first emerged.

The report went on to discuss the CAF process, the support available to school staff undertaking level 2 support to families, and developments in early intervention in Halton.

The following queries were made by Members:

Was there any data that showed how many CAF’s came from individual schools?

Primary schools currently lead on 84% of the open CAFs and secondary schools lead on 22% of open CAFs but there was no data that stated which particular schools they came from.

How is the success of these measured?

If the CAF has achieved its aims, the child should not progress to children’s social care as the intervention and support has addressed the needs.  Some families’ circumstances may change and the child may need a further CAF in the future; this may be right for that child and family but this is monitored to ensure support was at the right level.  The new ECAF recording system would improve the tracking of outcomes for all CAFs. 

The identity of the Lead Professionals is not clear on the chart on 3.2.2, will this improve?

Yes, a new system will be introduced which would be more robust and provide live data.

RESOLVED:  That the Board

1)    notes the report;

2)    notes the support available to staff in schools to complete and lead on CAF’s; and

3)    notes the developments underway to support early intervention across the Borough.