Agenda and minutes

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

No disclosures of interest were made.

No declarations were made.

Invited to attend are Cllr Elliott King and Cllr Sam Pritchard, Cabinet Members for Children’s Services and relevant Social Services officers.

Link to Cabinet Papers 20 February 2020, which contain the budget proposals (papers should be available online from 13 February 2020).           

Councillors Elliott King and Sam Pritchard, Cabinet Members for Children Services, Dave Howes, Director of Social Services and Julie Thomas, Head of Child and Family Services went through the proposed budget proposals in relation to Child and Family Services highlighting the main issues and answering questions.

The Panel is asked to discuss and agree its views and recommendations on the budget proposals in relation to Child and Family Services which it would like to make to Cabinet.

The conveners of each of the performance panels will feed in the views of their panel to the Service Improvement and Finance Performance Panel which meets on 19 February and has been convened to specifically look at the draft budget.  Chris Holley, Convener of the Service Improvement and Finance Performance Panel will then attend Cabinet on the 20 February to feed in the collective views of the scrutiny performance panels.

The panel agreed the following views and recommendations on the budget proposals in relation to Child and Family Services it would like to make to Cabinet:

·         Panel expressed concern about the risks associated with grants, in particular the increased risk as the Council relies more and more on grant funding.

·         Panel was happy with the overall focus in the budget on the priorities of this Council.

·         Panel noted the effective reduction of £1.35m of core funding for Poverty and Prevention next financial year (the majority of which is in Children’s Services), and an increase of £1.6m in Child and Family Services, which will basically result in an increase of just £0.25m in an overall budget of £42m. This is a very small increase compared to Adult Services and a very small increase relative to the increase in the RSG.

Following on from this meeting:

The convener will feed in the views of this Panel, along with the conveners of the other panels to the Service Improvement and Finance Panel which meets on 19 February.  The convener of the Service Improvement and Finance panel will then attend Cabinet on 20 February to feed in the collective views of the scrutiny performance panels and write a letter to the Cabinet member.