Agenda and minutes

The March 2021 Board minutes were reviewed and agreed as a true record of the last meeting. 

Action: post agreed March 2021 Board mins on SCDC website.

Claire Daunton raised the query that at 7.2 on the TOR states the board Members have 1 vote, but that there are 2 elected members for SCDC on the Board. It was discussed that the vote is for the organisation as the statutory member of the partnership and not the individual/s.  Therefore, there would need to be a consensus between individuals if more than one were present at the Board representing that organisation’s views and the consensus vote would be the vote cast.

Action- CD to take back to Council to determine who the voting member is. CD agreed the TOR, pending this clarification.

Action- 7.5 – ensure the TOR is non -gender specific throughout document.

TOR was agreed by the Board.

Peter Campbell led the vote for the position of Chair and Vice Chair.

Chair: CD - Nominated Stuart Smith as Chair

No other nominations for Chair were put forward. Stuart Smith was elected as Chair for next 2 years.

Vice-Chair: SS- Nominated Cllr Claire Daunton as Vice Chair for next 2 years.

No other nominations for Vice- Chair were put forward. Cllr Claire Daunton was elected as Vice-Chair for next 2 years.

SS asked the Board to be aware that we all have a role to play as strategic leaders to ensure this is fed back to stakeholders in these areas. As a Partnership we all take responsibility for sharing the information.

·         Youth and Families meetings

·         Adults’ meetings

• Youth and Families PSG meeting

LG updated that the Youth & Families PSG is on its second monthly meeting and growing in attendance and cooperation between partners. Attendance from Police, County Early Help team, Romsey Mill, housing associations and the medical practice relating to one of the cases. Still trying to engage schools.

• Adults’ PSG meetings

This meeting has been running since early 2021 and there is a very large number of hoarding cases that the group don’t seem to be able to make much progress with due to the majority requiring mental health intervention. There are currently 28 hoarding cases (revised from 10 at time of Board) in South Cambs, requiring ongoing input from many partners at great cost. There is currently no funding available in South Cambs to help these people for which is primarily a mental health issue. LG requested that Board members raise this issue at County CSP Board etc to request funding for a specialised mental health practitioner for these people.

Action- PC to chase employment of planned mental health worker that would sit in the SCDC Housing service

Action- SMc to request Hoarding is raised at ICS Health & Wellbeing Board.

Action- SS to raise hoarding issue at County CSSB and at CSP Chairs Meeting with Commissioner.

·         Northstowe

·         Orchard Park

·         Cambourne

·         Our approach to Milton and Waterbeach

·         Our approach to Fen Ditton & Fulbourn

·         Melbourn

·       Northstowe:

Work being done to address stigma between private and social housing types, working with BPHA. Children and young people’s issues have a low-level impact at the moment, but partners are having frequent meetings, involving youth and arts work in area. There will be an event in December with a follow-up in New Year based on feedback, possibly in conjunction with a ‘Menshed’ opportunity.

• Orchard Park:

Orchard Park Partnership group are in place focusing on early intervention. They recently held a ‘Fiesta event’ led by the partnership. They are meeting soon to process feedback and evaluate the success. There was a lot of interest from residents to do something. They have some quite serious ASB issues.

·       Cambourne

Engagement via the Town council-funded Community Development worker.  Event date tbc.   Cambourne Town Council will be using their Christmas event to engage people.

to share information and the need for action.

·         Policy changes

·         Status update

·         Status reports for 4 DHR

·         Summary of County DHR arrangements

• Status reports for 4 DHR

o   DHR1- at Home office. We received feedback to our author from the pre-quality assurance panel. We amended our reports as per their feedback and this has now been re-submitted.

o   DHR2- With home office and no feedback as yet from pre-quality assurance panel.

o   DHR3- this looks like it will be a full DHR but so far it appears that very little learning will emerge as there seems to be no information that can be found with any agencies in the past. Family and friends do not seem to be able to provide any information either.

o   DHR4- This DHR may be terminated early (invoking the break clause in the contract) as there seems to be very little evidence of DV, or of agency involvement and no engagement from family and friends.

It was agreed by the Board that CSP Chair, KH and LG to be given permission to invoke break clause for DHR4 if required.

Summary of County DHR arrangements

As of 1 April, the County Domestic Abuse & Sexual Violence Partnership team centralised the DHR process across Cambs. Each District Council has contributed into a pooled fund as a type of insurance, should a DHR occur in their District. There is funding to conduct 6 reviews a year across Cambridgeshire. If we have more than this, then each District Council must contribute more. County now have on file 8 approved authors who have applied through the procurement process with all contract and financial issues the responsibility of the DASV Partnership. The DA partnership Manager will brief the Author and CSP Chair and act as the point of contact throughout the review. They will also support the compilation of the Action Plan, liaise with the Chair and Author regarding feedback from the quality assurance panel and lead on the publication of the final report in line with Home Office statutory guidance.

CD advised that she had raised the issue of Home Office funding for DHR’s, at the Police panel Meeting, 15 Sept 2021.

Status update

LG updated on her concerns about the number of cases coming to the PSG (see 6. above).
LMc reiterated the need to speed up the recruitment of the Mental Health worker in Housing (see actions above). 

Community Safety Event

LG- We now have our CSP Comms forward plan approved by Cabinet. We are working through it, as each awareness week or campaign is created, mostly with content supplied by CSP partners for us to on-share or created by the SCDC Policy & Performance team. A few of the items overlap with this team so we have merged the calendars to avoid duplication. Some examples of communications relating to our Comms plan are:

• Action Against Hate- currently being created and led by Police.
• GRT toolkit and workshops which also covered racism
• Radicalisation & Prevent (KH mentioned earlier in item 10) is in progress and we will be sharing more information and training shortly and pushing that information outwards into Parishes.
• ASB awareness in relation to the trigger process that Lesley covered earlier. We will be sharing more information via the SCDC website on how this process works.
• Violence against women and girls (VAWG) newsletter is shared monthly to partners and colleagues. We have made contact with Amanda Warburton from the Domestic Violence Team who have an awareness day 25 Nov with 16 days of action after that. We hope to be able to use some of their material as well as information from the DAHA accreditation group that we are also a part of, to share internally and externally. 
• Comm Safety Engagement toolkit & grants have been shared in the Spring & Summer South Cambs Magazine as well as the parish updates.

Community Safety Event

This year we plan to hold ‘place-based’ local events instead of one big event.  This is partly due to Covid and partly because of a lack of engagement with the last event. These place -based events will be decided, based on the data and need e.g. Melbourn.

1.    Community Engagement / Safety Toolkit

2.    Gypsy, Roma & Traveller Negotiated Stopping Toolkit

3.    Evaluation

1.    Community Engagement / Safety Toolkit

LG- This toolkit is live on our South Cambs Community safety pages.  We have had 2 applications so far totalling £650. The Bridge mental health £500 / Harston Community Group- £150

2.    Gypsy, Roma & Traveller Negotiated Stopping Toolkit

SF- Portfolio lead will be Sgt Emma Hilson within her new role and she will provide an update quarterly. She will also complete the round of parish workshops that have been requested (Northstowe). Insp Shane Fasey & Chief Insp Paul Rogerson will be meeting with the OPCC to brief him and gauge timescales and discuss legal changes.

     3. Evaluation

There was money in budget to evaluate the toolkits, but how we complete an evaluation with the GRT toolkit not completed, is still unclear.  CD- requested that Parish Council’s are involved in the evaluation.

Action- SF to provide a holding statement that can be sent to the 13 parishes that have been requesting this toolkit since March to explain the delays and changes. 

Action- KH and LG to work with SS, SF to develop plans for evaluating the toolkits work.

SF- An Engagement Survey is being trialled through the Cambs City team. It will start online and then go into the community groups and families. Once the pilot has been evaluated, it will be rolled further to other areas within Cambridgeshire. Expected date for SCDC is early part of next year. We can then tailor to SCDC. Information from the last City and SCDC survey will be compiled to establish if there is any best practice to be used.

Action - SF – to review and incorporate (where appropriate) the questions from the last S Cambs police survey.

·         Substance misuse

·         Reoffending

·       Substance misuse 

·       Reoffending

SS- The above 2 priorities are a requirement of the CSP. SS wanted to assure the Board, that although these agencies are not present at every Board meeting, we are discharging our duties around these issues at countywide boards.  Reps from each will attend from time to time.

LG- Our ISA review is ongoing. It is currently sitting with the SCDC information governance team, who have given some feedback. We hope to be able to get all partners to sign it by the end of 2021.In the meantime we have an agreement in place which all parties are signatory to.  Information sharing and confidentiality are covered at every PSG meeting to ensure case details are handled appropriately.

·         Countywide DHR funding arrangements

·         PCC funding

• PCC funding

KH- The budget spreadsheet was explained and no questions were raised. Only money left is for an evaluation and grants.

Next meeting- Feb 2022, date TBA

Close

LMc- Launching tomorrow is £36k of 1-year funding for 2022-23 that can be applied for through SCDC, for children, young people and family services projects. It is a trial to see if it can be a rolling process by way of 3-year grants from 2023-26.  Contact KH or LMc for more information and the link is here:  Children and young people grant fund 2022 - South Cambs District Council (scambs.gov.uk)