Select Committee to review changes to children’s early help services in Buckinghamshire

The proposed changes to early help services for children in Buckinghamshire are to be examined by a special meeting of Buckinghamshire County Council’s Children’s Social Care and Learning Select Committee.

The special meeting was called after four backbench County Councillors (Julia Wassell, Chaudhary Ditta, Martin Farrow and Niknam Hussain) triggered the ‘call-in’ procedure for challenging council decisions.

The special meeting of the Select Committee will be held on Friday 2nd February 2018 at 10.30am. The public are welcome to attend the meeting in person to observe or to watch a live web cast of the event.

At the meeting the Select Committee will have the option of either rejecting the call-in request or referring the Early Help decision back to Cabinet for further consideration.

The decision to change the service provided to support families with difficulties and the provision of Children’s Centres was made on Monday 8th January 2018 by at a meeting of the Cabinet of Buckinghamshire County Council.

The agenda for the select committee meeting of Friday 2nd February 2018 can be found at the following link : https://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=788&MId=9924&Ver=4.

The live web cast of the meeting will be available at the following link : https://buckscc.public-i.tv/core/portal/home.

Details on the original decision to make changes to the Early Help services made at a meeting of the Buckinghamshire County Council Cabinet on Monday 8th January can be found at the following link : https://democracy.buckscc.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=124&MId=9518.

Established by the Local Government Act 2000, the call-in procedure is part of the Buckinghamshire County Council’s democratic scrutiny process enabling non-executive councillors to challenge any decision made by or on behalf of the council’s executive and have it examined by the relevant council select committee.

Because the decision being called in relates to children’s services it is to be reviewed by the Children’s Social Care and Learning Select Committee, which has convened the meeting on Friday 2nd February 2018 specifically for this purpose.