Issue - meetings

To provide details of the Council’s progress with the London Pledge.

The Committee noted that the London Pledge was drawn up in 2008, and adopted by the Children’s Trust, to ensure that children and young people in care across London had equal access to the same range of key services and support where they live, go to school, or access employment or training opportunities in London. The report set out the pledge principles and detailed how the Council were meeting these promises. The achievements in the overarching areas were: promises that were made to young people were clear, specialist looked after children nurse team established, and a complaints procedure for looked after children and young people.

When considering the health principles of the pledge, the Committee were informed that a multi agency forum had been established to address health, education and placements needs of LAC.  Individual health assessments were undertaken by Doctors and follow up reviews completed by a designated Children in Care Nurse, Judy Mace, who was also due to attend the next Committee meeting of the Committee on the 19^th April .The joint work of the Council with Tailstock Centre was pointed to as well as the signposting of children and young people to sexual health services as part of this pledge.   An enquiry was made on the attendance of young people at their healthcare meetings and it was reported that, as these meetings were not compulsory, it was usual for young people in care to sometimes not attend these meetings.  In relation to health visits to LAC outside of the borough, it was noted that the designated CiC nurse from the borough would travel to outside borough locations to visit CiC with weekend visits also completed when needed. The Committee agreed that the complaints procedure for children in care should be made available and published online as previously requested.

In the stay safe section of promises to young people, the Committee noted that young people will be consulted on their pathway plans.  There would be contact and liaison, where needed, with the Youth Offending Service in the young persons new placement area.

 The provisions of the Virtual School were highlighted in the section dealing with enjoy and achieve.  In particular their work on intervention at critical learning stages to ensure that children go onto achieve between the ages of 16-19. The 18 projects, which assist young people leaving care, also helped young people access University. The Committee noted that there were 44 care leavers attending University.  The Committee enquired about the support services to them and advised that there were potentially more bursaries available in future for access to with the Frank Butler trust referred to as a potential funding source. The Committee were advised that the Council would issue looked after children with a £2000 bursary that are attending University. There was a team which actively worked on accessing all potential funding sources to offer to care leavers and to improve the attraction of going to University.

In regards to encouraging a positive contribution in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 66