Issue - meetings

To consider for information purposes the Annual report of the North London Adoption and Fostering Consortium.

The committee were asked to consider the annual report of the North London Adoption and Fostering consortium This report communicated how the five boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington along with associate members Norwood  and the Post Adoption centre have been working together over the past year on: new adoption initiatives, developing work in fostering, joint publicity, information exchanges, adoption training developing the work of the consortium.  It was important to note  that  fostering had been added to the portfolio of the consortiums work last year.   Adoption   has always been a compatible area of shared area of work as it was regulated and  therefore councils will have to follow similar processes The five London boroughs had already been working informally  together on adoption for  around 10 years previously  and   now  had agreements  in place with among others  on how  adopters were shared. The requirements around training for fostering and adoption is  set in regulation and standards therefore it makes financial sense to the 5 boroughs to access this as part of a group . Publicity around fostering and adoption is another area where funding from the five boroughs is grouped together to provide maximum opportunity to meet the different needs of fostering activity. Recently  the consortium had organised a high profile adoption event where  15 potential adopters had been identified.

The committee  were pleased to noted that Haringey had the highest number  adoption orders compared to neighbouring boroughs and  they were also working on increasing the special guardianship orders. The committee noted that the placement of a child/young person  with family members in a fostering arrangement or through a special guardianship order was dependent upon the monitoring requirements for the child.

The overarching issue of  how much each consortium borough pays for  fostercare was part of  a separate piece of work by the North London Strategic Alliance.

RESOLVED

That the report be noted.