93 Attendance of the Independent Review Officer PDF 111 KB
Information on the role and responsibilities of Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO) to accompany and inform a discussion on the stability of placements.
Minutes:
The committee had at a previous meeting received a brief introduction about the roles and duties of an independent review officer and now invited two officers to attend a meeting to discuss their work with the children’s services and talk about the difference their role was to the work of the children’s service. The independent review officers were asked to reflect on a typical couple of weeks work in the children’s services. The committee learned that the independent review officers assisted with the chairing of Child Protection Reviews and ensured that the meeting was child centred . This meant engaging with the child before and after the meeting . They aimed to keep the meetings as small as possible in the interests of the child and ensured that requirements such as translators or sign workers were on hand to attend the meetings. The IRO’s also had responsibility for examining health and education requirements of the child as part of the review. When asked about their communication with children under 5, they advised that they would observe the child’s behaviour in their placement and report views to the meeting. The Independent Review Officers worked in consultation with the Social Workers to choose the appropriate people to be around the child at the meeting. Although they worked quite closely with Social Workers and were employed by the council , their role was to be a critical friend and provide quality assurance. If they had serious concerns about, for example, if timescales were not being met for dealing with issues concerning a child they had the free role to escalate matters through the management structure as their duty was to act on behalf of the child at all times. This duty was recognised by social workers when getting feedback from the IRO. In their free role they were able to pick up on general issues in social work activity and process . They had recently brought to the attention of senior management the issue of post 18 provision and also raised similar issues as the committee on the need to look at the trends in the service and have strategy for dealing with them. It was noted that recently a group had been set up to look at how general issues identified need to be addressed by senior management.
The independent review officers explained to the Committee that they were going through a difficult transition period as 2 experienced officers had retired and one other officer was moving to a position in another borough. From the 1st of June the IRO service would become part of the Safeguarding Quality Assurance and Practice Development service which has the responsibility to establish a new and robust quality assurance framework covering both child protection and looked after children. This would further involve amalgamating the roles of the IRO and Child Protection Advisors. There was anxiety expressed by the independent review officers on taking on the extra responsibilities that this would entail as it would mean ... view the full minutes text for item 93