Issue - meetings

The Committee to consider a summary of the findings of the recent Ofsted Inspection of the Fostering service. This report will follow in the next two days

It was previously envisaged that the Ofsted inspection of the Adoption service would accompany the Ofsted  Fostering inspection report and allow the Committee to consider these two  interrelated  subjects concerning the placement of Looked after Children together. However, Ofsted had exceeded their own deadlines in providing a  report on the Adoption inspection. This was due to the unexpected illness of the Lead Inspector. The service had been promised a response to the inspection in a further 14 days time . Therefore, a report on the Ofsted inspection for Adoption would be ready for the next meeting  of the Committee  on 13 December 2011.

The Ofsted inspection of the Fostering service had been completed in August and the service had been deemed as ‘satisfactory’. A team action plan accompanied the inspection report.  It was stressed to the Committee that  the action plan needed to be perceived as a   team response as  the actions were not  the sole responsibility of the  Placement and Commissioning  service. They relied upon a number of other stakeholder  departments  in the Children’s  and Families service to take forward the recommended areas for improvement arising from the inspection.

The positive outcomes from the inspection were that children reported positive relationships with Haringey Foster carers.  They provided support: in their education,  participation in leisure activities, and  were able to advocate well for the children in their care. Children were well consulted about the service they received and benefited from a number of activities and groups set up by the Fostering service.  The fostering panel and agency decision maker  were found to make appropriate recommendations and decisions.   Parents reported to inspectors that they valued the short breaks provided by the service.

 The Head of Commissioning and Placements then drew the Committee’s attention to the Ofsted requirements arising from the inspection and the actions to be undertaken by the service to address these requirements.  A context and some reasons behind the requirements were provided to Members to aid the understanding of their significance and how close the service was to achieving them.  They were as follows:

 Requirement 1 - unannounced inspection of foster homes - Committee noted that the statutory requirement to visit a child in their foster placement was every 6 weeks and this was continuing.  However, there were some foster carers not  visited in the 6 weekly  timescale and some visits not   thoroughly undertaken as required. The  Committee  noted that the  requirement to have an unannounced visit was separate to the statutory 6 weekly visits. There was an improvement plan assigned to  requirement 1 which included a review of carers not visited in  the timescales and unannounced visits for carers who had not had this type of visit in the last 6 months.  As part of this, requirement 2, which was not a specific Ofsted requirement,  the service recognised that there was a need for supervising Social Workers to add more information about the 6 weekly visits to the foster homes. This meant adding more details about their observations  ...  view the full minutes text for item 121