Issue - meetings

 The committee will  consider headline performance information relating to Looked After Childrenas at the end of May 2012.

Members of the committee considered the headline performance data for looked after children as at the end of May 2012. There was a further breakdown enclosed of the performance where the indicator showed a performance lower than the target which had been set.

Overall the committee were concerned about the format of the report as the figures in each row did not seem to add up and further explanation was required about the performance figure with some background information.

OP148 (Care leavers in education, employment or training). It was noted that the figures in the report were not up to date and it was agreed that more accurate information advising the number of care leavers in education, employment and training would be sent to committee members by email separately. It was also noted that the recently obtained aggregate quarterly figure for this indicator was just above target at 77.6%.

OP147 (Care Leavers in suitable accommodation) The committee were advised that these figures should be interpreted with care as the percentages were based on small numbers. For example at the end of April, two young people were counted as not being in touch. Currently one was still termed missing and the other had been found suitable accommodation. The committee were interested in returning to the subject of transition to understand the potential impact of the welfare reforms on care leavers and also requested a further update on the support provided to care leavers to tackle isolation. The report should include information about the support in transition. As an initial response, the committee noted that the council was one of the few authorities providing supported accommodation with a live in volunteer.

The committee agreed that a report come back to committee in September on Transition taking the above comments into account.

OP391 – (Timeliness of placements of looked after children for adoption following an agency decision that the child should be placed for adoption) The target was to complete three adoptions at the end of May and one had been completed. Although a small number this would still bring performance down. The performance in Adoption was due to be discussed at agenda item 9.

OP386 - (Children in care cases which were reviewed within required timescales) The committee were informed that there were technical problems with capturing this data and the service were working to get an accurate figure. This discrepancy had been realised from manually checking the figures. The service was working with IT to resolve how the data is collected from Framework I correctly as this was key management data.  The committee noted that if a case was not reviewed within the allocated days but considered 1 or 2 days later this would still show the target as not being met. The committee were reassured by the Head of Service for Safeguarding Quality Assurance& Practice Development that following the manual check on the figures she was confident that there was not a significant issue with the completion of these reviews.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 166