Issue - meetings

This report provides an analysis of the performance data and trends for an agreed set of measures relating to looked after children on behalf of the Corporate Parenting Advisory Committee.

Mr Richard Hutton, Senior Performance Officer, introduced the report.

The meeting heard that:

·      Suitable accommodation was defined through regulations for Children in Care, OFSTED and Housing. Specific to this discussion staying with one’s own foster carers rather than staying in a multiple occupancy home was the context for defining suitability and this was achieved largely through Staying Put arrangements.

·      At a previous meeting of the Committee, a report was submitted which discussed what constituted suitable accommodation. Under the new changes with OFSTED, the Committee took a decision not to use accommodation such as the YMCA, to move away from any model around HMOs for children and young people in care and that the Council would work to identify suitable accommodation to ensure that the standard would be good enough for one’s own child. It would be helpful if a short note could be re issued to Committee regarding how “suitable accommodation” would be defined with all the newly attained changes.

·      Some young people may be allocated suitable accommodation who then decided they would prefer to stay with family after their eighteenth birthday. This was a challenging situation as there was little in law that could be done to change the situation. Although the numbers for situations such as these were low. An update could be provided to the Committee regarding the issue.

·      Much work had gone into placement stability. The Council in the past six months had placement stability meetings with partner agencies to ensure that the needs were being identified to prevent children having to move placements. Providers were being held to account for the work they were doing with the key work support.  OFSTED had commented that the borough was on the right trajectory in terms of placement stability. The meetings were reviewed regularly and the Council continued to examine the children being brought into Haringey  and track those placements to ensure that they remained where they were.

·      The Council had recently launched a video along with another local authorities trying to attract foster carers. Councillors were encouraged, whilst engaging in Champions work, to have conversations with people on how they could become foster carers. Haringey was working in collaboration with Islington. The video would be sent to members of the Committee.

·      Information would be provided to the Committee regarding orthodontic care for young people.

·      Data reports regarding those in the system up to age 25 could be provided to the Committee, including at the next meeting. 

·      There had been a number of factors that had impacted on the three or more moves for the same child over different periods. One of them related to the way the court processes work. Whilst the courts had completed significant work to clear the backlog created by the coronavirus lock down, the borough was still experiencing some of the effects of delayed proceedings. There were still children who had waited two years for their proceedings to end and, during that time, it was difficult to contain them in one placement separately.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6