Issue - meetings

Mr Richard Hutton, Performance, Data and Analytics Manager, introduced the report.

The meeting heard:

·       Occasionally, there may be a situation where care proceedings may be in progress. In such a situation, a parent might be placed in a parent and child foster placement. In that scenario, the child may be then placed with parents, or perhaps at the end of proceedings, a child may go home with a parent in a community. It was at the conclusion of that process whereby an assessment could be undertaken and the assessment would be called a ‘placement with parents’ assessment.

·       An annual report was produced on EHCPs that had been refused assessment or issue. This had been done for the last two years and was used to track and monitor progress and to make sure that decision making was robust. This had been validated in the SEND inspection so the methodology being applyed was likely correct. In the last 12 months, of all of the plans that had been refused issue or assessment, the main reasons included children having had moved out of borough (the multi-agency panel felt that there was more that could be done to support children's needs through the ordinary offer of education), children (or young people) had moved into employment or training, or that there was not enough information. All of this analysis was shared with headteachers so that they were aware of the reasons and how it compared to statistical neighbours and benchmarking. If any issue or assessments were refused, a Next Steps meeting was offered. This could look at why the decision had been made, but also how they could be supported through the ordinary offer of education. This was generally done with the education provider and the person that had made the referral.

·       There were two panels. One that focused on children in care and that would include some who had EHCP plans. There was also another panel which had SEND power on it and they received regular reports. Further information could be provided to members outside the meeting.

·       Prior to the coronavirus crisis, the number of children in care used to be quite high.  Before the crisis, a lot of young people would arrive into the country in various methods. Since the crisis, people used other means to come into the country - by the seas - and so this had changed the numbers that came through to Haringey. There was also a national transfer scheme. Prior to the crisis, London was a high recipient of young people who were unaccompanied asylum seekers and there was an equation that stated that local authorities should receive 0.7% of the number of children in care. They needed to be unaccompanied asylum seekers. This then changed to 0.1% of the child population, but the children or young people were distributed across the country. So many were going past London to other places.

·       The point of the threshold was for Haringey to be able to show that it had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15