Agenda and draft minutes

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The Chair referred to the notice of filming at meetings and this information was noted.

Apologies were received from Jackie Dificolo

There was no urgent business.

There were no declarations of interest.

To consider the minutes of the meeting held on 2^nd September 2025.

There was a proposal to members regarding an event with ASPIRE and care leaders, Chris Liasi would send the invite out for December to members. There were be the opportunity for young people to sign up to workshops as they entered the event, these workshops would be broken up into champion model areas. The councillor responsible for the workstream would be present alongside a children’s services officer. There would be a focus group which could be taken away for planning of the champion’s model.

There would be stalls providing arts and crafts, expressions board, cooking, surveys and opportunities for children to win vouchers. This event could be up to 3 hours and would likely be held on a Saturday.

Officers had sense checked with young people what they would consider to be fun activities – spoken specifically to young people who attend aspire or leaving carers.

RESOLVED:

The minutes of the meeting held on 2^nd September were approved.

Nazim Hussan, IRO service manager introduced the report for this item;

• This Annual Report produced by the Independent Reviewing Service was prepared in accordance with the statutory requirement to inform the Corporate Parenting Board and senior leaders about the Council’s performance in respect of children in the care of the local authority. The report covered the reporting period April 2024 to March 2025. This report's data was derived from Liquid Logic, the data system utilised by Haringey Children’s Service

• The following was noted in response to questions from the committee:

• As of recent, the IRS would contact social workers two weeks in advance to remind them of the data submissions required, sometimes that information would get lost in translation, particularly when young people transferred from one service to another. Officers were working on being more robust to ensure that social workers and practitioners were aware of upcoming reviews and had sufficient time to be able to prepare for those.

• Whilst there was a national reduction in terms of the young people going into care, if you look at the reasons why young people were either diverted or returned back home at an earlier stage, a lot of that was to do with the hard work that practitioners were doing.

• There were ongoing good outcomes secured for children, many children staying within their family networks which was really important in light of the system reforms and the family's first approach. Officers were well on their way with that work which meant that many children come out of care, although the arrangements that they had prior to proceedings might be different than at the end.

• It was noted that there had been a significant improvement in terms of the timeliness of the process.

• In terms of participation, some of the young people were missing having due to vulnerabilities from care. Some of them were not in a place where they were able to have an open discussion or participate in their care meeting. The IRO’s were very sensitive and attuned to the needs of young people, they would make contact with a young person outside of the review process. So, whilst that may may not be reflected in the participation code, there were other ways in which the Iro’s showed that the young person's voices were being captured.

• There was a range of activities that the IRO engaged with young people. It was usually the older cohort who had experienced significant trauma who were not in a place to be able to have a conversation as part of a meeting.
• IRO’s were attuned to cultural differences, backgrounds, and mindful of some of the trauma that unaccompanied minors and young people may have experienced and were sensitive to that.

• Officers were respectful of everyone's home, whether they were a professional or a family member providing care to someone who's vulnerable within their family.

• The stability within the team and the relationships officers developed with the workforce as a whole had helped contribute towards  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

Sandy Bansil, Head of Children in Care and Placements introduced the report for the item.

The purpose of this document was to report on the activity of the Fostering Service fulfilling obligations in the Fostering Services Regulations (2011) to review and improve the quality of care, and National Minimum Standards (2011) to report to the executive side of the Local Authority. It would cover performance and developments in the council’s delivery of Fostering Services; how the council was compliant with key national minimum standards; the service offered to those seeking to foster and those children in care who are fostered. This report detailed the work of Haringey Fostering Service from 1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025 and sets out plans for service development until 31st March 2026.

The following was noted in response to questions from the committee:

• In the instance of a child having significant disabilities that required a level of adaptation to a property, officers would have the support of our health colleagues.
• There were probably more challenges with housing for children who were not in care, who may need to spend time with who are with their parents.
• Officers were in the process of developing an overnight short breaks unit and something that they were really keen to do was to make sure that it was in a package offer to foster carers.
• Next year, the team had a really exciting opportunity to report back on. Officers had wanted to support foster carers and provide more rooms so that they could have sibling groups and had been fortunate in working with the housing to have a test home.
• Members and officers would do a deep dive into the physical needs that foster families may have.
• Fewer people were putting themselves forward to be foster carers and so with that in mind officers needed to be having an effective marketing strategy. There wasn’t a maximum age for fostering it was about ability. It was challenging in getting younger people to come forward wanting to be foster carers.
• One of the biggest worries in London was due to the rising house and rent prices, people could not afford to buy homes and therefore this had a knock on effect on the decrease in foster care. It was suggested that members write to minister Josh MacAlister regarding the link between the decrease in foster care and the increase in house prices/rent.

Richard Hutton, Performance Data and Analytics manager introduced the report for the item.

This report provided an overview of performance for Children Looked After (CLA) Services for 2025/26. The report provided comparative data by benchmarking with our statistical neighbours and looks at how our performance had grown and developed, where this was appropriate. Haringey’s statistical neighbours were a group of local authorities judged by the DfE to have the most similar demographic profile and have been revised this year to account for latest comparable demographic data.

The following was noted in response to questions from the committee:

All children were offered a return home interview, there was a system in place where every week they met as a multi-agency group. There were police and health colleagues present and would collectively look at each child who had been missing from the preceding week. Children were offered up to three times for a return home interview. If, after three times they're still declining, then officers would probably draw a line there depending on the circumstances. These instances usually occurred with young people around the age of 13 upwards, but quite a lot of them were 17 and above, and the 17 and above year olds.

Ann Graham, Corporate Director of Children’s was glad to hear about the positive work and wanted continuity throughout future years. Skills would become embedded in the team and the committee wanted to give support on this.

Officers were planning a launch and celebratory events in the new year, Baroness Lola Young would attend these events

There was none.