Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Stennett and  Debbie Haith.

The Chair will consider the admission of late items of urgent business. Late items will be considered under the agenda item they appear. New items will be dealt with at item 11 below.

 There were no items of  urgent business.

A member with a personal interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered must disclose to that meeting the existence and nature of that interest at the commencement of that consideration, or when the consideration becomes apparent.

A member with a personal interest in a matter also has a prejudicial interest in that matter the interest is one which a member of the public with knowledge of the relevant facts would reasonably regard as so significant that it is likely to prejudice the member’ judgement of the public interest.  

 There were no declarations of interest put forward.

To consider the minutes of the meeting held on the 22 September 2011.

On page 2 of the minutes, the section which set out the discussion on the regular performance report, it was explained to the Committee  that a new format for the Performance report would be trialled with them.   The key areas in performance covering looked after children, regularly reviewed by the Committee, would also have a RAG(red amber green) status attached which would help the committee’s understanding of what the service were aiming for and the progress against it . This would make underlying trends, which the committee were interested in, more identifiable.

 In relation to CPAC106, and the final paragraph which advised that a low number of children LAC had been involved in the recent riots across London, it was clarified that this was an insufficient number to be considered a phenomenon.

Following the above clarifications the minutes were agreed as an accurate record of the meeting.

As part of the matters arising report, there was enclosed a response to Members concerns about the process and quality assurance arrangements in place for selecting third sector organisations to provide mentoring  to Care leavers.   The Committee considered this information and there was a remark on the lack of information included on KIS, a sub group of CONEL. It was felt that officers should review the organisations recent Ofsted report, and also check that the services provided by this group could cater for vulnerable groups of young people.  Whilst there was  an overview of the mentoring project and the organisations that would be involved in providing the mentoring services to care leavers provided, the Committee wanted to  view  background information on how the organisations were chosen.  They wanted a step by step outline of the process followed for checking and assessing the organisations offering to deliver these services to young care leavers. This was to enable a more fuller understanding on why these organisations were deemed appropriate for delivering this service  and to  be further  assured of the quality assurance steps being taken.  The Head of Children in Care agreed that she would speak with the Head of the Youth services who would have completed the quality checks on the organisations  and provide a fuller report on the process followed  for quality checking  organisation working with  vulnerable young people  and report back to the  committee at their next meeting in December.

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.

That the press and public be excluded from the meeting for consideration of any new items that may contain exempt information as defined in Section 100a of the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended by Section 12A of the Local Government Act 1985): paras 1 & 2: namely information relating to any individual, and information likely to reveal the identity of an individual.  

Date of next meeting 13 December  2011

None