Agenda and minutes

 Apologies for absence were received from  Cllr Allison, Cllr Brabazon and Cllr Solomon.

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 items11 &14.

There were no items of urgent business submitted.

 A member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a prejudicial interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered:

(i) must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest becomes apparent, and

(ii) may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter and must withdraw from the meeting room.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Register of Members’ Interests or the subject of a pending notification must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal interests and prejudicial interests are defined at Paragraphs 5-7 and Appendix A of the Members’ Code of Conduct.

There were no declarations of interest  put forward.

The actions agreed at the informal meeting were:

·        Funding of other leisure activities such as dance and music for children and young people that do not want to go to leisure centres. This is in addition to still making available the Leisure pass for  children and young people  in care  that do still want to go to Leisure Centres.

• Publicity about the increase of the Leaving Care Grant.
• Ensuring Aspire members email accounts are accessible.
• Providing an easier process for Aspire to pay for their events i.e. a purchase card for Sandjea and Faith to use.
• Looking at the IT provision for LAC.

·        In relation to Personal Education Plans, including music lessons. The Virtual School has a good music offer and it was about linking up this information when completing the PEP .Agreed to check, if there was a post 16 music offer available with Peter Desmond. There could also be information made available on how Children and young people in care can access music lessons from a young age up to the age of 18. [Virtual School Head]

•  Aspire and CPAC were  advised that from the ages of 16-19, there was a bursary available to young people in care to access to support education. A joint contribution was available for music lessons and this should be made clearer to young people and their carers. Chris Chalmers/Virtual School Head]
•  CPAC suggested that it would be useful to provide a summary of all the support funding a young person in care can apply for, after the age of 16. It would be good to understand how young people in care are told about the availability of this funding and how many are accessing this at the moment. [Chris Chalmers]

To consider the minutes of the meeting held on 19^th February 2013.

The minutes of the meeting held on the 19^th February  2013 were agreed as an accurate record of the meeting.

It was agreed to email members with information about the number of placements outside the 20 mile radius.

At the meeting with Aspire in  December , there was a request for   Corporate Parenting Committee  to consider the current position for Young people leaving care who are not in education or training or a Job or have no legal status in the country. The attached  report takes this request forward.

The Committee received a report about the care and support for care leavers.

Young people leaving care were encouraged to get the basics skills for employment and also educational aspirations were encouraged with opportunities to attend university in the borough. There was an opportunity for the council to develop internships for older care leavers and links were being made with the Princes Trust to enable places to be obtained on this prestigious course.

It was noted that 30% of care leavers are classified as NEET (Not in education, employment or training.  The Committee noted that this was not a dissimilar figure to other neighbouring statistical boroughs.  The annual education achievement awards provided members with an indication of the number of young people leaving care that were going onto university.  In response to a question about the educational support to LAC in custody, they would have access to education and learning at their place of custody.

 The Committee were informed that IRO’s oversee the plans for young people leaving care at 18, as they were keen for young people to be encouraged to take up, work, training and learning opportunities.   The Committee learned that some young people will need more support than others and this is largely connected to the confidence of the young person leaving care.   It was accepted that care leavers that are seeking asylum are more limited in being able to access university and work as they are charged oversees student fees and are not able to get employment until their immigration status has been resolved.  To help ensure that the immigration status of care leavers is resolved as soon as is possible, the Young Adult’s service have completed an audit, into the status and progress of each immigration application. The results will inform efforts to regularise the process followed.

 The following information was provided, as a result of Member questions.

• Care leavers will have contact with their personal advisors up to the age of 21 and if they are in education they will have contact up to the age of 25.  If a care leaver chooses to start University at the age of 24, they will still be entitled to access support from the council.
• There were a small number of care leavers with young children and the Young Adults service are working with Aspire to enable them to facilitate a specific support group for these care leavers. CPAC asked to be kept informed on the progress of opening the ‘Junction’ at Wood Green Library.
• The Overview and Scrutiny Panel for Children and Young People were completing a review on the job opportunities available for young people and Cllr Reece offered to speak with the Chair about including care leavers that are NEET in this review.
• The national target for support to care leavers was between 64% to 67% but Haringey had set this target higher at 80% and they were currently achieving just under the national average. The Committee noted that the age for participation in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 229.

The Committee will consider the impact or potential impact of welfare reform on the borough’s Special Guardians and internal foster carers.

The report explored the impact of the recent benefits cap on foster parents, special guardianship and kinship carers. It was explained that kinship carers are approved by the council and by the court. This is where parental responsibility is shared with the parent. A questionnaire had been sent to these carers and very few had commented on what the impact will be on their financial situation following the benefits cap.  Only one special guardian had replied and said that they may have difficulties paying their rent. Therefore, the impact of the cap on foster carers, special guardians and kinship carers was, at the moment, felt to be minimal. The Committee agreed to review this situation again in 6 months time at the December meeting.

This report sets out performance data and trends for an agreed set of measures relating to Looked After Children.

The Committee considered performance information and trends for measures relating to looked after children. The performance  highlights were:

• The number of looked after children continued to decrease
• A higher number of LAC had been placed for adoption.
• Two young people had returned after being termed missing.

In response to a question about the impact of local policing changes in the borough to the investigation of children and young people that are missing from care, there was not anticipated to be any difference. The responsibility for compiling the risk assessment regarding the missing young person still lay with the local authority and if this was returned as high risk, the Police still had a responsibility to find the missing young person.

 Percentage of children becoming looked after previously subject to a child protection plan - The Committee noted that, ideally, there should not be any un-planned child protection plans as the service should know the children that will become subject to plan.  Agreed the Assistant Director check what target the service had in relation to unplanned child protection plans

OP581b – Percentage of children placed outside Haringey-The ongoing issues of local foster care recruitment were recognised. The service was absolutely clear that getting local foster care was vital. There were other positive impacts of having local foster carers such as access to youth participation officers in the borough and less travel time for social workers.

OP418 – Number of adoptions/Special Guardianship orders .The service recognised that, despite significant improvements, there was no room for complacency in relation to improving adoption figures. Adoption needed to be considered as an early option for young children as older children were more difficult to place. 

OP386 – Children in care cases which have been reviewed within required timescales. It was noted that sessional IRO’s had recently been recruited and   this would help with improving this performance figure.

The Assistant Director  further set out what the service were doing in relation to tackling HR issues in the service and spoke about the increased awareness around sickness levels and sharing of good practice to help in areas of difficulty.

The Committee commended the Children’s Service and Performance team on the good progress made with providing good understandable data and analysis about performance in vital areas concerning the Committee’s remit.

This report provides an update to the report presented to Committee in September 2012 and describes recent changes and performance in the Fostering Service.

The Committee noted the challenges in the Fostering Service and a review of the service was being commissioned with a provider to be chosen in the next few weeks. The Committee noted that, although a review was taking place, the 2 vacant team manager posts & 4 social work posts would still be recruited to and they were currently out to advert.

The Committee noted that the service review will include looking at where improvements can be made to encourage more residents in Haringey to take on children/ young people that need care in the borough.  The review will examine what other local authorities do well and what Haringey can learn from them and apply to the service.

In response to a question about the difference between having a service and an external review , it was noted that the  latter  will  consider the market for  fostering and  consider all fostering services  that are deemed ‘excellent’ to understand what can be leant from them.  It will also take an overall analysis of the different component parts of the Fostering service such as foster care recruitment and consider alternative delivery methods.

Once the provider for the review has been chosen in May, they will begin work immediately and report their findings in September.

To consider  any new items of open urgent business submitted under agenda item 2.

There were no new items of urgent business put forward.

That the press and public be excluded from the meeting for consideration of item 13 as they 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.  

The press and public were excluded from the meeting for consideration of items 11 &12  as they contained exempt information as defined  in section 100a of the local government Act 1985:para 1 and 2 namely information relating to any individual and information  relating to financial or business affairs of any particular person(including the authority holding that information).

To receive details of Regulation 33 inspections made to a Haringey residential home.

The Committee considered the progress made on the implementation of the OFSTED action plan for  a  Children’s Home and  the findings of the recent  Reg 33 visits .

 To consider any new items of exempt urgent business as per  agenda item 2.

 There were no items of urgent exempt business.

Date of next meeting: 27 June 2013 6.30pm

 The next meeting was to take place on Thursday June 27^th at 6.30pm.