Agenda item

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  , for example  engagement levels in the household,  other than how the basic care requirements were being kept to.

Requirement 3 -   The policy on accepted methods of restraint and discipline on children placed with foster carers. This policy would be updated and consulted upon with the North London Fostering Consortium before reissue in October. This was following feedback from carers about the policy not being clear enough on the restraining actions that they were allowed to take. A summary to the policy would be added making this more accessible to carers.

Requirement 4 – Risk assessments for children who are  at risk of going missing are not in place – The inspectors had found strong evidence of practices for keeping children safe. However, what the service had not fully shown was the information they knew on how  to locate the child/young person  that went missing .Members enquired about why  this required action had not been picked up  by the service previously. In reply members noted that the work on risk assessment had been occurring but in an unstructured  way  and this would be rectified by the information being held in the appropriate sources

Requirement 5 - Reports responding to allegations of abuse and neglect not fully concluded - Members were reassured that there were not any outstanding investigations into reports of neglect and abuse where the outcome was not known. The issue, at the time of the inspection, was the bringing up to date of a spread sheet with the outcomes to the allegations. At the time of the inspection this had not been fully completed due to staffing changes. This spreadsheet was now fully up to date and there was also a written procedure for investigating allegations with clear and manageable expectations about timescales.   Members asked that the procedures for investigation also include time allocated for speaking with the child. 

Requirement 7 – Fostering service recruits, assesses and supports a range of foster carers to meet the needs of children they provide for. The inspection noted that there were a large number of children in care from Haringey and not enough internal carers to meet placements need.  This was continually recognised by the service. The Committee were due to receive feedback by the 20^th October on the results of concerted publicity activities in July to recruit foster carers.

Requirement 8 – Careful selection of staff and fostering households and monitoring of such people.  The inspectors found that one member of staff’s HR file did not have a reference with a record of verbal verification attached. The Committee were informed that this was a minor anomaly and easily rectifiable as the reference was concerning the recruitment of the Head of Commissioning and Placements, a fairly recent appointment, where contact could be made with the referee and evidence of this added to the file.  Although it was a managerial task to ensure that references were checked and verbally verified,   Members were assured that all other HR files for staff working in foster care and  of foster carers had been checked by the Head of Commissioning and Placements. She felt confident to report that there were no missing information regarding their selection. Members were asked to note the changing priorities of the inspectors as in the previous two inspections there had not been any checks made on the verbal verification of references. This additional check was probably owing to the increased level of scrutiny which the Council now experienced in inspections.   In relation to the second part of this requirement, monitoring of people in the fostering household helping to provide care ,  Social Workers  were fully aware that they needed to get CRB checks on all  new persons involved in the carers home and  therefore  the council  processing part of the CRB check process was being expedited.  However the timely completion of the checks was also reliant upon external CRB timescales.

Requirement 9 - Ensure that there are clear and effective procedures for monitoring the activities of the service – This was in reference to systems for data collection .There have been meetings between the Fostering and Performance team on exploring ways to better collate information required by the fostering return data.   An example  from the  inspection was that  the service were able to easily provide figures relating to Children in Haringey foster care (this included children placed in the borough through external fostering agencies)   but it would take longer to extrapolate the number of children in Haringey placed with council foster carers. This signified the need to make the office data systems more usable and work efficiently so that there was not undue officer time given to locating and extrapolating the required date.

Some disappointment was expressed at the overall assessment of the Fostering Service as ‘satisfactory’ when in a previous inspection, three years ago; the service had been assessed as good.  There was a feeling that, although the Ofsted scrutiny of the Council’s Children’s services had increased this should not mean that a satisfactory rating should be acceptable as a result.   As a way forward the Chair asked officers to compile an alternative action plan which would set out the actions  aimed at getting the service to a ‘good rating’.  This could be completed in time for the January meeting of the Committee.   To aid this work it was suggested that the Ofsted inspection results of fellow Consortium boroughs could be looked at. This was  where they had received a judgement of ‘good’ as this  could help with understanding the kind of actions  being and if they could  be workable here .  It was agreed that these comparisons would be made . Members  of the Committee were also asked to keep in mind that some of the boroughs in the consortium were not demographically similar to Haringey  and would not have  the similar issues to contend with. Also some of the consortium boroughs may not have listed outcomes arising from their fostering inspections.

In relation to outcomes for children, understanding was sought on how these were recorded and if this information was easily accessible to all parts of the children service dealing with the child i.e. Children in Care and Fostering Service.  It was clarified that the Children in Care service along with the Fostering service regularly monitored outcomes for children and also tried to quantify them. There was also a series of qualitative information which the service could easily call upon for checking the progress on outcomes for a child. This was through the daily logs of foster carers, summary reports from foster carers, statutory visits to the child, LAC reviews. When meeting with the children, as well as to check on their basic care,  Social Workers asked about the activities they undertake, interests, hobbies and who they interact with which were recorded.  The Independent Review officer was also required to meet with a LAC before a review meeting. Therefore  Members were assured that there was a wealth of material to consider when ascertaining how good outcomes for the child were being worked to.