Agenda item

This report provides an analysis of the performance data and trends for an agreed set of measures relating to looked after children on behalf of the Corporate Parenting Advisory Committee.

Mr Richard Hutton, Senior Performance Officer, introduced the report.

The meeting heard that:

·      Suitable accommodation was defined through regulations for Children in Care, OFSTED and Housing. Specific to this discussion staying with one’s own foster carers rather than staying in a multiple occupancy home was the context for defining suitability and this was achieved largely through Staying Put arrangements.

·      At a previous meeting of the Committee, a report was submitted which discussed what constituted suitable accommodation. Under the new changes with OFSTED, the Committee took a decision not to use accommodation such as the YMCA, to move away from any model around HMOs for children and young people in care and that the Council would work to identify suitable accommodation to ensure that the standard would be good enough for one’s own child. It would be helpful if a short note could be re issued to Committee regarding how “suitable accommodation” would be defined with all the newly attained changes.

·      Some young people may be allocated suitable accommodation who then decided they would prefer to stay with family after their eighteenth birthday. This was a challenging situation as there was little in law that could be done to change the situation. Although the numbers for situations such as these were low. An update could be provided to the Committee regarding the issue.

·      Much work had gone into placement stability. The Council in the past six months had placement stability meetings with partner agencies to ensure that the needs were being identified to prevent children having to move placements. Providers were being held to account for the work they were doing with the key work support.  OFSTED had commented that the borough was on the right trajectory in terms of placement stability. The meetings were reviewed regularly and the Council continued to examine the children being brought into Haringey  and track those placements to ensure that they remained where they were.

·      The Council had recently launched a video along with another local authorities trying to attract foster carers. Councillors were encouraged, whilst engaging in Champions work, to have conversations with people on how they could become foster carers. Haringey was working in collaboration with Islington. The video would be sent to members of the Committee.

·      Information would be provided to the Committee regarding orthodontic care for young people.

·      Data reports regarding those in the system up to age 25 could be provided to the Committee, including at the next meeting. 

·      There had been a number of factors that had impacted on the three or more moves for the same child over different periods. One of them related to the way the court processes work. Whilst the courts had completed significant work to clear the backlog created by the coronavirus lock down, the borough was still experiencing some of the effects of delayed proceedings. There were still children who had waited two years for their proceedings to end and, during that time, it was difficult to contain them in one placement separately. There was also volatility around the residential mother and baby units. Sometimes the quality of the assessments meant that reassessments had to be made at the Court's request at another setting. This counted as another placement move and sometimes the prematurity of the direction to test in the community meant that they came back into care and would be separated. This would appear as instability in the data.  In relation to adolescents, in a market that was volatile, it was challenging to offer stability in the semi-independent and residential arena so investment was being made in the borough’s LAC Sufficiency Strategy.

·      Efforts needed to be made to ensure that families were assisted with acute stress to prevent them from needing to come into care. It was important to have good recording systems and note the complex ways young people could be affected. For example, the agency afforded to adults to self-determine if they had capacity and this could mean that adults services could not intervene. Children and Social Care had to then ensure that harm did not extend to those adult children. This could happen in cases like substance misuse. It may be possible to examine areas of stress affecting families and report back to the Committee in January 2024. Whether it was acute stress, domestic abuse or housing issues, it was generally the case that families were in stressed situations which were usually also compounded by the cost-of-living and the quality of housing.

·      There had been an increase in the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. As the children were coming in, there were young people ageing out. Whilst the young people turned 18, they still required a service, but this was not visible in the statistics. The overall pressure when numbers only were presented was not always clear. The borough was still about 20 under its threshold. There was a steady intake of around three children a month. The borough had been approached by Kent County Council to take some children from the hotels and other local authorities surrounding Haringey were also seeing an increase. Local authorities were seeking assistance around resources and placements. There was difficulty in finding “matched” placements for the children. A number had gone into IFAs (independent foster carers) and the borough had managed to place some individuals locally. Finding the right therapeutic supporters was also a pressure.Accessing the right ESOL was also a concern because when children arrived in the middle of term, it could be difficult to get them into the right ESOL classes. Work was being done with the virtual school regarding tuition for some of the children. Another issue had been around accessing the right immigration lawyers and there seemed to be some challenges around this. Support was being sought from the London Asylum Consortium. The rota referral meant that the Council had to place young people within 5 working days and this depended on finding the right matched placements within the market. Age assessments, when required had to be within 28 days which was challenging when trying to find the right interpreter. Until recently, the Council had been quite reliant on an independent social worker to assist with some of the age assessments, but the Council had built up the expertise and a pool of trained social workers within the service. Attempts were being made to look at the next steps in terms of the increasing numbers and what that really meant for the service and staffing. The meeting agreed that there would be a more detailed report on this issue at the next meeting. It would also be useful to also have details in the report such as country of origin, languages spoken and other demographic details. The report could list the changes in the incident that happened between the Home Office and Kent County Council at the next meeting. 

The Chair felt that the Council could consider finding a way to consult with a wider range of residents in Haringey who wanted to give something back to the community and may wish to become foster carers or be involved in other ways. 

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.