Agenda item

This report provides a brief overview of recent developments in Children’s Services.

Clare Chamberlain, presented the report and highlighted the following items.

The Children and Social Work Bill received Royal Assent – the bill contained a raft of new measures designed to boost support for children and young people, including:

·         Increasing the age for which local authorities were responsible for Care Leavers up to 25 years old. This was a welcome change but did place additional financial burdens on the Council.

·         The Establishment of a Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel - Safeguarding partners in local authority areas must now make arrangements for partners, and relevant agencies to work together in exercising their safeguarding functions and promoting the welfare of children. Cases with the most serious implications for practice would be reviewed at the national level.

·         Regulation of Social Workers – A new organisation, Social Work England, was being created to take over from the HCPC as the profession’s regulator.

Steve Miley presented the year-end summary of Family Services data in section 4.4 of the report – highlighting that while there had been greater demand on the front end of the service because of an increase in referrals, by using systemic practice they had kept numbers of children on the child protection list down. He also noted that since bringing foster carer recruitment back in-house the service had recruited 24 new foster carers - the first time more than 15 foster carers had been recruited within a year.

Councillor Marcus Ginn asked if there was an opportunity to get parents who wanted to adopt involved in fostering. Steve Miley said they tended to be different cohorts – in general terms adopters were couples that had not been able to have children of their own and wanted to provide a lifelong commitment to a child. Foster carers on the other hand tended to be people who had already had their own family and were committed to giving something back by taking children and young people who needed short term support. Councillor Ginn asked what the average ages of adopted and fostered children were. Steve Miley said that children under five were most likely to be adopted – foster children tended to be in the 5-17 range.

Eleanor Allen asked if it was still true that a foster carer looking to adopt would lose their foster allowance. Clare Chamberlain responded that the Council had a policy of ‘no detriment’, ensuring that the same allowance would be paid for an appropriate period.

Nadia Taylor asked what ‘Section 47’ referred to. Steve Miley said it was when a professional (teacher, nurse etc.) tells Family Services about a potential child abuse case. Family Services would then meet with the police and decide if there should be an investigation. ‘Section 47’ referred to section 47 of the Children Act 1989 – they were more widely known as ‘Child Protection Inquiries’.

Matt Jenkins asked if there was a reason behind the number of Child Protection Inquiries (Section 47s) increasing so dramatically while Child Protection List numbers decreased. Steve Miley noted that the service had a practice lead who was looking at around 20 of the cases behind the data to understand the root causes and produce recommendations for changes to practice.

Matt Jenkins asked if there was opportunity for more training within schools that could reduce the number of Child Protection Inquiry referrals. Steve Miley said the concerns raised were appropriate things for Family Services to know even if they weren’t serious enough to be child protection cases. However, the service would soon be piloting the Leeds City Council approach involving more detailed discussions with referrers to determine whether it was necessary to make a formal referral. Leeds had dramatically reduced their numbers using this method, while still being able to gather vital intelligence on families who needed additional support. Matt Jenkins thought this would be a positive improvement for schools and asked when it would be happening. Steve Miley said a pilot with two schools would be running immediately and the service was meeting with Professor David Thorpe about the Leeds implementation and how to roll it out in H&F.

Councillor Alan De’Ath noted that from his personal experience there was often significant travel time to child protection meetings and professionals sometimes couldn’t attend due to other commitments. He asked if officers had considered using Skype or other video conferencing technologies to encourage better attendance. Clare Chamberlain said video-conferencing was being considered but it was in the early stages.