Agenda and minutes

Apologies for Absence

Apologies were received from Councillor High and Thompson.

To receive any declarations of interest.

There were no declarations of interest received at this point in the meeting.

N Ayres, Interim Designated Nurse LAC/CIC, NHS Tees Valley Clinical Commissioning Group; Wendy Kelly, CAMHS Transformation/HeadStart Programme Manager and Carly Dodsworth, Service manager 0-19 Healthier Together Middlesbrough will be in attendance.                                                                                                        

The Chair welcomed three officers to the meeting to discuss mental health assessment for children looked after.

The Chair firstly welcomed Nicki Ayres, Interim Designed Nurse for Looked after children/ Children in Care from Tees Valley CCG.

The officer advised that she has focused her presentation around the mental health assessments of children in care, and the health statutory duty in respect to these.

Initial Health Assessments (IHA)

In terms of initial health assessments, these should be offered to all children entering care and have to be completed within 15 working days with a report ready by 20 working days

These assessments should include the following:

·         General health screen to include childhood vaccinations in line with National Healthy Child Programme, so height weight etc.

·         REGISTRATION with a GP and DENTIST – a review of the IHA at 6 months (3 months ideally) should look at whether both registration and attendance has occurred

·         Any unmet health needs are escalated appropriately and managed via onward referral and/or management by the CIC specialist teams or by referrals.

Review of Health assessments

The review of the health assessments become part of the process and there are offered every 6 months post the initial health assessment to every child under the age of 5 years and annually for those children over 5 years. The reviews

look at all aspects of the previous assessment and action any outstanding health needs for e.g. still not registered with dentist, seen by optician (if required) and we work with the carer to identify if there is any support that can be provided to ensure this occurs.  Nationally and across Teesside, access to a dentist is an issue, and NHS England is monitoring the situation and is working wishes to be working with dentists to help them understand the necessity of children in care to be registered.

The assessments should also inform any gaps in service provision which can support JSNAs and service provision.

Health passports

Since 2018, there has been a requirement for every child aged 14 plus or those leaving care to be provided with a Health Passport, which is paper based, and contains all medical information on the child.

The passport contains information on their vaccination programme, short term ill issues, long term illnesses and any interventions which has been offered (e.g. stop smoking programme).

The requirement came from a specific recommendation from NICE SCIE PH 28 guidance for Looked after Children and Young People. The health passport should be offered at the final health assessment, but if declined still needs to be made available to the care leaver (various routes available e.g. the young person's registered GP) .

The child / young person once old enough can share their passport with who they wish, and the IHA would be discussed with the foster carers and professionals.

Middlesbrough landscape

The officer further went on to discuss the Middlesbrough landscape, however was clear that the challenges identified in Middlesbrough can also be seen elsewhere in the country.

The  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20/65

Helen Scourfield from the Family Youth Justice Board and Paula Jemson , Middlesbrough Council’s Head of Children Looked After and Corporate Parenting will be in attendance.

Item deferred

Victoria Banks, Virtual Schools Head will be in attendance to provide the Board will an update.

The Chair welcomed the Virtual Schools Head to the meeting to present the interim Virtual schools annual report to the Board and to provide an update on Covid.

The Head outlined that although the final annual report will be brought out in March, publishing the interim report meant that any issues and challenges could be addressed sooner. It was noted that due to COVID end of Key Stage results are not to be published therefore this year they will limited additions made to the interim report.

The Head advised that normally the main focus of the annual report was to report on the end of year results (SATS and GCSE) , however due to covid, these results will not be reported. However we do know how our Children looked after achieved and this has been reported in previous CPB meeting.  Therefore the Head discussed some of the strengths and some of the key areas of development  :

The key strengths were as follows:

Any other urgent items which in the opinion of the Chair, may be considered.

Philomena Protocol

The Chair asked Chief Inspector Deb Fenny and Sue Butcher, Director of children’s services to provide a brief overview of the Philomena protocol, which had been circulated to members for information.

Further information and an update on the progress of the protocol would be circulated to Board members at a later date.

Spotlight 2

The Chair advised the importance of every councilor in their role as Corporate Parents and therefore asked if members wished to be involved in the second spotlight report to contact her or the Democratic services officer for further information.