Agenda item

The Executive Director of Children’s Services and the Children’s Services Programme Manager will be in attendance to present an overview of the Corporate Parenting Strategy.

B Robinson, Children’s Services Programme Manager, was in attendance to provide the Panel with an overview of Middlesbrough’s Corporate Parenting Strategy.  A copy of the document in its entirety had been circulated to Panel Members and a presentation was given, highlighting the headlines from the Strategy.

 

The Corporate Parenting Strategy had been developed in consultation with staff, partners, Members and young people, as part of the improvement journey of Children’s Services.  The Strategy set out Middlesbrough’s vision and actions to support children and young people in the authority’s care.

 

The Strategy encompassed a Permanency Strategy and a Sufficiency Strategy.  The Permanency Strategy set out how the authority would strengthen its quality of practice to ensure positive outcomes for children and young people in its care and the Sufficiency Strategy set out how the authority would commission high quality support, placements and learning that met the needs of the children and young people in its care.

 

The guiding principles of the Strategy were developed directly from the consultation work with care experienced young people and care leavers and they had made short videos to accompany each of the principles:-

 

·        ‘Our Home’ – A stable and secure home arrangement that meets our needs and wishes.

·        ‘Our Friends and Family’ – Contact with all the people that are important to us in our lives.

·        ‘Our Education and Employment’ – Excellent support to access the education, training and employment that we need.

·        ‘Our Health and Wellbeing’ – Easy access to specialist support for our emotional and mental health and wellbeing.

·        ‘Our Adult Life’ – Support to leave care when we are ready and to make a positive transition to adult life.

·        ‘Our Voice and Influence’ – Being listened to, having a real voice and opportunities to shape and influence the plans for our care.

·        ‘Our Needs and Wishes’ – The starting point for planning for permanency with children, young people and their families.

 

The Panel was advised that at the beginning of compiling the Strategy, there were some things that were already going well/started to improve within Children’s Services, for example:-

 

·        Placements were more stable and there was a steady reduction in the proportion of children who had experienced three or more placement moves whilst in our care.

 

·        Reduction in drift and delay for children in our care, supported by a targeted focus from Futures for Families and the Innovate projects.

 

·        More children were being supported to attend school regularly, with a reduction in fixed term exclusions, leading to a more stable and effective learning experience.

 

·        Visits and contacts to children in our care were increasingly within timescales, leading to an improved experience of care and support.

 

In terms of areas that required further improvement, the following had been identified:-

 

·        Early identification of risk to support children on the edge of care.

·        Quality and timeliness of permanence planning.

·        Availability of sufficient and suitable local homes.

·        Access to emotional and mental health support.

·        Educational attainment for children in our care and employment and training outcomes for care leavers.

·        Robust oversight from Independent Reviewing Officers.

·        Better decision making on placements and resources.

·        Systematic dental and health checks for children in our care.

 

The Panel was provided with information in relation to trends and demands in Middlesbrough and it was highlighted that this information had been presented to the Corporate Parenting Board to support the sign off of the Strategy.

 

Members were informed that as at the end of October 2020:-

 

·        The numbers of children in our care had increased by 89% over five years.  This exceeded local and national trends.

 

·        In recent months the numbers of children in our care had started to gradually reduce.  The Panel was updated that the numbers of children looked after had reduced from 702 in July 2020 to 629 to date.  This was due to focussed improvement work that was ongoing and was very encouraging.

 

·        There had been a significant recent improvement in the balance between young people entering care and those leaving care, however, children were still spending too long in care and action was being taken to improve permanency practice.

 

·        As practice was being improved, reinvestment in resources was being made to reduce drift and delay and to support children on the edge of care.

 

The Panel was advised that, having looked at the evidence, the six key priorities were identified as follows and the detailed action plans being delivered by staff were structured around the principles:-

 

·        Prevention and Edge of Care

·        Sufficient and Stable Placements

·        Voice, Participation and Influence

·        Education, Employment, Health and Wellbeing

·        Permanency Planning

·        Managing Demand and Maximising Resources for Children in our Care

 

During the course of discussion the following issues were raised:-

 

·        The Chair commented that he had spoken to some foster carers who had approached him for advice.  He had shared the Corporate Parenting Strategy with them and provided their feedback.  One carer had queried “what do they (local authority) intend to do and what does it mean when the Strategy states ‘robust and innovative multi-agency wrap-around support for foster carers to support vulnerable and high risk placements’?”  The Executive Director clarified that this referred to Futures for Families working to support children and families on the edge of care and fragile placements together with the Innovate Team.  The multi-agency element referred to the differently skilled practitioners within Futures for Families.  It was acknowledged that not every foster carer would have experienced this multi-agency approach as Futures for Families only went live in September and foster carers with stable placements would not have required this type of support.

 

·        A Member commented that it might be useful to receive occasional feedback, from foster carers, in relation to the multi-agency approach to demonstrate the impact it was having.  It was queried whether specific training for vulnerable placements was provided, such as how to deal with challenging behaviours, and adolescence, and to build up a bank of knowledge and good practice that could be shared between carers.   The Executive Director stated that good practice did exist and that it may be worth hearing from Futures for Families skilled practitioners to provide anonymised examples of the work that they are doing and those practitioners would be looking to share their skills to upskill social work teams.

 

·        The Chair advised that another Middlesbrough Foster Carer had commented on access to specialist and mental health support as follows: “The Strategy states ‘swift access to specialist support when needed, swift access to mental health support services and therapies when needed and easy access to specialist support when needed’, at no point was access swift.  We waited four months for play therapy for the child in our care (who was paying was the issue) more than a year back and forth with CAMHS who quoted they had no budget to help children in care.  What timescale is considered swift?”  The Chair stated that the foster carer had asked for help and how could we respond to this.  It was acknowledged that the Strategy was new and that Social Work practice had needed to improve over the last year from a low base.  The Executive Director understood and acknowledged the comments of the foster carer in that the wait for specialist services had been too long and discussion was ongoing to rectify this.  Spotlight sessions were held at the end of each Improvement Board meeting, where services were held to account, and TEWV CAMHS would be accountable at the next meeting.  The CAMHS Service  had been clear that they had no specific resources for looked after children and the previous resource had been dissipated.  Other agencies could not be directed by the local authority but could be influenced and relationships were improving.

 

·        Reference was made to the 89% increase in the number of children becoming looked after in Middlesbrough over the last five years and it was queried whether the budget had also increased during that time.  The Executive Director responded that it was well-known that the primary cost from the children’s care budget was external residential placements.  There had been 74 children in expensive external provision and it was acknowledged that some of those young people would have been placed in such a placement as it best met their needs.  A foster care placement with an IFA would cost in the region of £800 per week compared to an external residential placement costing between £5,000 - £8,000 per week.  As previously discussed with the Panel, work was ongoing to move as many children as possible out of external residential placements where it was safe and appropriate to do so and such placement moves were being made because of need not cost.  As the numbers of looked after placements had decreased so had the numbers of children in expensive external residential placements.  External placements had previously been made too freely and any external placements now had to be authorised by the Executive Director.  This was the principal reason why costs had increased but were now coming down.

 

The Chair thanked the Officer for his attendance and the information provided.

 

AGREED that the information provided be noted and considered in the context of the Panel’s current scrutiny review.