Agenda item

The Head of Looked after Children and Corporate Parenting and Head of Legal Services (People) will provide a presentation to the Board.

 

N.B- An update presentation will be provided at the meeting, which will include up to date statistics.

The Chair welcomed the Head of Looked after Children and Corporate Parenting and the Head Legal Services- People to the meeting to provide an overview of the role of the Local Family Justice Board (LFJB) and the role of our legal services in providing support to our looked after children.

 

As way of introduction, the Head of Legal Services outlined that on a national level, the Family Justice Board was the primary forum for setting direction for the family justice system and overseeing performance and was set up to improve the performance of the family justice system and to ensure the best possible outcomes for children who come into contact with it.

 

At a local level, Local Family Justice Boards (LFJB) were established to support the work of the Family Justice Board by bringing together the key local agencies, including decision makers and front-line staff, to achieve significant improvement in the performance of the family justice system in their local areas..

The LFJB holds meetings on a quarterly basis and is attended by representatives of those that use the family justice system, including Local Authorities (Legal and Children’s Services), members of the judiciary, CAFCASS, private practice, Barristers, and the local police.

 

There are also subsidiary groups of the LFJB that look at specific areas such:

             - Local Public Law Working Group

             - Local Private Law Working Group

            -  Police Disclosure Working Group

 

The Head of Legal Services, briefly discussed the Local Public Law Working Group, which was a local public law working group which works collaboratively to identify issues that affected the local family justice system in regards to public law matters and to agree practical proposals to resolve.

Representatives from both Legal and Children’s Services attend and actively engage in the work carried out.

 

The Board were made aware of a recent project of the board with regard Care Orders at home, which has been a significant issue in Middlesbrough and regionally.

 

•          The session was aimed at those working within the family justice system across Cleveland and South Durham

•          The sessions were agreed as part of the Local Family Justice Board to explore why in the Teesside area we have higher numbers of Care Orders with children placed at home or with connected carers

•          The workshop offered 74 places and there were over 200 applicants to attend.

•          Aim: To work together to understand when we think Care Order’s at home would be appropriate but also when we may challenge each other about this. This allowed others to challenge (without being attached to a specific case) why a care order was considered the best option.

•          Understand what the law tells us about Care Orders at home including what can and can’t be done under a Care Order

•          Consider alternatives and specifically the Teesswide Supervision Order policy

•          The outcome of the sessions will be fed back to the LFJB group to seek approval/agreement to any recommendations.

•          The next project for the Local Public Law working group is to be decided, and will take into  consideration the contents of the recent March 2021 paper.

 

In terms of Middlesbrough Legal Services Children’s Team, the Board were made aware that Middlesbrough Council has an in-house team of lawyers who provide legal advice and support to children’s services to carry out their statutory responsibilities.

The team was as follows:

Ann-Marie Wilson – Head of Legal Services (People)

1 x Senior Childrens Adviser (Part time)

4 x full time Solicitors

1 x trainee Solicitor

4 x Legal Assistants

1 x Court Progression Manager

 

The overall objectives in terms of how the Legal Department can support Children’s Services are as follows:-

•       Be pro active rather than reactive by way of becoming involved in providing timely advice in regards to the decision making process rather than waiting for a crisis to occur

•       Work collaboratively together from an early stage to resolve issues and provide support to the department.

Examples of how this achieved were as follows:

•       Attendance at effective legal planning/gateway panel

•       Provide early advice when issues arise/attendance at Strategy meetings

•       Attend early legal planning meetings , and,

•       To read draft documents such as assessments, statements, and care plans before they are filed and raise any issues in a timely manner

The Head of Legal Services specifically mentioned a number of examples, which showed the progress made within the legal services team.

Bloom project/ Cynet

The first related to the Bloom Project/ cygnet.  There have been issues with increased demand and reduced capacity across the Legal Services Legal Team and as a result, the Council’s Leadership Management Team (LMT) agreed to commission a 12 month Managed Project Service to support the team until March 2022.

 

Further to a procurement process – the project was awarded to Cygnet Family Law, meaning a number of public law cases will be outsourced to them. The impact of outsourcing means that with increased capacity the Children’s legal team can contribute effectively to improving the quality of outcomes and supporting Children’s Services as outlined.

 

This would also allow time for future development work to be completed which will strengthen in-house delivery.

 

Appointment of Court Progression Manager (CPM)

The second area of progression has been the appointment of the Court Progression Manager (CPM). As part of the improvement work connected to Ofsted, there was an identified need to bridge the gap between the Childrens Team in Legal, and Children’s Services, and to improve the quality of court proceedings.

The purpose of this new role is to act as lead officer, working closely with Legal and Children’s services, to ensure the timely progression of cases in family court proceedings. Middlesbrough was the first local authority in the region to have this post.

Key functions of the role include:

•       lead an effective partnership between Legal and Children’s Services

•       use expert communications skills to develop a shared understanding of objectives across both Legal and Children’s Services

•       working externally to develop and maintain relationships with the local judiciary to ensure practice standards are continuously met.

•       responsible for a measurable improvement in the quality of court documentation

•       to develop, implement and deliver a case quality framework and bespoke practice development to ensure Social Workers have the requisite skills to produce quality evidence

•       act competently as a Social Work lead in formal case proceedings.

•       manage the progress of pre proceedings cases to identify/take action to deal with any potential/actual exceptions that might jeopardise the achievement of required milestones,

 

The appointment was part of the Invest to save strategy, as the improvements sought will achieve better outcomes for children in a more timely manner, and therefore reduce costs by way of resources, for example,  improving quality of evidence – plans being right first time, reducing the need for further hearings, and saving time for legal and Children’s services.  The successful candidate has been appointed and will commence the role in May 2021.

The Head of Legal Services finally provided the Board with some context advising that Middlesbrough currently had 118 sets of active proceedings in court involving 118 children.  The proceedings were made up as follows:

•       86 care proceedings (in July /august 2020- Middlesbrough had 140 care proceedings, which shows a decline)

•       12 adoptions

•       15 discharge of care orders

•       2 deprivation of liberty applications

•       1 placement application

•       1 Revocation of a Placement Order

•       1 secure application

 

The Head of Looked after children and Corporate Parenting finally provided the Board with information of progress to date from the collaborative working between children and legal services. This has led to supporting the reduction in the number of children looked after.

The most significant has been the reduction in the number of children looked after.

702 Children were in Middlesbrough care in August 2020.

In the last six months we had 66 children have become looked after children and 172 Children ceased to be looked after children. There were currently 563 children looked after (as of 21 April 2021)

In the last 6 months social care and legal have worked together to ensure that:

•       36 children have secured permanence and ceased to be looked after through the granting of a Special Guardianship Order. 

•       26 children were made subject to adoption orders in the period between August 2020 and 31 March 2021.  This is a 62.5% improvement on the full previous year score card.  This equates to 5% of the current Children in care Cohort.

•       The number of children placed with parents has reduced from a high of 99 children in August 2020 to 68 in April 2021.  In the past 6 months 21 children have ceased to be in a placement with parent arrangement due to revocation of a Care Order.

The Council has also commissioned the Innovate service, who are a commissioned social work team that have been commissioned to support children to move on to secure permanence and to move from residential placements to more appropriate placement settings such as foster care and back home to family.

The team began in June 2021 (phase 1) and were allocated 17 placement with parent (PwP).  Of the 17 young people allocated:

 

•       13 children now have secured permanence and Care Orders have been revoked.

•       1 application for revocation has been filed to court and a sibling group of 3 were assessed as unsuitable for revocation. 

•       (Phase 2) To date Innovate have commenced 10 new placements with parent placements through work that they have been doing with children in connected carers placements and in residential care.  Whilst this has increased the number of children in PWP placements these are positive moves for the children and will be closely monitored through the project and PMG to ensure revocation is progressed swiftly where appropriate.

•       Progress will be tracked and there will be ongoing review with the legal services to progress through revocations proceedings in a swift manner

As part of phases 1:

•       35 children were allocated to Innovate and were placed in connected carers placements with a view to progressing permanence through a special guardianship order (SGO) application.

•       Of which 30 SGO assessments have been completed

•       30 applications have been made to court to receive care orders

•       22 have had initial court hearings

•       1 child from this cohort has secured permanence to date and ceased to be looked after.

•       COVID has impacted on some timescales with this project, particularly in relation to DBS checks and medical assessments.

 

Following the meeting, a Board member queried, what was meant by a timely manner, for example, would the proceedings be faster?

In response, officers advised that often they are dictated by the court timings (26 weeks), but in terms of what is meant by a timely manner, the Head of Legal clarified by advising it was ensuring that it was about submitting the correct plan first time.

The Board member also queried whether there was monitoring of cases once they had gone through court proceedings. In response, the officers outlined that they look for feedback, be that positive or negative and officers look through these cases for audit purposes. The officers keep a record of cases that have been through the 26 week timeframe as good practice and also would identify cases which are taking longer, and challenge the reasons behind this (which may be circumstances out of the local authorities’ control).

The Head of Looked after children and Corporate Parenting also outlined that the improvement plan looks at improving systems, for example, working with Adoption Tees Valley to look at earlier notification of quality of placements, decision making is stronger and timely and once children are subject to full care orders/permanency orders, these are tracked closely.

The officers were thanked for their presentation.

 

AGREED- That the presentation be noted.