The Head of
Service- Future for Families will provide a presentation to the Board.
Minutes:
The Head of
Residential services was in attendance to provide a brief update on quarter 4
data, a full breakdown and the Ofsted report would be shared further in June/
July 2021.
The Head of Service
advised that there were currently 146 foster carers in Middlesbrough offering
227 placements.
In terms of quarter
4 recruitment, there have been 3 mainstream foster placements and 2 connected.
Despite Covid 19, within this quarter there had been 59 enquiries to the Foster
Team, 10 households had been approved and 6 households are ongoing at stage 1
and stage 2.
In terms of
connected carers, 141 requests; 60 have been temporary approved and 24 had been
approved at Panel.
In terms of
de-registrations of foster carers, there had been 12 in the last quarter. In
terms of comparison from 2019-20, there were 16, so numbers are decreasing. In
terms of Connected carers, there had been 7 and some de registrations were due
to the children being returned to their parents. The number of de-registrations
to private foster agencies has been 2 in 12 years.
In of training, the
service took on Board view of the foster carers and were aware most courses ran
when foster carers were at work. The service therefore commissioned the
Fostering Hub to undertake specific training for foster carers and this was
launched in February 2021. In 4 weeks Middlesbrough Foster Carers undertook and
completed 386 courses due to the flexibility.
The average age of
foster carers was between 50-59.
Placements
At quarter 4 there
were 161 placements. There were a number of vacant places (31) and this was due
to the fact that all of our placements need terms of approval and these may not
fit these. There are also a number of
foster placements whose terms of approval are for babies and there has not been
a need to take these places.
There were also a
number of placements that are not available e.g if there is a sibling group of
3 and 2 are found foster placements and the other sibling isn’t, that is
classed as not available. In addition, there may be some young people when they
turn 18 who stay with their foster carers and therefore those places become
unavailable or placements may not be available due to the health of foster
carers.
A Board member
queried how many of the 161 placements were of children in Sibling groups and
this information would be circulated to Board members at a later date.
In terms of Ofsted,
each year Ofsted asks local authority fostering services and independent
fostering agencies for data about their fostering services. This is the only
national data collection that provides an overview of the fostering landscape.
Ofsted ask all 151
local authority fostering agencies and around 280 independent fostering
agencies (IFAs) to provide data on:
• characteristics of foster carers
• terms of approval of fostering households
• capacity and the use of fostering places
• recruitment and retention of fostering
households
• data on complaints, allegations and numbers
of brother and sister placements
This provides a
unique insight into a sector that affects the majority of children in care.
Following the
presentation, a Board member outlined that they were aware there had been
advertising to recruit foster carers and queried how many enquiries had come as
a direct result of this. The Head of Service outlined that they had been
looking at the recruitment drive of North Yorkshire County Council, who are an
outstanding authority. From this, Middlesbrough has been advertising in Foster
carer fortnight and at key times during the year e.g New Year and September. A
foster carer had recently wrote an article for the lovemiddlesbrough magazine
and there were numerous videos on Middlesbrough Children Matter website to promote
and recruit foster carers. There was a target of 25 fostering households last
year, however covid had an impact on this. However Middlesbrough Council
approved 6 placements and have a further 6 who are going through assessment
stages.
In terms of recruitment
for the next 12 months, the service wishes to recruit another 25 placements, 35
the following year and 45 the year after (including our partners in practice to
ensure we have the capacity to recruit the number of foster carers).
In terms of staffing,
there was a number of agency staff who supported the foster carer social
workers. Staff turnover was also
addressed and especially due to covid and the Manager outlined that since March
2020, no members of staff had left the service (bar 1 member of staff who has
gone on Maternity leave and asked for a 2 year sabbatical).Breakdown of staff
would be brought back to a future meeting.
The Manager was
thanked for his presentation.
AGREED- That the presentation be noted.