Agenda item

Report attached

Tony Decrop, Assistant Director – Social Care and Safeguarding and Karen Dolton, Executive Director – Children and Young People presented a report providing an overview of Bury’s Looked After Children and Early Help provision and service development/transformation linked to those workstreams.

The report set out the principles and values of Bury Council’s commitment to children in care, gave information in relation to the numbers of children and details of sex, age, ethnicity and where those children had been placed.

The report also gave information in relation to Corporate Parents, Children in Care Council, Bury Children’s Rights, the role of the Independent Reviewing Officers, Monitoring and Governance, the Virtual School, Health of Looked After Children, Permanence, the Regional Adoption Agency and Special Guardianship Orders.

Future actions were reported including improving foster care recruitment, the Council and CCG becoming foster friendly employers, developing Corporate Parenting Champions across the Council and the CCG and having a robust Early Help offer.

It was reported that a three month consultation had been carried out which outlined a new proposed Early Help Division which would bring together staff from Team Oasis, Children’s Centres – including outreach services, Reaching Children, Families and Parenting workers and the Reach Out Project into a unified early help management structure. Within the consultation existing teams/roles moved to the Early Help and School Readiness division;  Integrated Youth Support Services, Connexions, School Attendance Service, Emotional Wellbeing practitioner, Early Years Advisors, Portage, Early Help Youth Offending Practitioners and Domestic Abuse Project.  A new role has been developed for School Readiness Lead Officer and Service Manager.  In order to strengthen and provide accountability and focus for Early Help and School Readiness, a role of Assistant Director Early Help and School Readiness has been developed; this will help to drive forward changes at pace to have the impact needed to reduce demand on the system. 

The SCIL line management has transferred from Communities and Wellbeing and is positioned within Early Help and School Readiness.

It was explained that the Early Help delivery model will be locality based and support communities.

A new early help assessment has been developed through multi-agency consultation.  The assessment is called the “Story So Far” and developed with the intention for it to be a live document where a family’s story can be captured and added to as their circumstances change stopping them having to re-tell it to different agencies.

Those present were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments and the following points were raised:

·         Councillor Susan Southworth referred to the role of advisor to the Foster Panel and rate of staff turnover in this role. There had been 3 or 4 different people in this post in the past 18 months.

Karen Dolton explained that she was aware of the situation and there had been some performance issues as well as staff leaving if they received a better offer. There had been a programme of improvement and enhanced capacity within the team.

·         Councillor Southworth stated that there were an increasing number of family and friends coming forward as carers for looked after children, sometimes with very tenuous links and asked what was done about this.

Karen explained that anybody that wanted to become a foster carer would have to go through the full training process and go through to the foster panel for approval no matter if they were family or friends. It was also explained that the courts expect that all family options are exhausted before permanency and adoption. It was stated that these placements were often the best outcome as the child could still live within their family network and there were fewer breakdowns.

·         Councillor Walsh asked what the Council and CCG offered to employees as a Foster Friendly Employer.

It was explained that this would include time away from work to attend training and other appointments associated with fostering.

·         Councillor Lucy Smith asked whether being a Foster Friendly Employee was an accredited award.

It was explained that, yes this was the case.

It was agreed:

That the contents of the report be noted.