Agenda item

The Looked After Children’s Sufficiency Strategy 2023-2027 focuses on what is known about looked after children and young people, including their voices, and the information about local homes for children. The strategy also provides the latest data trends, what the priorities are and the delivery plan to achieve those.

 

This item will provide an update on the delivery of the new strategy over the past twelve months.

 

This item provided an update on the delivery of the Looked After Children’s Sufficiency Strategy 2023-2027, over the past twelve months.

 

The Chair welcomed to the meeting Councillor Cusworth, the Cabinet Member for Children’s and Young Peoples Services, Helen Sweaton, Joint Assistant Director for Commissioning and Performance and Mark Cummins, SEND Transformation Project Lead.

 

The Chair invited the Cabinet Member to introduce the report, during which the following was noted:

 

·       The Looked After Children's Sufficiency Strategy focused on what was known about Rotherham’s children and young people, including their voices and information about local homes for children.

·       The strategy provided the latest data trends and what the priorities were on the delivery plan. The strategy set out how Children and Young People Services would fulfil its role as a corporate parent and meet its Statutory Sufficiency Duty, by providing good quality care, effective parenting, and supporting children and young people in care and when they left care.

·       The report and presentation would provide an update on the delivery of the strategy over the past 12 months, including the transformation programmes, such as foster care recruitment and residential children's homes.

 

The Chair invited the SEND Transformation Project Lead to present the PowerPoint, during which the following was noted:

 

Strategy Overview and Priorities-

 

·       The Looked After Children’s Sufficiency Strategy 2023-2027, was approved at Cabinet in October 2022.

·       The Looked After Children Sufficiency Strategy was developed in-line with the duty to provide or procure placements for children looked after by the Local Authority. The duty of ‘sufficiency’ required Local Authorities and Children’s Trust Partners to ensure that there was a range of sufficient placements which would meet the needs of children and young people in care. This included fostering placements, residential placements and accomodation for care leavers.

 

Key Priorities 2023-2027-

 

·       More young people would be able to be cared for safely in their families and communities within Rotherham and achieve independence successfully.

·       Children and young people would have access to a range of homes, both internal and external options, that would meet their needs and improve their outcomes.

·       All services would take the Rotherham Family Approach to ensure all Rotherham children and young people would be “resilient, successful and safe”, this would be evidenced by quality assurance activity.

·       Children and young people would be able to access the support they needed when they needed it, because Health, Education and Care Services would share a joint understanding of the needs of children and young people in Rotherham and would use this to inform commissioning and service delivery.

·       Children, Young People, their families and carers would be able to access Child Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) assessments and interventions when needed.

·       Children, young people, families and carers would benefit from additional social value in Rotherham, for example more employment opportunities.

·       More children, young people and families would benefit from additional support to improve outcomes and to access employment.

 

Children In Care Trends-

 

·       The numbers of children in care had reduced from 505 to 464. This followed a steady downward trend over the past two years.

·       The number of in-house placements across all types of available provisions, predominantly in-house fostering, residential and sixteen plus had stayed consistent across the period measured, however it was increasing as an overall percentage, as the overall number of children in care reduced.

·       Placement stability was strong, with 60% of placements being consistent.

·       Placement moves had  reduced, this suggested that the plan that was in place was working.

 

Leaving Care Trends-

 

·       Leaving care would be a focus area for the service over the next year, specifically reviewing sufficiency arrangements, including the in-house offer to foster carers.

·       The number of care leavers had stayed consistent with a slight reduction. There was a larger number of children aged 11-15 who would enter leaving care over the next few years and would require leaving care accomodation.

·       There had been continued development of the in-house residential homes provision. The service currently operated seven homes, with a further four expected to become operational shortly.

 

Residential Case Study-

 

·        The case study was from a short stay home single occupancy home. The home was used in situations where a young person required accomodation quickly and where other options were not available at that time.

·        Background information was obtained through the initial referral form and gathered further by a matching meeting. The Service Manager met child D at their Children in Care Review.

·        The service was sensitive to their experiences and their life chances. The remit was to create a secure base where workers could further explore their risks and prepare them for independence as part of their step-down plan.

·        Positive relationships were formed and evidenced by the following:

o   Sharing sensitive information including past experiences and their hopes for the future.

o   Decreased frequency of going missing and when they were missing, they would stay in contact with the team.

o   Increased family time.

o   Engaged with numerous direct work sessions a month.

·        The service supported their transition into a further placement outside of Rotherham, in line with their Step-down and Safety Plan.

·        D visited this placement since leaving and expressed that it was the only place that they felt safe and cared for.

 

Children’s Home One and Two-

 

• The service opened several residential homes over recent years and were keen to highlight the high quality of the homes. Young people were involved in the development of the residential homes, examples were provided of how young people were involved in the naming of the homes, interviewing senior employees within the residential service and had helped to pick the furniture and bedroom colours.

 

Fostering Rotherham-

 

·       Fostering Rotherham was a collaboration of digital on-line marketing and place based foster carer recruitment, support and retention of local foster carers. The marketing and brand was more prominent due to the work completed over recent years; this included the support from elected members. The aim of the marketing campaign was to grow the in-house offer, to ensure that more children in care would be in family-based settings, and that there would be an in-house provision delivering better value for placements.

·       Fostering Rotherham worked with local foster carer heroes who offered up their homes and hearts to young people in and around the community.  The service worked with over 120 fostering families from across Rotherham and South Yorkshire, to improve the lives of local children and young people.

·       Every day, the Fostering Team and carers lived the Rotherham Council values that were at the core of the local authority. These were honesty, accountability and always being respectful. The service was ambitious and aimed to make a real change for all of Rotherham’s looked after children and were proud of what they did.

 

Foster Carer Retention-

 

·        Building a stronger, connected community.

·        Providing regular opportunities for carers to connect, learn and feel valued all year round.

·        Monthly activities for carers included the following:

o   Coffee afternoons, which offered informal peer support and connection.

o   Foster carer breakfasts, which recognised and celebrated carers.

o   Quarterly forums, which offered opportunities to learn and strengthen relationships across the fostering community.

o   Quarterly wellbeing Sessions, which promoted foster carer wellbeing through activities like ‘paint a pot’, pamper sessions, wreath making, jewellery workshops and walking with Alpacas.

o   Partnerships activities, for example working with local organisations such as the Arc Cinema, Wentworth Woodhouse, Grimm and Co and Rotherham United, to offer free or discounted experiences for families. There were also businesses that had financially supported some of the services activities.

 

Celebrating the Foster Carer Community-

 

·        Highlights from the last 12 months included the following:

o   The launch of a short fostering film called ‘Everything’, which was shown at the Arc Cinema in October 2024.

o   Free tickets provided for Wentworth Woodhouse to see ‘T’was The Night Before Christmas’ and free tickets for a Christmas Pantomime for fostering families in December 2024.

o   An Easter Egg Hunt and 50 Years of Fostering Celebration in April 2025.

o   The first Fostering Rotherham Festival and a fostering trip to Bridlington in May 2025.

o   The first Fostering Rotherham Olympics and Colour Dash in July 2025.

o   A story making workshop for children in care in August 2025.

o   Afternoon Tea with the Mayor of Rotherham and a celebration of foster carers in October 2025.

o   The varied programme of celebrations recognised commitment, built communities and ensured every foster carer would feel part of the Rotherham Family.

 

Challenges-

 

·       There were recruitment challenges for the residential workforce, as the recruitment remained extremely competitive. As more in-house residential homes became operational, more employees were required, recruiting employees was a national challenge. This would be an area of focus to increase marketing in this area.

·       Recruitment and retention of foster carers remained an ongoing challenge due to the competitive nature of the market. There was also an ageing foster carer population in Rotherham, this mirrored a national challenge.

·       An emerging area of focus and priority was the shortage of available, externally commissioned placements across fostering, residential and sixteen plus accomodation. There was a cohort of children in care who would soon become care leavers, therefore the service was reviewing their local offer for care leavers and assessing the sufficiency of placements, to see what options were available to develop further in-house provision to support care leavers.

 

Opportunities-

 

·       Ensuring continued and improved awareness and local support for looked after children, especially when developing new provision.

·       Developing place-based marketing to increase recruitment and complement the online presence.

·       Continuing to promote what’s working well and share good new stories.

The Chair thanked the relevant officers for the update and opened the meeting up to questions, during which the following was noted and discussed:

 

·        CAMHS generic waiting lists for services such as Getting Advice, Getting Help and Psychological Therapies, were at four to six week and children in care were not waiting a significant period for CAMHS support. The service reorganised the way in which they provided in-house therapeutic support to children in care, therefore in situations where children required additional support and before they reached the threshold for CAMHS support, the service Empower would assist. Empower aimed to support children in situations where either the trauma they had experienced or the emotional wellbeing needs they had were impacting on the home that they were living in, risking placement breakdown. CAMHS services supported the Empower service delivered by the local authority with clinical supervisions. More information on the Empower would be shared with the Commission in writing.

·        The latest figures showed that there were 45 children in care on the waiting list for neurodevelopmental assessments. It was advised that being a child in care did not necessarily require prioritisation over another child. However, in situations where ab assessment of needs would help the service to identify the right home for the child or would help provide support, this would be prioritised.

·        In relation to page 42, the current 344 care leavers and the target of 98.2%, it was clarified that there were seven children and young people who were not in appropriate accommodation, this was because any care leaver in custody could not be classed as being in appropriate accommodation.

·        There was a Service Multi-Agency Protocol in place to support children in care and care leavers, the policy ensured children and young people in care would not be criminalised for behaviour such as criminal damage in residential homes.

·        The support offered to care leavers was detailed within the Care Leavers Local Offer. The support for care leavers would not begin later than age sixteen, this was dependent on the young person. They would be consistently asked what support they would need in terms of preparation for adulthood. There were many programmes delivered by CYPS and other services such as housing and Employment Solutions, to transition a care leaver into independence. Personal Advisors offered support which covered anything that would be expected of a parent or carer offer, up until the age of twenty-five. Rotherham had a Care Leavers Covenant, a Care Leaver Offer and Care Leavers Charter.

·        In-house residential homes were spread out in different wards across the borough. The main considerations when the service looked at purchasing a property were whether the home would be a good one for children, whether it had the right facilities and was in the right neighbourhood. A full list of the geographic location of in-house residential homes by ward basis would be provided to members of the Commission in writing. The Cabinet Member urged all elected members to support any applications at Planning Board which proposed an in-house residential home.

·        The services ambition and aspiration were to have sufficient homes across the borough, including foster homes, residential homes and post sixteen supported accommodation, to be able to match each individual child to the right home. However, it was noted that was not the position the service was in. Since 2021, the service had not been in a position where there were too many suitable properties available for children and young people. When identifying suitable properties, the service looked at the size of the property and whether it would be big enough to house two children comfortably, alongside a staff team, whilst replicating a home environment. Outside space for the children and young people was also considered, alongside whether the property was in a reasonable distance from education provisions. The properties also needed to be within an area that the police would recommend and be priced within an allocated budget.

·        At times the service struggled to find appropriate properties which would meet all the relevant criteria, however, the service had purchased a range of property types. Examples were provided of properties purchased from the open market, council homes and existing council assets, such as caretaker properties that were refurbished to ensure the right standards. The service worked well with Strategic Housing and Asset Management to look at accommodation requirements and utilising properties that the council already had.

·        The service received significant investment from Cabinet into services such as the in-house residential and in-house fostering services, this had enabled the service to continue to grow in-house provisions.

·        Private sector providers were leading the market, in 2024 the top ten private providers made a combined profit of three hundred million pounds in profit alone.

·        In relation to fostering, although the service had not managed to significantly increase the number of foster carers, the council had maintained their number of foster carers, whilst regional and statistical neighbours had seen a significant reduction in numbers. The maintenance was attributed to a very clear marketing strategy and good level of investment to provide support and recruit good foster carers in Rotherham.

·        The Commissioning Team worked hard to develop and grow relationships with private providers such as Independent Fostering Agencies and residential providers. This enabled the service to access available places when required.

·        Additional investment for the services residential workforce was agreed to enable good quality, supportive homes for children. This also contributed to ensuring the right homes were available for children within Rotherham. 70% of children were placed within twenty miles of their home.

·        On a monthly basis, the Joint Assistant Director for Commissioning and Performance chaired the Children and Care Sufficiency Board, which fed into the Children’s and Young People’s Services Change Management Board, chaired by the Strategic Director of Children’s and Young People’s Services. There was an action plan which aimed to increase the places and homes available for children to live in, to promote fostering and encourage more in-house foster carers to work with the Council to grow the in-house residential service, and to explore what in-house supported accommodation was required for care leavers aged sixteen plus.

·        There was a cohort of foster carers who were ready to retire and often positive foster care endings. Examples were provided of foster carers who decided to adopt their foster child or agree to a Special Guardianship Order, which was a positive ending for the child, but the loss of a foster carer for the service. The service agreed to share a profile with members of the number of newly approved foster carers and the number of de-registrations over the last two years. Some foster carers had a break from fostering for many reasons such as a placement end, a child returning to their birth family or a baby moving onto adoption.

·        The service would provide members with additional information on the financial support available for children on Special Guardianship Orders, specifically any financial support available for higher education.

 

Resolved:- That the Improving Lives Select Commission:

1)    Considered the progress made against the delivery plan for the Looked After Children’s Sufficiency Strategy.

2)    Requested that additional information be provided to the Commission on the Empower Service.

3)    Requested that additional information be provided by a ward basis, on the locations of residential homes across the borough.

4)    Requested that the specific data be provided on how many children are in care currently and the comparison to the number of places available for allocation.

5)    Requested that specific data be provided relating to the current number of newly approved foster carers, the current number of fostering de-registrations and the comparison data to other local authorities.

6)    Requested that additional information be provided on whether there is any financial support available for higher education, for young people in a Special Guardianship Order arrangement.