Minutes:
Ailsa Barr, Acting Assistant Director Safeguarding, gave the following powerpoint presentation on the recent Ofsted Focussed Visit (21st-22nd March, 2019), and the outcome thereof:-
What’s Working Well
Improved practice in respect of children coming into care:-
- Most recent S20 Audit (February 2019) evidenced appropriate use or a clear rationale for Section 20 placements and thus minimal drift
- Of the 33 children subject of Section 20, 6 where Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker Children, 10 by virtue of receiving short breaks, 6 were 17+, 8 in PLO/legal process and 3 with a plan for reunification
- All admissions presented to Public Law Outline Panel including emergency admissions so that:
· Opportunities for reunification fully explored
· All family options exhausted and viability assessments appropriate front loaded
· Adoption planning including (early permanence) considered at earliest opportunity
Improving Placement Stability
- Long term placement stability tracker
· Process managed within Performance Clinics
· 21 long term matches achieved in 2018/19
· 13 more with Panel date already booked (7 x IFAs)
- Better use of Special Guardianship Orders/Child Arrangements Orders
· Early use of Interim Supervision order/CAO at initial hearings
· 28 Looked After Children stepped down to SGO/CAO in 2018/19
· 83 children made subject of SGO/CAO not previously Looked After over same period
· 273 SGO/CAO placements financially supported by CYPS
· Post-SGO Support Worker to encourage greater sign up by carers
· Letterbox co-ordinator
A ‘Good’ Adoption Service
- 32 adoptions successfully completed – 22 of these children in the ‘Hard to Place’ categories
- Time limited searches by exception only and in accordance with identified needs of the child
- RMBC acknowledged as regional Early Permanence leads – 6 EP placements in 2018/19 with 7 more in process
- Only 1 disrupted adoption
- 35 more children already in adoptive placements, 25 of whom were in ‘Hard to Place’ categories
- Post-adoption support
· Rotherham Therapeutic Team
· Adoption Support Fund – 136 applications
- A collective commitment to ensure the Regional Adoption Agency does not impact on performance and adoption outcomes for our children
Innovative Practice
- Intensive Intervention Programme using predictive analytics to identify and support the most vulnerable towards increased placement stability
- Right Child Right Care – providing targeted and performance managed interventions to support more Looked After Children to permanent arrangements
- Edge of Care Service – significant investment in a range of Edge of Care Services )PAUSE, MST, FGC, Edge of Care Team) to support children to remain living with birth/extended families and to support Looked After Children to return home
- Life-Long Links (2nd wave) to re-establish long term social and family connections using Family Group Conferencing model and social mapping processes to improve placement stability
- The House Project – contributing to the ‘coming Home’ objectives in supporting 16 and 17 year olds to move for Out of Authority placements and towards semi-independent living
Areas for Further Development
- Although the quality of Life-Story had significantly improved, it could be produced too late and was not yet widely available beyond children in the adoption pathway
- Insufficiency of in-house foster carers could impact on matching practices and placement stability
- Foster carer retention had been an issue
- A small number of pre-birth assessments had been concluded too close to the end of the pregnancy to allow for a full 12 week consideration within the PLO process
- Quality of some Care Plans and Support Plans could dissuade the Court from endorsing early permanence
What We Are Doing About It
- Continued Right Child Right Care implementation until we are confident it had become embedded practice
- Improved foster care recruitment
Revised Marketing and Placement Sufficiency Strategy
Foster Carer Diversity Scheme
Mockingbird
Challenge 63
Fostering Network retention project
- Task and Finish Group had produced a Pre-birth Planning Process and Tracker with milestones measured in Performance Clinics
- Production of life-story work to become a performance measure
- Improve the quality of Care Plans via the continued drive for ‘Outstanding’ Social Work practice
Feedback – What’s Going Well
- Significant improvement in Permanence Planning for Looked After Children
- A real focus on securing the long-term future for Looked After Children with some very creative interventions that were well-adapted to the needs of individual children
- Progress was very evident and effective strategic management had built on existing strengths and improved management oversight
- Right Child Right Care was progressing to becoming standard practice
- The Service was reflective and adaptive having embraced the learning identified in previous Peer Reviews
- There was strong evident of front-loading assessments and twin track planning
Feedback – Areas for Improvement
- Social Workers were able to well articulate the plans for their children but they were less well reflected in case files in a consistent way
- The unique identity of our children was not always captured in assessments especially in regard to ethnic identity and some of our risk assessments were not sufficiently robust to inform placement decisions and permanence plans
- Sufficiency was an issue in terms of both demand and the complexity of our young people leading to a small but significant number of unregulated placements
The Strategic Director and Leadership Team were proud of the Service for the progress it had made and the drive for improvement.
The letter received from Ofsted on the outcome of their visit set out very clearly the positive strides the Service had made and set out some of the issues/recommendations identified correlated with those already identified by the Service itself and would form an improvement plan.
Discussion ensued with the following issues raised/clarified:-
· It was noted that children who were Looked After had to be placed in an Ofsted registered provision i.e. a foster care placement which had been approved under national standards; placed with their parents if an appropriate assessment had been undertaken or placed in a registered children’s home. If a child was placed anywhere else it was an “unregulated placement”. An explanation was given outlining under what circumstances “unregulated placements” occurred and the steps taken to address this
· The Authority could care for a child in that arrangement for up to 20 days.
· Ofsted had looked at a small number of case files related to “unregulated placements” and had felt that the plan for the child was appropriate but was concerned that the written risk assessment contained within the case file was not clear enough about the risks being considered and why, therefore, the actions outlined had been taken. The Service needed to ensure that consistent managerial oversight was in place, to make sure that risk assessments were up to date, and Social Workers used these to record the rationale for their actions/ decisions clearly consistently in the case records
· Any proformas used needed to be useful for practitioners and work would take place with workers to develop them. The operational model work around Signs of Safety was enabling Social Workers to succinctly record what they were worried about, what they were going to do and why
Resolved:- (1) That the progress made be noted.
(2) That the Select Commission continue to have oversight of performance of Children and Young People’s Services.