Agenda item
Fostering Service Quarterly Report, Quarter 3 (October 2020-December 2020)
To provide information to the Council’s Corporate Parenting Committee about the general management of the in-house fostering service and how it is achieving good outcomes for children, in accordance with standard 25.7 of the Fostering National Minimum Standards (2011). The report details the activity of Brent’s fostering service from 1 October to 21 December 2020.
Minutes:
The purpose of this report was to provide information to the Council’s Corporate Parenting Committee about the general management of the in-house fostering service and how it was achieving good outcomes for children for the period from October 2020 to December 2020.
Onder Beter (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) hoped that the Committee would be pleased to see the increase in the digital profile of Brent fostering and recruitment and marketing. The service had adapted to new ways of working and had also supported Foster Carers with more online training. He highlighted the increase in the uptake of training now that there was a virtual learning offer available and the additional 150 places providing access to online courses detailed in section 7.1.5 of the report, which he expressed was good as access to training was a critical point for how Foster Carers chose which local authority to foster for.
Section 7.2.8 of the report detailed how Brent would celebrate the achievements of Foster Carers, as during the pandemic it had not been possible to do the usual annual awards event. The Lead member and Strategic Director of CYP would be asked to record video messages to Foster Carers and the Council would provide a voucher for each Foster Carer, which they were happy to do as a token of appreciation for Foster Carers. The Committee agreed that the video messages to Foster Carers would be shared at the start of the next meeting.
The Department for Education (DfE) had not agreed to fund the Joint Fostering Project that Brent had been working on with other Local Authorities but section 9.1 of the report detailed how Brent were aiming to take that work forward with one of the Local Authorities stepping back and another stepping up to be involved. The Committee would be kept up to date with future development.
The Committee queried what limitations and challenges the joint fostering project might be faced with now that there was no central government funding for the project. Onder Beter expressed that they were hopeful and there was director level consultation taking place with the 3 local authorities who were committed to a joint piece of work. The scope of the Project may not be at the scale they would have initially hoped but by end of February 2021 they would be clearer on the commitment of the local authorities.
In relation to section 4.2 of the report, the Committee asked about the decrease in young people in fostering placement and whether this was related to older teenagers and the challenge of finding placements for that age group. Onder Beter advised that this was partly due to the needs of the young people and lack of sufficiency around foster placement for teenagers. Onder Beter stated that older children coming into care late were placed in semi-independent provisions either in Brent or the neighbouring Local Authorities, noting that the decrease in placements was not substantial.
There had been a significant increase in placement stability in comparison to the previous year. Placement stability was measured based on the percentage of 3 or more placement moves the child had, and this had reduced from 17.3% to 12.3%. Onder Beter highlighted that considering the profile of children who were mostly older ages this was a good improvement, and Brent had recently increased stability of social workers for children in care. Work continued to improve the outcomes and stability for children.
The Committee queried whether there had been an increase in family breakdowns due to pressure from COVID-19 which had resulted in an increased LAC population. Onder Beter advised that there was currently no evidence to support the hypothesis that this was happening but it continued to be monitored. There had been an increase in the number of referrals, which in turn had increased the number of child protection enquiries and child protection plans, and from September 2020 up until the Committee meeting there had been a slight increase in the number of LAC coming into the care system, but there was no evidence it was due to the impact of COVID-19 on family relationships. Onder Beter stated that the number of Looked After Children was lower compared to the same time last year. Onder Beter advised that Brent had done well to keep the number of children in care at a steady rate and was not anticipating a significant increase for the current year.
The Committee noted the positive news on the uptake of courses by Foster Carers and noted it would be good to keep that under review. The recruitment drive had been well noticed by the Committee and other members, with the Leader passing on thanks to the team. They passed on their praise to the fostering team and felt it was clear that they had used a difficult period to massively expand the digital offer and support to Foster Carers.
RESOLVED:
i) To note the content of the report.
Supporting documents: