Agenda item
Update on Semi-Independent Provision for Looked After Children and Care Leavers
To provide the Corporate Parenting Committee with an update on the quality assurance of semi-independent provision commissioned by the Council to accommodate Looked After Children (LAC) aged 16-18 and Care Leavers.
Minutes:
The purpose of this report was to provide the Corporate Parenting Committee with an update on the quality assurance of semi-independent provision commissioned by the council to accommodate looked after children (LAC) aged 16-18 and care leavers. Shirley Parks (Head of Forward Planning Performance & Partnerships, Brent Council) advised that the report detailed the work done to develop the new quality assurance framework with children and young people at its heart to ensure it responded to their experiences and how they thought it could improve. Shirley Parks also detailed the major consultation the government had done around semi-independent provision, and the fact government were preparing to introduce some national standards and a form of Ofsted quality assurance. The details of this were not specific yet, but the Council had put itself forward to have a conversation with the DfE about those standards. The Committee were advised that this work would remain in place alongside the national framework.
The Committee were grateful to see a report about semi-independent provision quality assurance in co-production with young people. They offered appreciation to those who worked in semi-independent provision and emphasised their expectation that providers needed high calibre experienced staff who understood the experience of young people and should be providing specialised training for those staff to improve their understanding of young people and trauma. Shirley Parks agreed and noted that as part of the process they had spoken to providers for their input into the framework and the key objective was to find providers completely aligned with the Council’s aims and develop commissioning around that.
The Committee also felt it was important to consider the role regeneration and housing could play regarding how the Council understood the care leaving population to predict housing need for the future, and for the needs of care leavers to be considered when the Council considered housing projects in the Borough.
The Committee highlighted there were some children and young people placed in Brent by other authorities. Shirley Parks acknowledged that there was not a list of every semi-independent provider in Brent, but one thing the Council could do when they became aware of those providers on local patches was to invite them to the provider forums as the forums were not exclusively for those Brent Council had commissioned. There was an intention to set up a best practice forum and a training forum for all providers, and the invitation would be extended to those providers to help them understand Brent standards.
The Committee were advised that young people had been a really important part of the work to help the Council understand the key issues young people faced and had put things on the table that officers may not have thought about. Shirley Parks acknowledged that there was an action plan to implement the work and it would be reviewed regularly with young people to ensure it was fit for purpose, in the context of any national guidance that came out.
RESOLVED:
i) To note the content of the report.
Supporting documents: