Agenda item

This report fulfils the Council’s statutory obligation to present an annual report to the Corporate Parenting Committee (CPC) on outcomes for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, in line with The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations (2010). The report provides a summary of the activity alongside strengths and areas for growth in supporting Looked After Children and Care Leavers in Brent.

Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) introduced the report, which presented the 2022-23 annual report on outcomes for looked after children and care leavers and a summary of the activity taking place. In introducing the report, she highlighted the following key points:

·         There was a total of 319 children in care in the reporting year compared to 341 the previous year which was a 7% decrease. She explained that this was a result of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) turning 18 during that period.

·         The Council had received positive feedback following its Ofsted ILACS Inspection in February 2023 regarding placement stability for children. There had been a reduction in movement of placement of approximately 3% in the reporting year.

·         Comments by the inspector stated that the Council had embedded permanency planning for children and achieved permanency for children without delay, and the Council was making strides with early permanency with Adopt London West (ALW).

·         There had been a lot of participation activity over the past 12 months, and the service intended to merge Brent Care Journeys and its Children in Care Council (Care in Action and Care Leavers in Action) into one single offer. Children valued the offer of those activities, particularly the hub, and there had been good success with the participation in the Grand Mentors scheme.

·         Priorities for the coming year were around stabilising and retaining workforce so that children could benefit from stable, long-term relationships. There was a continued focus on working with partners to improve health outcomes, particularly emotional wellbeing. The service envisaged future development work with Brent Care Journeys in anticipation of the end of the 5-year partnership with Barnardo’s and continued to engage young people in that work. Another priority was around improving accommodation pathways and independent development for care leavers. The Council was also reinvigorating life story work for children in care to help them understand their narratives for why they were in care.

The Chair thanked Kelli Eboji for her introduction and invited contributions from the Committee, with the following points raised:

The Committee asked for further information regarding the priority for staff retention. They asked whether staff were leaving due to feeling overworked. Kelli Eboji highlighted that the Council was working hard to ensure there was a competitive offer for staff. The Council had also broadened its options for recruitment, including looking internationally, and would now be welcoming a cohort of international staff over the next few months. In relation to the reasons staff left, she highlighted this was for a myriad of reasons but nothing specific. Following Covid, many staff relocated or moved to remote working which had impacted the workforce, particularly in London. Staff were not necessarily leaving due to money but because the type of work was very stressful and complex, and the workload was such that people did not want to do it anymore, particularly if there were other pressures in their home that made the pressure of the work incompatible. The Council was offering a flexible working policy and training to combat some of this. Palvinder Kudhail (Director for Integration and Improved Outcomes, Brent Council) added that the Council had some very good agency staff who loved working with the Council and the Council was approaching agency staff at every opportunity to convert to permanent staff. The incentives offer had been revised recently which was improving the story around what the Council paid, and there was also the benefits of the Civic Centre building and supportive managers.

In response to how many staff were permanent compared to agency, Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) explained that, for the whole of the children and young people department, there was probably about 20% agency staff. In some areas of the department that figure was much higher, such as in locality services where some teams were around 50%. He highlighted that the Council employed a lot of long-term agency staff, so the number of agency workers had not been flagged as an issue during the recent Ofsted ILACS inspection. The Council preferred staff to convert to permanent rather than stay as agency and so there needed to be benefits to going permanent. However, he highlighted there was a pattern of staff generally not staying in social work posts long term anymore, with the average being about 5 years since qualifying. He explained this was not just being experienced in Brent, but in response the Council was doing as much as it could to support the workforce.

The Committee highlighted the fact that cases going over 26 weeks in court created a burden on the child because a decision was needed ASAP, and asked if there was a percentage breakdown of the reasons for delays. Kelli Eboji explained there was no percentage breakdown because there were often many reasons for delays, mainly due to the complexity of cases that Brent had.

The Committee asked how the 3-month trial to support permanency detailed in section 5.10.3 of the report was going. Kelli Eboji replied that the trial was one month into starting with someone in post doing a lot of liaising with social workers. However, the service was unsure whether the trial could be sustained due to the need for social work capacity to deal with the day-to-day work.

The Committee was pleased to see an increase in post-16 young people accessing education, employment and training. They asked for examples of how the Council had worked to increase those numbers and what type of employment, education or training young people were going into. Sharon Bucky (Head of Inclusion and Brent Virtual School) explained that the post-16 team was very focused and undertook a lot of work with the LAC and permanency team on this work. The majority of work focused on bringing the team together with Brent Works. There was a Supported Targeted Interventions Team with Prospects who had additional investment through the GLA to support young people who were more challenging, such as those who had a difficult year 10 / 11 and did not have a sense of agency in their own education, employment and training. That team had a particular programme looking at cognitive behavioural job coaching and helping people into work through a supportive internship approach, building their skills to go into further training. This had been successful but there was still more work to do on that front with additional funding now available to do that alongside relevant partners. The Council also had apprenticeships available and were placing care leavers into apprenticeships in most Council departments. Kelli Eboji added that, from September, a new programme for work experience placements for young people in the Council would be launched for where young people were not yet ready for an apprenticeship in order to prepare them for one in the future. It was highlighted that young people were very interested in their own enterprises now so it was important to support young people into that.

The Committee had concerns that, although the numbers had decreased, there were still a number of children going missing from care. They asked for further information about the action taken when a young person went missing, what the main barriers were to finding them, and whether there was enough support from police to fully investigate and prioritise these instances. They were particularly concerned following the Casey Review which found failings of the police in 75% of child protection cases. Kelli Eboji explained that when a child went missing from care there were a number of protocols that the Council needed to follow. If a child was missing then there should be a named police officer responsible for the case. A Strategy meeting was required within 72 hours of the young person going missing which pulled together the entire professional network that might be involved in the case, including the police who were required at those meetings. The meeting would then explore the missing young person’s connected friends, networks and school connections. She highlighted that the school had been a key contributor at a recent missing persons case as the child had been missing from placement but in contact with their school. She highlighted that the response differed depending on the contact partners received from the young person, as some children missing from placement still kept in contact. This complicated matters for the police as they would no longer consider them as missing, and, as a result, sometimes the Council would need to escalate these cases. Sonya Kalyniak (Head of Quality Assurance and Safeguarding, Brent Council) added that when the service had difficulties getting a police response they went to her for support and she could get someone to look into it quickly. Social workers were also good at escalating concerns.

On the whole, it was felt that the Council had a good relationship with the police and in meetings partners were clear on who should do what. Police would lead on intelligence, including known addresses, phone work and visiting locations the child was connected to, while social workers phoned networks and stayed in touch with the young person if they could. In some extreme cases, the Council had agreed the release of a photo of a looked after child or alerted the British Transport Police if it was thought the child was moving via public transport which then involved police forces in different parts of the country, meaning that the case could move from the local professional network to a much wider network in some cases. In all cases, safeguarding and protection was a priority including seeing the child as a victim rather than perpetrator if they were involved in county lines due to vulnerability and exploitation. When a child was returned to home or care a dedicated staff member conducted ‘return home interviews’ to obtain information about why the person went missing and where they went. This happened independently from the practitioner involved in the case to have a more open conversation with the young person. In response to what learning had been obtained from those who repeatedly went missing, Kelli Eboji highlighted that relationships made the difference. When a looked after child had many changes of people in their lives having one or two people who related to them was important. The child would often be challenging to engage with as they had been hurt and did not trust very easily, so it was important to find the best person they could relate to in order to have those conversations. Going missing from placement was often a typical reason for placement breakdowns as those vulnerabilities and uncertainties made it difficult for foster carers to manage and created instability.

Continuing to discuss the process when a child went missing from care, Nigel Chapman added that there was a senior police officer responsible for bringing together a weekly meeting to discuss children missing from home and care which picked up any trends and contextual safeguarding issues. Nigel Chapman received weekly reports on those who were missing, and for those who were missing for longer periods of time he received information on where the police were in finding them. The Safer Brent Partnership had recently had a discussion about the police response to the Casey Review at a local level and sought an update from the Chief Superintendent. The response to the Casey Review was being dealt with as a Met-wide issue but the NW BCU had a willingness locally to do things better.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report.