Agenda item

To inform the Corporate Parenting Committee of the contributions of Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) towards quality assurance and improvement of services for Looked After Children (LAC).

Sonya Kalyniak (Head of Quality Assurance and Safeguarding, Brent Council) introduced the report which informed the Corporate Parenting Committee of the contribution of Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) to the quality assurance and improvement of services for looked after children (LAC). She informed the Committee that the IRO role was statutory to ensure LAC needs were fully met and that their care planning was progressing as it should. The report identified areas of practice strengths and weaknesses. In introducing the report, she highlighted the following key points:

• Brent had 2 in-house IROs who were permanent members of staff and commissioned the remainder of IROs to Aidhour. Aidhour had been contracted with Brent for over 20 years, meaning the IROs had been in place for a very long time and knew the children very well. Some IROs from Aidhourhad started to retire from their role so there had been some staff turnover and it was important to ensure there was sustained stability there. The service was looking at options to gradually bring more IROs in-house as it was seeing a lot of stability with in-house IROs presently.
• There was a strong focus on the advocacy service for IROs, who routinely checked that children and young people knew about advocacy and how it could support them. Brent’s Advocacy Services were provided by Coram Voice for LAC and care leavers, and they had exceeded their target specifications of providing 500 advocacy hours per year to 60 children. In the reporting year, they had provided 697 hours of advocacy support to 67 children and young people. This included advocacy for children with a child protection plan.
• The Ofsted ILACS Inspection had reviewed the IRO service in February 2023. The inspectors had found that most IROs were monitoring the progress of children’s plans, that actions were progressed and letters from IROs to children following review were child focused and easy to understand. However, the inspection had found that the consistency of those letters required improvement and there was a need to ensure children were active participants in their review.
• There was a lot of work being undertaking on participation and ensuring IROs found creative ways to ensure children engaged in their reviews. That work would continue into the next reporting year.
• Following the Ofsted ILACS Inspection, the service had done some in-depth audit work into some of the themes the inspection had found and put some improvement work in place which the service was now seeing.

The Chair thanked Sonya Kalyniak for her update and invited comments and questions from Committee members with the following raised:

The Committee asked why table 7 of the report indicated that over half of LAC did not participate in their review meeting. Sonya Kalyniak explained that the IRO would aim to speak to the child in advance of the review and make every effort to speak to the child, see them in person, offer advocacy support or speak to someone else who knew the child very well. The service could undertake some benchmarking compared to other similar local authorities as to the number of LAC participating in review meetings and provide that information to the Committee in the next report. Sonya Kalyniak was of the view that it would be relatively comparative to other local authorities. Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) added that Brent had similar participation figures at its last Ofsted Ofsted Inspection but it had not been flagged as an issue previously. There was no national data captured so benchmarking data was not readily available, but the Council was generating some of its own performance indicators on this to monitor how many children were participating in their reviews. In addition to this, a Team Manager would be involved in the IRO review for any child that had not been directly involved to see what could be done differently next time. In response to whether hosting IRO reviews online could increase participation, the Committee heard that the Council tried to ensure as many reviews as possible were done in person to ensure the relationship work was done. However, the service had found that participation during lockdown was quite high because children found their reviews to be less intimidating online so now officers checked with young people to find out how they wanted to participate. Some children would only do their review online, but it was still important that the IRO met the child in advance to build their relationship. This would then count towards attending reviews directly.

The Committee asked whether having a case load between 60-65 children was in accordance with national guidance, as detailed in paragraph 7.1, as this seemed quite high. The Committee was advised that a caseload of 60-65 cases was the number nationally recommended in the IRO handbook. Although IROs did work directly with children in advance and during their reviews, they would not have day-to-day contact and so 60-65 cases was seen as a reasonable caseload.

The Committee asked for further information about paragraph 9.1 which detailed looking at social pedagogy approaches. Sonya Kalyniak explained that this was one of the approaches in the Brent practice framework which foster carers had received training on. The approach was a way that young people could learn or build relationships through activities done together. For example, during a LAC review it could be cooking a meal together and conducting the review while having the meal around the table. This approach took a lot more time and consideration, but it was Brent’s ambition to do more of that type of review, depending on what the individual child wanted.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report.