Agenda item

To provide an overview of participation activity for care experienced children and young people in 2022-23 and demonstrate how feedback from care experienced young people informs practice and service development.

Sonya Kalyniak (Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance, Brent Council) introduced the report, which provided an overview of participation activity for care experienced children and young people in 2022-23. In introducing the report, she highlighted the following key points:

·         One of the key achievements of the reporting year was that young people had been trained as interviewers and participated in the interviews of key members of staff, including the Chief Executive and Director of Children and Young People.

·         The Council had hosted a Pride of Brent Youth Awards ceremony with members of Care in Action (CIA) and Care Leavers in Action (CLIA) being both part of the judging panel and receiving awards.

·         A staff conference which had included Brent Care Journeys had involved different multi-media presentations from young people for them to express their experience of being in care, and 400 people saw those visual presentations which included a moving dance production.

·         The service had been considering how Brent Care Journeys ways of working could be incorporated into future service design when the partnership came to an end in early 2025.

·         The Council would be starting a new round of Bright Spots surveys in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Coram Voice, which would be the third time using the tool meaning it would yield some comparable data and results. Those results were then used for CIA and CLIA to advocate on behalf of other young people. The previous round had found that it was not always easy to build relationships with foster carers when a child first entered care, and so the groups had created a leaflet of ‘dos and don’ts’ for foster carers, which they had now developed into training that they would deliver.

·         It was highlighted that there had been several changes in Participation Workers over the past 6-12 months, which had been challenging for CIA and CLIA because that work was very relationship focused. The service was working hard to get more permanent recruitment into those teams and had now recruited a Participation Manager who had already been involved in participation work in Brent and had been endorsed by CLIA representatives.

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

The Committee asked whether Brent Care Journeys would be continued past the end of its partnership in 2025. Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) explained that Brent Care Journeys was a partnership with Barnardo’s but not a contract so was a slightly different way of working. The Council had a strong relationship with Barnardo’s and worked with them in a number of other areas such as the Family Wellbeing Centres. As such, the Council was hoping this was not the end of Brent Care Journeys and was in conversations as to what that provision would look like beyond 2025 in its evolved state. 

The Committee noted that the report detailed the disruptive nature of changes in children’s social workers, and asked whether the service was doing anything to make that transition between social workers easier, particularly because social worker changes would become more likely with the current national workforce issues. Members of CLIA shared their own experience of managing changes in social worker, highlighting that sometimes it was hard when one social worker left to feel motivated to build a relationship with someone new. Some of the work CLIA was doing to combat that was work around trusted relationships where the young person had a trusted person they could talk to about these issues to help with that transition. The young person could get to know their new social worker with that trusted person to allow the new social worker to get a sense of the young person for themselves rather than through their case files. CLIA acknowledged that this could be a time-consuming process but worked to establish that relationship at the first instance.

In response to CLIA, Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) highlighted that she agreed this should happen, but currently it was difficult to create that sense of handover due to the amount of vacancies within the service. In the LAC service, there was around 30% vacancies, which meant people were coming in and out at different times and when one person left there was not automatically someone there to take over straight away, creating a gap for young people. She highlighted that there was a need to be creative to ensure that sense of consistency for young people and the service was always open to suggestions on how that could be made easier for young people. Sonya Kalyniak added that the social work induction programme used a trauma informed approach to inform incoming staff where young people had already had changes of social workers and what they had told the service made things easier for them. Leaving social workers were also asked to do later life letters and end relationships with children and young people properly, including recording the work they had done with the young person. Palvinder Kudhail (Director Integration and Improved Outcomes, Brent Council) added that the Council was now collecting data on the number of transitions a child had, and if they had more than 3 social worker changes then the Council would look to see if there was anyone else within that person’s network who had been more stable and could provide that consistency. It was often found that the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) was consistent and so the Council might look to them and ask them to reassure the young person and do an extra visit with them.

In considering that transition period and the work the service were doing to minimise that disruption, the Committee asked how long that gap might be between a child’s previous social worker leaving and being allocated a new social worker. Kelli Eboji answered that the ‘worst case’ scenario would be a week or fortnight gap where the service was waiting for someone to start. Where a social worker left and there were no other social workers with capacity, the Team Manager would hold that young person’s case until someone new started to ensure the young person was always allocated.

The Committee asked about the uptake of participation projects and whether children and young people were making use of them, such as the grand mentoring scheme and apprenticeship scheme. They heard that there was a cohort of around 20 young people making good use of the grand mentoring scheme and the Council was in the process of renewing that contract so that it could continue. Officers and the Committee felt that more needed to be done around the apprenticeship scheme, particularly around the promotion of those opportunities. Some members of CLIA had not heard about these opportunities. Officers explained that, normally, a care leavers’ personal advisor or social worker would let them know about the opportunities available to them and share the local offer with them, and if they joined their local hub that information would be available there too. The Committee felt there was still work to do around communicating effectively with care leavers to ensure they could access these schemes and the Committee asked for a follow-up on communication of the local offer in a future report.

RESOLVED:

i)              To endorse the development areas for 2023-24 outlined in section 4.11 of the accompanying report.

ii)             For a future report to detail the communication and engagement of the local offer with care leavers.