Agenda item

To provide information to the 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).

Kelli Eboji (Head of LAC and Permanency, Brent Council) introduced the report, which provided information about the general management of the in-house fostering service and how it was achieving good outcomes for children. In introducing the report, she highlighted the following key points:

• Paragraph 4.1.2 of the report set out the achievements against the priorities set the previous financial year.
• The largest challenge facing the fostering service currently was recruitment of foster carers. The Council was working hard to improve its ability to recruit new mainstream foster carers, and the carers that had been recruited were in the target demographic. The revised fostering offer was due to launch following its approval, which included an increase in the fostering allowance. It was hoped the new offer would improve recruitment and retention and provide more local placements for Brent looked after children. The service had received DfE funding to improve recruitment and retention which had gone towards the new joint fostering recruitment hub due to go live in May 2024. It was hoped this would increase the catchment area for Brent, bringing in new enquiries.
• The fostering offer had been rebranded with a ‘share your love, share your life’ message and a new logo. The launch for the revised offer would take place in Foster Carer Fortnight and would start with a foster carers walk and end with a picnic for foster carers, staff and community members. Members were invited to attend that. The new fostering offer would also see the service work with HR to get Brent recognised as a fostering friendly organisation.
• The service had seen an active summer with a community awareness raising campaign, which was now reflecting in the number of enquiries and assessments.
• The achievements of foster carers had been celebrated with a cream tea event in Foster Carer Fortnight in May 2023, a seaside trip in August 2023, and an end of year event in November 2023.
• The new LAC resilience service had been running since November 2023. This gave the service another way of maintaining placement stability for children and supporting foster carers and families. The service had seen 13 referrals to date and had already avoided a placement breakdown.

Following the introduction, the Chair invited two foster carers who had attended the meeting to talk about their experiences of fostering with Brent.

One foster carer told the Committee that they had begun their fostering journey with an independent fostering agency before joining Brent 5 years later. She had fostered a Brent child at the time and following that experience had decided that, as she lived in Brent, she should give back to her borough. She had now been fostering for Brent for 12 years. She highlighted that her positivity towards fostering for Brent was thanks to her Supervising Social Worker, as without their mutual understanding of each other she would not have succeeded as a foster carer. Since being with Brent, the foster carer felt she had been able to bring out her passion to help others and now fostered Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASCs). She currently had a staying put arrangement with a 20-year-old and felt sad about the day they would leave but felt that the bond and relationship would remain as most of the young people she had cared for remained in touch.

Another foster carer had started foster caring as his wife had wanted to foster. He had agreed, as his wife’s parents fostered as well, which made them a fostering family. He told the Committee that he had been in care from the age of 14 and was still in contact with his foster carer. As such, being part of a family that fostered and as a child that was brought up in foster care, he had wanted a way to give back to society. He had seen that when the children he fostered for learned that he had also been in foster care it gave them hope, and that was a very important part of the role. He agreed that the relationship a foster carer had with their Supervising Social Worker was vital to ensure success and he had been blessed with the social workers he had worked with.

The Chair thanked officers for the update and the foster carers for sharing their experiences with the Committee, and then invited comments and questions from Committee members with the following raised:

The Committee highlighted that one of the challenges of the fostering service was encouraging foster carers to attend training, and asked the foster carers present what their experience had been of training and how they would encourage other foster carers to attend training. The foster carers believed in in-service training as there was always something new to learn. They felt it was important to ensure the training was accessible, including utilising hybrid technology to enable training to take place online if necessary and ensuring the time was convenient. They felt that the training they had attended had been useful but may require carers to take time off work to attend due to the timings. The foster carers suggested doing a questionnaire for foster carers asking how they would like to attend training and at what times.

RESOLVED:

i)               To note the content of the report.