Agenda item

Update from the Director of Children Services.

The Panel received a presentation from the Assistant Director of Corporate Parenting which covered a number of areas such as performance scorecard, Children Looked After (CLA) reviews, dental and health, 20+ miles away, Missing children and Placement Sufficiency

With regard to the performance indicators, Assistant Director of Corporate Parenting stated that Harrow continued to perform well in comparison to statistical neighbours and national averages.  Harrow performed better than other local authorities in relation to placement stability indicators, suitable accommodation for care leavers and care leavers in education, employment and training (EET).

In quarter 2, 90% of all CLA had reviews in timescale, while this is not a published Key Performance Indicator, the target was to have at least 95% of all reviews within timescale.

Members were informed that usual review timescales were; within 1 month of when child first entered care, a second review within 3 months, and within 6 months thereafter.  CLA reviews were chaired by an Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO); Service sat within Quality Assurance and Service Improvement with its core functions consisted of reviewing plans for children in care and monitoring the Local Authority in respect of its corporate parenting and safeguarding responsibilities.  A total of 18 reviews were late in Q2, however, the majority of reviews were held within 2 weeks of being due.

In terms of dental checks and health checks performance for quarter 2: 83.3% of all CLA have up to date dental checks (90/108 children).  This was better than the statistical neighbour average of 75% and England average of 70%.  The service’s primary challenge was around teenagers refusing to see a dentist, and work being carried out by social workers encouraged attendance.  A further 5 children were open to CYADS team and had specialist dentists to hat met their needs. Harrow’s target was for at least 90% of all CLA to have an up to date dental check.  The CLA health team provided a separate and detailed report at the panel re: Health Checks, challenges and progress made.  The team worked creatively with nurse colleagues to explain the purpose of the medical and to provided reassurance to young people who had been uncertain and unwilling to meet with nursing staff.  Currently 10 children had not had a medical within the last 12 months.

In relation to Children placed more than 20 miles away from home, it was noted that 85% were long term placements and only 15% were short term placements.  There was a decrease in the number of children placed 20 miles of more from Harrow.

The officer gave an update on missing episodes, with 8.6% of children looked after during Q2 (16/244 children) having had a missing incident.  Any missing incident indicated a child was at risk of harm, each missing child was reviewed weekly with police and senior social care managers, as well as independent return home interviews were offered.  Strategy meetings with the police and multiagency network were held to find children and prevent further missing incidents, identified and addressed safeguarding risks, included proactive measures such as Child Abduction Warning Notices, phone tracking, and national alerts Children who might be at risk of harm while missing from care were also subject to MACE panel (multiagency child exploitation panel) arrangements.

An update about placement sufficiency challenges, the placement sufficiency strategy and work undertaken to development placement sufficiency for children were also given and outlined in the slides for the meeting.

In response to members’ questions regarding the target of dental checks, the Officer confirmed that a 90% target was set at a high standard, to make sure we were aspirational for children.

In response to members’ questions regarding placement sufficiency, the officer explained that sibling groups, and parent and child placements could be most difficultly sourced.  However, there were a number of foster carers caring for sibling groups and provided care to parents and children in-house.

The Panel thanked the officer for the detailed report.

RESOLVED:  That the report be noted.