HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

CHILDREN’S SERVICES AND CORPORATE PARENTING

CABINET PANEL

WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2010 AT 10.00 a.m.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE FOSTERING SERVICE 2009/2010

Report of the Director of Children, Schools and Families

Author: Karen Devereux – Head of Fostering Service

Tel:01992 588498

Executive Member:-Jane Pitman (Executive Member for Children’s Services)

  1. Purpose of report

(a)To summarise the activity of the Fostering Service during 2009/2010 up to 31st March 2010 and identify service developments for 2010/2011.

(b)There has been no Ofsted Fostering inspection this year and both the fostering service and private fostering inspections were reported in last year’s annual report..

  1. Summary

2.1The first year of the Placement and Provider Strategy has produced a more focussed and streamlined service that improves the use of resources within the Placement and Provider portfolio. This is beginning to increase the capacity to meet the diverse needs of children and young people including those with complex needs and challenging behaviour; and achieved improved outcomes while providing services which are better value for money.

2.2There has been an Improvementin timescales for annual reviews of foster carers

2.3Some progress has been made in relation to the induction standards for foster carers but it remains slow overall.

  1. Recommendation

3.1To note theAnnual Report of the Fostering Service 2009/2010.

4.Background

4.1Under the Children and Young Peoples Act 2008 the expectation is that every effort will be made to support children and young people within their wider family and community if they are unable to remain with their birth family.The strategic objective is to ensure that opportunities for children and young people to remain with their nuclear family, wider family and community are assessed and facilitated if at all feasible. Where this is not possible, placements with foster carers or within residential provision should be made within a 20 mile radius to the child or young person’s home whenever possible.

4.2There were approximately 980 children and young people in our care 2008/2009, this increased to approximately 1160 by the end of March 2010. The 2008/2009 figures already reflected a significant increase which was caused primarily by the increasing number of adolescents both coming in to care but also staying longer in care. The 2009/2010 increase includes the impact of Baby Peter’s death resulting in partner agency professionals referring higher numbers of vulnerable children and the Southwark judgementwhich has placed the onus on local authorities Social Care to provide accommodation for homeless 16, 17 and 18 year olds.

4.3The Placement Recruitment Team (PRT) was established in spring 2009 and became fully operational in June 2009. The aim of PRT is to focus on increasing the number of enquiries for all of the Children and Families services but particularly for fostering in order to increase the number of approved in house foster carers. There has been a significant increase in overall enquiries with a total of 1,002 between April 2009 and March 2010, 801 of these were specifically for fostering – this is an increase of 283 from 2008/2009.

4.4The Fostering service met the 2009/2010 target of 72 mainstream foster carers, 8 specialist carers and exceeded the by 1 the target for respite carers by recruiting 9 new respite carers. Unfortunately due to a large number of carers being approved in March 2010, the financial saving associated with the increase in carers was not fully achieved.

4.5The capacity of the fostering service has increased and the number of independent placements has reduced, however with the increase in the CLA population it has not been possible to achieve the reduction in Independent placements anticipated in the placement strategy above. Research indicates that we should anticipate losing 10% of our foster carers annually. 58 foster carer were de-registered during 2009/2010;-13 family and friends foster carers, 31 mainstream foster carers and 14 where the carer successful applied for an SGO.

4.6We were able to recruit to the Specialist Fostering Supervising Social Worker post and the post holder is based in the Adolescent Resource Centre (ARC). The Residential and Fostering Service are working extremely well together to support the 8 specialist foster carers to provide quality care to some of our most challenging and complex children and young people. This model is being developed during 2010/ 2011 by recruiting specialist carers to work with a young age group of children support by DatchworthTurn Children’s Home and Resource Centre. The Family and Friends team continues to work under pressure with a Team Manager and just 4 Supervising Social Workers.

4.7The Team supported more than a hundred foster carers and completed 35 assessments that were approved by panel. Of these 23 foster carers were approved under regulation 38 (short viability assessment)A number of assessments continued on to become full fostering approvals and others for Special Guardianship orders.

4.8Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO) were introduced during 2009/2010 to undertake all first reviews and reviews where there have been concerns necessitating the review being presented to fostering panel. The IROs brought 36 reviews to panel where there had been allegations against foster carers of these 11 carers took up independent support offered.

4.10This year also saw the introduction of the Independent review mechanism (IRM) for foster carers. One of our foster carers accessed this service, the recommendation was upheld and the carer subsequently resigned.

4.11The fostering service received 10 complaints this year; these have mostly been resolved at stage 1 with the help of the customer focus team. One complaint was resolved at stage 2 and we have one outstanding complaint from a prospective carer whose application was not progressed by the fostering team. The Complaints register is included as Appendix 1.

4.15A focus on carers’ annual reviews across the service has resulted in a considerable improvement in relation to reviews on time from 59% in 2009 to 76.5% in March 2010.

4.13The fostering service is committed to working with the our foster carer workforce in order to comply with the Children’s Workforce Development Councils (CWDC) training standards, for all carers to complete within the first year of approval, we are making slow progress with existing carers with just 29 workbooks & portfolios complete at the end of March 2010. The fostering service is focusing on improving this performance and would have benefited from being able to recruit to the 2 training officer posts within the Placement and Provider Strategy, hope to recruit to these posts in the future.

4.14Members’ topic group requested a report to the Children Services Panel, with a copy to topic group Members showing the number and breakdown of BME (black and minority ethnic) foster carers. The latest data, drawn from the annual return to OfSTED in March 2010, is provided in the tables below.

A4.1 / White British / 476
A4.2 / White Irish / 5
A4.3 / Any other White background / 16
A4.4 / Traveller of Irish Heritage
A4.5 / Gypsy/Roma
Mixed
A4.6 / White and Black Caribbean / 7
A4.7 / White and Black African / 3
A4.8 / White and Asian / 8
A4.9 / Any other mixed background / 8
Asian or Asian British
A4.10 / Indian
A4.11 / Pakistani
A4.12 / Bangladeshi
A4.13 / Any other Asian background / 7
Black or Black British
A4.14 / Caribbean / 13
A4.15 / African / 5
A4.16 / Any other Black background / 12

Breakdown of BME children in placement

White / Girls / Boys
G1.1 / White British / 293 / 242
G1.2 / White Irish / 1 / 2
G1.3 / Any other White background / 13 / 23
G1.4 / Traveller of Irish Heritage / 0 / 0
G1.5 / Gypsy/Roma / 0 / 0
Mixed
G1.6 / White and Black Caribbean / 17 / 15
G1.7 / White and Black African / 0 / 4
G1.8 / White and Asian / 5 / 4
G1.9 / Any other mixed ethnic background / 9 / 8
Asian or Asian British
G1.10 / Indian / 5 / 5
G1.11 / Pakistani / 0 / 2
G1.12 / Bangladeshi / 0 / 0
G1.13 / Any other Asian background / 5 / 2
Black or Black British
G1.14 / Caribbean / 6 / 5
G1.15 / African / 7 / 6
G1.16 / Any other Black background / 1 / 2
Other ethnic groups
G1.17 / Chinese / 0 / 0
G1.18 / Any other ethnic group / 6 / 6
G1.19 / Refused / 0 / 0
G1.20 / Information not yet available / 0 / 0
G2.1- G2.2 / Information about children and young people who are seeking asylum / Number
G2.1 / How many placements did you provide to children/young people who are seeking asylum? / 19
G2.2 / How many of the placements reported in G2.1 were for unaccompanied children/ young people seeking asylum? / 3

4.15The Fostering Service in conjunction with the Adolescent Resource Centre (ARC) was supporting 8 specialist fostering placements for hard to place children and young people at the end of March 2010. However it should be noted that many of our foster carers manage children and young people with complex and challenging behaviour and the ARC and Datchworth Turn are providing support to many of these placements.

5Inspection Outcomes

5.1As reported in last year’s annual report, our first Private Fostering Inspection took place in February 2009; the overall rating for the inspection was satisfactory with the organisation rated as good.Notification of PrivateFostering arrangements remains low despite both local and national awareness raising campaigns. We anticipate a second Inspection of our Private fostering arrangements between June 2010 and March 2013. It is hoped that we will be able to retain the Private Fostering officer post through transformation.

5.2As reported in the last annual report the Fostering Service had its sixth annual inspection in March 2008, this was the first fostering inspection conducted by Ofsted. The overall quality rating was found to be good. Outcomes relating to enjoying and achieving were rated as outstanding, while those for staying safe and making a positive contribution were rated as good. The provision for helping children to be healthy was rated as satisfactory with a requirement that all foster carers undertake first aid training, and a recommendation that we develop a 'health passport' to ensure that when children move between foster placements their health information is kept up to date. There has been a significant increase of carers completing 1st aid training. The health passport is being issued to all new carers and placements as of January 2010.

5.Financial Implications

5.1The work of the Fostering Service is critical to the success of Hertfordshire’s Children Looked After Strategy. In October 2009, Cabinet approved a virement of £933,000 to the Fostering Service to support an ‘invest to save’ business case based on increasing the number of in-house foster carers. Projected savings are built into the current IPP savings.

Background Papers

  1. Placement and Provider Strategy
  2. Review of the Placement and Provider Strategy year 2

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Appendix 1

Looked After Children

Fostering Complaints Register

2009/2010

Date
Received / Complainant / Date

Acknow.

/ Investigating
Manager / Team / Actual Response
Date and outcome
12/02/2009 / 13/02/09 / Simon Levitt, / Customer Care Manager / Unhappy with carer’s not listening to his son’s requests not to have phone calls to father monitored and carer’s attitude and behaviour. Letter sent to Mr Malone on 13th February 2009.
15/05/2009 / 05/06/2009 / Josie Elkin/KD / Fostering West / Dissatisfied with the Fostering team and initial contact, did not feel could work with department. Letter from KD on 5/6/09 to apologise and matter resolved.
07/07/2009 / Acknowledgement letter and fully reply on 22/07/09 / Jackie Whates-Butler, Tara Geere, Sheen Amin / Fostering East / Felt she had been let down by service, placement put boys in her care at risk by placing a girl with sexualised behaviour. Non existent support package.
22/04/2009 / 08/05/09 / Tinu Ashaye / Fostering North / Foster carers withholding items of clothing bicycle x box etc when placement moved also savings account pass book not given back. Tinu investigated all now resolved.
July 2009 / 09/07/09 / Jonathan Fisher / Adoption / Ms Watson complained the amount of financial support she receives from HCC has been reduced since the granting of an SGO, would like money reinstated. Jonathan Fisher upheld her complaint and wrote on 9/7/09 to that effect agreeing to an additional £200 per year in addition to the SGO allowance. Resolved.
15/1/2010 / Karen Devereux / Fostering / Wrote to Director unhappy with the way she was treated during her training. The director wrote to apologise saying her concerns will be raised with trainer to ensure situation does not happen again.
9/12/2009 / 19/1/09 / Karen Devereux & Tinu Ashaye / Fostering North / Complaints over income tax bill carer has received and problems with the system of payments made by CSF to foster carers. KD wrote letter of acknowledging their complaint sympathising with their position.
Dec 2009 / JF wrote letter 11/12/2009 / Karen Devereux,
IRM, Jonathan Fisher / North / Not happy with decision made at panel to reduce numbers of children. Appeal to independent review mechanism.
11/03/2010 / KD wrote letter on 6/4/2010 / Karen Devereux, Julie Hobster / South / Not happy at being turned down to foster, already adopters, KD wrote letter of explanation and offered advice for appeal.
04/03/2010 / 1/4/2010 / Karen Devereux / West / Not happy with the treatment by Panel at her review.

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Appendix 2

HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

FOSTER PANEL CHAIR’S ANNUAL REPORT: 2009/2010

  1. Summary
  2. Foster Panels continue to be geographically based, sitting in Hemel Hempstead and Stevenage, with an additional county wide Family and Friends Panel sitting in either venue depending on availability. Each Foster Panel has an independent chair, one of whom also chairs the Family and Friends Panel.
  3. There has been successful recruiting of foster carers during 2009/10, as well as increased activity and formality in using Family and Friends as carers, both of which have led to increased business for panels.
  4. Ensuring that panels reflect the community remains a priority.
  5. Panel workload.
  6. Foster panels usually meet twice a month, for half a day, in each part of the county, with Family and Friends panel meeting once each month.
  7. Foster Panels consider assessments of new potential foster carers, as well as considering the first annual review of carers, requests to change the terms of approval for carers and reviews following any allegations or standards of care issues raised about carers. Carers who wish to provide care under a ‘shared care’ arrangement for children with a disability or learning difficulty also have their assessments considered by the Panel.
  8. The Family and Friends Panel consider emergency, short term and longer term arrangements by which carers related to, or well known by children are formalised.
  9. Panels are regulated as part of the Fostering Regulations, and these guide how panel functions, which matters must be considered by Panel, how Panels should be made up etc.
  10. This year panels have been asked to sit for whole days rather than half a day, and additional panels have also been required. ‘Mainstream’ Foster panels have also dealt with Family and Friends matters on occasions.
  11. The additional business is partly attributable to successful recruitment of local foster carers, as a response to increased numbers of children and young people becoming looked after (this is a national trend, thought partly to be a response to recent high profile cases). It is established knowledge that children and young people generally have better outcomes if they can be placed with families close to their family home, making contact with family easier, and ensuring that disruptions are minimised (in schooling for example).
  12. Where members of the child’s family or close network come forward to care for the child it is also generally in the child’s interests to be placed within that network, and so increasing numbers of children are being placed with Family and Friends carers, where assessments show that this is a safe and sustainable arrangement.
  13. The Specialist Foster Carers, (where carers have enhanced skills, are salaried and care for children with considerable le difficulties or high level needs) have also come ‘on stream’ this year and their assessments have come to panel for approval.
  14. Increasing numbers of Foster Carers leads to increased numbers of first reviews, which also come to panel.
  15. Panel encourages carers to consider a broad age range of children, as a means of providing a more flexible resource, so long as this ‘fits’ with their own family, their skills and experience and their preference. This then removes the necessity for a request to have their approval varied in order that they can care for children who may have a birthday while placed with them who then ‘go over’ their approval range.
  16. Panels have responded to the additional requests for longer or additional panels throughout the last year, though the impact has been considerable for individual members.
  17. Reading Panel papers takes members about the same length of time as Panel—so a half day panel requires a half day of reading, a full day will require a full day.
  18. Panel members are committed to thorough scrutiny of matters, in the best interests of the children, but increasingly the time commitment is becoming a strain for some.
  19. Conduct of Panels
  20. Panels are formal and important meetings as they are part of the scrutiny to ensure that children and young people who are looked after by the county for whatever reason are provided with safe stable and caring environments where their needs can be met and their life chances improved. All Panel members participate equally and contribute to the process of making sound evidence based recommendations.
  21. Panels invite all applicants to attend when their application is being considered, and again for their first review and for any review following an allegation or standards of care investigation. Most of the applicants/potential carers attend, and many of those for reviews of one sort or another also attend.
  22. It is helpful for Panel to hear directly from applicants or carers themselves. There is a sense of openness and natural justice in them being able to advocate for themselves and in meeting the people who are making recommendations about them.
  23. Panel gives feedback to workers who present assessments and reports, and requests feedback from workers and form applicants who attend panel. This feedback was initially reported to the Panel business meeting but will in the future be collated and fed-back to Panel members quarterly by the Panel Adviser.
  24. Panel membership
  25. Membership of Panels is prescribed by the Fostering Regulations. It has been difficult to recruit to East panel this year, and as a result this panel has been totally female and white, which does not reflect the community from which our carers are recruited. Recent appointments have balanced gender composition of East Panel and added to its cultural diversity.
  26. Social work representation is a requirement under Fostering Regulations but it is increasingly difficult for operational staff to meet the demands of Panel membership (reading time as well as attendance). Quoracy of panel is a recurrent administrative headache, though we have not had to postpone one panel this year.
  27. East Panel has been without an elected member for the best part of the year (it is a requirement to have an elected member on Panel) but a Member was recently appointed. As yet we do not elected members on either West or the Family & Friends panels.
  28. Panel members take part in an annual review/appraisal of their role as Panel members. Each Panel Member can sit for a maximum of three fixed terms, each of three years.
  29. Panel administration.
  30. All Panels are well served by the administrative staff. They have the task of compiling the agendas, ensuring papers are available in a timely manner for circulation to members prior to panel, for taking notes of Panels meetings, which can be difficult as well as lengthy, and then producing and circulating the record of the meeting. With increased business and lengthier Panels demands on admin staff are considerable. They respond to requests and queries from presenting social workers, members of the Fostering Service and other social work teams in addition to ensuring the smooth running of Panels.
  31. Panel has the benefit of professional advice from an experienced Fostering Service Manager. This is crucial to the Chair when reference needs to be made to regulations, to CountyPolicy and Procedures, or to Fostering practice generally. The advisor attends at least 5 panels each month, some of which last most of the day, and completes all the reading associated with each panel as well as following up any operational or service related matters within Children, Schools and Families.
  32. Panels make recommendations in respect of the approval or changes in approval of carers: the agency decision maker makes the final decision. There is good prompt and clear communication between the Panel chairs, adviser and the decision maker when contentious or difficult decisions are recommended.
  33. Other Panel matters.
  34. Panel members should have a learning opportunity at least annually: unfortunately no training has been planned during the last year. It will be important to maintain these opportunities if Panel is to remain well informed and consistent across the county.
  35. Changes and developments within ChildrenSchool and Families may impact on the Panel’s effectiveness.

Michael Shaw and Biddy Jackson