Agenda item

To receive a report by the Executive Director of People – Children.

The Corporate Parenting Board considered a report by the Executive Director of People – Children on the Corporate Parenting Data Set.

The Executive Director of People – Children informed the Board there was a much larger population of older young people in care than younger and the number of young people who had been with the Authority for a long time was larger than those who had not. The numbers who had come into care were managed on a monthly basis a large number were younger and coming into care through the courts.   The Authority had not seen the same number of young people leaving care due to COVID-19 and received a directive not to exit 18 year olds due to COVID-19.  A number of court hearings had been delayed and deferred significantly with several young people waiting to hear the outcome of their final hearing.

Officers informed the Board there was a little bit of disparity between information held on MOSAIC and health colleagues.  A health liaison group was being set up to ensure the data held was replicated by health colleagues.  In terms of emotional wellbeing an Emotional Wellbeing Group had been established.  During October the focus would be on the health of our young people. 

In terms of safety focus had been on missing children and child exploitation.  In Dorset both absent and missing episodes were recorded as a missing episode which meant there might be an over-representation on missing episodes.  Since the last meeting 14% of young people had a missing episode which was higher than the national average.  Officers would be offering more meaningful interviews for those young people who went missing in an aid to reducing the missing episodes.

The Executive Director of People – Children mentioned that officers continued to see a challenge where children were moving from one placement to another which was not what officers would be looking for.   For those placed too far away from home it was hoped to have a strategy in place to have them closer to home.  Work was underway to increase the number of Permanency Plans in place for children.

Officers were concerned about the difference between the National and Dorset rate for young people in Education which was being focussed upon and considerable work was ongoing with schools to improve the outcomes for Dorset young people

The Executive Director of People – Children confirmed Dorset had a Regional Adoption Agency in operation which they were looking to review.  The Authority needed to be confident enough adopters were being recruited for young people.  With COVID-19 there had been real challenges around the number of children being available for adoption.  She mentioned the data for Care Leavers – Pathway Plan would be available at future meetings of the Board.

Members were concerned that the Initial Health Assessments were not all completed within the statutory time and confirmed there was disparity between the east and west of the county on this.

The Executive Director of People – Children considered going forward the Corporate Parenting Board needed to be a multi-agency Board to ensure both aspects of medics were available.  She confirmed this was on a risk register owned by her and the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

One Member asked why clinicians couldn’t visit the young people in their own home or give them the choice to have the visit in their own home or a medical setting. It was noted that young people would not want clinicians coming into their homes to do this and better to look to a nurse led service away from the home where young people could talk about what had happened to them.  There would also be a problem around timings with clinicians travelling to appointments where focus was required on getting appointments completed on time.

One member noticed the number of carers that had resigned had risen from 44 to 64 and asked if carers had actually resigned or whether they were no longer fit for purpose.  The Executive Director of People – Children commented the figures would be a mixture of people where concerns had been raised it was not uncommon that some carers who were significantly older had poor health or died and independent fostering agencies would take over.

One member asked whether officers drilled down on the accusations against foster carers as it looked as though most were unfounded and it would be good to know why they happened and whether they could be pre-empted.

Officers confirmed that all allegations were investigated and drilled down and looked at very carefully. Regarding health assessments officers confirmed what they were looking at in the data sets were children placed at a distance and how a stronger health agenda was brought forward for the young people.

One member asked whether any data was collected on the parents of children coming into care as to whether they had been in care themselves and whether that care was in Dorset.

The Executive Director of People – Children confirmed that some care leavers did become parents and officers worked hard to support them.  The average age of parents where there was an issue was the over 25-30 year old parents.  Some care leavers stayed in touch until they were 26 years old.

Noted