Agenda item

            The Board received a report of the Strategic Director, Children and Young People which sought to review the current position regarding the Halton Children in Care (CIC) population and the arrangements for placing children. It also proposed a revised strategy where all children in care had improved choice of placements to suit their needs.

The Board was advised that there had been significant difficulty in recent years in recruiting sufficient Foster Carers to meet both the demand for placements and to provide a choice of placement. Currently, there were 69 approved carers, approximately 20 of whom were kinship carers. It was projected that at least an additional 20 carers were needed to provide for the current CIC population, which as at 9^th October 2009, was 158.

            It was noted that whilst the recent Ofsted inspection of the Foster Care Service in Halton judged the service to be good with some outstanding features, the Inspector did make a formal recommendation in respect of National Minimum Standard 17. This standard required fostering providers to have a sufficient number of foster carers to allow for placement choice. Halton was currently unable to fully meet this standard.

            The Board was advised that in addition to foster care, the Borough had 6 residential beds for young people, with 4 at Edinburgh Road and 2 at Littlebourne. It was noted that, in Halton, the average age of children in residential care was 13.2 years. The young people who were placed presented with increasingly complex emotional, behavioural and mental health issues and an analysis of placements had highlighted some key issues for Halton, which were set out in the report.

            The Board was further advised that in order to meet the variety of assessed needs of young people, Halton would need to provide a range of provision for Children in Care. This would include provision for:

• less complex needs
• more complex needs
• extensive complex needs
• preparing for independence

            It was noted that, under this proposal, Halton’s existing children’s homes would need to change their purpose. The lack of capacity within the foster care service needed to be urgently addressed.

            There were a number of barriers to the recruitment of carers, some of which were reflected nationally and some of which appeared more specific to the Halton area, and these were set out in detail in the report.

            In order to address the shortfall of foster carers it was proposed that:

• allowances paid to carers were increased to reflect not only the cost of caring for a child but to represent a payment for their professional task;

• consideration was given to building the capacity of the Foster Service Team through the introduction of Support Assistants with a specific remit to provide placement support;

• the integration of services continued so that an increasing range of partners and essential support services were available to the children and foster carers; and

• using some of these proposed changes, the marketing campaign to recruit more carers would need to be revised and intensified.

            The Board was advised that a similar ‘Invest to Save’ approach to developing foster care provision had been undertaken by St. Helens Council in recent years and had proved extremely successful. They had seen their number of foster carers rise from 59 in March 2006 to 103 in September 2009, with a corresponding rise in the number of Kinship carers from 52 to 65. This had significantly reduced their use of expensive purchased placements and had improved their retention of existing carers.

            It was noted that an ‘Invest to Save’ bid had been approved by the Executive Board on 5 November 2009, for £250,000 to enable the changes detailed above to be undertaken.

            Arising from Members comments and questions the following was noted:

• that the proposals set out would hopefully solve issues around how appropriate placements were for the young people;
• that Independent Placement Agencies were required to complete the same checks and assessments that the Council makes when placing a child;
• that the Council had various ways of improving ‘incentive’ packages, i.e. reducing leisure facilities costs, that could not be provided by smaller independent agencies; and
• that staff at the Children’s Centres did an excellent job and the Board’s appreciation be passed on.

            RESOLVED: That the approach identified in the Strategy be endorsed and further work be undertaken to develop it further.