Agenda item

(To receive a report from Janice Spencer, Assistant Director – Children’s Safeguarding, which provides key performance information for Quarter 3 of 2021/22 which is relevant to the work of the Corporate Parenting Panel)

Consideration was given to a report by the Head of Fostering, Adoption and Leaving Care, which provided key performance information for Quarter 3 of 2021/22 which was relevant to the work of the Parenting Panel.

There were currently 720 children in care within Lincolnshire. The number of children in care had increased, which was partly due to the placement of a number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children within Lincolnshire.

The seven measures which had not achieved the target uring the quarter were highlighted and could be found within the report and a full breakdown of all of the performance measure was set out at Appendix A.

The recruitment and retention of fosterers remained challenging in a competitive market. The pandemic had also seen a change in peoples desires to continue or become foster carers.

Difficulty accessing NHS dental services nationally as well as the reduction in service as a result of the pandemic meant that the target for the Percentage of Children in Care with an up-to-date dental check had not been achieved in quarter 3, although the measure had improved. Efforts continued to ensure that all children in care were registered with a dentist and dental checks were being completed.

The Head of Fostering, Adoption and Leaving Care was pleased to report that the Children in Care Living Within a Family Environment measure had been exceeded, which emphasised that, for many children in care, a family placement was deemed the most suitable means of offering care and maintaining children within their family networks. The Council continued to explore enabling children and young people to remain within their family or extended network if they cannot, for whatever reason, live with their parents.

Overall the service was performing well in comparison to national data.

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

• The level of trauma experienced by many unaccompanied asylum seeking children was acknowledged.
• It was confirmed that 104 of the children in care within Lincolnshire were asylum seeking children and this figure was mandated by the Home Office. Funding for those children in Lincolnshire’s care would be provided by the Home Office
• Each young person would be allocated a social worker and would have access wide range of support available children, including access to language specialist and mental health services. As with all children placed in Lincolnshire’s care, support provided would be bespoke to each individual’s needs. The Council were working closely with the relevant teams to ensure that there was adequate support available, which could also mean placing Children in locations where communities could better meet the religious and cultural needs of the children
• Assurance was provided that the Council had adequate resource to support the children where necessary, following the recruitment of four additional staff to support with the rise in children in care within the County.
• Officers had not yet received notification of any Ukrainian Refugee Children being placed within Lincolnshire, but there was awareness that all Lincolnshire authorities were willing to support refugees.
• Targets were set and benchmarked through comparisons with national data and any trends and projections shown nationally.

RESOLVED:

              That the report be received and the comments made be recorded.