Agenda item

a)    Report of the Director of Transformation and Partnerships

b)    Presentation by the Corporate Scrutiny Manager and Research and Equalities Manager

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Transformation and Partnerships that appraised of some analytical work that had been carried out into the increase in numbers of looked after children (LAC) in Durham (for copy see file of Minutes).

The Corporate Scrutiny and Performance Manager gave a detailed presentation that highlighted the following:-

·         LAC numbers

·         Potential causes of growth in LAC

·         LAC Rates – Comparisons

·         National and Local Policy Drivers

·         Throughput, starters and leavers

·         LAC – Monthly New Entrants

·         Increase by LAC by Area

·         2016/17 LAC Rates by Deprivation Decile

·         New Entrants – Summary

·         Summary – Population and Deprivation

·         LAC rate by Local Authority

·         Regional Relative Increases Since 2007

·         Relative Increases 2007 – 2017

·         The London Effect

·         Social Care Management Best Practice

Councillor Hopper said that the success of the family teams reacting to larger groups of parents would impact on the number of children being looked after.   The Head of Early Help, Assessment and Safeguarding said that this also happened when Children’s Centres first opened but she added that the HEAT tool would help to find those vulnerable families and that numbers could increase as a result.

With regards to regulation 24 placements, Councillor Durham asked how many there were and if there was a spike.  He was advised that there were 50 cases that needed to be reclassified as Looked After Children and there was a further 50 the following month and it was the cumulative impact of that.  The data for a looked after child showed that some older children would stay in care until they felt ready to become independent.  So the increase in children who were 18 had increased.

He further asked how many unaccompanied asylum seeking children had been dispersed into the county and was informed that there were 10.

Councillor Patterson asked how much preventative services had had an impact bearing in mind the reduction of frontline services, such as the Children’s Centres, Surestart and regulation 24.  The Head of Early Help, Assessment and Safeguarding advised that there was no correlation or evidence that reduced amount of service available affected this and that services now targeted and worked with much more vulnerable families. Dedicated services had been created for this.  She believed that this work did make an impact and made a difference.

Referring to statistics and benchmarking, Councillor Jewell asked how reliable and accurate the figures were and if it was possible that different authorities applied less rigour.  The Head of Early Help, Assessment and Safeguarding explained that this Council had a historically low rate of looked after children and that some authorities had an exceptionally high rate to start with so comparing relative increases and decreases should be be treated with caution but that they did raise attempts to gain a better understanding of them.

On answering a question from Mr Conlon about the cross over of starters and leavers, the Head of Early Help, Assessment and Safeguarding explained that starters were impacted by regulation 24 issues. Some children were in care for a short time but others could be permanent and this was a challenge.

Councillor Bainbridge asked how many brand new cases had contributed to making the statistics high and was advised that it was an aggregated figure and although not worked out fully would account for a lot of the increases.

Resolved:

That the report and presentation be noted.