Agenda item

The report provides an overview of Croydon Council’s work to achieve permanence for children looked after.

Officers present spoke to the report and provided Members of the Panel an oversight of the permanence options available. They informed that permanence may start at the point from where children became looked after before proceedings and beyond. The service assessed family members, alternative carers within the family network, which took different forms within proceedings, such as Regulation 24, connected person’s assessment as well as long term option for a children and the Special Guardianship Order (SGO) which was an alternative placement order.

Officers provided some statistics and highlighted that the number of children looked after fell by 4% last year. This was in line with the children looked after. The number of looked after children who left care decreased by 4% last year too.

The service conducted assessments and made recommendations to court about whether prospective carers were able to meet the needs of the children and what support they would need. In the last financial year, there was sixty-five SGO granted, three was to foster carers of three children. In the current financial year there was four order in quarter one, six in quarter two and six in quarter three which was a significant decrease, this was believe to be due to a reduction in care proceedings an improved quality of assessments which were more robust. An improvement in the ability to assess kinship carers and progressing through fostering panel – therefore a high number of connected carers, also the delays in proceedings due to the pandemic and court space.

In relation to the financial implications, the service was generous in that the allowance now referred to special guardians and some of the financial review that should have been in place was not, thus now a process for a proper annual review to ensure all special guardians packages that need to be reviewed were reviewed annually. Additional funding had been provided by the government to DfE to commission grandparents plus to offer additional special guardianship support with access to a number of families within the service.

Further to the report, officers summarised that the numbers of children matched with foster carers was better this year than last year. Fostering to adopt was also a significant rise. There was four children with no placement order and twelve children with placement order with active family finding. There was four children making applications to discharge placement orders where the service were looking for families for a long time as a parallel plan. There was three early placements this year. There was fourteen children waiting for adoption who went for a placement order and there was a delay in the court process for this.

In conclusion, work around permanence was improving for the service, which was in line with the vision to achieve a good outcome for children. Though there remain challenges such as timeliness, there was strong indicators of improvement.

Members of the Panel discussed the report and ad contributed to comments and raised questions.

There was comments raised relating to foster carers becoming adopters or special guardians. Though this was desirable there was concern that it was a disincentives for foster carers losing security. Officers informed that discussions were had regularly around foster carers, special guardians and the return to parents. These happen with children so the service could determine the best outcome for the child. It was highlighted that making a decision to care for a children was a difficult decision as there was financial implications.

The Chair noted that the increase in numbers of adopters would hinder te financial support. There was also a disproportionality within the black and Asian community.

Panel Members discussed the agencies.

ACTION: To bring this report back to another Panel Meeting.

Panel Members discussed further on care plans, which officers informed that the Independent Reviewing Officer was the lead for ensuring that care plans were completed.

ACTION: For Panel Members to review the process for Special Guardianship Order or for Children Social Care to provide a flowchart.

The Chair thanked officers for their report.

The Panel RESOLVED to note the report and permanence activity during 2020.