Decision details

Audrey Swann, Headteacher of Vulnerable and Challenging Groups, Lancashire County Council provided the board with some background to the report that was circulated to members and details of a subsequent action plan that will outline the practical steps required to deliver it.  The Corporate Parenting Board and partners alongside the Council need to accept this as a priority and support an increase in Education, Employment and Training (EET) for Children in our Care and Care Leavers by providing opportunities and resources to allow this to happen.

 

The Virtual School has a statutory duty to support and champion those children and young people in care to their local authority and care leavers.  One of the key duties of the Virtual School is to ensure that across the Local Authority 'Top priority is given to creating a culture of high educational aspirations and that the authority strives for accelerated progress and age-related attainment or better for looked-after children'.

 

The duty to promote the educational achievement of a looked-after child extends to looked-after young people aged 16 or 17 preparing to leave care.  It is expected that although clearly focused on children aged between pre-school and 18, Virtual School Headteachers should work with care leaving teams to ensure the education of those transitioning from care is supported at both a strategic and individual level.  For those between 16-18 years, the Virtual School Headteacher should liaise with the young person’s Personal Adviser during the initial transition to leaving care services to ensure the adviser understands the young person’s educational goals and support needs.

 

The Children and Social Work Act 2017 stipulated that advice and support needed to be available for all eligible care leavers until the age of 25. This included the provision of a Personal Advisor for each young person to assist with preparation for adulthood and independent living. This included support when required in relation to education and employment. The Local Authority must also provide a published care leaver offer to support and sign post young people to services and advice and guidance available to them.

 

It is good practice and expected by Ofsted, for the Virtual School to work closely with leaving care services and contribute to providing advice, guidance and support in relation to education, training and employment to care leavers beyond the age of 17 and in Lancashire we extend our support when required to care leavers up to the age of 25.

 

A detailed account of all the data contained within the report was presented to the Board which included:

 

·  Care Leaver Education, Employment and Training (EET) Data

·  Comparative Data from 2015-2019 within the North West, statistical neighbours and nationally.

·  Details of the current role of the Virtual School in supporting Children Looked After (CLA) and Care Leavers into Education, Employment and Training (EET)

·  Activity and Impact – Success Outcomes

·  Future Plans

·  Plans and recommendations from findings

 

In conclusion the contributing factors to Lancashire's high Not in Education, Employment and Training (NEET) figures are complex and require a whole organisation approach, with buy-in at every level and every department. As corporate parents there is a desire to share the responsibility for our children's outcomes, whilst acknowledging the key roles needed in achieving this as Children's Social Care. There is a need to create an aspirational community and become corporate parents who offer exceptional opportunities to the children in our care and care leavers.

 

Roxanne McAllister, Children's Social Care Team Manager, Lancashire County Council presented the PowerPoint attached to the agenda – Aspirations for Children in our Care and Care Leavers which outlined the challenges that Children's Services had and presented recommendations that would help overcome them and move forward.

 

The aims of the services are to:

 

•  To ensure that children in our care and care leavers have access to opportunities, have their aspirations raised and supported and to achieve in line with their peers and their own goals.

•  To create an aspirational community and become corporate parents who offer exceptional opportunities to the children in our care and care leavers.

•  To increase the number of care experienced young people in Education, Employment and Training to the number of young people generally.

 

53.6% of Lancashire care leavers are NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training).  Over the past 4¹/_­2­ years, Lancashire's Leaving Care Services have made lots improvements in different areas, however the figure has stayed around the same throughout.  This is not just a single service issue.

 

There are three different categories of NEET:

 

·  G4 – NEET due to illness or disability (account for 20.1% of NEET)

·  G5 – NEET for other reasons (account for 63.1% of NEET)

·  G6 – NEET due to pregnancy or parenting (account for 16.8% of NEET)

 

In all three localities, North, East and Central Lancashire, G5 NEET ‘Other’ has the lowest proportion of long term (+6 month duration) NEET status, in both Central and East.  G6 – Parenting had the higher proportion of Long Term duration whilst in the North G4 – Disability did.

 

Long term (LT) NEET made up the majority of Lancashire's NEET population, so as a service, thought needs to be given to those two categories and how young people are supported to enter into employment.

 

Further breakdown of data can be found in the presentation attached to the report.

 

Roxanne reported that she had carried out a piece of work that compared care leavers who had graduated university between care leavers that had been Not in Education, Employment or training for the longest period of times.  Findings from the report found that stability and placement were the main key comparator factors.

 

Following this piece of work key themes on what an action plan should focus on, were presented as follows:

 

Long Term NEET

Placement type

Disruption during high school

Mental Health

Pregnancy and parenting

Placement stability

Age coming into care

Social work consistency

 

With regards mental health, it was noted that there should be a service culture change around mental health, rather than seeing it as a barrier to employing a young person, it should be seen as a way to improve someone's mental health.

 

In conclusion, recommendations from the findings are detailed below and these will be carried out in conjunction with the service redesign:

 

•  Focus of the 13+ team will be to keep families together, offering bespoke packages of support for families managing teens and issues of contextual safeguarding, upskilling social workers in this team and taking learning from Children with Disabilities in this area.

•  Family Safeguarding Model will focus on keeping families together and provide the resources to achieve this.

•  Implementing targets for the proportion of children looked after who are placed in foster placements remaining in their existing schools.

•  The proposed increased staffing levels will increase social work continuity for children looked after and lower caseloads of both social workers and Personal Advisors will increase quality of work and outcomes for young people.

•  Increased training for Personal Advisors around coaching, careers advice and support in employment.

•  Sexual health services and child care support.

•  Accommodation strategy.

•  Mental Health strategy.

•  Recruiting our young people to our ‘family business’ by creating more opportunities for our young people within our own organisation and within our contracts with others.

•  Creating a culture of aspirations and meaningful occupation for care leavers, at every level of the organisation.

 

Discussions ensued following the presentation and it was reported that the Advocacy Service were experiencing a high number of referrals due to the number of changes in social workers and placement changes which is of concern.  Also there are more Education, Employment and Training referrals made compared to Not in Education, Employment and Training and the query was around what part advocacy played in that.  The Advocacy Service offered to do some targeted work with Children's Services to try and increase that offer to young people.  In reply, it was noted that there was continuing work being undertaken on social work retention and in moving to a new service delivery model, a new retention strategy was being developed to ensure social workers remain in Lancashire and are not moved across areas within Lancashire to cover high caseloads.  A piece of work has commenced on placement stability, around where Lancashire's children live and will ensure it is linked to where their school, plan and details of their Personal Education Plan

 

There needs to be a joined up strategy from beginning to end and it needs to be on everybody's agenda across the Network, as the reality is, when you are Not in Education, Employment and Training between the ages of 11 and 13 and in a care setting, the data is telling us that it is significantly more difficult to get a young person engage in Education, Employment or Training regardless of what aspirations are behind that.  The Corporate Parenting Board will underpin this strategy.

 

Within Lancashire County Council, employment placements have been offered to our young people in care and currently there are:

 

32 young people on work placements

21 on apprenticeships (three now employed full-time and 10 part-time)

 

Other young people are also placed in the private sector also.

 

With regards sexual health, there is an opportunity to review the existing pathways.  Research tells us that the danger zone for children in care is when they leave care.  When young people are in care the access to contraception and a range of services is available.  One of the issues is around older children looked after and their willingness to engage in health assessments so there is a need for support from health colleagues going forward to improve this.

 

The Board were informed that this area of work had political support across the board and supported the plan which will be owned by the Corporate Parenting Board who will ensure its success and monitor the progress regularly.

 

There is a need to ensure that foster carers are kept well informed to have discussions with young people in their care around aspirations and that the plans for the young people are the right plans for that young person.

 

Expectations of the Corporate Parenting Board is to write to Universities, businesses (ie NHS, Police and other local businesses) and colleges as a Board requesting their engagement for our children and young people in care and care leavers and seeing what they can offer them, including employment at schools, colleges and universities.

 

In conclusion it was:

 

Resolved:  i)  That Brendan Lee and Shell Arliss would discuss more targeted work with the Advocacy Service outside of the meeting.

  ii)  That Brendan Lee would draft an action plan following the comments from the Board and will undertake conversations outside this meeting to develop a plan and to also include data that underpins it. 

iii)  That a draft plan will be presented at a future board meeting for it to approve and then to monitor the progress regularly, ensuring it is making a difference to our children in care and care leavers.

iv)  That the Corporate Parenting Board agreed to support this report.