Agenda item

Umer Khonat, Practice Improvement Officer, Business Intelligence, LCC

To receive the Performance Report.

Umer Khonat, Business Intelligence Analyst, Business Intelligence Team, Lancashire County Council provided an overview of performance information for December 2020 that is produced in relation to Children's Social Care and more specifically Children in Care and Care Leavers that the Board received with the agenda papers.

The Board received the headline indicators which are a subset of the main indicator set, which gives further breakdown data.

A few highlights from the data was:

·  In October the number of Children Looked After was 2130 (84.8%) and in December 2020 there had been a decrease to 2106 (83.9%) a reduction of 10 in Lancaster and 26 in Burnley.  There have been some increases in other districts, however they were offset by the decreases.  Rates did peak in July 2020 during the pandemic and the trajectory is now showing signs of decline.

·  There has been a reduction from 94% (October) to 91% (December) in the percentage of children looked after with an up to date statutory visit and it is expected that this will increase again in the new year.

·  99.5% of reviews were carried out during the previous 12 months in time and this figure had been seen since April 2020.

·  The percentage of children looked after registered during the previous 12 months, who also had a previous period in care had increased from 8.6% (October) to 9.8% in December.

·  In terms of placement stability, there has been a small improvement in children looked after during the previous 12 months who had three or more placements.

·  Children looked after who have had the same placement for at least two years had fallen slightly from October (70.8%) to 70.0% in December and there is scope for improvement on this.

·  Up to date health assessments was the highest in December for over two years and a lot of work has been undertaken with Health partners to improve the outcomes for children looked after in Lancashire, with 78.3% in December 2019 to 91.9% in December 2020.

·  With regards to up to date dental assessments, this has shown a decrease from December 2019 at 69.5% to December 2020 at 51.0%, however, this is mainly due to the lockdowns experienced during the pandemic with access to dentists being limited, however 51% is not an acceptable level and further work is required to improve this rate.

·  In terms of the three care leaver indicators, they are as follows:

Ø  Percentage of care leavers in suitable accommodation had seen a reduction of 9 care leavers in suitable accommodation since October 2020 93.0% to 92% in December 2020) and this is not acceptable and further work will be carried out in terms of improving this figure.

Ø  Care Leavers in Education, Employment and Training (18-20 years) has increased by 6% since April (48.0% in December 2020, an increase of137 care leavers) and is the highest it has been for around 18 months.  There is a lot of work being doing in this area.

Ø  With regards to care leavers with whom the Local Authority has been in contact with in the last two months (18-20 years), performance is at 88% (December 2020) which is a 13% increase from December 2019.  There is still scope for improvement here.

Caroline Waldron, Designated Safeguarding Representative, Clinical Commissioning Groups, provided some context in terms of the performance data on dental assessments.  Caroline is also the Lancashire and South Cumbria representative on the NHS England Looked After Children North Regional meeting, and every designated nurse that attends the meetings are reporting the same challenges in relation to routine dental checks, in that they can access emergency treatments, however routine assessments at this time are not being currently being provided due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Providers are continuing to give good oral health advice to young people as part of the annual health assessments and also to foster carers.  Caroline has also approached the Dental Lead in the Integrated Care System as to whether there is any bespoke provision that can be provided for looked after children across the footprint.  However, the performance in the data is reflective of the current pandemic across the UK.

Roxanne McAllister, Senior Manager, Looked After Children and Care Leavers, Lancashire County Council provided the Board with some context in terms of the leaving care data received, in particular with regards to the unsuitable accommodation data.  It was reported that the vast majority of young people who are classed as in unsuitable accommodation are in the criminal justice system.  The decrease in the in-touch and contact data is about capacity in the service which has been addressed, so targets will start to improve.

Following on from Roxanne's comments, Barbara Bath, Head of Fostering, Adoption, Residential and Youth Offending, Lancashire Council reported that the work that the In Care out of Trouble agenda is providing is working with all agencies (Courts, Police) in trying to include care leavers in that group of young people that need to be prioritised in terms of diverting them from custody and the criminal justice system.  Work is in-hand, in the early stages and the full agreement has yet to be signed off to include care leavers as part of that piece of work, however, it is ongoing and hopefully in a few months' time, the data will have seen an improvement from the multi-agency effort as it is not a single agency issue.

A request was made with regards to how many of our children in care/care leavers, have been affected by COVID-19.  The Board noted that in response to the pandemic data wise, currently there were 25 children who have a COVID-19 condition on their record which is a decline from the peak in September 2020.

A discussion on health at the recent Care Leavers Forum had noted that when young people leave care and have to book appointments for themselves, sometime anxiety prevents them from doing this and also the fee for example of prescriptions, dental treatment that they would have to pay if they were working, or what happens if they are not working.  It was suggested that there needs to be Health support included in the Local Offer and would be a good piece of work to take forward.  Caroline Waldron, had been in attendance at the Care Leaver Forum and following the discussions and as part of her wider discussions with the Dental Lead, feedback will be included from the young people at the meeting and also took the opportunity to look at the Local Offer and strengthen this support and ensure guidance is easily accessible.  The Board were also informed that Health were reviewing the Care Leaver Summary Passport, where a lot of the information needed to support Care Leavers can be shared at the last Health assessment prior to leaving care.  It was noted that a wider piece of work would be carried out between the Children in Care and Care Leavers Service and Health to ensure that support is given to the young people and that this is something that the Personal Advisors (PAs), should be carrying out in their role.

The Board felt that receiving the data at the start of the meeting and the feedback provided on data from the Services was a much better way of conducting this meeting, and it was reassuring that Services could update the Board on work that was ongoing to improve/maintain targets and gave the Board an opportunity for scrutiny.

Resolved:  i)  That the Corporate Parenting Board discussed and commented on the information presented and agreed the content of future performance information provided to subsequent meetings.

ii)  That Jane Hylton, Ralph Rushworth and Caroline Waldron would discuss the Health Local Offer and use the benchmarking tool provided by the Catch 22 summary report.

iii)  Marieta Birt, fostering representative agreed to report back at the Fostering Forum to ensure that all foster carers were made aware of appointment bookings when preparing their young people for leaving care.