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Corporate Parenting Report

Prepared by Jacquie Burke Deputy Director Children's Social Care & Safeguarding

October 2016

Contents 1 Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 2

2 What is Corporate Parenting .......................................................................................................... 2

3 The Looked After Cohort ................................................................................................................. 2

4 Enabled to Develop Permanent Positive Relationships .................................................................. 4

4.1 Sufficiency ............................................................................................................................... 4

4.2 Statutory Reviews of Children who are Looked After are Robust .......................................... 5

4.3 There is Robust Pursuit of Permanent Homes for Looked After Children .............................. 6

5 Involved in their Care and are Prepared for Transition to Independence .................................... 10

5.1 Care Leavers Accommodation .......................................................................................... 10

6 Are Healthy ................................................................................................................................... 12

6.1 ELFT Reported to CPB in October 2016 about its Performance Against its Responsibilities 12

6.2 Looked after Children and CAMHS ....................................................................................... 13

6.3 Parenthood, Looked After Children and Care Leavers ......................................................... 15

7 Are are enabled to meet their potential ....................................................................................... 16

7.1 Care Leavers in Employment Education or Training ................................................................. 16

7.2 Attainment of Newham looked after children and care leavers 2015-16 ............................ 17

8 Are safe ........................................................................................................................................ 19

8.1 Children Sexual Exploitation ................................................................................................. 19

8.2 missing from care ........................................................................................................................ 20

8.3 Children are safe in their placements ................................................................................... 21

9 Next steps ..................................................................................................................................... 22

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1 Purpose This is a report about corporate parenting activities and outcomes for Newham Council Scrutiny

Commission. The report provides an overview of the activity of the Corporate Parenting Board

during 2015/16. Some of the data pertains to the reporting year 2014/15 and 2015/16 because of

the cycle of reports.

2 What is Corporate Parenting All elected members of the Council have a duty to act as a Corporate Parent to children in the care of

the Council. The role of the Corporate Parent (Councillors) is to ensure that the services provided by

the Council as a whole contribute to achieving positive outcomes for children in care.

Our five corporate parenting priorities are that children looked after and care leavers are:

a) Enabled to develop permanent positive relationships.

b) Respected and involved in their care and are prepared for transition to independence.

c) Are healthy.

d) Are enabled to meet their potential.

e) Are safe.

In Newham corporate parenting responsibility is exercised through the ‘Corporate Parenting Board’

(CPB) which is chaired by Councillor Shah and is attended by senior professionals responsible for

bringing up our looked after children: LBN Children's Social Care , LBN Housing, LBN Youth Offending

Team, CAMHS, ELFT Nursing, LBN Virtual School and representatives of the Children in Care Council.

The CPB meets five times a year and follows an annual plan with each meeting focused on one of the

propriety areas above. The purpose of the meeting it to present performance against ambition, test

this against the young people’s spoken views about the specific areas and to provide challenge and

support to professionals.

3 The Looked After Cohort To set the general context of the looked after child population a snapshot of figures are set out in

Table 1, 2 and 3 below. As of 31st October 2016 there are 369 children who are looked after by

Newham Council.

Table 1

Age and Gender 31/10 2016 BOYS GIRLS Total cases % age

Under 1 7 7 14 4%

1 to 4 14 15 29 8%

5 to 9 35 15 50 14%

10 to 15 85 62 147 40%

16 to 17 65 64 129 35%

% gender 56% 44% 100% 0%

Total No of Looked After Children 206 163 369 100%

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Table 2

Ethnicity at 31/10/ 2016 Total cases Proportion of cases

White British 69 19%

African 37 10%

Asian Other 37 10%

Mixed Other 29 8%

Caribbean 26 7%

Pakistani 26 7%

Black Other 19 5%

Bangladeshi 19 5%

Eastern European 19 5%

Indian 16 4%

Other Ethnic Group 14 4%

White and Black Caribbean (Mixed) 14 4%

White and Black African (Mixed) 13 4%

White Other 8 2%

Nigerian 7 2%

Arab 4 1%

White and Asian (Mixed) 3 1%

Somali 3 1%

Information not yet obtained 3 1%

White Irish 2 1%

Absent 1 0%

Total 369 100%

Table 3

Legal status at 31 October 2016 Total cases

Interim Care Order 47

Full Care Order 147

Voluntary agreements under S.20 161

Placement Order 5

On remand, committed for trial or detained 5

Emergency orders or police protection 4

Totals 369

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4 Enabled to Develop Permanent Positive Relationships This aspect of the corporate parenting was reviewed in April 2016 is to ensure:

Sufficiency of placement planning,

Statutory reviews of children who are looked after are robust, timely and include the children

and young people.

There is robust pursuit of permanent homes for these children.

4.1 Sufficiency Section 22G of The Children Act 1989 requires councils to provide local accommodation to meet the

needs of looked after children. Councils need to consider their strategy for securing the range of

accommodation capable of meeting different needs. The local analysis of sufficiency fits with the

national picture of a shortage of foster carers, that in-house carers prefer younger children (often

because of the local hosing stock) but there is greater demand for placements for 10-17 year olds.

Our aim is to look after children as close to Newham as possible, depending on their need, to have

high quality placements at reasonable cost and to place children in families rather than institutions

wherever possible. Table 4 below shows where children are placed as at 31/10/2016.

Table 4

Placement at 31 October 2016 Number %

Foster placement with relative or friend (kinship) 20 5%

Placement with in-house foster carer 129 35%

Placement with private/voluntary foster carer (P&V) 123 33%

Secure Unit 2 1%

Homes and hostels (subject to Children’s Homes Regulations) 37 10%

Other residential settings 5 1%

Placed for adoption (including with former foster carer) 4 1%

Placed with own parents 4 1%

In lodgings, residential employment or living independently 45 12%

Totals 369 100%

78% of children in the care of Newham council are looked after in a foster placement and 49% of this

cohort are looked after by Newham carers including kinship foster placements. The cost of in-house

foster placements are almost half the price of P&V foster carers and (CIPFA Average £467 cf £887)

and they are significantly cheaper that residential homes (CIPFA average £3,400).

There are particular challenges in Newham in that 60% of looked after children are from a sibling

group of 3 or more but only 13% of in-house carers are approved to care for 3 children. 5% of our

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looked after children are disabled and have complex needs, of these only 3 children are placed with

in-house carers. Newham, as with all London authorities, is suffering from a shortage of affordable

housing and this makes it difficult to attract people to become foster carers.

Our experience of seeking placements for our looked after children is that it is extremely difficult to

locate placements for some of our most troubled young people, there is a national shortage of

placements in secure units as well as units that can manage children with severe challenging

behaviour.

Our commissioning priorities are:

Increase the number of in-house foster carer placements to enable more children to be placed

in and around Newham including for disabled children and for emergency placements.

Increase support to in-house foster carers including out of hours support and cluster schemes

where they can support each other.

Increase use of friends and family foster carers.

Improve the process for ensuring that the views of the young people inform placement choice

and so minimise breakdown of placements.

Increase residential placement choice by working with local providers to improve the quality

of provision and negotiate preferential rates.

Reduce costs and ensure value for money through use of framework contracts and minimising

use of spot purchasing.

Work with neighbouring local authorities to achieve greater regional and sub-regional

collaboration and economies of scale.

Improve matching process and tracking of needs and outcomes.

4.2 Statutory Reviews of Children who are Looked After are Robust The Independent Reviewing Officers (IRO) are required to produce an annual report. the following

information is taken from the latest report 2015/16.

The total number of LAC review meetings carried out in 2015/16 was 1,136. This compares with

1,056 in 2014/15 and 852 in 2013/14 and 935 in 2012/13. This increase is partly attributable to the

number of children that were in care for only a short time during the course of the year (929

children were in care at some point during the year). Some children will require more reviews than

the minimum statutory number; a sample of reviews held more frequently than indicated by

statutory timescales indicates that reviews have been called due to concerns about the child’s care

plan, placement moves, or to consider care plans for presentation at court or care plans updated

following key assessments.

The percentage of reviews held within statutory timescales was 99.8% which exceeds the

performance target of 98% and is an improvement on 2015/16. The majority of late reviews are

first reviews where notification from the social work teams and the Placement Advisory Team to the

IRO service have been delayed. Upon notification the IRO service allocates an IRO to every looked

after child within 5 working days as required and ensures a timely review thereafter.

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Statutory guidance states that the local authority must ensure that its reviewing service provides for

the full participation of both children and parents in the decision making process where possible and

appropriate. In 2015/16 99.7% of looked after children over the age of 4 years communicated their

views, wishes and feelings at their reviews. This may have been through their attendance, through

correspondence or completing a consultation form, by briefing an advocate, or through discussion

with the IRO. This is an improvement on the level of child participation achieved in 2014/15 and

2013/14 (97% for both years).

The service monitors participation of mothers and fathers at Looked After Reviews. Previously it

was not possible to report on the discrete participation of mothers and fathers due to the absence

of data but this is now routinely monitored. In 2015/16 60% of mothers and 37% of fathers

participated or contributed to their child’s review. This is a decrease from 2014/15 where 76% of

mothers and 48% of fathers participated in the review process. Parents may have attended the

review, met separately with the IRO, briefed an advocate, submitted their views in writing, or

communicated with the IRO via email or phone in order to give their views. There is some question

about the integrity of the 2014/15 data and how it was collected as it was the first year mothers and

fathers participation was separated.

Parental participation is lower than child participation and this is to be expected as not all parents

will wish to, or are able to, contribute to the care planning for their children. Unaccompanied

asylum seeking young people have no contact with parents or relatives who could contribute to the

review process. The difference in participation between mothers and fathers reflects the lack of

information, in some cases, regarding the fathers identity or whereabouts.

One of the key functions of the IRO is to resolve issues arising out of the care planning process.

Issues could relate to the care plan; implementation of the care plan or decisions relating to the care

plan; poor documentation; or poor practice (such as not visiting within agreed timescales). In

2015/16 a total of 60 alerts were initiated by IROs across all three stages, 81 Alerts were raised in

2014/15 and 79 were raised in 2013/14.

4.3 There is Robust Pursuit of Permanent Homes for Looked After Children It is a key objective of our corporate parenting to ensure that children have as few placement moves

and are placed in permanent homes whenever possible. Placement stability can be affected by a

number of factors including the quality of early planning (including the impact of emergency

accommodation), carer capacity, challenging/changing behaviour, mental health issues, or changes

in risk profile, e.g. onset of risk around child sexual exploitation or serious youth violence.

Unplanned changes in placement can have adverse effects on looked after children; education may

be disrupted, contact with family and friends may be adversely affected and there may also be an

impact on a young person’s cultural identity if they have to move away from Newham to an area

outside of London. CPB and April 2016 received a report about placement stability and the

information below is taken from this report.

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Table 5

Table 5 above showed that placement stability was at 12 % which is a decrease from 13% last year

February 2015. The target is 10% and through the year we have fluctuated from 13% at the highest

to 11% at the lowest percentage there continues to be a small number of children whose significant

emotional and behaviour difficulties have impacted on placements which have led to placement

breakdowns and have impacted on placement stability. The trigger points have been the onset of

adolescence when young people have tested the boundaries and carers are unable to support the

placements.

Table 6

A statutory indicator of success is the percentage of long term looked after children who have

remained in a stable placement for 2 years. Table 6 above shows performance that has improved

throughout 2015 having suffered a dip in stability. Performance remains below our target of 68%

but is largely in line with that of our statistical neighbours.

A deeper analysis of placement moves shows that there are significantly higher numbers of looked

after children from aged 15 years old who make up 161 of our cohort of looked after children. These

children are more likely to have placement moves because of the challenges they present in

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placement, their particular vulnerability (CSE) or they are late entrants to the care system and have

more chronic experiences of poor parenting and can find it harder to settle into routine. There are

always a significant amount of 15 to 17 years old who are placed in residential placements and semi

independent placements following breakdown in previous placements. The LAC service has an

embedded CAMHS clinician who provides direct work with children and consultation to placements

and social workers, our hypothesis is that this has a positive impact on placement stability that

enables performance to remain fairly consistent against stability indicators, despite the changing

profile of our looked after children and the increasing complexity with the older cohort.

Children and young people who are at risk of placement instability are discussed at the Placement

Stability Panel which has an overview of placements where stability is a concern. A range of

intelligence is utilised to identify the ‘at risk’ placements which require review by the panel. The

panel is led by the Looked After Children Service and the panel comprises of health, virtual school,

CAMHS and the Placement Team.

A further indicator of successful corporate parenting is taken from the Adoption Scorecard which

was first published in 2014. The latest was published by DfE in March 2016 and Newham continued

to perform exceptionally well in the average time between a child entering care and moving in with

its adoptive family – reduced by 41 days to 412 days.

When examining the scorecard results for Newham, it is important to recognise that Newham

continues to actively pursue and has a good success rate in adoption in cases which many other local

authorities might not normally consider. For example, where the child has a disability or complex

health needs, or the child is older, or we are trying to keep sibling groups together. This approach

can achieve good outcomes for children. However, permanency can be achieved through a number

of options apart from adoption such as Special Guardianship and Child Arrangement Orders.

There are three main indicators:

Table 7 - A1 Average time between a child entering care and moving with their adoptive family

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Newham’s performance in this indicator has continued to improve with a reduction of 20 days from

the previous year. Newham has been successful in significantly reducing the length of time between

the start of care proceedings until conclusion when a placement order is made to allow a child to be

placed for adoption. The relevant contextual figure on the scorecard is the length of care

proceedings locally. Newham’s average over three years is 44 weeks. However, currently the

average length of care proceedings as of June 2016 was less than 26 weeks.

Table 8 - A2 Average time between a local authority receiving court authority to place a child and

the local authority deciding on a match to an adoptive family

There has been an improvement in this indicator by 19 days as compared to the previous year

average. This has been achieved by the proactive joint working between the Adoption and

Integrated Neighbourhood Service (INW). The INW Service provides the Adoption Service with a

profile of children who are likely to require an adoption decision, as soon as adoption is a possibility

and/or from the legal planning meeting where a decision is made to commence care proceedings.

This enables the adoption team to identify suitable potential adopters prior to court authority.

Hence, once court authority is given the case can be progressed swiftly to matching panel.

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Table 9 - A3 Children who wait less than 16 months between entering care and moving in with

their adoptive family

Newham has achieved well in this category. This has been achieved through joint working between

services and clear tracking and monitoring systems for all children within the care system to ensure

individual children’s plans for permanency are progressed swiftly.

5 Involved in their Care and are Prepared for Transition to Independence

5.1 Care Leavers Accommodation Newham has a statutory duty to provide suitable accommodation and support to looked after

children and young people leaving care in order to prepare them for independent living. This

provision is for service users generally aged 16 – 18 years, although the age range extends up to 25 if

the service user is still in full-time education.

The suitability of care leavers accommodation was subject of scrutiny by CPB in June 2016.

A particular achievement is that 87.4% of current care leavers were recorded as being in suitable

accommodation during 2015/16 which is above the London and England average (82% and 78%) and

is an improvement of more than 9% from 2014/15.

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Table 10

However, the Children in Care Council at CPB in June 2016 raised concerns regarding the quality of

accommodation and support provided by the council’s contracted service provider, Finefair Limited.

Further concern was raised when the Deputy Director Children’s Social Care and Safeguarding met a

care leaver in a Finefair property. The specific issues of this visit were reported to Finefair who acted

quickly to remedy the matters. As a result of subsequent enquiries about the quality of this

provision, the provider has provided an improvement plan that is closely monitored every month by

the Children's Social Care Commissioning Team. The contract is ready for renewal and different

options for improved provision are being sought.

When young people have successfully managed in semi-independent accommodation they are

moved into their own tenancies wherever possible. The Lettings Agency has for a number of years

operated a direct quota scheme enabling various groups to be made direct offers of a social housing

tenancy. This has continued with the introduction of the revised Allocations Policy in October 2012.

For the 2015/16 quotas were agreed at 70 x 1 bed & 6 x 2 bed properties for care leavers. A quota

of 18 x 1 bedroom units and 3 x 2 bedroom units has been agreed for the April- September 2016

period with a further quota to be considered for the October-March 2017 period.

Though there was some overlap to the current financial year, the quota of 76 tenancies was met.

Some flexibility was applied in increasing the number of 2 bedroom units offered to meet CYPS

needs. It is a requirement for a tenancy to be offered for all nominated care leavers to complete an

induction session. All cases where a tenancy is at risk of breach are flagged to the Leaving Care Team

for intervention

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A review of 35 council tenancies offered through this scheme was undertaken to assess the success

of tenancy sustainment. Of these 35:

2 has incidents of anti social behaviour.

7 cases had built up arrears .

1 case the tenancy was terminated within weeks of commencement.

1 case the property was repossessed, following the care leaver not moving in.

Our young people have successfully maintained the majority of their tenancies, and this is because

of the joined up working between housing and the leaving care team. The induction to housing

tenancy has been very successful and participants have stated that they are were more aware of

their responsibility to contribute towards rent and council tax payments and that it was helpful the

workshop was facilitated by a housing officer who was able to answer their questions.

6 Are Healthy

6.1 ELFT Reported to CPB in October 2016 about its Performance Against its

Responsibilities It is the responsibility of ELFT to ensure that:

a) Every looked after child has an initial medical completed within 28 days of entering care.

b) An annual health assessment if over five years of age and a six monthly assessment if under

five years of age and there is continuity of health care planning.

c) That all children in care are registered with GPs and dentists.

d) There is appropriate transition when children or young people leave care.

e) That all children in care aged 5 and under have their developmental checks.

f) That immunisations are up to date.

The Looked After Children Health Team comprises a Lead Nurse and two Nurse Specialists one being

a health visitor. The CCG has employed a full time shared post Designated LAC Nurse with Tower

Hamlets.

The service provided to looked after children in Newham is underpinned by the guidance

“Promoting the Health and Well Being of Looked After Children”. Every child and young person

entering care should have a health assessment within 28 days. To achieve this target close

partnership working between Social Care and the Looked After Children Team is essential and work

is ongoing to achieve this. They then have subsequent review health assessments, 6 monthly for

children under 5 years and annually for those above the age of 5 years. The nurses see children and

young people at clinics or by home visits if placed within a reasonable distance (agreed as no more

than two and a half hours drive). For those children and young people who are placed too far away

to visit, there are established links with the national network of looked after children’s nurses and

this allows an equitable service for our looked after children regardless of where they are placed as

they are seen by professionals who have undergone the required training. All assessments

completed by external providers are quality assured by the Designated Nurse LAC.

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Those young people who do not attend appointments are contacted and visits are arranged if they

are reluctant to come to clinics. Texting them has been a useful tool which improves communication

and if all this fails, sending them health promotion packs and contact details with an open invitation

to contact us via our generic email for health information and advice. Reminder texts are sent prior

to all appointments. Strategies to improve attendance of 15 – 17 year olds are being implemented

which include offering afternoon appointments, alternative venues, asking their social worker to

speak to the young person and encourage attendance.

Young people leaving care at 18 years receive a Health Passport with health promotion materials

and information on accessing health services. Information is requested from their GP to provide a

health history for them. The Health Passport is currently being reviewed as a QI Project, which

includes consultation with young people for feedback on content and design and how they wish

information to be given to them, for example by the use of apps or useful health websites.

Table 11 - Health Performance Indicators for 2015-2016

Health Activities 2015/16 Yes Cohort %

Dental Checks 223 234 95.30%

Health Assessments 219 234 93.59%

Immunisations 201 234 85.90%

Development Assessments aged 5 or below 16 17 94.12%

Average Dental & Health Assessments 221 234 94.44%

These health outcome indicators are slightly down on last year’s performance. There has been an

increase in the DNA rate for those young people aged 16-18 years old and this is being audited and

strategies to improve attendance are being explored. These include using a voucher system to

encourage attendance and a choice of alternative times and locations at which to be seen.

The timeliness of initial medicals being carried out has been problematic with only 53% of initial

notification reaching the LAC health team within 14 days of the child entering care. This inevitably

increased the likelihood that the medical will be out of timescale. In response to this the Deputy

Director for Children's Social Care & Safeguarding established a task and finish group of relevant

senior leads to devise a better notification and tracking system. The new system was implemented in

October 2016.

6.2 Looked after Children and CAMHS

The CFCS LAC team aims to:

Provide a separate pathway for LAC within CFCS to prioritise the emotional needs of looked

after children, although some LAC are also seen within other pathways (e.g. ADHD, long term

psychotherapy).

Provide assessment and treatment of mental health and emotional and behavioural

difficulties.

Support the professional network and carers for looked after children experiencing emotional

and/or behavioural difficulties often when there are concerns about placement stability.

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Provide accessible support and advice for LBN social worker teams (regular consultation to

LAC and leaving care teams, attendance at professionals meetings). Weekly embedded

sessions in the LAC 0-16, 16-18 and Leaving Care Teams are being developed at the request of

LBN commissioners following of the success of pilots of embedded CAMHS clinicians in the

Fostering and Adoption Team and 0-16 LAC Team. Measure outcomes in terms of direct and

indirect work by using CORC approved measures for LAC cases including CHI-ESQ in order to

rate the quality of the service.

Work undertaken by CAMHS:

• 60 new cases taken on between September 2015 and October 2016.

• 39 consultations offered to social care staff and carer where appropriate between April – June

2016.

• A variety of methods are used to outcome direct work such as ORS/ CORS/ SDQ and CAMHS

will be piloting more consistent use of these plus ESQ for next quarter.

The CAMHS dedicated LAC workers have noted an increase in the number of new referrals and

speculate that an increase in consultations to the social work teams has increased awareness of the

service and therefore generated more work. There appears to be an increase in young LAC people

with highly complex needs placed in private residential homes in Newham by other local authorities.

These young people are frequent users of GP, ED and CAMHS services often presenting in crisis

where their residential support is highly variable. Finally there have been more referrals in respect of

UASC than in previous years.

The strength of the current model is the multidisciplinary composition of the team as well as the

capacity to take on direct work with LACs and their carers when the timing is appropriate as well as

being able to provide individual and group consultation, supervision and training to social care staff

and other key professionals in the young person’s network e.g. school, voluntary agencies.

New development of formal embedded CAMHS clinicians in 3 LAC teams and development of a new

post for Fostering Teams which will aim to improving social workers knowledge and skills in CAMHS

competencies, provide more direct and relevant training and evaluate usefulness of consultation

work.

The challenge in the current provision is the limited capacity – 2.2 WTE staff. Newham benefitted

from the Burdett Project which has now ended, this provided funding for LAC Clinical Nurse

Specialists and ability to offer mental health assessment and sign posting for young people placed

out of borough. There are inadequate reciprocal arrangements with neighbouring CAMHS services

for Newham LAC placed out of borough and are therefore dependent on Newham CAMHS to

continue to provide service. Not all referrals to CAMHS LAC come from LBN social workers. The team

also see young people who self refer or are referred from other professionals such as GPs, Education

and Care Homes.

The Children in Care Council told us that they valued having a choice about whether or not they

engaged in counselling/ therapy, and said that if they opted to engage in counselling they wanted to

know that they would have some control of what happens in the sessions. Young people also talked

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about reasons why they came into care and the fear that counselling/therapy would remind them of

upsetting events which they would rather forget.

6.3 Parenthood, Looked After Children and Care Leavers We know that having a child at a young age can limit the future prospects of both parents and child.

Teenagers who become parents are known to experience greater educational, health, social and

economic difficulties than young people who are not parents. Research indicates that growing up

with adverse parenting, trauma and abuse can lead to problems in adolescence and adulthood and

can present challenges when those young people become parents. Evidence from research also

suggests that both young women and young men in/and leaving care are more likely than their

peers to be teenage parents, with one study finding that a significant number of young women

leaving care fell pregnant within 18 to 24 months of leaving care. It is therefore imperative that we

as corporate parents provide essential education and support to enable our children to make fully

informed choices about becoming a parent. CPB welcomed a report about parenthood in October

2016.

Young people who live in the borough or close by are introduced to SHINE young people’s sexual

health service for confidential discussions about sexual health, contraception, and advice about

pregnancy. Those young people who live outside the borough are introduced to similar support in

their local area.

Our looked after children who have health assessments through the LAC Nurses also complete the

DUST screening tool to help identify and address any sexual health concerns. The LAC Nurse will

work with the young people to develop strategies to support their health needs and these are

shared with their allocated workers.

The data for our care leavers are as follows:

• There are 251 young people who have an allocated worker in the leaving care team.

• 4 young women in the cohort are pregnant.

• 12 young women are mothers.

• 6 of our young people’s children were subject of Child Protection Plans and 2 resulted in care

orders with plans for adoption

• Out of the 12 young mothers who have a child/children, one young mother is engaged in

employment.

The data for our looked after children is as follows:

• There are 361 looked after children 122 of whom are aged 16 or 17 and 63 of these are girls.

• There is 1 looked after child who is pregnant.

• In 2015 3 Looked after young women became pregnant.

We know that a disproportionate number of looked after children and care leavers have their

children removed from their care. The Pause Project in Newham works with mothers who have had

one child removed from their care, the project has worked with 2 care leavers (former), with one

care leaver who is actively engaged with the Leaving Care team.

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Our Children in Care Council told us that having trusted adults such as a foster carer, youth worker,

advocate, teacher or outreach worker would encourage them to talk about intimate health

concerns. They speculated that in situations where they did not have a good relationship with their

workers, they would not willingly discuss concerns with them. One young person said that

“everyone starts jumping up and down when a girl gets pregnant, but people don’t always take the

time to do anything to prevent the pregnancy” . Some young people said they were happy to go to

sexual health clinics, sometimes outside of the borough for anonymity, but the best advice they gave

us was they just want a social worker or a foster carer to talk to them about sex and relationships as

children who live with their families might expect.

7 Are are enabled to meet their potential

7.1 Care Leavers in Employment Education or Training CPB is due to receive reports in December 2016. However data presented to the Board in June 2016

shows our performance with care leavers in employment training and education.

65.1% of current care leavers were recorded as being in EET at the end of 2015/16 which is

significantly above the London and England average. Of the 113 classified as not in EET, 89 are

recorded as NEET, 2 refused contact, 11 no longer require services, 5 are recorded as not in contact

but with attempts to make contact, and 6 have not been recorded as in contact with, within the

'contact window' for the current year allowed by the DfE - though 3 were contacted near the 3

month window.

The Virtual School have been working with the Data and Impact Team to ensure these entries are

made as soon as possible which has impacted on improved performance. In addition, the Virtual

School is currently working to systemise the data entry for these indicators as part of the new EET

offer. Following the Leaving Care Options Appraisal, the service has embarked on a programme of

activity to significantly improve care leaver EET data; this includes the extension of the virtual school

to care leavers and building a virtual EET team comprised of named professionals from Workplace

and RPA. Where a young person was previously looked after and not in contact with the Leaving

Care Service due to the case being closed, the care leaver's EET status is unknown and will be

considered as NEET. The service regularly reviews NEET data and contacts all previous care leavers to

inform them of their entitlement to a leaving care service and ascertain their EET status.

For the purposes of this data set children are included if:

• Their 17th, 18th, 19th 20th or 21st birthday fell within the collection period.

• The child was looked after for a period of at least 13 weeks after they reached the age of 14

and ended after they reached the age of 16 (excluding pre-planned short breaks).

• The child is no longer looked after.

From 2015/16 the DfE asked LAs to start including 17 and 18 year old young people - the 2014/15

data does not include 17 and 18 year old young people. Contact with the child needs to have been

made around 3 months before and 1 month after the child’s 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th or 21st birthday

(apart from if a young person leaves care because they turn 18 where the window is on the birthday

or 3 months after). Note: employment includes voluntary unpaid work, full or part time work.

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Training includes government supported training, including Youth Training, New Deal, Training for

Work, and National Traineeships.

7.2 Attainment of Newham looked after children and care leavers 2015-16

A detailed report will be prepared for CPB in December 2016 covering all key stages but for the

purposes of this report a summary of key stages 4 and 5 is provided.

Key Stage 4 – eligible cohort was 31

At Key Stage 4 there has been another change to assessment methodology with a move away from

the 5A*-C including English and Maths to the new Attainment 8 and Progress 8 measures plus the

A*-C in English and Maths measure. However, the DfE has not yet confirmed how it is going to

report on the attainment and progress of looked after children and the National dataset for GCSEs

will not be released to local authorities until October. Once Newham has the data, we have agreed

to join the NCER project which for the first time will produce national data for looked after children

in line with the rest of the population. In the meantime, this paper reports below on the measures

previously reported.

It should be noted that 48% of this cohort has recognised special educational needs and therefore

the Table 12 below shows attainment for the whole cohort and also without those with SEN.

Table 12

Qualification level Whole cohort 2016 Without SEN (and ESOL learners)

At least 5 A*-C GCSE grades including English and Maths

13% 27%

A*-C in English and Maths Probable New measure

13% 27%

At least 5 A*-C grades 16% 33%

At least 5 A-G grades 48% 53%

At least1 A-G grade 74% 87%

At least Entry Level grades 84% 87%

At least P scales 87% 87%

No qualifications taken 13% 13%

The 2015-16 GCSE cohort was known to be a lower achieving group on average than in the last two

years and the 5 A*-C grades (including English and Maths) figure of 13% is down from last year’s 26%

but slightly higher than the 10% predicted for this group. This difference represents one young

person who achieved slightly higher than expected. He was actually in secure accommodation and

yet achieved very well. This cohort is also larger than last year at 31 as opposed to 25. The majority

achieved in line with expectations with the exception of four young people who achieved at a

slightly lower level and four who over-achieved. One young man arrived in the country as an

Unaccompanied Minor from Eritrea during Year 10 and still achieved 5 A*-C grades.

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Table 13 - Three year trend for Key Stage 4 Level achieved 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16

5 A*-C grade GCSEs (Including English and Maths)

19% 26% 13%

The most recent available National LAC figure (for 2014-15) is 13.8%. The 13% of the cohort who did not achieve any qualifications was made up of 4 young people – two who consistently refused to engage with education following a number of placement moves, one young person who had a large number of missing episodes and one who struggled with a child sexual exploitation profile. None of them attended a mainstream educational setting. The majority of these young people have been in care for a period of between 1 and 5 years (61%)

but there is a significant number (8) who have been in care for most of their lives ie between 11 and

15 years. However, three of the four highest achievers have been in care for only 1 or 2 years. All of

these were educated in Newham schools and there has been an increase in the proportion of young

people in Year 11 educated in the Borough; from 12% last year to 42% this year.

The four highest achievers were educated in Newham schools and there has been an increase in the

proportion of young people in Year 11 educated in the Borough; from 12% last year to 42% this year.

It would seem that achievement for those young people educated in borough is higher overall than

for those out of borough; reflecting the high achievement of Newham Schools and best practice

when working with looked after children. However, it should also be noted that the young people

with the most complex needs are frequently placed out of borough at specialist establishments.

Key Stage 5 – the overall cohort of 172 was made up of 69 in Year 12, 90 in Year 13 and 16 in Year 14

(who completed the Key Stage a year late).

Table 14

Qualification level Percentage at this level Total (175 young people)

ESOL 13% 22

P scales or Entry Level 9% 15

Vocational Level 1 and 2 23% 39

Vocational Level 3

8%

14

AS and A Level 9% 15

Work 2% 3

Apprenticeship 2% 3

Total EET at present 65% 111

Secure (education available) 4% 7

Parent 1% 2

Missing 1% 2

Other NEET 18% 32

Total NEET at present 25% 43

To be confirmed 10% 18

A point to note is that three girls who had babies during the last academic year and were counted as

NEET have been supported to re-engage with education for the coming year. Also the bulk of this

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cohort is studying for qualifications up to Level 2 which reflects the low academic point at which

many young people entered the Key Stage due to an ESOL or SEN profile. They may still go on to

Level 3 a year later than their peers and then to University as has been the case for a number of

Newham young people in the past. These figures represent only a snapshot of the activity of this

cohort and the team will be working to engage any young people who are currently showing as NEET

or to be confirmed and therefore the picture should improve.

Higher Education

This year there have been 11 confirmed new starts at University for Care Leavers and there may still

be more. The total now studying at University in all years is 49 plus an additional two young people

who have secured places but are awaiting funding. There are also 2 young people currently taking

access to university courses.

The 11 new starters include a number of young people who have gone to university later than usual

following a three year sixth form as is often the case with our care leavers. There are also two young

people who are undertaking post graduate qualifications and another young person who has a place

for next year following successful completion of their first degree.

The overall picture for the children and young people who completed key stages last year is once

again a mixed one; reflecting the individual nature of their abilities and difficulties. There are many

pleasing results, particularly for the older cohort that reflect the combined hard work of social

workers, virtual school staff, schools, foster carers and, of course, the children and young people

themselves. As always, the Virtual School will be working hard to support them around the issues

highlighted in this report; particularly to raise achievement for Key Stage 2 Maths and those at risk

of not achieving any qualifications at the end of Key Stage 4 and also to support those young people

who require additional time to achieve their best post 16.

8 Are safe The last report on this theme to CPB was in February 2016 and is due to report again in February

2017. The information set out below is therefore not as current but is indicative of practice.

8.1 Children Sexual Exploitation

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a type of sexual abuse. Children in exploitative situations and

relationships receive something such as gifts, money or affection as a result of performing sexual

activities or others performing sexual activities on them. Some young people enter our care to

protect them from CSE whilst for other looked after children many have had difficult starts to their

lives and experienced neglect, abuse or trauma and this can make them more vulnerable to

grooming or exploitation by adults. We also know that some perpetrators deliberately target

children’s homes because of the high vulnerability of the children placed there and how easily they

can make contact with the children.

In May 2016 Newham Safeguarding Children Board (NSCB) audited all active cases of suspected or

actual CSE along with partners from health and police. 40 cases were audited and of these 16 were

looked after by LBN. The majority had become looked after because of their vulnerability to CSE

rather than becoming exploited after entering care. We know that there are other vulnerabilities

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associate with CSE and in Newham 75% victims had a history of going missing from home or from

care therefore.

The process for protecting young people from CSE is enshrined in the London Safeguarding Children

Board procedures. In Newham there is a dedicated child protection coordinator of team manager

level who chairs initial strategy meetings for all children whoa are at risk of sexual exploitation and

because of the association with missing she now also chairs initial strategy meetings for children

who go missing. The strategy meetings are attended by Children's Social Care and police as a

minimum and a plan is formulated about how to protect the young person, disrupt the exploitation

and identify and arrest the perpetrator. There are subsequent reviews of this plan and if agencies

are unable to work together to effect change this can be escalated to the Multi Agency Sexual

Exploitation panel (MASE). The purpose of this panel is to use the collective intelligence form all of

the CSE cases to develop a problem profile of victim, perpetrator, location and type of activity, this

enables is to work both responsively and proactively to stop CSE.

Some young people in our care are moved out of London to disrupt their association with CSE,

sometimes they move to specialist residential homes and very occasionally we apply to the court for

an order to keep the child in secure accommodation so tat we can work with them about their

safety. When a LAC moves out of the area the police responsibility moves to that location but LBN

retains responsibility for that child. One young woman was moved to the north of England but

because we were planning for her return to London the CSE police from Newham remained closely

involved in her care and in the strategy to keep her safe. The CSE audit found good examples of

cross borough partnership where the network was engaged both locally and externally in these

cases and it resulted in excellent case management to secure a positive outcomes.

8.2 missing from care

The Department for Education and the London Safeguarding Children Board have published key

guidance in the last 2 years which is “designed to ensure that when a child goes missing there is an

effective, collaborative safeguarding response from all agencies involved”.

Table 15

Missing from care episodes Missing Type

Quarter Individuals

went missing

Individuals

went missing once in period

Individuals

with multiple missing episodes in period

Total

number of missing episodes

Missing Absent Unauth-

orised

Q1 2015/16 31 17 14 50 42 4 4

Q2 2015/16 25 12 13 55 40 7 8

Q3 2015/16 19 9 10 42 35 2 5

Q4 2015/16 26 13 3 21 13 2 6

Q1 2016/17 26 16 10 39 38 1

Q2 2016/17 26 15 11 72 66 6

The table above shows the number and frequency of missing episodes for young people in care.

There is a fortnightly report to senior managers that details those young people who are missing

from care and sets out the plan to locate them and support their return in addition to the bespoke

response via strategy meetings. The CSE audit highlighted the LAC social work teams who showed

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particularly good initiative when arranging return home interviews (RHIs): when a child had a history

of going missing there were sound arrangements with the placement to offer RHIs.

Children's Social Care & Safeguarding is keen to improve performance and accountability for

children who go missing from home and care and the Deputy Director has refreshed the focus by

establishing a partnership working group to improve practice. This began in September 2016 and

thus far the new steps have been:

There has been a renewed focus on return interviews with the format of the report being

sharper and enabling us to harvest a better problem profile across our missing population .

We have recently identified additional operational capacity to improve missing practices. This

role involves chairing initial missing strategy meetings to model baseline requirements for these

meetings; reviewing quality of return interviews, revising the return interview template and

offering training to frontline practitioners to glean meaningful information from young people

subject to a return interview.

Triage will review all CSE and Missing children with partners on a fortnightly basis to add

additional management oversight and challenge.

The CSE/Missing lead delivered a comprehensive training session to frontline staff re return

interview requirements through the September service meetings to each neighbourhood and

the LAC service. The session focused on how to improve current practice by using a problem

solving activity to address barriers to completion. As a result of this the numbers of completed

return interviews has risen sharply.

8.3 Children are safe in their placements

LADO

If children and young people allege maltreatment from their foster or residential carers the matter

is reported to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), who decides whether the threshold for

LADO intervention has been met and this is where an individual has:

behaved in a way that has harmed, or may have harmed a child;

possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child; or

behaved towards a child or children in a way that indicates they may pose a risk of harm to

children

in 2015/16 Newham LADO received 211 enquiries from across the borough (not just children in care)

which resulted in 110 meeting the threshold for LADO involvement and of these enquiries 16

pertained to children in care. A number of enquiries do not result in LADO investigation but in

standards of care enquiries that can result in additional support to the carer or referral to the

fostering panel to consider whether the carer can continue to work with us.

The Fostering Panel is the mechanism for approving, reviewing suitability and deregistering foster

carers. This is an independently chaired body with representation from elected members as well as

officers a health and independent representatives from the community . The independence of this

panel provides rigour, challenge and quality assurance of the standard of assessment of potential

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carers, the annual review of fostering households and ultimately the safety of children we entrust to

the foster carers.

Table 16

Fostering Panel 2015/16

New approvals

Foster Carer Re-approved

De-registrations

Resignations Long-term matching

Annual review

13 49 8 13 9 75

The table above shows the volume of work carried out by the panel, which meets 15 times per year.

De-registration is significantly different from resignation in that the fostering service has a view that

the carer is no longer suitable and takes its assessment to panel for a decision. The carers have a

choice to attend all of these panels so therefore have a voice in the de-registration process. It would

appear that 8 de-registrations is not an insignificant number and is evidence of the high standards

we expect from our carers.

9 Next steps The CPB has a busy agenda and young people are represented in person and with their advocate at

every meeting. The CPB is essentially a governance board and the partnership welcomes the

challenge to our performance from this meeting.

This report shows the breath of responsibility of the CPB and for partners involved in keeping our

young people in care safe and helping them to be the best they can be. We have evidenced that we

need to continuously improve and continuously challenge our performance.

In recognition of the need to advance our agenda for LAC the Deputy Director for Children's Social

Care & Safeguarding now chairs a partnership meeting that is overseeing the development of a

multi--agency LAC strategy and partnership pledge to our looked after children.

There are 4 strands of the strategy:

1. Health and wellbeing,

2. Learning and achievement

3. Safety and stability,

4. Resilience and responsibility,

Strategic leads from across the partnership have been paired up to develop the ambition for our LAC

against these areas, lead innovative practice and report on the positive impact on our young people.