To update the Scrutiny Committee about progress in relation to the Local Authority’s Corporate Parenting Duties and to answer key questions of the Committee.

The committee received a report about progress in relation to the Local Authority’s Corporate Parenting Duties, presented by the interim assistant director safeguarding and family support.

Committee members heard that:

·        The number of children in care in the county was slightly higher than in statistical neighbours but there could be many different reasons for this;

·        Further work was taking place to drill into the data and a more detailed analysis could be brought to a future meeting;

·        Placement stability was not very good at present and work was taking place to understand why this was the case;

·        Work was also taking place to understand the reasons why children in the county came into care and what resources were in place to tackle the common factors;

·        Officers were anticipating an influx of cases following the return to school after covid closures and were in discussion with CAMHS regarding capacity.

The committee encouraged officers to proactively identify challenges and areas for improvement that could be brought to the scrutiny committee. It was suggested that two such areas of work could be a review of corporate parenting, including the role of councillors as corporate parents, and a review of the independent reviewing service.

The committee welcomed the detailed analysis and suggested that the heat map data should be shared with all councillors so that links could be made to corporate parenting.

The recommendations below were proposed by Councillor Jennie Hewitt, seconded by Councillor Elizabeth Foxton and approved by the committee.

RESOLVED: the committee recommends:

a)     That the work programme be updated to include a report on corporate parenting and a report on the independent reviewing service and that these should be included in training.

The committee adjourned at 11:51 and resumed at 12:03.

Mr Andy James left the meeting during the adjournment.