Agenda item

The Panel review the Annual Report so as to ensure members are appraised on the care provided to children for whom the Local Authority are responsible.

The Head of Service for Children’s Quality Assurance and Safeguarding (Children and Young People) introduced this report to the Panel.

She said that the capacity of the IRO Service is challenging as there is a real demand for it and that this has had an effect on the timeliness of the reviews that have been carried out.

She stated that it has been a challenging 12 months for all concerned, but stressed that the team are committed the care of children and young people within B&NES.

She informed the Panel that the steps taken to strengthen the service and improve recruitment have been positive and have led to three posts being permanently recruited to. She added though that the IRO service will likely have further difficulties in meeting statutory requirements if the number of children in care continues to rise.

She explained that since the summer of 2021, IRO’s have returned to seeing children in person, visiting them where they live and spending time with them within their local community. Some children and young people however have expressed a wish for their reviews to continue to be held virtually and where IRO’s feel this is appropriate and in the child’s best interests they will accommodate this request.

She stated that the number of children and young people in care in this reporting period had increased by 9%, with there being 197 children in care at the year end. Once again, the number of children coming into care was higher than the number of children leaving care.

She said that due to the challenges with recruitment and retention the service has had some difficulty in allocating children based on their needs with allocation primarily being led by an IRO’s capacity. She added that whilst the average caseload of an IRO remains fairly consistent, there were more children

coming into care in Q2 and Q4 than leaving and for a small IRO service which is often working at capacity, this creates additional pressure on IRO’s and in turn impacts on IRO’s being able to review care plans within 20 working days of the child coming into care.

She informed the Panel that the IRO service was instrumental in supporting children to participate in the Bright Spots ‘Your Life, Your Care’ 2020-2021 survey which was undertaken between February and April 2021. She said that this saw 40 children in care aged between 4-18 years old taking part in the survey.

She stated that in this reporting period there were eight formal escalations and thirty-nine informal escalations made by IRO’s. She added that themed audits are to be undertaken with these being identified by the themes emerging from the quality assurance activity within the service and the data reports.

She said that she was proud of the service for continuing to provide support in such a challenging environment.

Councillor Michelle O’Doherty said that she felt the challenges that were being faced by the service. She asked how much of a factor was monitoring children in out of area placements, especially those who are unaccompanied, asylum seeking and trafficked children.

The Head of Service for Children’s Quality Assurance and Safeguarding (Children and Young People) replied that on average B&NES had been receiving 5-6 children within this category a year, but this is increasing with approximately 16 unaccompanied, asylum seeking and trafficked children being placed in Q1 and Q2 of 2022-20223 . She added that children placed out of area should be visited every six weeks by their social worker and that placement stability is always an important consideration within a child’s review. IRO’s travel to see children in person despite the location of where they live.

Councillor Liz Hardman commented that she could sense the frustration regarding capacity within the service. She added that she felt the service was doing a fantastic job, but needed more support.

She asked if the numbers of children in care continues to rise were there any contingency plans/risk analysis in place as to how this might impact on the care of children. She added that if the number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children continues to grow are there any contingency plans in place to cope.

The Head of Service for Children’s Quality Assurance and Safeguarding (Children and Young People) replied that capacity was not just an issue relating to asylum seeking children, there were also safeguarding matters leading to more children being unable to remain with their families and being placed in the care of the Local Authority. She added that she felt that there was a need to think about how further support can be provided for the service.

The Panel RESOLVED to;

i)  Note the growing pressures on the IRO service as a result of the increasing numbers of children being placed in the care of Bath and North East Somerset and the continued work and commitment of IRO’s to maintain contact with children in care, regularly reviewing the plans for these children so as to ensure their needs are being met.

ii)  Recognise and value the impact of the IRO role in providing scrutiny and at times challenge when there are concerns that the needs of children are not being met or plans progressed.