Agenda item

John Coleman (Assistant Director – Children & Families) informed the partnership that was slightly outdated but children in care in Warwickshire had decreased to 831 from 855 since November 2021. The council aims to get more children leave care then be taken into it, between October 2021 to February 2022, more children were leaving care. In November 2021, the council took in 23 asylum seeking young people into care after the Home Office opened a hotel in Warwickshire, but 53 children left care that month through adoption or SGOs (special guardianship orders). For the 2021/22 financial year, more children left care then entered it in Warwickshire. In the 2020/21 financial year, there was an increase of 106 children entering care. There was a record number of children entering care in Warwickshire who were asylum seeking children (108) children who are asylum seekers, this was partly because of the Home Office hotel. In December 2021, 12 children in foster care had been placed for adoption and this had now increased to 20. 84 children were in residential care, but this had decreased 74 by the time of the meeting as they either moved into foster care or moved back home. 19% of children in foster care were placed at least 20 miles away from their family home so most children in care were placed in Warwickshire. Children going missing regularly increased to 26 with them having 77 missing episodes between them. When a child goes missing, they get a home interview to see why they went missing; most children go missing because of issues around exploitation and county lines. 10 out of the 26 children were being carefully monitored as they had exploitation/county lines warnings around them. Warwickshire was aiming to improve its stability figures; a child having three or more placements in 12 months was above the national average and children having a long-term placement was below the national average. These issues were caused by a shortage of placements. There were some good news stories in the stability data because some children move from a foster placement to a family member which is often more permenant but this impacts the stability statistics. Work around identifying family members who could take children in before they get moved multiple times was being investigated.

Councillor Jerry Roodhouse expressed concerns with the missing children numbers. In response to Councillor Roodhouse and the Chair, John Coleman stated that the exploitation team were working with these children in detail to try and understand what was happening to them the team works with the police to put distraction/disruption techniques in place. John Coleman suggested asking some children who had been at risk of exploitation/county lines talking to the panel of their experiences. Numbers of children in care had decreased because the courts were frozen due to Covid-19 and they were not moving anything effectively but things had started up again since October-November 2021 this had started up again. Children who were waiting to be adopted or an SGO, or children who were going home after placement finally had their orders revoked. It was believed that the spike for children in care had come and gone and this number should continue to reduce. In November 2021 the council made and agreement with CAFCASS (children and family court advisory and support service) and the local court system at court for there to be a new protocol: when a child is going to leave care and go back to a parent who has their order revoked, there was a whole court hearing this which takes a long time to do; the new protocol is that if there is no objections to a child leaving care then there would be no hearing and a judge would end the court order in a day. This reduced children in care cases by 20 so work was being done to keep the protocol implemented. The other reason was the investments in children services which all went live on the 1st July 2021 to keep children out of care. These investments were working on reducing the number of children coming into care and helping them stay with their families or with extended families. At the time of the meeting there were 831 children in care and the council was aiming to get this to 830 or less by the 31st March 2021 and below 800 in the next six months. 

It was agreed that looking deeply into county lines would go on the work programme for a future meeting.

The Chair praised the work done with CAFCASS and getting children to live with families before going into foster care.

John Coleman added that nationally Warwickshire had the highest number of children placed with family members instead of being in foster care (140 at the time of the meeting).