The Panel Members who attend Corporate Parenting Board will feedback to the rest of the panel of issues of relevance.
Minutes:
The Panel acknowledged that two of the Children’s Scrutiny Panel Members were also members of the Corporate Parenting Board and two Scrutiny Panel Members attended Corporate Parenting Board as observers. The Panel considered potential duplication of work between the Corporate Parenting Board and Children’s Scrutiny panel.
The Chair of the Panel, Councillor Marchington, advised that questions would be asked by Children’s Scrutiny Panel Members at the Corporate Parenting Board meetings regarding areas of scrutiny focus, for example Performance data and any key issues would be fed back to the Children’s Panel.
The Panel was informed that at the last Corporate Parenting Board there were concerns raised with recruitment and retention of carers and officers reported that this was a key area of focus for the Board.
Tom Brailsford, Service Director, Resources, Improvement and Partnerships advised there was a comprehensive action plan which looked at national best practice and national best practice research on the recruitment and retention of carers. The action plan looked at how foster carers were marketed and how they targeted groups that would like to foster. It also looked at how Fostering advisers engaged with foster carers within the initial conversation after an expression of interest had been submitted and ensured that it turned into an enquiry in a timely manner. Tom further explained that Fostering Advisers undertook to work closely with Kirklees Fostering Network.
In response to a question around understanding and being able to supply retention and wrap around care, Tom Brailsford advised that there was a variety of support and offers around retention of Foster Carers and one example was renumeration and benefits. Tom advised that foster carers had access to Employee Healthcare, training, support from other Foster Carers and supervision from social workers.
The Chair of the Panel, Councillor Marchington, advised the Panel that Corporate Parenting Board looked at performance management data and scrutinised the data received. The Panel was informed that a variety of different questions were asked from Partners and Members of the Board and it was noted that Children’s Scrutiny would also feed in their questions to the Board.
In response to a question regarding how difficult it was to get young people who abused substances who were willing to admit it and come forward to receive the right support, Tom Brailsford advised that there was a very well-established substance misuse service which ensured that young people received the right service which met their needs. Elaine McShane, Service Director, Family Support and Child Protection advised that it was a challenge for young people as the first step of accessing support was admitting the young person had a problem. The Panel was informed that there were practices in different services that helped work with young people to build trust in relationships and to help facilitate the disclosure by the young person.
Panel members who were also members of the Corporate Parenting Board advised that the main focus of the Board was to be a corporate parent to young people who were not in a family environment and were looked after by Kirklees. The Board wanted to achieve the experience of a family for looked after children through Kirklees and took the opinion that if it was not good enough for their own children then it was not good enough for looked after children.
RESOLVED-
1. That the feedback from Panel members and officers be noted.
2. That updates on key areas of focus for scrutiny are provided to the Children’s Scrutiny Panel after each Corporate Parenting Board by relevant members of the Panel.