Agenda item

The Board will consider the Annual Report of the Children’s Rights Team for 2022-23.

Contact:

Lucy Fearnley, Team Manager for Quality Assurance and Safeguarding

Zoe Prince, Fostering Service Manager

The Board considered the Children’s Rights Team Annual Report presented by Lucy Fearnley, Team Manager for Quality Assurance and Safeguarding. The report set out the services delivered by the Children’s Rights Team (CRT) during the period of 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2023 and it was highlighted that:

• The focus of the work of the CRT continued to be listening to and sharing the views and voices of Children Looked After and Care leavers.
• The CRT had supported children and young people with a wide range of advocacy issues in the previous year.
• At present the team was supporting 105 young people, and the feedback received was positive highlighting that young people felt listened to and heard.
• Young people continued to be involved in foster care recruitment and the children’s services training programme.  
• Both training programmes had now returned to being held face to face following the Covid-19 pandemic and were delivered by the young people.
• There were a number of young people who had also supported staff recruitment through the Young Peoples Panel’s.
• The CRT continued to run the Children in Care Council and Care leavers Forums and there were various projects offered for young people to get involved with.
• The CRT aimed to ensure all CLA (from the age of 10 received) contact and information about the CRT and participation opportunities.
• The Independent Visitors Scheme continued to employ volunteers to match with CLA and spend time with young people on a 1:1 basis.
• There were currently 26 children match with volunteers.
• Looking forwards, the key priorities for the CRT in 2023/2024 were:
  • To develop further the recording of advocacy work by exploring electronic recording of work with Liquid Logic Developers, with the view of establishing Tableau dashboards.
  • To continue to develop and enhance involvement in Practice Learning Days across Children’s Services, to further capture children’s voices, experiences, and help support participation to inform service developments and practice improvements.
  • To review the Service against revised Advocacy Standards when published.
  • To complete a review of the current service capacity and offer.
  • To work in collaboration with the Looked After Children’s service, to develop a children’s consultation forum to ascertain the view of children and young people Looked After in respect of how they wish to celebrate their achievements.

Responding to a question from the Ex-Offcio about Democracy Friendly Schools and potential for joint work with the Our Voice team, Sara Miles, Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance agreed to investigate the scope of this further.

Responding to a question from the Board in respect of making sure that the voices of children and young people were heard by the Corporate Parenting Board, Ophelia Rix, Head of Service for Children Looked After and Care Leavers advised that the development of the Looked After Multi-Agency Partnership was in progress which focused on the 7 Corporate Parenting Principals to drive this agenda forward working across the Council. Workstreams were identified and an update on key priorities within these would be available in due course, within these priorities would be a key focus on amplifying the voices of children and young people.  This involved working closely with the CRT and the Children in Care and care leavers forums. The Board noted the response and highlighted the Boards role in instigating change.

Responding to a question from the Board in respect of the Total Respect Training, Lucy Fearnley provided reassurance that the training was held in person and provided to all new members.

Responding to a question from the Board in respect of specific plans to include children and young persons voices to the Board, Ophelia Rix advised that the approach was still in development, the first part would include the introduction of a newsletter including the feedback of children and young people. Lucy Fearnley added that this was being developed collaboratively across the wider services. In response the Board welcomed the demonstration of increased activities for Care Leavers as positive.

RESOLVED: The Board noted the Children’s Rights Team Annual Report and it was agreed that Sara Miles, Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance would investigate the scope of joint working around Democracy Friendly Schools and the Our Voice Team.