Agenda and minutes

(1)        Referring to paragraph 30 (1) the Chairman informed Members that a group had met to discuss the Performance Management Framework and that this would be reported to the Policy Overview and Scrutiny Committees to give all Members the opportunity to discuss the Framework.

(2)        RESOLVED: that the minutes of the meeting held on 25 July 2011 are correctly recorded and that they be signed by the Chairman.

(1)      Members had received a briefing note on Highway Drainage Cleansing, however they were unaware how many gullies were in the county.  Mrs Law requested that an issue she raised relating to the sharing of gully space with utility companies be followed up. 

(2)      RESOLVED: that the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee note the follow-up items report.

(1)    RESOLVED: that the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee approve the notes of the Informal Member Group on Budgetary Issues held on 15 September 2011.

(1)    RESOLVED: that the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee approve the notes of the Informal Member Group on Budgetary Issues held on 14 October 2011.

(1)    RESOLVED: that the Cabinet Scrutiny Committee approve the notes of the Informal Member Group on Budgetary Issues held on 2 December 2011.

Mrs J Whittle, Cabinet Member Specialist Children’s Services, Mr A Ireland, Director of Families and Social Care, Ms L Totman, Head of Corporate Parenting and Mr P Brightwell, Performance and Quality Assurance Manager (LAC) have been invited to attend the meeting from 10am to answer Members’ questions on this item.  

(1)     The Chairman welcomed Mr Andrew Ireland to his first meeting of Cabinet Scrutiny having recently joined the authority. 

(2)     The witnesses were asked what they thought of Mr Narey’s (the former Chief Executive Officer of Barnardo’s) comments in response to a question about the social background to Looked After Children (LAC) and that by dealing appropriately with LAC that the number of new cases, and therefore the pressure on the budget, would decrease.  Mr Narey had previously commented that trends were actually going in the opposite direction, and that in the future more children might become LAC. 

(3)     Mr Ireland explained that he understood Mr Narey’s remarks in relation to the need to intervene earlier with young children, and that in his opinion and experience this was right.  There was an issue for Local Authorities with older children, particularly following the Southwark judgement [which made councils responsible for the health needs and well-being of homeless 16 and 17 year olds.] It was considered that there were often poor outcomes resulting from the care experience for adolescents.  There were increased pressures surrounding older children, their education has often been disrupted and this could prove to be more challenging, it was considered important to draw distinctions around particular scenarios.

(4)     Mrs Whittle explained that it was essential to get early intervention right, particularly where it was highly unlikely that the children would be reunited with their parents. 

(5)     Mr Brightwell referred to the 2006 Care Matters document which predicted that the population of Looked After Children would reduce but that it would be more needy and vulnerable.  It wasn’t the aim to prevent children from becoming looked after if they needed to be but children were sometimes staying in the system for much longer than necessary at present.

(6)     In 2001 Kent published its first big strategy to reduce the numbers of looked after children.  The new strategy (2011 to 2015) focussed on reducing the average length of time children needed to be looked after.  Based on current looked after children numbers, a reduction in one month would show as a reduction of 100 children on the LAC register.  It was perhaps the case that in 2001 the authority had prevented children entering the care system when they needed to and that had created a bottleneck in the system that has contributed to an increase in looked after children numbers since 2008.  It was necessary to develop high quality services to support children, not to prevent them entering the system when they needed to. 

(7)     Mr Brightwell explained that the multi-agency strategy was drawn up following the criticism from Ofsted. 

(8)     Members queried how funding was going to reduce the numbers of LAC.  For foster children the ultimate aim was to reunite them with their families, although it was accepted that there were times when this was not possible.  In the current economic times there were increased pressures on families, how would the numbers of LAC be reduced under  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38.