Agenda item

Please introduce yourself and outline your role and responsibilities.

I am the Chairman of the County Council’s Corporate Parenting Panel (CPP), and of the Children’s Social Care and Health Cabinet Committee.  I am also a Deputy Cabinet Member. I am responsible for seeing that the agendas of these two committees cover the issues that Members most need to look at – adoption, fostering, Virtual School Kent (VSK), CAMHS etc - anything which impacts upon the lives of children in the care of the County Council.

You have a much bigger role that that, with your fostering and adoption background.

I used to be a foster carer, so I have a personal knowledge and experience of the subject. Over the years I cared for 20 – 30 children and have foster granddaughters of 25 and 9. 

What are your corporate parenting duties?

As I have said above.  But every Member has corporate parenting duties and responsibilities. I have been on the County Council for a very long time, and I know that people form into silos in some areas.  The majority of Members know they have a corporate parenting role, but not all are involved as much as they could be.  The Corporate Parenting Panel (previously the Children’s Champions Board (CCB)) raised the profile of the corporate parenting role but it is very difficult to undertake this role. I see corporate parents as being a bridge between the County Council and children and young people in care.  I have ensured that young people serve on the Panel, and I see them and their involvement as an asset as they tell it like it is. Also, the foster carers on the Panel are a very valuable resource as they bring their insight and we see their view of the bureaucracy that sometimes comes into our processes.  They are advocates for young people.  I have also served on fostering panels and adoption panels.

How should elected Members fulfil their corporate parenting role? What should they be doing?

They do the best they can with their ability and with their awareness, but they could do more.  The question is how can they do that?  They need to keep engaging with young people, they all signed the County Council’s Pledge to its children in care, they saw the excellent presentation at full Council that young people did recently, to give Members an insight into the issues of being children in care, but the corporate parenting role is a hard one to identify. We need to ask ourselves ‘what is a good parent?’ and do the same as corporate parents as we would for our own children. Young people are in care because of what has been done to them, not because of anything they have done.

I agree that many Members are not fulfilling this role, but what should they do?  How should they care for children in care?

Obviously there is a line that they can’t cross; Members can’t go round to a child’s home and say ‘I am your corporate parent’.  They can celebrate and recognise children’s achievements and attend VSK events and participation days, be supportive and make themselves aware of the content of the County Council’s Pledge to children and young people in care. They can recognise the issues that children and young people in care face, such as the limits they face around doing things such as staying overnight at a friend’s house, or the problems they encounter when going abroad for an expedition and losing out on benefits because they have missed signing on, and then get into debt trying to catch up.  We could look at issues like this and talk to the partners and other local authorities who place children in Kent who could help address this sort of issue.  The County Council retains its corporate parent status when young people grow older, leave care, go to college and start work. As corporate parents we could be doing the same for children and young people in care as we do for our own children, like helping them out if they are short of money.  Members could look at the County Council’s Pledge to children and young people in care and make sure they are doing all that is listed in it. Working with our partners is key to addressing these issues.

How can we be aware of the range of problems faced by children and young people in care, eg abuse, being unaccompanied asylum seekers (UASC), and what we can do to help with these problems?  How do we solve this?

Stability and security are key.  Corporate parents should ensure that systems are in place to deal with the issues that children and young people in care face. Their experiences can vary a lot, and can be affected by small things, eg having a bad day because a social worker does not turn up when arranged, or a good experience such as an inspirational social worker changing a young person’s life experience. Children and young people in care don’t want to feel any different from anyone else their age.

How does a child or young person become looked after? How can we identify those that need special help?

They could be in care due to poor parenting - perhaps their parents did not have good parents themselves, so don’t have a good role model.  Their parents may be unable to prioritise their children’s needs above their own needs or relationships.  There could also have been a family breakdown, domestic abuse or drug or alcohol problems, but the most frequent issue is poor parenting.

How can we scrutinise the quality of support that we give to children and young people in care? The CPP is fine for Members who are interested and have chosen to be Members of it, but it only includes a few Members.  How can we relate the issue about children and young people in care to the rest of the Council, eg with an all-day full Council meeting  to focus on these issues?  How can we get the tools to be good corporate parents, including all Members, not just CPP?

We used to issue Member briefings sheets setting out how many children and young people in care are in any area at any one time.  The minutes of the former CCB used to be referred to full Council, but the CPP minutes do not now and I am not sure why this changed; perhaps we should reinstate this arrangement. CPP minutes go to the Kent Corporate Parenting Group (KCPG) and vice versa, so will be seen by full Council as part of the KCPG annual report. To spread the message about the corporate parenting role, all Members need to see CPP minutes and information and statistics relating to children and young people in care. Briefings for new Members could include this.  Members tend naturally to concentrate on their own local areas of the county and the issues in which they have most interest.

We need to keep an eye on the support which is given to children and young people in care, eg by foster carers, as the quality of care varies.  How can we achieve this monitoring without appearing too heavy-handed?  

Every foster carer has a regular review so we can monitor that way, via the Fostering Panels.

Are those Panels sufficiently independent?

Fostering is a professional job, so foster carers need the right skills to be able to deliver a quality service. They must also protect themselves to avoid burnout, and we must ensure that they get suitable support from the fostering team. A reminder of the corporate parenting role could be included in the induction pack for all new Members when they are elected, with regular reminders of the role and ongoing training during their period of office. There could be a mantra of ‘think child’ for any decision they make, eg for issues such as provision of open space, housing and infrastructure. We need to look at where children and young people in care are being placed and consider whether or not if those placements are appropriate. Corporate parenting is a very diverse subject and not an easy one to tackle.

We have to provide school places for children and young people in care and help and support them through their education, but how can we expand our support to improve their life chances?

We do get involved with schools to some extent, and ensure that children and young people in care have things such as a passport, so they can take part in school outings.  Birth parents do not necessarily co-operate with such things but we do things like this for the children.  We also ensure that they have a financial reward when they pass exams and have a savings account so they will have a fund of money when they leave care.  Foster carers need to be very savvy about the rights and entitlements of children in their care and how to help them access what they are entitled to.

Why does the County Council press for adoptions for the under-5s?

Under-5s usually have priority for adoption as they are easier to adopt. They are more likely than other children to be in care as a result of poor parenting, and perhaps as a result of their parents being directed to take a course to improve their parenting. Such parents often keep trying to be better parents to their children and to resist them going into care.  Their children are likely to be in the process for a while before being released for adoption.

I know there is a Pledge for children and young people in care which sets out what the County Council will do for them and what they are entitled to.  We get them into a local school when they come to a new placement and give them plenty of support there, but should we be pushing to get them into a better school?  They need support when they start a new school or enter any new stage of their life.

Support for a child settling into a new placement and entering a new school should be provided by a social worker and the foster carer working together. Every school must now have a named Governor to look after the interests of children and young people in care in their school, and a policy that sets out how it will approach their needs, but these policies were required to be set up some time ago and may be getting a bit old now.

A child’s school might be the only stable element of their life and the only place where they feel safe.  A good teacher can see if something is not right with a family and can identify signs of possible neglect (eg by a child’s poor appearance or if they have not been given a breakfast) and start to tackle the issue. Schools also need to be sensitive to the presence in their class of a child in care, eg when making Mother’s Day or Father’s Day cards.

I have great admiration for foster carers and the role they undertake. It is a difficult job to do, and many children must pass through their home, with all sorts of problems.  How can we increase the number of foster carers who are trained and prepared to foster children and young people with special needs or mental health difficulties?

Yes I agree that our foster carers are brilliant peopleand the skills they bring to the job are amazing. Being a foster carer is a professional job, a vocation, and we need to recognise this and train and support them with therapy and respite care, which is a huge issue.  We need to ensure that all the services that need to be around the child are there. The health issues of children and young people in care didn’t use to appear on agendas but do now. Health professionals can help to identify issues such as potential abuse, eg by the appearance at hospital of a child with non-accidental injuries.  It is important that all partners who deliver services for children are fully engaged and can work together effectively.

Do we need to access more help from professionals outside the County Council to address issues with children and young people in care, eg mental health/SEN?

We must ensure that other agencies which help with and support these issues are engaged and their work co-ordinated, and that a child’s social worker links with them.  Some of the issues that foster carers deal with, eg children who go missing, are over and above the issues that a parent would have to deal with for their own children, so other professionals need to be involved.

We could look at best practice and update the education briefings that we give to Members.  Is Kent looking at Essex County Council at the moment, to see what they do and compare their and our practices?

We have recently had meetings with them but the outcomes of these are not yet known.  Essex had their children’s services rated as ‘failing’ but have since achieved a ‘good’ rating, so it would be interesting to find out how they did that.

Caseload size is a key issue in improving services.  Kent is unique in the number of children and young people in care it has, plus the number of UASC and the number of children placed by other local authorities. The County Council has corporate parenting responsibility for UASC but not for children placed by other local authorities. The placing authority retains the corporate parenting role, and some of them are not good corporate parents to their children and young people in care. A good corporate parent would not place so many of their children out of their area.

I have never been asked by any parent in my area to support them with a school appeal, so I wonder if many people know who their local County Council Member is, and how to contact them. A building block in grasping Members’ corporate parent role is the good relationship they have with young people on the Corporate Parenting Panel. The VSK apprentices that the Panel meets are ambassadors for other children and young people in care and give us much information about what life is like for them, what works and what doesn’t.

It is rare to hear young people speaking to elected Members. Meetings with Our Children and Young People’s Council do not work in a formal setting; meetings with them need to be fun.

Some young people do not have high expectations of what they will find and achieve in life and seem to think that they ‘don’t deserve to be happy’.  Corporate parents need to help them to develop some self-esteem. Some think it is their fault that they are in care, although there they can often have a better experience in care than they would have had otherwise; they get good meals, someone to cuddle them when they are upset, and someone to watch football with.

I am still not clear about how I can access children and young people in care in my role as an elected Member. Am I permitted to meet children and young people in care at schools, or at a foster carer’s home, or is there a barrier to me doing this? If I can’t reach them, how can I help them?

We need to address the issue of Members meeting children and young people in care.  Elected Members cannot expect to relate to every child in care in the county, but need to ensure that support is in place to help them.  Visiting a child at school would single them out as being ‘different’, and they want to appear to be like any other child in their class.

Being spoken to by a local councillor can be intrusive; why would a young person want to talk to a stranger about being in care?

Children and young people in care do not want to be picked out as different so keep their care status private as they fear being seen by school friends as ‘bad’ for being in care. I was brought up by my grandparents, and I remember feeling different from school friends. Nowadays, family set-ups are much more diverse and a child who is not with their birth parents is no different from many other children at their school.

How can I help children and young people in care if I don’t know who they are?

You can help by addressing the issues which affect them, eg you could ask the local social work office about the caseloads that they carry and if they have the resources to do what they need to do to support children and young people in care.

How can I help personally if I can’t identify a child as being in care, to avoid them being picked out as different? I can appreciate the need to avoid picking out children and young people in care as I remember from my own school that the children who had free school meals stood out.

Members need to ask themselves if they understand their corporate parent role; not all Members do.  Then there is the question of how we tackle that role; how does the County Council empower Members to take on their corporate parenting responsibilities?  There is a fine line that Members can’t cross, but we must ensure that our various partners are around a child to support them.

Thank you very much for giving your time today to help the Select Committee with its information gathering.