Agenda item

The Chairman welcomed Sinead and Sarah to the meeting and invited to introduce themselves before answering questions from Members.

 

Sinead stated that she had been a senior practitioner in the children in care team at the Poltons Family Centre in Dover.  One of her key roles was to place children with Foster Carers in order to support them once an order was in place.   She still had a full social worker case load and also carried out other managerial tasks.

 

Sarah explained that she was a team manager and managed a team of 6 social workers and 1 social work assistant, her role was to straddle the two functions of the supervision of social workers and a managerial function for her team for example drawing up the duty rota and providing training and development for social workers.

 

Q – There can be some confusion around the use of the term “supervision” which has a specific meaning in the context of social work. Can you explain this please?

 

Sinead explained that in this context supervision was carried out 3 or 4 weekly or more frequently if something happen in relation to a case.  In the regularly 3 or 4 weekly supervision there was an opportunity to for the social worker to discuss cases with the manager and to speak about the social workers role and training. It was a reflective discussion. It gave the manager oversight and the opportunity to discuss ideas on specific cases.

 

Sarah stated that supervision meetings provided an opportunity to explore the dynamics of cases in a reflective way in order to enable a picture to be gained of the case.  Social workers instincts were important in relation to cases. 

 

Sinead stated that supervision was crucial for Kent in relation to Ofsted inspections, Ellen Monroe (?) had made a recommendation regarding reflective supervision and the importance of social workers being able to discuss their feelings about a case with their managers.

 

Sarah confirmed that supervision provided a formal record of discussions enabling Ofsted to look at the how and the why of a case.  It made it possible to provide a clear record of why a decision was made.  Looked after Children had a right to look at the decision made about them which is why it was particularly important to make sure that key decision about the child are recorded.

 

Sinead referred to the new records system that had been introduced and encouraged reflective supervision on a rolling basis. 

 

 

 

Q - Sinead you are based in the Poulton Family Centre in Dover?

 

Sinead explained that the Poutlon Family Centre was a general family centre which housed the family support team and the children in care team and managers.  It was a drop in centre. 

 

Q – Members have a corporate parenting responsibility, how far would you like Members to support and help you?

 

Sinead referred to visits made by Elected Members to local offices and where appropriate to sit in on a review.     She stated that it would be helpful out in the local offices to know what Members were doing and their focus in relation to Looked after Children, maybe via a newsletter. 

 

Q – Members are often not sure how much they are allowed or it is appropriate for them to get involved with Children in Care.   It would be helpful to have basic details of Children in Care in our area and to know our local social worker.  What are your views on this?

 

Sinead stated that she would be happy for her team to link with their local elected members and for them to visit the local team but of course these visits would need to be pre-planned.

 

Q – It would be helpful to have a countywide link for each area for local member and more local information for each member.

 

Sinead stated that there could be a two way link between the social working team and the local members.

 

Q – The key aim of the Select Committee is to make us more aware as Corporate Parents and to do the best possible for our children in care, who can we achieve this?

 

Sinead stated that it would be helpful to have Members come along to our meetings and to get first-hand experience and to see the system worked.

 

Q – Sinead as you cover Dover do you have issues with unaccompanied asylum seekers?

 

Sinead explained that from 1 December 2014 the responsibility for unaccompanied asylum seekers had passed to Children in Care teams.  She and her colleagues had received training regarding assessment etc. prior to 1 December 2015.   In Ashford the Children in Care team did a lot of work with unaccompanied asylum seekers. Sinead confirmed that these children were taken to an assessment centre and would go from there to a foster carer or would be allocated housing anywhere in Kent depending on what was appropriate in the particular case.

 

Sarah stated that since 1 December 2015 the second team in Gravesend had taken over responsibility for 102 unaccompanied asylum seekers the aim is that eventually these cases will be fully integrated into the children in care teams..    She personally believed that this was a positive move as asylum seeking children were also looked after children but with particular issues of communication and the need to use interpretators.  There was an issues regarding the volume of unaccompanied asylum seekers and there were hot spots in Kent where this was more of an issue.

 

Sinead explained that children aged 16 – 18 remained the responsibility of the Children in Care team.

 

Q – Is one of the difficulties with unaccompanied asylum seekers assessing their age?

 

Sinead agreed that this was an issue, and that she had gained experience of this when at university in a placement in an asylum team.   She explained that it was possible to appeal against an age assessment.  The age of a child was important as there was a need to make sure that young vulnerable children were not placed in an inappropriate setting.

 

Sarah confirmed that unaccompanied asylum seeker children had the same rights as other Children in Care, they were allocated a social worker  and would have a care reviews, the first of which would take place within 28 days

 

Q – Is there any specific process for unaccompanied asylum seeking children who go missing?

 

Sinead and Sarah confirmed that the process for dealing with this issue was the same as it would be for any other Child in Care.   As a social worker they had a corporate parenting role and there was a need to consider carefully where the child might be.

 

Q – is there anything that Members can do as corporate parents to help you in your role?

 

Sinead stated although they had some amazing foster carers, one of their issues was the need to find enough good quality foster carers who would commit to children in the long term.  It would be nice to have a pool of foster carers who had a high level of expertise and experience. 

 

Sarah stated that one of the most successful things over the past two and a half to three years was the integration of children in care into a separate service, which worked for children and ensured that children had a consistent social worker.  One of the issues that children in care mention regularly is how important it is for them to have not to have a number of changes in social worker.   Over the past two and a half and three years Kent has been more successful in keeping social workers in post and with the same child.  She would welcome anything that Members could do to encourage a stable workforce would be appreciated as this was key to making the lives of children in care better.

 

Sinead mentioned the important support given by social work assistants.   She stated that her team did not have a social work assistant, which meant that tasks such as taking a bible out to a child had to be done by a social worker.  It would be helpful to have some support to carry out the more simple tasks.  Sinead explained that she was aware of social work assistants who had been in post for over 10 years and who therefore had a detailed knowledge of their area and the families within it which was extremely valuable to new social working and for building relationships.

 

Sarah stated that social work assistants became, via association with social workers, very skilful and were able to provide a huge level of support.   In her team they supported social workers in the background documents required for adoptions such as life story books in order to help meet statutory timescales. 

 

Q- Although you are both KCC employees the adoption service is provided by Coram have any issues arisen in working with them?

 

Sarah and Sinead confirmed that the relationship with KCC’s children in care teams and Coram was good.  Sinead stated that her team had completed 12 adoptions so far this year, in order for these to be dealt with quickly a good relationship with Coram was necessary.  KCC had been working with Coram for at least 2 years so this was a relationship that had been built up over a period of time.

 

Q – In relation to unaccompanied asylum seeking children, there may be issues in relation to culture, language and religion therefore does this means that you spend more time supporting these children compared to other Looked after Children?

 

Sinead confirmed that communication difficulties with unaccompanied asylum seeking children were normally the main issue which made it difficult to build relationships with them.  The interpretation service had been unreliable with social workers having to wait for an interpretation to attend which was very time consuming and distressing for the child.

 

Sarah referred to the issue of integration and the need for the young person to be integrated into our society.

 

Sinead also explained that these children/young people ended to try to support one another and form groups and there may be a risk that within that group maybe an individual who was not a positive interest.

 

Q – What can KCC as a local authority to prevent child exploitation?

 

Sinead confirmed that there had been a lot of awareness raising over the past months.  An issue that had come from Members was the importance of ensuring that there was an awareness of the issues around child sexual abuse and the importance of there being tools in place to deal with this.

 

Sarah stated that one of the key issues around child sexual exploitation was the importance of interagency working and this was where Members were best placed to support inter agency co-operation for example between the police and colleague in education.  She emphasised that relationship building and joint working were critical.  A lot of mapping was being carried out to identify where patterns were developing and to have discussions across agencies.

 

Sinead referred to the service provided to children in care by the CAMHS which had developed over the past 4 to 6 months, this was useful in providing support regarding sexual exploitation e.g. workshops for young people and 1 to 1 support e.g. over a six week period.  It is extremely helpful for the young person to receive this type of support from someone other than their social worker. 

 

Sinead confirmed that in relation to child exploitation there were certain areas in Kent where children were more vulnerable and she confirmed that her team were in regular contact with the police regarding the situation.   She stated that the child in care out of hour’s service was brilliant.  It was important that foster carers were aware that if a child went missing they should be looking for signs such as coming home in different clothes and having new phones for example and made the social worker aware so that this could be explored in their follow up interview with the child. 

 

Q – How do we ensure that accommodation that we provide for Children in care is safe?

 

Sinead explained that Foster Carers had a full assessment and those provided by independent agencies were assessed to she is they were suitable for Kent’s C in C.  There was also supported lodgings which again were all assessed.  Some unaccompanied asylum seeking children were place in group living but this accommodation was also inspected to see if it was suitable for these children.

 

Sarah stated that issues had been identified regarding the quality of supported lodgings accommodation.  This young people are able to cope with independent living better than others and therefore this was reviewed as necessary. 

 

Sinead stated that it would be useful to have a formal assessment process for supported accommodation across the county like a “kite mark” so that all were of an agreed standard.  So that the same rigorous process that was applied to foster care accommodation could be applied to supported accommodation a part of one service.