Agenda item

The Chair welcomed Claire Coutinho MP, Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, to the meeting of the Children and Young People Board.

The Minister emphasised that the government wanted to strengthen loving relationships between families and outlined that the £200 million funding for children’s services would be spent to focus on:

• Families in crisis - by first addressing early intervention/help for families suffering from drug abuse, mental health challenges and domestic violence.
• Use of Kinship carers – to maintain connection to family where possible.
• Social workforce – reduce turnover of staff to reduce instability in relationships.
• Care leavers – focus on providing better access to opportunities.
• Market for placements – children’s homes and supported accommodation.

Members comments:

• Funding for children’s homes and the fostering sector was urgently needed due to the increasing costs of placements which was unsustainable.
• A member asked how regional care cooperatives would be rolled out.
• Concern was raised around local government’s role in quality assurance as local authorities provided a link between education and care.
• Education for parents was needed to prevent the over reliance on Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). EHCPs can be seen as a magic bullet but other measures can and should be explored to ensure the best outcomes for children.

The Minister’s response:

• A review of funding for children’s homes and fostering was needed to ensure specialist provision could be provided to those in real need.
• In order to improve placement stability, security, safety and permanence for children, significant work was being undertaken to improve the fostering system including an uplift to the national minimum allowance, the roll out of the Mockingbird Programme and work to help recruit new foster carers (only 4% of those interested in foster care become foster carers).
• There would be two pilots of regional care cooperatives to test integrated commissioning of services. This would include secure accommodation to match need regionally and reduce issues such as bidding wars. Members were pleased with this ‘test and learn’ approach.
• A system strategy would be worked on with the NHS to provide a joint specialist health workforce.
• A new inspection framework would ensure local authorities would be at the heart of quality assurance, however each partner would have a social care inspector. Local inclusion plans and partnership working, would put local authorities at the centre of assessing strategic need in SEND – which would allow councils to drive partners in quality assurance.
• Ambitions and funding to train 5000 early years practitioners to become SENCos.
• Need for further teacher training was noted and practice guides on national standards on good intervention in SEND would be distributed.Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) had produced promising results. Increased provision and mental health support teams would be explored in schools.
• Agreed that it was important to increase knowledge across the mainstream system which would provide parents with understanding of EHCPs.

The Chair thanked the Minister and emphasised the enthusiasm of the Board to continue the dialogue.

Decision

The Board agreed to note the update on the Implementation Strategy and SEND.

Action

• Children Social Care Placements Task group to share final report in June with the Board and the Minister.