6th November 2019
Nick Ramsay AM
Chair, Public Accounts Committee
Dear Nick,
Re: Care Experienced Children and Young People
Thank you for your letter of 21st October requesting an update from the Ministerial Advisory Group with regards to the progress made against the identified work streams.
To improve accountability and opportunities for scrutiny, the Improving Outcomes for Children’s website has just been launched which details the role of the Ministerial Advisory Group and the work of the Improving Outcomes for Children programme. The Annual Report will be published on the website in November. The Ministerial Advisory Group has worked closely with Welsh Government in advising on Phase 3 of the Improving Outcomes for Children programme (2018-21). The Group continues to provide advice and direction to the Improving Outcomes for Children work programme so that it maintains its focus and continues to progress at pace the three key areas for action.
WORKSTREAM 1 – SAFELY REDUCING THE NUMBERS OF CHILDREN IN NEED OF CARE
Strand 1 - Supporting local, regional and national approaches to reducing safely the need for care.
1. Members of our Group undertook an Appreciative Inquiry in six local authorities to help identify effective approaches to family support and strategies for managing risk, including edge of care services. The findings from the Inquiry and subsequent recommendations have been useful in determining how Welsh Government invests in strengthening support for vulnerable families in the community, including services that assist family reunification and exit from care. To help reduce the need for care and more intensive therapeutic services, Welsh Government has invested £15 million over two years via the Integrated Care Fund. Regional Partnership Boards (RPBs) are publishing their plans for making best use of this this grant, including additional capacity for family conferences and reunification of children with birth families. The Reflect project has been rolled out across Wales to reduce the number of children being taken into care by breaking the cycle of repeat pregnancies and recurrent care proceedings.
Strand 2 - Strengthen arrangements for Kinship Carers and Special Guardianship Order
2. The arrangements for supporting kinship carers have been strengthened through co-production of a kinship care guide. The Ministerial Advisory Group has supported this development and the work being done by AFA Cymru to develop a national framework for special guardianship support services.
Strand 3 - Undertake research identifying the number of children who have parents with a learning disability and who no longer live at home and the reasons behind this changed status.
3. As part of the Improving Outcomes for Children programme, Welsh Government commissioned the Institute of Public Care (IPC) to carry out pioneering research to: establish the extent to which parents with a learning disability in Wales are involved with Children’s Social Services; understand the factors driving patterns of involvement; determine practice changes needed to support an improvement agenda in this area of public services. Research findings are due to be published in December 2019.
Strand 4 - Identifying approaches which help to avoid use of court proceedings, encourage the use of measures rather than care orders and promote consistent judicial practice.
4. Welsh Government is working in a number of ways to explore how we can support a whole system approach to reducing the numbers of children entering care. The Family Justice Network and Local Family Justice Boards have key roles in taking forward work with partners including the judiciary, local authorities, Cafcass Cymru and others to explore ways to address the variation between local authorities in terms of the numbers of children in care, how to improve consistency in working practices and share best practice. This work complements the Ministry of Justice’s Targeted Family Justice Review.
WORKSTREAM 2 – HAVING SUFFICIENT HIGH-QUALITY PLACEMENTS FOR CHILDREN WHO ARE LOOKED AFTER
Strand 1 Enabling local authorities to source suitable and timely placements for the children and young people they look after, ensuring that more of them can be placed closer to home.
5. Welsh Government is developing a national strategic approach to the commissioning of placements for looked after children in order to improve sufficiency, choice and quality of placements through better commissioning and regional working. The Ministerial Advisory Group has helped to define the priority areas to be tackled and it will continue to be actively involved. The National Commissioning Board and RPBs have been asked to focus on children’s services, including placements for children who are looked after.
Strand 2 Helping local and central government to work on national, regional and local initiatives that will improve placement choice and quality.
Fostering
6. The National Fostering Framework has developed a strategy for local authority fostering services. There have been considerable efforts to improve:
• the number of enquiries to foster that become approved carers (this includes moves towards a regional approach for dealing with initial enquiries);
• the quality of the service that applicants receive throughout the foster care assessment process;
• the learning and development opportunities for approved foster carers (with introduction of a national learning and development framework scheduled for November); and
• the ‘overall ‘offer’ foster carers receive by being a local authority foster carer (including reductions in Council Tax; online access to the foster care handbook and to foster care payslips; free town centre parking; free access to leisure facilities for the whole foster family).
Adoption
7. Welsh Government has provided local authorities with £2.3 million funding in 2019/20 to help strengthen adoption provision to prevent children re-entering care and to reduce the time they spend waiting to exit care through adoption. The Regional Collaboratives are working with voluntary adoption agency partners on specialist adopter rec