Issue - meetings

Fostering Service Redesign

Meeting: 09/03/2022 - Children and Young People's Services Scrutiny Committee (Item 53)

53 Fostering Service Redesign Phase 2 pdf icon PDF 53 KB

This report outlines the proposals for Phase 2 of the Fostering Service Redesign.  The Committee is asked to scrutinise the proposals and provide any recommendations to the Cabinet Member prior to a decision being taken.

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

53.1     The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Cllr Russell, introduce the proposal for Phase 2 of the Fostering Service Redesign, phase 1 having been addressed in April 2021.  She reported that this phase of the redesign was designed to offer more local in-house foster placements, to different cohorts of children with a varying range of needs, a much stronger offer of remuneration, support and respite and to improve retention rates, increase the social care workforce and reduce caseloads and make West Sussex a provider of choice. 

 

53.2     The Assistant Director (Corporate Parenting) outlined the headlines by saying that previous under-investment by the County Council had resulted in children being placed in out of county fostering placements.  The status quo needed rebalancing before transformation could begin.  The development of a Business Intelligence Hub would allow the service to focus on areas not done so in the past by producing analytics of patterns and trends.

 

53.3     Members of the Committee asked questions and a summary of those questions and answers follows:

 

·       The Business Intelligence Hub would be able to run targeted campaigns to recruit new foster carers in areas such as BAME, younger carers and LGBT+. Currently communications were shared online and Members could support by retweeting and reposting these.  Children seeking asylum needed quite specific cultural supports and any support from Members to find foster carers in a wider range of cultures would be gratefully received.

 

·       It was hoped the ratio of in-house foster carers to external foster carers would improve dramatically to maybe a 60-40 split.

 

53.4     The Chairman thanked the service for the report and the ambition and quality of the work.

 

53.5     Resolved – That the Committee:

 

1.   Welcomes the ambition and quality of the report and fully supports the proposals to increase the number of inhouse foster carers.

 

2.   Highlights the importance of focussing on recruiting foster carers from a wide range of backgrounds to ensure there are suitable placements for all our children and welcome that this is part of the proposals.

 

3.   Recognises the role of members in communicating fostering opportunities and will continue to share these on social media within their communities.

 

4.   Will monitor the impact of the proposals through the Quarterly Performance and Resources Report.