Agenda and minutes

Apologies had been received from Tom Wells, Dr David Lewis and Heather Manning.

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 14 October 2021 were accepted as an accurate record of the meeting and would be signed by the Chairman.

To receive a presentation from Adam Johnston.

Adam Johnston explained to Board Members that Worcestershire Children First had a legal responsibility to ensure that each child had a health assessment as they become accommodated.

Adam underlined the importance of compliance in terms of the work being undertaken to ensure every looked after child had an up-to-date health assessment. He detailed the focus on qualitative issues to ensure health assessments meaningfully inform subsequent emotional health and well-being and mental health support. Focus was necessarily being put on collaboratively working with health partners to ensure such support was available and timely in delivery, which was currently not the case.

RESOLVED that following the quality audit in April a further update would be brought back to the Corporate Parenting Board.

Presented by Maria White.

District Foster Carer Recruitment – Maria White and Alison Williams

Maria White gave the Corporate Parenting Board an update on the current situation with Worcestershire Children First Fostering as the Responsible Individual. Maria outlined the improvement work streams and progress made thus far, alongside a number of the Fostering Managers and the Recruitment Lead for Fostering.

The Board were assured that all workstreams were progressing well.

Items to be considered at future meetings include:

-        Annual IRO report

-        Annual Care Leavers report

-        Annual Virtual School report.

The items to be considered at future meetings were noted and it was suggested that an update on Health Assessments should be added to the list. An update on the Fostering Improvement Plan could also be considered in future once more work had been undertaken.

The data report was noted.

The Chairman mentioned that it had been suggested to him that there should be Corporate Parenting Champions for different aspects, such as health or housing but he explained that he expected the Corporate Parenting Representatives from the Districts to be a Champion for their areas. He hoped the data provided for each district could be used to identify any issues in a specific area and actions could then be taken to investigate the particular issue.

Adam Johnston

The Board was assured that young people had had the chance to provide input to the content and presentation of the pledges. The pledges were for all looked after children and care leavers but they could be applied to individuals.

Cue or prompt cards were being developed to be used alongside the pledges and it was hoped that Board Members, in their role as Corporate Parents, could make use of them to start conversations with young people or to inform others of what was involved in being a Corporate Parent.

Andy Roberts and Adam Johnston

The Chairman suggested that great value could be gained from Members of the Corporate Parenting Board attending some of the focus or support groups for Foster Carers. It was recognised that if carers agreed to Councillors attending their group, they were sometimes able to air concerns to them, when they felt they were not able to raise them in more formal review situations.

Dates 2022

Thursday 12 May 2022

Tuesday 12 July 2022

Wednesday 5 October 2022

Tuesday 29 November 2022

Locations to be finalised.

• Thursday 12 May 2022
• Tuesday 12 July 2022
• Wednesday 5 October 2022
• Tuesday 29 November 2022

All at 2pm, locations to be notified.