1 Summary

1.1 The following decisions are sought.

1.2 That the Executive Member approves the proposed developments in the Fostering Service in 2004/05, and, in addition, approves proposals to build on these initial pilots and develop the wider range of family placement services during 2005/06.

2 Reason(s)

2.1 In order to increase the number and choice of foster placements within Hampshire, and improve placement choice for children who are looked after, thus enhancing stability of placement.

2.2 To improve the life chances of looked after children, as described in the County Councils Corporate Aims.

2.3 To reduce expenditure on placements with independent fostering agencies.

3 Other options considered and rejected

3.1 To continue the current, rising use of independent fostering agencies, who may not be able to provide placements within Hampshire, and whose costs are markedly higher than Hampshire's in-house service.


4 Conflicts of Interest declared by the decision-maker or a member for officer consulted

4.1 None.


5 Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee

5.1 None

6 Reason(s) for the matter being dealt with if urgent

6.1 Not applicable.

Approved by: Date of decision:

Cllr. Felicity Hindson

1 Introduction

1.1 This report outlines the proposals for piloting key developments in the Hampshire fostering Service in 2004/05. It builds on earlier reports to the Social Care Policy Review Committee in September 2004 and to the Executive Member's Decision days in September and October 2004.

1.2 The report also outlines proposals for building on those pilot schemes during 2005/06 .

1.3 As an underpinning principle it confirms the Social Services Department's commitment to children who are in the care of the Local Authority, living in stable, permanent families, in order for them to achieve their full potential as described in the County Council's Corporate Strategy.

2 Hampshire County Council Corporate Strategy

2.1 The Hampshire fostering service, and the proposed developments, support the strategic aims of the County Council, in particular:-

2.1.1 Aim 1: Maximising life opportunities; in this case for some of our most vulnerable members of the community.

2.1.2 Aim 5: Improving services, and,

2.1.3 Aim 6: Developing Councillors and staff in terms of Members' involvement on Fostering Panels and improvements for Foster Carers.

3 Race Relations (Amendment) Act

3.1 The Government Regulations and Inspection arrangements specify requirements concerning racial (and other forms of) discrimination. Compliance with the Act in terms of carrying out an Impact Assessment is confirmed, forming part of the programme of work relating to the Department's Service Plans.

4 Background

4.1 A number of reports have been prepared following the reorganisation of the Family Placement Service as part of the remodelling of the Children's Sector in the Social Services Department, and following an inspection by the Social Services Inspectorate in 1999/2000.

4.2 The Executive Member for Social Care approved proposals for investment in the fostering service in October 2004, accepting the conclusions of the above reports that the fostering service is the primary provider of family based care for Hampshire's looked after children, and that in order for the service to increase its capacity, certain improvements are critical.

4.3 These improvements consist of developing support services for Foster Carers, as well as developing specialist allowance and fee paying schemes to meet the needs of children who have special needs.

4.4 The Hampshire fostering service does not currently have a scheme which would enable foster carers to make fostering their primary source of income, and it is this scheme which the Social Services Department proposes to develop, recognising that some children and young people have a level of dependence which requires their foster carers to be available full time in order to care for them.

5 Proposals for Piloting developments in 2004/05

5.1 The pilot schemes to be introduced before the end of March 2005, will be in respect of both payments made to foster carers and service development proposals. The costs are attached in Appendix A.

5.2 The most ambitious development is in piloting arrangements to employ ` `professional' or specialist foster carers, who would care for children who have been identified as highly dependant or present a specific challenge, and who would otherwise be living in residential care, or in independent foster care placements away from Hampshire.

5.3 The introduction of such arrangements would increase the likelihood of children who might otherwise experience multiple placements, being maintained in foster placements within Hampshire, offering them greater stability and leading to better outcomes. This, in turn, would improve the Department's performance against key performance indicators.

5.4 The County's fostering recruitment team has experience of prospective new foster carers, with proven experience in childcare, expressing an interest in fostering children with complex needs, but being unable to pursue an application to foster for Hampshire Social Services, because of their need to earn an income. Hampshire Social Services do not currently have the ability to offer such an income.

5.5 The pilot nature of the scheme would enable a balance to be tested between the level of remuneration, and the respite and support packages which would be available to the children and the foster carers. It would also ensure that the children who would most benefit from such a scheme are identified, and that foster carers who can best meet these children's needs are recruited to the scheme. Decisions can then be taken about the extent to which the scheme should be developed in the future. A number of children have already been identified, some of whom are in residential care, and others who have experienced a number of placement breakdowns, who would benefit from the new proposals. The foster carers to participate in the scheme would be a combination of current foster carers and foster carers who are being or will be recruited specifically to the scheme.

5.6 It will be critical to monitor and evaluate the impact of the scheme, both on foster care recruitment but also on outcomes for children. In that way the decision to extend or develop the pilot during 2005/06, can be made promptly and efficiently.

5.7 The funding for this proposal would exert an additional pressure of £25,000 in the current financial year.

5.8 The second proposal is to formalise the existing arrangement whereby foster carers who make themselves available to take children in an emergency overnight or at weekends, are paid a small retainer in recognition of this service. To date this has been developed in an informal way, and it is proposed that the service be developed on a more formal footing, which would enable foster carers to be recruited specifically to this scheme, perhaps as part of a `progression' scheme for foster carers. The financial impact of extending this scheme to the end of the current financial year is to exert a further pressure on the budget of £8,800.

5.9 The third proposal concerns the introduction of a recruitment incentive bonus, initially on a pilot basis, in recognition of the fact that the best ambassadors for foster care are foster carers themselves. Those foster carers who take the time and trouble to explain the fostering task, with its challenges and rewards, to others in the community, will receive a payment of £500 when a new foster carer is successfully approved and begins to foster for Hampshire. This will have no effect on this financial year's budget position as the bonus will be payable at the end of the assessment process, which takes between four and six months to complete.

5.10 To complement the introduction of the above schemes, three additional services will be introduced to enhance the recruitment and retention of Hampshire's foster carers. The first of these is to re-designate three social work posts from other teams in the county where recruitment of staff has not been possible, to enhance the County's fostering recruitment team This will mean that foster carers who are successfully encouraged to consider the fostering task, can be trained, and recruited as efficiently as possible, without the possibility of delay.

5.11 The County recruitment team currently has a full time establishment of 3.5 social workers , and relies on staff from other teams within the children's sector, to undertake assessments and training of prospective foster carers on a sessional basis during periods of high recruitment activity.

5.12 The second scheme proposes that additional staff are re-designated over a six to nine month period, in order to establish the degree to which this will enable the team to undertake more frequent and vigorous recruitment activity, additional training of prospective foster carers, and ultimately to recruit more foster carers. This should lead to an increase in the number of new foster carers starting to foster for Hampshire. The additional cost during this financial year will be £15,000.

5.13 The Social Services Department already has an Out of Hours service, which offers advice and responds to emergencies, and which foster carers already access. It has been identified that a more responsive service would make a substantial difference to foster carers' ability and willingness to care for children with more challenging and complex needs. Such a service would complement the existing Out of hours service, but be able to respond in a more pro-active way, by visiting and offering personal support to foster carers, before a difficult situation becomes a crisis.

5.14 There are a number of possible models for developing such a service, and the pilot will enable these models to be tested, before establishing it on a more formal footing. For example, social workers in the family placement teams already carry out a range of duties out of office hours, related to recruitment, training and support. There are a number of ways in which an additional support service could be meshed with these duties, as well as fitting with the existing Out of Hours service, and the pilot will give an opportunity to test the most effective model.

5.15 In the first instance, newly approved foster carers, and those with children with more complex needs will be targeted for the service. Once the model is fully developed, all foster carers will be able to benefit from the enhanced support service. The cost of this development during the current year will be £13,200

5.16 The final proposal for a service development to be piloted before the end of this financial year, is in respect of additional day time support for foster carers. This is an area which has long been recognised as being even more important to many foster carers than increased remuneration.

5.17 Hampshire Social Services Department has already piloted the development of `Foster Care Support Workers' during 2000. Ten foster carers were recruited to five full time posts, for a period of twelve months, to offer practical advice and support to their colleague foster carers. The pilot was formally evaluated by the Department's Performance Management Unit, which concluded that the posts were extremely effective, and highly valued by foster carers and staff.

5.18 Seven of the ten foster carers remain in post today, and it is proposed to develop this idea and recruit more foster carers into specific support roles. The model will have to be adapted, as Fostering Regulations ( 2002) now prevent foster carers who were not already employed before April 2001 from being employed for more than five hours each week, by the fostering service. This limits in some ways, the range of support tasks which can be carried out, and means that a larger number of foster carers will have to be employed in order to offer the range of support required.

5.19 Tasks will have to be carefully targeted, and are likely to include the support of new foster carers, the support of carers whose looked after children are not in full time education, or children who are placed at a distance from home and need to be transported in order to maintain contact with family members or friends. It may be that certain geographical areas of the County will benefit from these support roles more than others, and again the piloting of the new Foster Care Support Worker roles will enable the new arrangements to be tested before further developments are agreed. The cost for the current financial year will be £6,800.

6 Financial Considerations and Conclusions

6.1 The additional cost this year of developing the proposed pilots is £60,000. This represents an additional pressure on the budget for the Social Services Department. It is critical, however, that the investment proposals recommended in principle by the Policy Review Committee and agreed by the Executive member for Social Care in September and October 2004, are put into practice without further delay.

6.2 All of the proposals will be evaluated over the next six to nine months, in order to ensure that they represent value for money, as well as to ensure that they have the desired impact, namely increasing the number and range of skilled foster carers, creating increased choice of placements for children, and leading to better outcomes for those children.

6.3 A further report will be presented to the Executive member for Social Care in February 2005, which will describe the baseline position and the measures against which the pilots will be evaluated, both in terms of improved outcomes and value for money. If the pilots achieve the desired outcomes, decisions can be taken during 2005/06 about whether or not to extend the programmes.

6.4 In addition, if the full impact of improvements to services and payments in the Fostering Service is to be felt, and on the assumption of success, the proposed pilots represent only the first phase of investment proposals for the fostering service. In the coming year consideration will have to be given to the introduction of a nationally recommended fostering allowance rate, which is now a requirement within the Children Act, as well as to the range of additional services outlined in previous reports. These include increased respite care, holiday pay for foster carers, enhancing the current skill fee schemes, as well as a range of other proposals.

7 Recommendation

That the Executive Member for Social Care

7.1 Approve the recommendations for introducing improvements to the Hampshire fostering service on a pilot basis during 2004/05, recognising that these represent additional pressures on the budget.

7.2 Invites a further report in February 2005 which will outline the baseline position and performance measures against which the pilot schemes will be evaluated.

APPENDIX A

Priorities for Pilot Schemes to be Introduced before 1^st April 2005

PAYMENTS TO CARERS

INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE TO IMPROVE SERVICES

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - Background Documents

The Following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB the list excludes:

1. Published works

Documents which disclose exempt of confidential information as defined in the Act.