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Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Rooms 2/3, Civic Offices Angel Street Bridgend CF31 4WB. View directions

Contact: Andrew Rees  Senior Democratic Services Officer

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies for Absence

To receive apologies for absence (to include reasons, where appropriate) from Members/Officers.

 

Minutes:

Apologies for absence were received from the following Members/Officers for the reasons so stated.

 

Councillor D Sage – Recuperating

Councillor PWJ White – Recuperating

Councillor DBF White – Hospital appointment

Councillor HJ David – Unwell

Councillor JE Lewis – Holiday

Councillor LC Morgan – Unwell

S Cooper – Annual leave

M Shephard – Other Council business

 

2.

Appointment of the Chairperson

Minutes:

RESOLVED:                 That in the absence of the Committee’s Chairperson, it was moved and seconded that Councillor M E J Nott be appointed Chairperson for the meeting.

 

 

Councillor Nott took the Chair.

 

He also welcomed S Daniel to the meeting, a new Democratic Services Assistant in the Democratic Services Section.

 

3.

Declarations of Interest

To receive declarations of personal and prejudicial interest (if any) from Members/Officers in accordance with the provisions of the Members’ Code of Conduct adopted by Council from 1 September 2008.

 

Minutes:

None

4.

Approval of Minutes pdf icon PDF 47 KB

To receive for approval the minutes of a meeting of the Corporate Parenting Cabinet Committee of 5 January 2015.

Minutes:

RESOLVED:               That the minutes of the Corporate Parenting Cabinet Committee of 5 January 2015, be approved as a true and accurate record.  

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5.

Overview of Current Regulated Residential Child Care Provision in Bridgend pdf icon PDF 53 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Corporate Director – Social Services and Wellbeing submitted a report, to provide Cabinet Members with an overview of the current residential regulated childcare provision in Bridgend CBC and provide cases studies of Children and Young People who have benefited from the services offered, and also to seek Cabinet’s approval to change the “Statement of Purpose” for Newbridge House in order to match the terms of the registration certificate provided by CSSIW.

 

The Head of Adult Social care advised by way of background information, that Bridgend CBC currently has three residential Children’s Homes, regulated by CSSIW, delivering services to children and young people aged between 0 – 18 years and these were outlined in paragraph 3.1 of the report, including the type of support services they provided.

 

The Group Manager – Children’s Regulated Services  confirmed that each of the above residential homes had its own “statement of purpose”. These have all previously been approved by the Corporate Parenting Committee and were detailed in Appendix 1 to the report. None of the units were currently registered to provide emergency bed provision as other effective arrangements are in place to respond to such situations.

 

She added that each residential unit is subject to “The Children’s Homes (Wales) Regulations 2002” and as such is inspected by CSSIW every year. (Copies of each of the most recent inspection reports were shown at Appendix 2 to the report.) For many years, all the Council’s residential child care homes had received very positive inspections with Managers and Practitioners receiving praise for the quality of services being delivered.

 

All the units’ registered Managers were experienced managers and worked closely together to support each other. They had clear reporting mechanisms in place and were confident decision makers she added.

 

The Group Manager – Children’s Regulated Services advised that all the residential units had developed positive links within the local neighbourhood, with Newbridge House and Sunnybank having named Police Community Service Officers (PCSO’s) who regularly call in at the homes to meet with and develop important relationships with the young people accommodated in order minimise situations of self-harm, risk taking behaviour and any offending or anti-social behaviour.

 

She then proceeded to give a resume of further information in respect of these establishments, as was contained in more detail, in paragraphs 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 of the report.

 

The Cabinet Member – Resources asked if the Committee could in due course, be informed if accreditation to staff at Sunnybank had been successful.

 

The Leader advised that he was happy with the progress being made in the Residential Care facilities detailed in the report, and particularly at Bakers Way, where the most recent CSSIW Inspection report noted that ‘ support is provided for children/young people and their families in an environment which is caring and supportive and child centred in their approach. ‘

 

A Member echoed the comments of the Leader, but asked if there were any children or young people on a waiting list awaiting care provision in one of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.

Update on Progress Made to Increase the Number of In-house Foster Carers and Placements within Bridgend pdf icon PDF 61 KB

Minutes:

The Corporate Director – Social Services and Wellbeing submitted a report to provide the Cabinet Committee with an update in respect of the progress made to increase the number of in house foster carers and placements within Bridgend, as well as highlighting significant achievements made during this financial year.

 

After a brief introduction to the report from the Head of Adult Social Care, the Group Manager – Children’s Regulated Services advised that Bridgend CBC had a clear corporate parenting responsibility to ensure that its Looked After Children (LAC) population wherever possible, and when it is safe to do so, are looked after within their local community where they will maintain family contacts and have their cultural, social, health and educational needs promoted.

 

She added that the Local Authority has access to a dedicated marketing resource to support recruitment of foster carers and ensure that marketing is appropriately targeted. It also has a Recruitment Officer based within the team to oversee the planning and management of assessments, both for general foster carers and managing the court timescales and assessments for relative foster carers.

 

She further added that the Local Authority currently had 38 approved relative foster carer households, and was focused towards working to secure permanence via legal orders other than care orders, thereby reducing the number of children placed with family who are categorised as LAC. Relative foster carers were carers who are approved specifically to look after named children within their family.

 

The Group Manager – Children’s Regulated Services stated that the Local Authority has 17 general in-house foster carers who are resident outside of the Local Authority’s boundaries, supporting the Council to offer in-house provision to children who have been identified as needing out of county placements.

 

The Local Authority had seen an increase over the past year of carers who wish to transfer from Independent Fostering Agencies (IFA’s) to the Local Authority service. This is reported to be due to the reputation of BFC and as a result of consistent positive CSSIW inspection reports. BFC also had a sound reputation amongst its foster carers for the excellent support it provides to carers from a dedicated team of professional social workers and a placement support worker. The IFA carers report identified that in BFC there was a better choice of placements and matching of children to households and, in some cases, better remuneration for the task they perform.

 

She reminded Members that in 2013 a decision was made to disband the Resolutions fostering service. Consequently existing Resolutions carers were encouraged to opt to transfer to any one of the four Resolutions partnership Local Authorities. Throughout the past year Bridgend CBC had been fortunate, through acting promptly and setting out clear guidelines and expectations in writing (for all the carers wishing to transfer), in being able to secure a significant number of the foster carers who were previously approved by the Resolutions Fostering service. Only one carer household out of 19 chose to transfer to another fostering agency (for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

7.

Informal Forward Work Programme - April 2015 to October 2015 pdf icon PDF 22 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support submitted a report, seeking approval for the proposed Informal Forward Work Programme (IFWP) covering the above period.

 

Committee Members noticed from debate earlier in the meeting, that a further item was to be added to the IFWP for the meeting scheduled in July, namely a report regarding the “National approach towards Advocacy Services”.

 

The Head of Safeguarding and Family Support confirmed this, and added that a report on the ‘ Connecting Families “Edge of Care Project” ’ had also been deferred from today’s to the July meeting, the agenda for which was probably now too large when bearing in mind the other items scheduled to be considered at that meeting.

 

In light of this, and following a directive from the Corporate Director – Education and Transformation, it was  

 

RESOLVED:              That the Corporate Parenting Cabinet Committee noted the report, and agreed that in view of the number of agenda items proposed for the next scheduled meeting, the Head of Safeguarding and Family Support consults with the Chairperson of the Committee in order to establish agenda items for the next two scheduled meetings.

 

 

 

 

8.

Urgent Items

To consider any other item(s) of business in respect of which notice has been given in accordance with Part 4 (paragraph 4) of the Council Procedure Rules and which the person presiding at the meeting is of the opinion should be reason of special circumstances be transacted at the meeting as a matter of urgency.

 

 

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