a)        

The performance report gave data for Quarter 3 which represented October, November and December 2024;

b)       

Children’s Social Care Benchmarking had been updated to figures as of 31 March 2024.

c)        

Children’s services predicted a rise in the number of Child Protection Plans following its response to the Ofsted inspection in 2022 and as a result of improving it response to thresholds and decision making. The next phase would ensure that children and families were receiving the right help and support;

d)       

It was acknowledged that there were some children that if they had received different support other than statutory child protection intervention which was earlier, harm could have been prevented;

e)       

There was a high proportion of children who were experiencing neglect that were subject to re-referrals into the service. The service would see improvement, but that improvement was not sustained following the stepping down to universal services. It was acknowledged that the re-referral rate was high, but there was a high level of quality assurance in that space. The service was also building capacity better around the family to make the change and improvements more sustainable. The council was also strengthening its early help offer to ensure that when a social worker was not involved, there was sufficient support in the families community;

f)         

There was a reliance on agency workers due to the vacancy rate within Children’s services which was pressuring the service to maintain good caseload levels for its workforce to provide a successful intervention;

g)        

Plymouth’s number of children and young people in unregistered provision had decreased to two and was positive for the service in which that number had fluctuated significantly. The two young people in their provisions were in provisions that were CQC registered but not Ofsted registered;

h)       

Councillor Laing had a number of conversations with Ofsted and the Department for Education to speed up the process for registering provisions as this was having an impact on children and young people using unregistered provisions;

i)         

There were around 20 children and young people that were in residential placements ready to step down to high support foster placements, but those foster placements were not available for the city. The Family homes for Plymouth children was a new scheme which was developed to not just provide additional financial support to Plymouth City Council foster carers that were able to take children with more challenging and complex needs, but also a better support package wrapped around them. The model provided an additional £800 month fee to Plymouth City Council carers as there was a requirement to have at least one carer at home all the time to meet the needs of those complex children;

j)         

The inaugural Fostering Summit that took place in 2024 was successful and of the actions identified most were implemented. Plymouth aimed to be a council that valued foster carers by listening and implementing changes following their suggestions.