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Dear colleague,
Welcome to the March edition of the LGA’s Children and Young People Bulletin.
I would like to start by paying tribute to the work of you and your teams over the recent weeks in which we have seen the Covid-19 pandemic affect every area of our lives. I have nothing but admiration for the dedication and determination shown by councils across the country as they have worked to make sure our children and young people are kept safe in these unprecedented times.
The team at the LGA is speaking with the Government on a daily basis, raising issues on your behalf to help you respond to the crisis. Your feedback is important to help us ensure Government understands the issues you are facing on the ground – please send through any issues you’d like to make us aware of to coronavirus.enquiries@local.gov.uk
You can also find all of the Government’s specific advice for children and young people on our dedicated section on the LGA’s coronavirus hub.
Councillor Judith Blake
Chair, LGA Children and Young People Board |
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News
Coronavirus
You can find all of the Government advice about coronavirus in one place on our Coronavirus hub. This includes the latest guidance for children’s residential settings, educational settings, and employers and businesses.
Government reshuffle
You will have seen that Gavin Williamson has retained his role as Secretary of State for Education in the recent Government reshuffle. Other appointments within the Department for Education are:
- Nick Gibb will continue as Minister of State for School Standards.
- Michelle Donelan takes on a new portfolio and has been appointed as Minister of State for Universities.
- Vicky Ford has been appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families.
- Gillian Keegan has been appointed as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Apprenticeships and Skills.
- Baroness Berridge has been appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the School System.
Baroness Barran MBE has retained her role as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Civil Society and DCMS. Her portfolio includes youth and social action.
Consultations
Please note that we have raised with the Government the fact that councils, providers and schools will have very limited capacity to respond to consultations under the current circumstances, or to support care experienced young people to respond. We have therefore asked whether deadlines can be extended and are waiting on confirmation.
Unregulated accommodation
The Government has launched a consultation on reforms to unregulated provision for children in care and care leavers. This includes proposals to introduce minimum standards for unregulated settings, and to make it illegal to place under 16s in unregulated provision. We would be grateful for your own experiences of using unregulated settings, as well as your thoughts on the Government’s proposals, so that these can influence our response. Please email louise.smith@local.gov.uk
Government has also asked that:
- Care experienced people are made aware of the consultation so that they can respond or influence responses
- Specific examples are provided around the use of emergency unregulated accommodation so that they can better understand the needs of these young people and therefore what accommodation needs to be provided to reduce the need for emergency unregulated/unregistered placements.
Keeping children safe in education – consultation
The Government has launched a consultation on proposed changes to the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance. In particular, this proposes changes to the role of the Designated Safeguarding Lead to require them to have a greater focus on improving the academic achievement of children on the edge of care. If you would like to feed into the LGA’s response, please send your comments to louise.smith@local.gov.uk
Adoption Support Fund
The Government has confirmed transitional funding arrangements for the Adoption Support Fund beyond March 2021 to reduce the uncertainty for both families and those supporting them. Some funding has been committed for 2021-22 so that in cases where therapy packages have been agreed and started in the 2020-21 financial year, families will be able to access support beyond March 2021. Packages of support will be limited to a maximum of 9 months from July 2020 until the Spending Review settlement is known. Download the Adoption Support Fund Transitory Funding 2020/21 factsheet.
Inquiry into historic abuse claims
At the start of the month, the LGA gave evidence to the IICSA as part of its Inquiry into Accountability and Reparations for Victims and Survivors of CSA. It has also requested that the LGA and the Association of British Insurers should each separately produce codes of practice for responding to civil claims. We are very keen to base this on the views of councils, and those wishing to be involved in the code’s development should contact emma.jenkins@local.gov.uk [Forgive the acronyms above which I’ve used to ensure firewalls and spam filters don’t stop you getting this update].
Profit-making and financial risk in independent children’s social care placements
You may have seen coverage of the research that we commissioned looking at profit making and financial risk in the biggest independent providers of placements for children in care. We are increasingly concerned about the levels of debt and indicators of financial risk in some of the largest groups, as well as the lack of market oversight which means we have no clear understanding about how profit, consolidation and risk are affecting the market and outcomes for children in care. We are calling on the Government to introduce oversight of groups of providers, and work with councils to support more in-house and smaller providers to ensure we have the placements that meet the needs of our children.
CSA Centre – New Research
The Centre of Expertise on CSA has published a new report looking at typologies of CSA to support professionals to understand different types of offending including CSA in the family, through online interaction or through sharing or viewing images.
Clarification whether a service is registered with Ofsted
All children’s social care services that are registered with Ofsted can be found on the Ofsted reports website. However, as we cannot publish the name and address of children’s homes, if someone wants to find a children’s home on the website they need to know the home’s unique reference number (URN) and search using that. Therefore, it is not always easy to identify whether a particular service is registered or not.
Every local authority can access an extract from our register of social care providers which includes all registered children’s homes along with other information like recent inspection judgements and the address of the home.
We will send this extract to up to four different people in each local authority each month. To access the register you need to email millie.drysdale@ofsted.gov.uk and provide the following information:
- Name of local authority
- Name of nominated individual(s)
- Position / title of nominated individual(s)
- Contact email address of nominated individual(s)
- Contact telephone number of nominated individual(s).
Where someone in your authority is already receiving the register each month, if you email the address above we can also tell you who they are.
As well as this list, where local authorities are unsure whether a specific children’s social care service is registered with Ofsted, they can ask their regional contact at Ofsted to check this for them. LAs can also ask the same contact whether a service has applied to Ofsted to register.
first magazine
LGA's membership magazine 'first' is received as a hard copy by over 18,000 councillors and 400 chief executives. In a response to demand, we have made it easier to read online by creating a dedicated website to read all of its articles, interviews and opinion pieces.
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