To consider the attached report.

Although tremendous work was being done by the current carers who were very loyal to the service, challenges remained in recruitment and retention.  The service received a good level of enquiries from potential carers but not enough went on to become foster carers. The service was looking to utilise digital media to advertise further.

Most of Trafford’s children in care were over 10 years of age and a large proportion had been in a placement for over 2 years, with a number being placed with the child’s family. One of the main areas that Trafford struggled was the placement of sibling groups so in those cases Trafford had to go out to the private foster care providers.

Benchmarking had been conducted with other local authorities and Trafford’s level of approvals of foster carers did appear to be lower than the other respondents. Although work needed to be done to see whether other authorities included placements within families, as Trafford excluded those placements from their data.

Following the overview, Councillor Maitland asked whether Trafford had looked further afield than just Greater Manchester for ideas of how to improve recruitment and retention. The Corporate Director for Children’s Services responded that the service had worked with Trafford Housing Trust to look at work being done nationally to identify areas of best practice. Other Local Authorities across Greater Manchester were keen in seeing the outcome of this work, with a view to possibly adopting it.

Councillor Dillon asked how the decision on where a child would be placed was made. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services went through the selection criteria that was part of the council’s rigorous selection process and the Committee were assured the allocation of placements was needs led.

Councillor Acton noted foster caring represented a reduced cost compared to other forms of provision. Councillor Acton expressed his disappointment that Trafford was one of the lowest performing authorities when it came to recruitment and urged the need to find out why. The Corporate Director for Children’s Services responded that the recruitment rate was below where they wanted to be. Trafford had aimed to recruit 15 during the year but had only recruited 4 so far with 4 more being trained.

Councillor Acton asked whether putting additional resources into the foster carer service to provide the support they needed would lead to overall savings. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services agreed that it was an area where the Council could invest to save. The Corporate Director then informed the Committee of the support offered to foster carers and the plans to enhance the offer. 

Councillor New spoke about the advertisements for foster carers and how she felt they were not realistic enough and failed to recognise the pressures that they are likely to face. The Corporate Director for Children’s Services spoke of the way foster caring had changed over the years to the point where service mainly needed foster carers who could look after older children and sibling groups. The change in the demographic of children in care had led to foster carers needing higher levels of emotional resilience and skills.

Councillor Maitland asked how many children were placed with internal foster carers and how many were placed with external foster carers. The Corporate Director of Children’s Services responded that Trafford had 372 children in care 101 were placed with internal foster carers, 113 were living with family members, and 75 were living with parents. 32 were placed with independent foster agencies but while it was more expensive than internal provision it was as high as external residential placements.

RESOLVED: That the update be noted.