The most significant item scheduled to be discussed during the meeting was an update to the Placement & Sufficiency Strategy 2022-2025. The panel were also scheduled to receive verbal updates about the work of the Corporate Parenting Co-ordinator, the engagement with children and young people in care, the Residential Service and the Corporate Parenting Dashboard. In addition to these updates, reports on the Foster for Bradford service and on the work of the Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) were provided.

Placement & Sufficiency Strategy update

The report submitted to the panel provided an update to the Placement & Sufficiency Strategy 2022-2025. The strategy details how Bradford Council plans to fulfil its legal duty to ensure there are enough placements available locally to meet the needs of all of the children in its care.

The report explains the legal framework for providing placements to looked after children. It also sets out the challenges facing the service, including the shortage of local foster families, the national shortage of placements for children with complex needs, and the shortage of move-on accommodation for care leavers.

The report identifies the priorities that the council is currently focussing on to address the challenges it is facing. These are:

• Developing an 'edge of care' provision
• Increasing the availability of short breaks for children in care
• Developing Foster for Bradford, the council's in-house fostering service
• Increasing the number of beds available within the in-house residential care service
• Reducing the use of external residential care providers
• Increasing the block contract with an external residential care provider from 11 to 20 beds
• Developing a residential care provision for children with complex emotional and behavioural needs
• Developing a residential care provision for children with acute mental health needs
• Increasing the range of registered supported accommodation available for 16- and 17-year-olds
• Improving the planning for move-on accommodation for care leavers.

The report goes on to describe what is currently being done to address these priorities, and to quantify the scale of the problems facing the service.

At the end of October 2024 there were 1,383 children in the care of Bradford Council. Of these, 75 were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) and 284 (20%) were placed more than 20 miles outside of Bradford.

The most common placements were:

• Fostering in-house (285 children, 20.6%)
• Fostering purchased (311 children, 22.5%)
• Kinship care (312 children, 22.6%)

The report explains that there are few suitable placement options available locally for children with complex needs, especially for those who require a high level of care and supervision. This has resulted in the council becoming reliant on spot-purchased solo placements, which are a costly option for the Trust.

A very small number of Bradford's looked after children are placed in unregulated settings because of the lack of regulated placements available.

The report explains that the shortage of foster families is contributing to the council's reliance on expensive purchased provision, often at the expense of keeping children local.

To help address the problems, the report says that a needs assessment has been completed to inform the recruitment and retention strategy for Foster for Bradford. The report also details the work that is currently being undertaken to expand the in-house residential care service.

The high cost of housing is identified as a barrier to recruiting new foster carers, as well as limiting the ability of current carers to offer placements. The report mentions that funding for home adaptations to allow carers to look after more children has been approved in one case and is in the pipeline for two more.

To address the shortage of move-on accommodation, a partnership is being developed with Housing Options, with a Housing Options worker based in the Care Leavers Service. The partnership has led to a Care Leavers Housing Panel being established, which plans for those who have turned 18 but remain in supported accommodation.

The report says that to date the Panel has helped to move more than 80 care leavers to their own tenancy in a timelier way . It also explains that work is being done to identify supported accommodation providers who may be willing to register as landlords. This would mean that care leavers aged 18 in those provisions would be able to claim Housing Benefit.

Three capital projects have been identified:

• 'Strengthening Families Outreach'
• A joint-funded Tier 3.5 provision
• Increasing fostering capacity

Strengthening Families Outreach aims to reduce the need for children to come into care and to safely exit children in care into family or kinship arrangements.

The report describes a capital bid to purchase a building to deliver short-term emergency accommodation and intensive support for children and families. It says that the bid was discussed at a meeting of the Property Asset Group (PAG) in October 2024 and that it was supported by the group. An offer, subject to survey, has been made on a property.

The second project, a joint-funded Tier 3.5 provision, would support a small number of children aged 15-17 with complex mental health and social care support needs.

The report describes a working group that is developing a proposal for a specialist therapeutic setting that will meet both the children's health and social care support needs. It explains that the term Tier 3.5 refers to provision that sits between Tier 4 mental health provision and high-cost residential placements.

The proposal is for the provision to be a joint-funded, dual-registered service that can be configured either as a 2-bed children’s home or 2 solo beds within the same setting.

The third project aims to increase fostering capacity. The report explains that in a survey undertaken by Foster for Bradford in April 2024, 87.5% of foster carers said that they had space in their property that could potentially be used for fostering and that with help to redecorate, renovate, or refurbish the room they could care for another child.

The report describes a proposal for the development of a 'Room Makers Scheme', which would aim to create an additional 10 fostering places in Bradford by providing funding and support to foster carers who are willing to use space within their homes to care for another child.

The report concludes by explaining that a needs assessment and gap analysis to inform the new Placement & Sufficiency Strategy (due in 2025) are in progress, with oversight from the Sufficiency Board.

Foster for Bradford annual reports

A report was presented to the panel that gave an overview of Foster for Bradford. It included the annual reports for Foster for Bradford and the Fostering Panel.

The report explains that Foster for Bradford was launched as an Independent Fostering Agency under Bradford Children and Families Trust in April 2023 and that it was inspected by Ofsted in March 2024, receiving a judgement of 'Requires Improvement' with six recommendations.

The report provides a summary of the performance of Foster for Bradford in 2023-2024, including details about the number of fostering households approved, deregistered and reviewed. It also sets out the challenges the service is facing.

The report explains that Foster for Bradford are actively looking to recruit more foster carers, explaining that a needs assessment and gap analysis will be completed to inform the recruitment strategy for 2024-25 and beyond. It also provides a summary of the marketing and advertising undertaken in 2023-2024 and explains that a 'Faith in Fostering' campaign was launched to attract more carers from ethnically diverse communities.

The report states that Foster for Bradford aim to:

provide high quality care locally for Bradford’s children in care

The report explains that 16 assessments for mainstream/part-time fostering were completed and approved in the year, creating 19 fostering places. It also says that 71 kinship carers were approved during this period, and 98 households ceased to foster, partly because of an increase in the number of children achieving legal permanence via Special Guardianship.

The report goes on to discuss the performance of the Fostering Panel, explaining that it runs four panels each month, chaired by an Independent Panel Chair. It says that the Panel routinely includes questions created by children’s participation groups, and that a Panel Advisor role has been created to improve the quality and timeliness of the work presented to the Panel. It also discusses how feedback from those attending the Panel is gathered and used.

IRO Annual report

The report provided to the panel gave an overview of the service provided by IROs in 2023-2024. It highlighted the challenges facing the service in Bradford and set out its priorities for the coming year.

The report quantifies the number of children entering and leaving the care of the council, as well as providing details about the orders they were subject to and the types of placements they were in.

The report explains that in 2023-24:

• 502 children entered care, a 16% decrease on the previous year
• 601 children left care, a 30% increase on the previous year
• there were 1,485 children in care on 31 March 2024, a 6.5% decrease on the previous year
• the use of Police Powers of Protection decreased by 40%
• the use of Interim Care Orders decreased by 23%
• the number of children subject to a Placement Order increased by 26%
• the number of children in care living with a parent decreased by 30%
• the number of children placed in adoptive placements increased by 19%
• the number of children in unregulated placements was 10 (Bradford Council did not measure this figure in previous years).

The report goes on to explain that there has been:

a sustained focus on exiting children from care by discharging care orders and/or replacing with more permanent orders i.e. Special Guardianship and more recently focus on achieving permanency earlier in the care planning process.

The report details the work the service is undertaking to improve, including working with Leeds Relational Practice Centre to focus on restorative ways of working and improving the effectiveness of actions agreed in the review process. It also explains the service's involvement with the Placement Review Panel and the Permanence Panel.

The report sets out the key priorities for the service in the coming year. These are:

• To continue to maintain a stable and permanent workforce
• To continue to embed improvements to child participation and IRO consultation
• To re-establish IROs undertaking audits
• To embed the promotion of evidence of dispute resolution with partner agencies
• To ensure effective IRO oversight
• To reduce drift and delay in care planning
• To maintain positive working relationships with social care and partner agencies
• To listen to children and young people about how they can improve the service.

The report also details the areas where the service believes social work practice requires further focus in the coming year. These are:

• To ensure the child's voice is heard and understood
• To continue to highlight the impact of changes in social worker/team manager on continuity of care planning for children
• To continue to highlight the importance of information sharing and IRO oversight of care plans
• To continue to highlight the importance of timely decision-making, management oversight and safety planning on incidents of significant harm and permanence planning for children and young people
• To ensure that parents are fully included wherever possible in care planning
• To continue to ensure that the permanence plan remains right for the child/young person and that all avenues are explored to enable them to live with their extended family
• To ensure that young people leaving care are well supported
• To develop relationships within area teams through IROs attending meetings and away days.