Agenda item

Report of the Director of Children’s and Education Services.

The Board considered a report of the Director of Children’s and Education Services that provided an overview of the fostering activity and performance in 2024/25.

Officers explained how the foster care was subject to legislative and regulatory guidance through The Children Act 1989, The Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 and the Fostering Services: National minimum standards 2011. They further explained how it was further regulated through the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations published in 2010 and the Assessment and Approval of Foster carers guidance 2013.

The regulatory framework for fostering set out the minimum standards expected to ensure that the care provided by foster carers was adequate to ensure that those children placed within fostering homes are well cared for and achieved good outcomes.

The requirement for fostering agencies to produce an annual report is primarily set out by Ofsted and governed by the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011, specifically Regulation 35, along with the National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services, particularly Standard 25.7.

The purpose of the annual report was to evaluate the effectiveness of the fostering service; to identify areas for improvement and development; to ensure compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements; to inform stakeholders, about the service outcomes and future plans. The review of the Fostering service activity and performance data was outlined in the Annual Fostering Service report attached.

The Fostering Service plan to improve and develop the following key areas in 2025/2026:

• Continue to drive the Fostering Excellence Project to enable increased capacity and resilience of internal mainstream fostering households
• Continue to develop recruitment of carers from a range of diverse backgrounds to more closely match the backgrounds of children in care
• Identify reasons for drop out between enquiry, expression of interest and approval, to improve conversion rate
• Finalising and launch Coventry’s Kinship strategy and offer
• Continue to develop Kinship fostering in line with the Kinship strategy and our Kinship offer and aim to increase permanence through special guardianship arrangements
• Ongoing growth of the Next steps fostering scheme
• Relaunch parent and child and out of hours schemes
• Launch a short stay provision to support families in need to prevent children coming into care
• Continue to ensure foster carers are consulted about all changes that affect their role
• Widen mentoring offer for connected persons carers and offer to applicants during the assessment process
• Review support available to children of foster carers and newly approved foster carers during their induction period
• Embed DDP principles and continue to upskill all workforce caring for children

In considering the Briefing note and report, the Scrutiny Board asked questions, received responses and discussed a number of matters as summarised below.

• Evidence showed children in foster care often went on to become foster parents
• Foster carers are kept updated and in contact through online networks and mailing lists. There is also financial and practical support available to carers as allocated by an annual review.
• That the budget for fostering could lead to overspends and underspends in some areas during the same year as the budget was aspirational and planned for growth, although it could be later supplemented and adapted through additional support packages.
• The decrease in fostered children was due to more children remaining with their families as encouraged by the council but only when it is decided to have been appropriate and completely safe to do so.
• The fostering panel met weekly and undertook vital work in supporting carers and discussing how to improve the process of fostering.
• It took an average of 2 years from the start of assessment to becoming a foster carer.  Work had started looking at reducing these timescales by using technology in a different way.
• That placement disruption was often related to childhood trauma. Turnover of supervising social workers was low which is important for consistency.
• That fosterers may choose to stop fostering as they age but the council had no age limit on fostering children.
• The council performs medical checks to ensure prospective carers are capable of caring for themselves and children.
• Fostering to adopting is rare but if requested, care is taken to consider its potential impact on the child.
• The council is actively recruiting new foster parents via community groups promoting fostering, links with faith groups, social media and street campaigns, they also specifically target areas where they know homes are more likely to have room to house foster children.
• There are various issues around matching children to families including size of sibling groups, room space within the house and concerns of conflict between fostered children and pre-existing children.
• That although the drop from 511 initial enquiries to only 20 households approved may seem disconcerting, initial enquiries were an online tick box with low commitment, the drop is when these are followed up on with greater commitment required and information regarding the requirements is explained.
• The council had a productive, robust and healthy working relationship with the judicial system that facilitates a quick and high performing fostering process.

Members requested that the following information be circulated to them:

• A link to the national campaign video promoting and explaining fostering.
• Explaining the reasons for the numbers of foster carers reducing significantly at each stage after initial contact.

The Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2) Resolved to note the contents of the briefing note and report and had no further recommendations for the Cabinet Member.